> commodity hardware

Apart from the "someone's basement", as objected to in this thread, it also doesn't say they acquired "commodity hardware"; I took it to suggest the opposite, presumably for good reason.

▲

wtallis 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> it also doesn't say they acquired "commodity hardware"; I took it to suggest the opposite, presumably for good reason.

This seems entirely like wishful thinking. They were using a 12 year old server that was increasingly unfit for the day-to-day task of building Android applications. It doesn't seem like they were in a position to acquire and deploy any exotic hardware (except to the extent that really old hardware can be considered exotic and no longer a commodity). I'd be surprised if the new server is anything other than off the shelf x86 hardware, and if we're lucky then maybe they know how to do something useful with a TPM or other hardware root of trust to secure the OS they're running on this server and protect the keys they're signing builds with.

	▲	gnufx an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm just reading what was written, especially "the specific components we needed", and assuming they're not as incompetent as is being suggested, given they've served me well. Perhaps you haven't been tendering for server hardware recently, even bog-standard stuff, and seen the responses that even say they can't quote a fixed price currently. At least, that's in my part of the world, in an operation buying a good deal of hardware. We also have systems over ten years old running.