Open source all you want! It doesn't change the fact that they're spying the contents of your screen no matter what input is being used with Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology
The original idea of open source or rather free software is to bmactually "own" the code in a way that you can modify it to your needs. Guess this is not the case here, then. But I guess also most of android falls in that category that by now. I guess we should be using better,more attributes when describing open source
miki123211 1 hours ago [-]
There's at least:
source available - whether you can read the code
open source - whether you can run (a modified version of) the code on some piece of hardware you own
open hardware - whether the hardware they sell you lets you run modified versions of their code
open contribution - whether they want your modifications
free software - whether your modifications have to be open source too
If it's at least source available, it can have any combination of these.
bogwog 1 hours ago [-]
"Free software" has always been a misleading term, unfortunately. Maybe calling it "Freedom software" instead would be clearer.
But when you conflate free software with open source, you get confused people cheerleading their own abuse. Android is probably the worst offender here. Google Chrome, VSCode are others that come to mind.
functionmouse 60 minutes ago [-]
The idea of free software, yes, is to own the code in a way that you can modify it to your needs. The idea of "open source" as a mantra is to confuse and muddle the ideas of free software in order to subvert the ideologists in that camp into supporting and furthering the goals of billionaire corporations. "Open source" as a calling card is intended to kill free software.
paxcoder 9 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ornornor 3 hours ago [-]
Samsung does that too and use it to sell you stuff, show you ads, and retarget you across devices! (Not saying it’s a good thing, but rather pointing out how common this is)
mijoharas 2 hours ago [-]
I'm really sick of the enshittification of smart TV's.
A while after I've had my LG TV, and found every arcane different menu you need to remove all the ads. They started sending me ads via the notification pop-up.
This continued even after finding and removing the consent for advertising (that I'd missed in one of the consent pop-ups.)
I've considered and looked into "dumb" TVs, but I don't think they're for me. I just want one that's not enshittified!
ornornor 2 hours ago [-]
FWIW I’m pretty happy with my Panasonic OLED (2019 model), it has totally optional smart features (ie it has a Netflix app), works well offline, and turns on instantly.
cryo32 2 hours ago [-]
I just don't bother with television full stop.
Geroke 2 hours ago [-]
I can't say I have either since they tried to change the format to cinema from electronic theatre.
2 hours ago [-]
surajrmal 2 hours ago [-]
This is not "enshittification". That implies it's gotten worse over time. Smart TVs have been doing this from the beginning.
mijoharas 1 hours ago [-]
I disagree. It's definitely gotten worse, notification ads for my TV for example.
LG also didn't used to have home screen ads, but that's a long time ago now.
antonvs 2 hours ago [-]
Smart TVs are the enshittification of regular TVs. An attempt to extract more money from the customer without providing a useful benefit.
9 hours ago [-]
imglorp 2 hours ago [-]
Is this their dongles, TVs, or both?
gricardo99 9 hours ago [-]
you can disable this feature by going to Settings > Privacy > Smart TV Experience.
nicman23 9 hours ago [-]
can you ? can you really ?
c0balt 13 hours ago [-]
That looks neat, the code appears be mostly in C, seems reasonable documented and is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/rokudev/lt-sdk
dsign 8 hours ago [-]
I wonder what would make this better (for some use cases at least) than venerable FreeRTOS? Or Zephyr? Or any of the other many, many RTOSes? In particular, the ESP32 comes with top notch documentation and SDKs that will make beginners at least want to stay with Espressif's modified RTOS for a while.
jon-wood 4 hours ago [-]
That's also what I was wondering. What problems is this custom RTOS solving that all the other ones don't, or is it in fact just that some Roku engineers decided they needed some job security and having an OS nobody else uses would be a good path to that?
UnreachableCode 57 minutes ago [-]
On the topic that will likely pervade this news item: does anyone know the best FOSS TV system
hiccuphippo 38 minutes ago [-]
Not sure what exactly you are asking for, but check Jellyfin, it might be part of the answer.
UnreachableCode 26 minutes ago [-]
Jellyfin is good. I'm currently using the Roku version
phantomathkg 12 hours ago [-]
The good thing is, it is not written in Brightscript.
aturek 11 hours ago [-]
Brightscript could have been worse!
And much, much better, as well
phantomathkg 10 hours ago [-]
How could it be better? Brightscript is a proprietary language that serves nothing but a low power STB.
dubcanada 2 hours ago [-]
On hackers news a technology focused platform where custom weird languages thrive. You're complaining about a company who the original developer made their own language.
Isn't this exactly how all of the other languages where created?
krackers 13 hours ago [-]
>that is already used in our industry-changing Roku remote controls.
Why does a remote control require a RTOS?
topspin 12 hours ago [-]
Roku remotes are sophisticated devices. There are many models, so features vary, but among the possible features are 3.5mm audio output, Bluetooth audio, voice command input, Wi-Fi, infrared, battery charger and other things. Clearly a substantial MCU is present and thus, an RTOS.
NDlurker 11 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure they don't have gyroscopes and accelerometers anymore, but they did early on. It was basically a Wii Mote and I played a ton of Angry Birds on my TV.
phh 7 hours ago [-]
You can do an IR remote without a RTOS, but as soon as you do BLE you realistically need a RTOS. You have timers for keep-alives, connection states, competing interrupts, CPU-"intensive" tasks that can be preempted (for crypto)
SpecialistK 13 hours ago [-]
Voice command handling, I would suspect.
_ZeD_ 9 hours ago [-]
to spy on you
tecleandor 5 hours ago [-]
I don't know if I'm missing something but from what I can see...
They don't seem to have any written documentation online, not even a list of features. They seem to have some doxygen docs on the repo, but they're not built anywhere. The only information ready to check are YouTube videos. The developer forum link they have in the top right doesn't work (I think since January they killed their forums).
It's a chore just to know what does it do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
LoganDark 12 hours ago [-]
I wish they would offer the instruction in text as well rather than only in videos. Videos become stale and can't easily be used as a reference.
LeFantome 9 hours ago [-]
Get an AI to transcribe the videos for you and then ask it to create a manual from the transcription.
LoganDark 59 minutes ago [-]
That's actually not the worst idea, thanks.
ddtaylor 8 hours ago [-]
Does this meaningfully allow a person to push a modified version to their own TV without using a screwdriver?
jon-wood 4 hours ago [-]
From the front page of the site at least, no. This isn't for the Roku device itself (which is almost certainly running some flavour of Linux), its for peripherals like the remote control which will have much less powerful processors.
jgalt212 13 hours ago [-]
Please someone make a Roku remote with a physical keyboard.
zzrrt 10 hours ago [-]
You can probably do it with a keyboard paired to a server/RPi that emits the keystrokes to the Roku ECP API, if having that second device is acceptable.
dd8601fn 7 hours ago [-]
Rokus have a rest api that accept all the navigation and text inputs you'd do with the remote.
relyks 12 hours ago [-]
This might be possible now. I think the better option is having a hardware device that acts a bridge between a bluetooth keyboard and the Roku.
snailmailman 11 hours ago [-]
On my rokus, I am able to use my phone as a remote via the roku app. This includes typing on mobile via my phone's keyboard. Makes logging into things much easier.
criddell 4 minutes ago [-]
AppleTV is like that too. It's nice being able to use the password manager on my phone rather than have try to enter some long complicated password a letter at a time.
pslab 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
RomanVoropaev 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 15:14:02 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://docs.roku.com/published/acrservicepolicy/en/CA
source available - whether you can read the code
open source - whether you can run (a modified version of) the code on some piece of hardware you own
open hardware - whether the hardware they sell you lets you run modified versions of their code
open contribution - whether they want your modifications
free software - whether your modifications have to be open source too
If it's at least source available, it can have any combination of these.
But when you conflate free software with open source, you get confused people cheerleading their own abuse. Android is probably the worst offender here. Google Chrome, VSCode are others that come to mind.
A while after I've had my LG TV, and found every arcane different menu you need to remove all the ads. They started sending me ads via the notification pop-up.
This continued even after finding and removing the consent for advertising (that I'd missed in one of the consent pop-ups.)
I've considered and looked into "dumb" TVs, but I don't think they're for me. I just want one that's not enshittified!
LG also didn't used to have home screen ads, but that's a long time ago now.
And much, much better, as well
Isn't this exactly how all of the other languages where created?
Why does a remote control require a RTOS?
They don't seem to have any written documentation online, not even a list of features. They seem to have some doxygen docs on the repo, but they're not built anywhere. The only information ready to check are YouTube videos. The developer forum link they have in the top right doesn't work (I think since January they killed their forums).
It's a chore just to know what does it do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯