If you just give binary blobs and no sources
The main point is that you give the source to the blobs, so it’s not a black box anymore - new maintainers knowing what the blob does (and how) saves a HUGE amount of time prodding the black box (blob) to infer its behaviour.
And it doesn’t pose a security risk - if anything, more eyes on the code is better. Security through obscurity has been proven a myth since open code has more eyes on it. Security researches have smarter things to do than prod some binary blob when there’s so much code that’s either open source in the first place or at least only they got access to closed code.
What obscurity does is limit the eyes on the code, but the share of bad actors hoping to strike gold to researches looking at it outdoes any benefit.
Will your technically-challenged great-Aunt switch to post-support build when her phone hits EoL
She won’t. But you as her niece/nephew might. And the local repair tech might when she comes to ask. Abd she’s not an idiot, just the technology isn’t mature enough in the societal sense: people don’t think of bringing their phone to a repair shop like they do their cars, which is a fixable issue - even without much advocacy groups time will fix this issue.
hackers [will] be able to remote control her banking app and take away your inheritance before the community can even patch it
You might be mixing apples and orabnes here: why and how is the community expected to “fix” a banking app?
A banking app is a closed blob just like phobes nowadays. It’s a parasitic relationship: blobbed phones are used to justify blobbed apps and vice versa. It’s like saying “well, the foubdation of the building is bad, but to fix it we’d need to also deal with the crumbling walls” - so instead of fixing, it often is better to do a fresh start. But you’re suggesting we should continue making buildings with bad walls and foubdations because we have the wall materials lying around, so why not use them?
Then there could also be licensed code
This is a recipe for disaster. I hope you’re trolling.
The Internet wouldn’t work if DNS were centralized, and the only thing DNS is used for is translating key pairs (basically). Now a single point of failure would have to do code vetting?
It’s the totalitarian dream! Oh, and absolutely out of touch with reality.
Sorry for being pedantic, but it will do no such thing.
The lives rhat have already been cut short - they’ll continue being cut short. That time isn’t something a magic wand nor a ban on sale can fix.
This type of ban won’t even try to deal with the existing smokers. The only thing it tries to do is stop the new geberation from becoming smokers by taking away access.
Which will probably work, but it’s a stopgap - not a solution.
I’d argue a policy of prevention, of raising prices, of limiting the amount of cancer-causing chemicals and of clearly defining and educating people about tapering off (including perhaps cigarrettes of differing nicotine levels like the vapes) would work better than saying “time’s up, young-uns 2008 onwards can’t get cigs”.
I’d also argue a better approach would be a school lesson where kids try a puff of cigarette smoke, hopefully hate it for life, and never think about trying it again. Banning stuff just makes it seem cool and I think this rebellious aspect is what gets most high school kids into the addiction.
Accessibility doesn’t help, but cigs are already illegal to sell to under-18s but we all know how effective that is at preventing teenagers developing the addiction. Altering the rule a bit doesn’t get rid of the problem of it not being properly enforced.