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Comment by jsnell | Hacker News Reader

My guess is that this is due to that display running Android Things, which IIUC went out of support in January. There's something to be said for making sure users aren't running a browser that's not getting any security updates. (There's also something to be said for giving users a choice, but unfortunately very few people could actually make an informed choice when it comes to that).

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Disclaimer: I own one of these Lenovo devices.

This makes perfect sense, thank you. The last thing Google wants is to be blamed for allowing some old device's camera to be compromised and be the source of a leaked video of somebody dancing naked in their kitchen.

Basically a case of a device company riding some trend 5 years ago installing an OS that has an end date for support and since the manufacturer already got it's money for the device there is no motivation to solve the problem.

At this point why does anyone expect any electronic to be relevant after 2 years of ownership anyway?

> At this point why does anyone expect any electronic to be relevant after 2 years of ownership anyway?

I pray it is a joke or sarcasm.

> (There's also something to be said for giving users a choice, but unfortunately very few people could actually make an informed choice when it comes to that)

Irrelevant, ethically speaking they still deserve that choice.

Agreed, software-driven hardware devices should perform the same original functionality as when they were purchased forever, unless it's a hardware failure, or unless there is an explicit expiration on the purchase agreement.

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