A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
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Every day, the reasons to either switch to dumb devices or open-source software keep piling up.
Then you have the mainstream user that can't be bothered to even install an adblocker. It is mind-boggling.
You underestimate how scary it is for them to do anything out or the ordinary. Most "normal people" and I include people like project managers in a tech company, really think things will blow up if they mess with any settings.
This is why the default browser setting is so valuable.
The mainstream user doesn't care enough to install an adblocker
Amazon is adding full-screen video ads that will play when you start your Fire TV unless you quickly perform an action on it. […] “Our focus is on delivering an immersive experience so customers can enjoy their favorite TV shows and movies, as well as browse and discover more content they’ll want to watch. We’re always working to make the Fire TV experience better for customers and have updated one of the prominent placements in the UI to play a short content preview if no other action is taken by a customer upon turning on their Fire TV.” Amazon said in a statement to Cord Cutters News.
Sure, that’s definitely a feature for customers. Especially the fact that you can only click it away in the first few seconds. I also love to have my ads be immersive. Biggest pile of bullshit I’ve heard this week.
Sure, that’s definitely a feature for customers.
You misunderstand: the advertisers are the customers.
A lot of the fire tvs can be rooted! There’s a great community over at XDA with all the needed resources.
I have two 4k sticks (1st gen) rooted and debloated running Leanback launcher. When you cut out all the junk, it really is (or was?) the best 4k streaming device under $50.
I‘ll definitely have to try if that’s possible with my Grundig TV that has a FireTV built in.
Coolcool! At the very least, you should be able to block Amazon from pushing updates.
People keep buying big tech products and subscriptions then are shocked when they fuck you over? shocked picachu
Unfortunately, for a lot of non-tech savy people, the options often boil down to this kind of shit or being part of a botnet within a few days.
Yeah, what is the alternative? “Oh you can assemble your own raspberry pi kit, after you partition an SD card and install a special version of Linux you can then tunnel it to a vpn and BitTorrent all your movies and shows using the -arr software suite and then use a package manager to install Kodi or jellyfin to watch, and maybe if you put docker on it you can use HomeAssistant to dim your lights when watching”
Meanwhile their iPhone autocorrects half those words to something else.
There are fewer and fewer options every day that aren't by big brands.
It’s a real shame. Monopolies in any industry/product inevitably lead to fucking over consumers… time we broke em up I think
Hundred percent agreed
You can btw "simply" opt out from this in the settings (look for "featured content" and disable it).
Yes it should be opt-in, but it's not that hard to keep the fire tv (stick) being a good device for the price paid.
please tell me i can do something with ADB against that. my boyfriend is already annoyed at those, and i want to do something against it. no root sadly.
I wish, I have not found a way yet and I work in cybersecurity. Though I have to admit I didn't give it my best at all.
One thing I would like to try soon is running FLauncher. Though I kinda doubt they will allow another launcher to be set as default. Their site offers some workarounds but "Fire OS" is a lot more locked down. For example using the normal ADB command to turn the screen upside down (needed for my projector) is not working either.
Really a shame. I bought a new TV with Android OS because it isn't locked down, and gifted my BF my old Fire Stick because he got a TV with the shitty Samsung OS. Wish i could block the new ads for him.
I found that the following helped: by never turning it off it just continues where it left off last time it was used. This assumes power is independent of TV.
Useful Settings This ADB command kills the sleep timer:
adb shell settings put secure sleep_timeout 0 and this ADB command kills the screensaver:
adb shell settings put system screen_off_timeout 2147460000
I've noticed they have added this trick to my FireCube. When it's first powered on it looks for the remote and often doesn't find it. Then as you press a button on it, it clicks the first show or movie being advertised.
I didn't pay top dollar for a cube to deal with this crap.
I'm finding I'm using my laptop more than my cube these days. I'm also cancelling services as I go. Arrrhh time to go!
I have blokada on mine I had whitelisted all the amazon servers it connects with but when I read this I removed them all to stop it updating hopefully.
Will probably work until I get round to trying the xda fix.
Does that help? For me it doesn't stop anything. It looks like it uses DoH or something to bypass filtering.
Well mine didn't update at all until I manually added the servers from amazon it was blocking by default.
So I kind of assume taking them off again is a temporary solution. That said I can't guarantee they haven't changed anything since then and I might wake up to a worse fire cube sometime.
Blokada overrides the dns to its own and even then I don't see how dns is at all relevant because it blocks the update server from being connected with.
Firesticks use a hardcoded backup DNS which can't be changed/disabled without root access. This renders DNS level blocking useless because they'll just use their backup DNS if your DNS resolves to 127.0.0.1/0.0.0.0
There are lots of low cost single board computers that can run Kodi and Jellyfin which are open source and don't have any ads.
Currently have everything Amazon blocked so it doesn’t update, and everything on the default Home screen is blank or missing except the home icon and settings menu.
Installed “Wolf Launcher” and “Launcher Manager” to set it to the Home button, and “Launch on Boot” to automatically start Wolf Launcher after the default home screen is done loading nothing.
Everything behind a pihole to block Amazon and Twitch ads, plus SmartTubeNext for youtube with adblock and sponsorblock.
People buy Firesticks and run the Amazon software?
What a disconnected statement. Every once in a while I recommend going into the real world (yes I know it's scary) and exploring your relationships out side of the internet
Man I hate this flippant pseudointelligent passive-aggressive crap.
Yes, not everyone missed their childhood to learn Linux like we did. People don’t have the time or knowledge to build their own streaming box. None of their friends are ever impressed when they do anyway.
Those people are all busy specializing in something else, so that you or I don’t have to learn to farm, or manufacture Cheetos, or keep the water running.
This is being extremely exploited by late-stage capitalism now, however. What we need are some ethical choices for stuff like smart devices, things that don’t need “cloud connection” just so your phone can turn your lights on. FFS they’re right next to each other, we don’t need to bring CloudFlare into this.
What we need are some ethical choices for stuff like smart devices, things that don’t need “cloud connection” just so your phone can turn your lights on.
IKEA's smart stuff is the best out there for the average consumer. Manages to be something that "just works" whilst also being fully local, no cloud connection, uses open standard APIs and provides firmware updates as downloads.
Man I hate this flippant pseudointelligent passive-aggressive crap.
Then proceeds to spew different pseudo intelligent passive-aggressive crap. 🥴😮💨
We're not talking about installing Linux or anything close. We're talking about downloading an app, paying for an IPTV subscription and a VPN. 🫠
Again, most people do not know what IPTV or a VPN is. They do not care to find out, their brain doesn't spend any amount of time thinking about these things. If you're not into cars you don't wonder if there's a way for your car to go faster or sound or look cooler. You get into your car and you drive it to your destination. This is the same concept.
Someone mentioned, either in this thread or another thread going outside and I found that amusing as in the same way that people used to come into pubs to sell pirate DVDs, they're now selling Android TV boxes and fire sticks for £100. You'd be surprised at what the layman knows.
The layman doesn't know what that it though. I know people who have those and they just called them "dodgy fire sticks" and have no idea how or why they work.
Hi there, is there alternative software that can be installed instead? Any recommendations?
I don't have a firestick, but they might just be meaning a different launcher. I use this one on a Shield. Works great. https://www.firesticktricks.com/wolf-launcher.html
Amazon’s shit is locked down pretty well. At least the fire cube is, not sure about the stick.
I wasn’t able to easily change launchers on my 1st gen cube. It is possible via flashing a whole new OS I believe but I was really hoping for a side-loadable solution.