Glorifying government intervention into market economics (and forcing a changeover of an entire ecosystem of hardware, producing innumerable e-waste) seems like an odd take for HN's libertarian culture.

Same thing with the sideloading, it's not enough that android lets you do it, apple's business model centered around the iphone as a secure endpoint has to be completely outlawed.

kinda seems the android idea just isn't resilient enough to stand on its own in the market without government intervention to literally outlaw competition with it. given how obtuse and anti-consumer the USB-IF body tends to be, this probably won't end well in the long run.

and this isn't even going into the e-waste problems resulting from the android software lifecycle or the lack of OEM support lifecycle for parts availability, etc - all of which are simply swept under the rug in the headlong rush to coronate a market winner by government fiat.

it's easy to see that with the lack of concern over e-waste, and the lack of concern over sideloading in other situations (like consoles) that this was never really about e-waste at all, it was just legislating a solution to the android vs iphone wars. And that's fundamentally disappointing - fanboy wars should not be the basis for governmental policy and regulation.