
Google Fuchsia: A system built for 'Instant Apps' on steroids - datguacdoh
https://9to5google.com/2018/02/16/fuchsia-friday-instant-apps/
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O1111OOO
AI-driven search, always-on, cloud-focused, centralized, over-engineered for
maximum tracking/profiling, decisions left to a single authority... I didn't
think Google could outdo itself but along comes Fuchsia.

This is my knee-jerk reaction and I admit I'm looking ahead as Fuchsia evolves
further. Trying to see the benefits of this in the long-term but currently
failing. Is this another nail in the coffin to conventional desktop OSes as we
possibly evolve (or de-evolve) in the decades to come?

I sometimes imagine what systems like those in ' _Star Trek_ ', ' _2001 - A
Space Odyssey_ ' (HAL) and others might look/feel like. Is Fuschia an attempt
to get us there (cynical flipside: albeit with authority figures bent on
reestablishing control of a narrative they have lost over the last few years).

How much control do we give up and... can we trust the gatekeepers?

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maxerickson
I watched an episode of Star Trek TNG this morning where they disconnect the
microphones in a room so the computer can't hear them.

(the one where Barclay gets zapped with the brain light)

On Star Trek though the computer runs on free energy and is just a tool.
Google has to make money.

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O1111OOO
> On Star Trek though the computer runs on free energy and is just a tool.
> Google has to make money.

Right. As I think ahead, though, the only tools we're essentially getting are
from commercial companies. Even our own governments (worldwide) are running
these tools from the same commercial sources.

I'm not aware of any solutions being built now for the kind of interconnected
future (smart homes, smart cars, smart "news", etc) that isn't centralized and
also coming from commercial sources (Google, Amazon, etal).

The Star Trek/2001 analogy is about an OS system that isn't too dissimilar to
our own connected future. Instead of handling a Star Ship, these systems would
be running smart homes, managing our lives. That's a lot of profiling in the
hands of a few companies (and their _" partners"_) who may not have the best
intentions.

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jarofgreen
This all assumes constant, good and cheap data network coverage tho - is that
an assumption the whole OS is making? :-( if so.

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taneq
Yeah, open some previously-unused (or even not-recently-used) feature of an
app and suddenly bam, there goes 100mb of data.

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ledriveby
Ad networks do this shit all the time.

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pmontra
Instant apps are an interesting concept. I believe my Android 8 phone supports
them but I really didn't notice any of them running. Maybe it's how they are
designed. Anyway, does anybody know the answers to these questions?

1) Are they going to ask the same permissions every time an instant app is
downloaded or are they caching the answers of the user?

2) How do they pick the instant app to download when multiple apps can do the
same thing?

3) As a consequence, how to know which company to contact for assistance
and/or ask for our personal data (think GDPR)?

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foolrush
Try Vimeo. It is the only instant app I have seen yet. It seems to lay around
and be more instant if you have already launched it.

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pmontra
I went to vimeo.com with the browser of my phone (Firefox). Started to watch a
video, the video plays inside the browser. I checked if I had instant apps
enabled in Settings (Apps, Advanced, Default apps, Opening links) and I did.
Maybe it's because I'm using Firefox? Would it work with Chrome? Oh well, it
really doesn't matter. If I want an app I'm installing it, otherwise it's
perfectly fine not to have it. Actually, I prefer not to have too many things
going on without me knowing.

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enos_feedler
I believe you need to use Chrome

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dingo_bat
I prefer PWAs more than this. Instant apps is highly proprietary. PWAs have
the potential to work across platforms.

~~~
pjmlp
With a lower UI/UX quality than any native UI, but hey it is portable.

For example, WebGL based games still don't run properly on devices that barely
sweat with OpenGL 3.x native apps.

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Mononokay
What happened to Escher? The repo is deleted and I can't seem to find anything
on it.

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Skylled
I'm not sure why Escher started in a separate repo (possibly to make testing
on Linux easier), but it's been moved to its rightful place inside of the
Garnet repo.

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bsaul
i hope they don't overengineer this OS by trying to reinvent the wheel. Just a
regular mobile OS, working fast on cheap hardware, with an elegant SDK and the
possibility to develop apps using cross-platform tools would look appealing
enough to me. IE : take iOS or android, fix the parts that are broken, and
remove useless feature ( because you don't care about backward compatibility
anymore), use a modern and safe language for the sdk, make it open source
enough that people can have experiment with it, and you've got a winner.

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druidcz
This reminds me of Apple's OpenDoc[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc)

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ENGNR
Progressive installation is great

I'm getting a bit apprehensive about the feed centric view though. What are
the odds Google is going to require full
browsing/identity/use/location/voice/video/file permissions for everything, by
mixing it all together into one 'experience', like they do with the Google
assistant

I suppose at least it's open source

~~~
jarofgreen
Based on what happened with Android and Open Source, I'd be wary. Over time
some of the Open Source core apps and bits of the O.S. (I think?) were
replaced with closed source things via Google Play. There was good technical
motivation for doing so - it bypassed the slow carriers and allowed users to
get the latest updates quicker - but the end result was the same.

I'm also wary of the feed thing to. As well as the data access thing you
mention, how does it decide what the "best" app for a task is and do I get any
say? Also, I wonder if it will end up with a situation that if you want your
content to be available to these users you have to make it available with no
control over how it's presented? (You could argue that on the web currently
most content producers have messed that up with trackers, ads, etc which is a
fair point but I don't know if this is the answer.) If so, whether it's Open
Source or not makes little difference to most people trying to publish stuff.

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ZenoArrow
Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems hugely wasteful to require apps to
be downloaded for every use.

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andrewchambers
they would use caching heavily, they just don't delete it until you actually
need some free space.

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ykm
Ephemerality sounds like JIT but for apps. Seems the necessary stuff to run
the app will be downloaded dynamically and cached locally to run later.
Though, why cant be this done in the current setup? What are the limitations
that fuschia overcomes in this regards?

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flohofwoe
So... like web pages? [https://xkcd.com/1367/](https://xkcd.com/1367/)

(except worse because it's a walled garden)

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Jyaif
"Apps" do not imply walled garden.

