chickenbane
Joined 11 years ago
Joined 11 years ago
Funny how you frame Java "only" being available for some of the most popular platforms, which is billions of devices.
It was a cute novelty, and if you're not picky it's a fast soda, but honestly it was just stocked with cheap, off-brand gross soda. Would have been genius if occasionally it gave you something interesting (or at least good).
https://theglobepost.com/2020/10/15/us-military-base-poisoni...
As a Play Store developer, I give Google the benefit of the doubt. By the way, before you assume a nefarious purpose, consider all Android phones connecting to the Play Store (by definition) have an auto-updating root process. Why does Google need to impersonate an application developer? This is fundamentally why Commonsware scare tactics don't resonate with me, the application has less privileges than the system and the app store, the calls are coming from inside the house!
But, there are more common and mundane reasons. Honestly, a lot of people lose their private signing key. And if that happens, no more updates to your app. By using App Signing, Google can help regenerate a key for you. They want to make this ability consistent across their whole store, that's why they're making the change.
They can also optimize the app bundle the device downloads from the store, as the store will know the target screen size, localization, CPU architecture, etc. The current workflow forces the application engineer to upload separate apk configurations. So this is also an improvement.
Android Pie: https://www.androidauthority.com/project-treble-2019-1045370... Android 11: https://9to5google.com/2020/12/16/android-updates-4-years/
This idea is likely held by people who have not had a lifetime of discrimination and insults and made fun of for X. When you have been such a victim, being in a professional, zen-calm work environment is a luxury, and honestly not too much to ask for.
The downside of Android being an open platform is that Google is limited in forcing vendors to update their devices - and most do not. That said, Android has had regular monthly security releases for years, and the Pixel devices are excellent from a security perspective. Google also monitors its app store - as well as the full Android ecosystem (as far as Google Play Services is installed) for potentially harmful applications. This is why you regularly see articles along the lines of "Google removes malware from the Play Store that has had X installs!"
I'd say the biggest vulnerability for Android users given its impressive scale is a vulnerability in a vendor's supply chain. Given the complexity of devices, a vendor likely has multiple places where a malicious actor could insert malware into an Android device. I think this is why US intel has ultimately decided devices from China - Huawei in particular - are untrustworthy. If you can't validate every component of a device and trust the vendor will always audit its security, then it's hard to trust a device, even if it is safe right now.
Docker is a much bigger dependency than ko, involving a daemon and a socket you have to manage and secure. ko is a only a go program, and builds are straight-forward and lightning fast compared to Docker.
Importantly, ko also removes the need for a Dockerfile. Yes, as you point out a Dockerfile can be simple, but but the best part is no part. Dockerfile has plenty of foot guns and best practices to learn so if at the end of the day all you need is a go binary on a container ko will serve you much, much better.