As was repeatedly made plain to see during this year’s Google I/O, developers are eager to learn more about Google’s Fuchsia OS. Today, those appetites are beginning to be satisfied thanks to the quiet launch of the official Fuchsia OS developer website, Fuchsia.dev.
This isn’t our first run-in with Fuchsia.dev, as the site briefly went live just after Google I/O, though it had no real content to share at the time. This morning, as noted by the Fuchsia Reddit community, Fuchsia.dev is live once again with a new design and tons of official Fuchsia documentation.
This is the first time Google officially and openly acknowledges its new operating system as a real thing that exists that it wants to involve others in. Very interesting.
You don’t have to go far in that Reddit post to see it’s already in doubt whether this is really Google or some random guy that put up a website with already existing documentation. All personal information of the registrar hidden and being registered in Holland for some reason is quite strange.
Sometimes people overthink:
* It is the same domain is earlier
* There is a valid Google certificate on the domain (https)
* The whole content, analysis and feedback system is entirely linked to Google’s policies and legal pages
…this is a legit site!
Look up “dutch sandwich”. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not for tax *ahem* efficiency purposes.
Fuchsia might replace Android entirely. And Zircon might be ported to the x86 PC architecture which could spell doom for the Linux kernel. Overall I’m excited. A microkernel from Google with stable APIs/ABIs. This sounds promising.
This might be what Hurd has been waiting for. Nix for the package manager, Wayland,
Aside from that, I would be surprised if this slowed the momentum of the Linux kernel. There are no shortage of kernels out there, and none of them have even been a blip on the radar in the last 20 years. Once things like Apache, MariaDb, Redis, etc. are developed on Fuschia first then ported to Linux, I will concede it has surpassed Linux.
It may deprecate Linux within Google, but the wider world doesn’t run on Google software.
I wonder if Fuchsia would be a good alternative for emulation boxes like Recalbox/Retropie since Google has dropped support for the RPI3.
Maybe on future boards with all vulkan work being done on this OS, and with some joypad and other drivers imported/implemented, Fuchsia could be a possible option…
How bad is the security nerfed?
The last I heard the Fuschia team was building an OS with security for the modern world, but the Google ad team lost their minds when they figure out they wouldn’t be able to spy on people and got the features pulled.
This reminds me of the Help Desk story arc where Ubersoft starts selling a malware dev kit. Is there a link to adware/spyware dev kit for Fuschia on the website?
I don’t know what you’re smoking or drinking but Google is not technically spying on you. They are collecting information which you give them by using their services and in exchange they show you the most relevant ads. Google doesn’t share this information with third parties though. What’s more this information cannot be accessed by most Googlers – they have quite anal security policies.
Also, security in Fuchsia/Zircon is excellent – something akin to SeLinux/MAC is already built-in. What Google decides to install on top of it is a whole different matter.
birdie,
Some people would quantify that as “spying”, but admittedly it depends on your definition. From a technical point of view, there’s not much difference between “spying” versus “collecting information”, obviously the same technology can be used for many purposes. Would you define spying as collecting information without user consent?
Which of these do you consider spying?
Is a court wiretap order spying?
A service provider snooping on user data to sell ads?
An employer snooping employee activity on their own networks?
The NSA collecting domestic internet data? Foreign data?
China collecting internet data?
A hotel hotspot collecting internet data from guests?
Driving a van around town capturing unencrypted wifi traffic?
A neighbor capturing unencrypted traffic on cable lines?
Exploiting browser bugs to collect personally identifiable information?
Obviously these have different legal and social implications, but IMHO they’re all forms spying just having different levels of acceptance.
Well, there have been abuses by google itself as well as by individual google employees. It’s not an easy problem to solve. We can’t just pretend that security will block everyone with malicious intent. You’ve got employees writing code that ends up running behind firewalls and their code may legitimately need user data. That access is potentially abusable.
Part of the problem is google’s own business model. While endpoint crypto DOES offer excellent security from internal threats, so long as companies including google insist on accessing user data for advertising/marketing purposes, that implicitly rules out the use of strong crypto that would protect users from internal threats. The result is that low level infrastructure staff need to be implicitly trusted. It doesn’t help that data centers are staffed by low level employees where it’s statistically likely that some may be compromised by outsiders (say by competitors, the NSA, foreign governments, etc).
Even with SELinux, it doesn’t do much to protect from hardware level access. While there’s a lot an IT administrator can do to harden networks from outside threats, inside threats with hardware access are far more challenging. Heck even the janitor poses a risk, haha. I bet there’s a lot a hacker could gain access to if they were invited to work their skills from within google’s network
FlyingJester has replied on my behalf I mean I concur.
I do agree that it’s not spying, but only because users are willfully giving them this information.