Hacker News Reader

40 million Chromebooks will be shipped in 2021!

Calling a Chromebook (or Android) "Linux" is disingenuous for the purpose of "The Linux Desktop" "winning". We all know that a proprietary user-land stapled on top of the Linux kernel and all the applications running in a web browser is not what was meant by "year of the Linux Desktop". Hell, Google will likely replace Linux with Fuchsia within the decade.

This comment saddens me.

When I see Chromebooks being mentioned, I always think about "One Tablet Per Child" charity from Person of Interest show.

(Slight spoiler for season 4)

Giving every child in the country a free tablet with Internet access, loaded with quality educational software sounds like a great good, but is it so good if it also comes loaded with surveillance equipment and is controlled by a malicious AI attempting to control human society?

(Chromebooks aren't free and Google isn't an evil general AI, but it is a multinational adtech corporation, which is as close as you can get to amoral GAI in the real world today.)

Pretty much exactly my concern. This isn't some philanthropic group doing this. It's Google, and everything that comes with it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com