irotsoma

There’s too much of a fine line in what is considered hate and what is considered “alternative facts”. The current state in the US shows how language can be twisted to mean the opposite and how easy it has always been to dehumanize some group in order to make laws not apply to them.

Sounds like this might be specific to your brand of TV. I have a Sony and there’s a bunch of Sony junk on there that I disabled a long time ago. But my TV app doesn’t have any ads in it yet. I’m guessing your manufacturer added ads to their TV app and made a deal with Google to use them as the ad provider. Unfortunately, those apps are relatively proprietary since they are supposed to be primarily just a simple UI for the tuners and so mostly hardware specific. Not saying there aren’t replacements, but likely that would require someone to reverse engineer some of of the hardware firmware’s APIs rather than web APIs that most apps interface with and aren’t guaranteed to be the same across models. Those are only available if you own an actual TV, so it’s less likely to exist.

Anyway, my point is that your searching probably needs to focus on the TV rather than the Android/Google TV platform as a whole. Look on forums devoted to the TV brand. You may have more luck.

The other alternative might be to block the ads on your router, but that may or may not work or cause some unintended inconveniences. For example I have Google’s DNS blocked and my wifi constantly drops and reconnects even when I only want to watch locally hosted content because the TV thinks it’s offline and needs to fix the connection.

I distance myself from companies run by people who say or explicitly support people who say that I don’t or shouldn’t exist. There are a few other things that make me distance myself from companies, but that one is a pretty hard line. (I’m gender “non-compliant” and on the Autism spectrum among other things that have been explicitly said don’t exist, shouldn’t exist, or need to be “cured”). Otherwise, I try to distance myself from any companies who explicitly collect and sell my information and other things that I find problematic, but that’s not always possible.

But the shithead exec is supportive of fascists which means privacy is secondary to the desires of the current regime. That’s just a standard part of fascism. And if the current regime is allowing untested backdoor code to be inserted in the Treasury department and NASA and the CDC and most major social media to strip out protections for people they don’t like, climate change, etc. Just imagine what someone who actually supports them ideologically would be willing to do.

That’s for use of the website. Not the device.

I said from the beginning it’s a deal breaker for me. You’re the one trying to convince me it’s not the issue I think it is.

And I’m not talking about the license to modify the firmware software itself. I’m talking about the EULA of the device itself. Pretty much any device you own that has any kind of software on it is not owned by you outright to modify as you wish. This website doesn’t show the agreement, but if it has a paid feature to unlock, it has to have one somewhere.

But were talking about firmware here. My computer also has firmware and an OS. I never have to touch that. Home Assistant is an application that I run on a computer. And I don’t have to modify the code in Home Assistant to get it to connect to another device. I just configure it.

I also install Linux on my laptop. Is that self hosting, too? We’re not talking about a server or a “host” other than the hardware device itself that lives in the house. If I want the server functionality, sure that’s self hosting the server software. Firmware and operating systems are generally not referred to as self-hosting since all devices need those things. Self-hosting refers generally to cloud-based applications, not standalone hardware firmware/OS.

This is a hardware device that is hard coded to connect only to a specific server that you have to pay to access if you want any API functionality. If I want to use my own I have to learn the programming language, figure out how to modify the Firmware, and then maintain a fork of that firmware indefinitely including making sure that there are no automatic updates since that would overwrite the modifications.

But i have no desire to compile and maintain a fork of software just to set a URL and auth token. And again, this is a license to modify the firmware, so they could at some point decide to revoke the license to modify the firmware or stop publishing security updates on their git repo to allow for merging into the fork I have to maintain. Probably won’t if they are reputable and don’t get acquired, but still a risk. It’s just not worth it for me for any open product I purchase.

Two issues I have:

1. There is a license on what you can install on the device. Open means no licenses on owned things, regardless of how open that license is initially, it can be changed.
2. The server it connects to is not configurable. You have to build your own firmware and maintain it and that goes back to the first point in case they decide to change the license.

OK, I see. They decoded not to have the device respond to requests. It’s not that the device has endpoints, it’s that it’s hard coded to connect to a specific endpoint and you have to build your own firmware in order to get it to connect to your own server.

That’s still a deal-breaker for me. It’s just that the connection is flipped. I don’t want to have to build and maintain firmware to use the device in addition to maintaining the server. Why can’t this be a setting on what server it connects to?

I think you’re not seeing my point. This is in the hardware. It’s simple to have a setting that defaults to connecting to the company’s server and then have that setting allow for changing the sever target. Why do I need to build firmware to do that?

And, no, it’s not acceptable to require forking, regardless of the ease of merging. It still means you won’t get critical security updates without manual intervention.

And finally, it’s requiring trust. If the company decides to change the license, you are out of luck. And again, the documentation and policies are already lacking, like what happens if your API key is compromised? Do you need to pay for a new one to be generated. These are on your local device.

And no, home assistant doesn’t require self-hosting. It requires hardware to put the central system on, but doesn’t require an external server for web services. This device is putting the lock inside the hardware you are purchasing. If I purchase hardware, I want it to be mine. Not subject to a license of what you can put on it, even if that license is initially very open. It’s my hardware.

Home assistant does sell hardware that is totally open with no license on what software you can put on it. Most people put it on their own hardware. This is totally separate from the cloud service they offer which is for interacting with the sever over the internet and some other stuff. That cloud functionality is totally optional and you aren’t required to modify the home assistant code base in order to NOT use the cloud. So it’s not at all equivalent.

No, with home assistant they have a cloud server that has additional functionality that you can use or not. Home Assistant doesn’t restrict access to the software on device it’s running on.

With this, the device itself will not allow you to access its API endpoints without having a key that you need to purchase. And though they say it’s a one time purchase, who’s to stop them from releasing a critical security patch that invalidates the keys, even accidentally, or includes making the keys a monthly subscription going forward. Or what happens if that key gets exposed and you need them to generate a new one? Do you need to pay for that or is the device permanently compromised unless you build your own custom firmware?

You’re allowed to modify the firmware to use a self hosted server for that functionality without violating the license, which is better than nothing, but then it’s up to you to maintain your fork of the firmware. Why not just only require the key if you’re connecting to their server and allow you to select your own server without needing to modify and maintain a fork of the firmware?

Problem for me is that there is some kind of restriction on accessing the device’s API at all and you pay extra for the key that will get created when you unlock it. This may mean that some kind of lock is in place on the device that has to have a key for it created. Even if they give you a key, what happens if an update removes that key’s validity, even unintentionally. I’ve had this happen with products in the past. A bug will restrict access to things or worst case, will totally brick the device because the lock is stuck in place.

Not saying this device has that problem, but the concept of a lock existing means it could intentionally for profit, maliciously by hacking, or unintentionally end up locked later, so I’m just against the concept in the first place. It’s a potential point of failure for no good reason but profit on a device that is supposed to be open. I’d happily accept if they changed a little extra for a device that had no lock at all. Just I don’t want a device with a lock on it.

Also, I’m not sure how having my own server helps here, in fact that’s my plan in the first place as I want to get the thing to interface with my own internal systems. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the implementation, but my understanding from the very brief information available is that you get on your device, connect to their server to pay a fee, and then a key is created for you and then you can access the endpoints running on the device either through the server or directly with REST calls. The alternative is to teardown the device and build your own custom firmware that uses different authentication mechanisms. I don’t really have the interest to mod the firmware and then have to maintain a fork for getting official updates. I just want to be able to be able to interface any servers I have with the device as I choose.

$20 to unlock the API killed it for me. If it has a built in way yo lock it down, it’s not an open platform and is a great way for bugs to brick a device.

Seems a lot of futo fans were advocating that it was “open-source” because the code is available while ignoring that an essential part of something being consider open-source is that the source is licensed openly as well as being viewable openly.

I’ve been using Heliboard for a while. It does most that gboard does, but the predictions aren’t as good of course.