terrific

I don’t know, I don’t share your pessimism. In my personal experience, most hardware isn’t unhackable. Apart from iPhone / iPad (where hardware and software are non-standard, and also made by the same vendor) I struggle to find any examples. I have installed Linux many times on Chromebooks, where there is some BIOS module that checks for OS “authenticity”, but that can be disabled. I have flashed ROMs on android devices many times too. It’s sometimes a bit inconvenient, but nothing remotely close to impossible.

Someone will install Linux on them and use them as a cheap barebones computer. I’m sure with a bit of jiggery-pokery they can be repurposed to something useful.

The classroom runs on Chromebooks, Google Classroom, and code.org (AWS). Corporate infrastructure top to bottom. This is so dystopian. Get the kids hooked on XaaS while they are young, and you’ll have a customer for life. I’m so happy I live in a welfare state, and gee I hope we manage to make the switch away from the US big tech monopoly.