They’re really cool and some people depend on them but working on apps which rely on them has had me thinking about e-waste and cost. Some people have devices which are old but still perfectly functional except that they’re falling out of driver & security support, and many blind people don’t have tons of cash sitting around to replace them. I really hope that the tech industry finds a better model for things like that which are so important to everyday life.

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bell-cot 2 days ago | parent [-]

> I really hope that the tech industry finds a better model for things ...

Given the tech industry's failure to support things with 10X, 100X, 1000X, etc. the number of people affected, this seems unlikely.

Instead, could legislation ("when unsupported, it becomes open source", or whatever) be workable? Politicians might not want to be seen voting against blind people. OTOH, the situation is probably 100X more complex than I know of. And legal changes wouldn't magically give anyone the skills and budget and stuff to keep providing support.

	▲	acdha 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Fair, yes, I certainly agree that regulation needs to be a key part of this. In one case I was aware of, simply being able to rebuild an Android image after setting the flag to enable TLS >1.0 would’ve added years to the service life of some expensive hardware.