Roku is exploring ways to show consumers ads on its TVs even when they are not using its streaming platform: The company has been looking into injecting ads into the video feeds of third-party devices connected to its TVs, according to a recent patent filing.
This way, when an owner of a Roku TV takes a short break from playing a game on their Xbox, or streaming something on an Apple TV device connected to the TV set, Roku would use that break to show ads. Roku engineers have even explored ways to figure out what the consumer is doing with their TV-connected device in order to display relevant advertising.
Any company trying to use the HDMI-CEC protocol in such a subversive manner should lose their license to the HDMI standard IMO.
Man… My personal list of banned companies not to buy from is getting scary long.
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."
– Banksy
Imagine being the guy working on this and how much you hate yourself anytime somebody asks you what you are working on.
Even worse: Imagine being the guy working on this and being proud of yourself.
I think the former situation is worse for the person working on it.
I remember having an argument with my teacher in college about this. He asked us what we would do if we were asked to code something that could be used for things you personally don’t agree with such as the government using tools to “help” but also remove peoples privacy. Or corporations being able to show you more ads. I told him i would refuse. And he said that it would be my job though and sometimes you have to do things you don’t like. So i told him i would quit. And for some reason he could not really comprehend that and we got into an argument.
You were talking to a teacher who probably couldn’t afford to pay rent if he ever quit his job.
To be fair, most people I know don’t have the financial flexibility to quit their job if they’re asked by their boss to do something objectionable
Unfortunately, I bet these guys don’t care. I used to work at a company you might have products from and I would constantly hear “Hey, we’re a business” as an excuse to degrade the user experience. :(
We had to listen this C-level guy give a speech how good the last couple of years have been. We’ve increased the price of services by 50% and the amount of useless upsell shit we push to people has gone up as well. While our wages are still the same and people are getting laid off constantly. But I need food and shit.
Some people also have no qualms in doing the dirty job. They get paid and they don’t care.
I knew a guy who went to work for palantir. I asked "what if you end up working on like domestic spying or other sketchy stuff?’
He was like, shrug, iunno. Guy did not give a shit about anyone outside his immediate friend and family group.
And when it turns out the thing he made is used to hurt his friends?
I’m going to guess he values himself more than his friends, and he’d find justifications, but maybe he’d surprise me.
“Yeah, I know it’s shitty, but it pays the bills 🤷🏻♂️”
I recall watching a defcon speech given by someone who used to make malware. He opened the speech by apologizing and saying that he knows that he will burn in hell.
Don’t buy Roku TVs. Got it.
Late Stage Capitalism: Using a microscopic laser, we are able to burn our advertiser logos directly into our customer’s retinas, so they will see them even as they sleep.
Shareholders: 👏 👏 👏
our customers’* retinas
No, it is customer’s since there will only be one customer left at that point.
It seems like so long that Roku was not a horrible company. Simple little box for a good price with a small static ad on the home screen to make money.
Seems like a lifetime ago.
Guess I’ll never buy a Roku TV then: Get all the way fucked!
Is this why they made people waive their right to sue them?
Yeah… Fuck Roku.
No, no. The waiver was because they lost millions of people personal data to hackers and scammers. Entirely different fuckup.
I wish a pox on these capitalist pigs.
Every day I get a step closer to dropping all this trash, going back to piracy.
Just do it.
Slowly but surely, we dropped Amazon, Netflix, and a few other services so far. My goal once I have free time is to setup a plex server so my parents can partake aswell.
Probably the only thing that won’t get cancelled is YouTube as it provides to many benfits even as the cost goes up when split across 3 households
I would recommend Jellyfin instead of Plex, it does basically the same thing but it’s open source and way less bloated
I’m surprised that of all the services you would pay for YouTube, as I’ve never considered it. What advantages does a paid subscription have over uBlock/Sponsorblock?
The ability to download and use YouTube music with my screen off and the lack of ads on videos I watch on YouTube all the while still supporting the creators.
I think the $25 a month is worth it when I don’t gotta worry about anything. Plus split that over 7 people and it’s cheaper than Spotify.
Thanks, I can see how it works out with a 7 way split and a service that “just works”.
I still run an old version of Vanced for screen off radio style music in my truck, though I mostly stream from my own collection now with Ampache/Ultrasonic. I’ve done a ton of ripping lately with Zotify, it pulls down whole albums and discographies from Spotify in decent quality, and combined with Beets everything gets tagged perfectly.
With the recent price increases in streaming services lately I’ve been concerned about the long term survival of the industry, and figured it was time to start rebuilding my own music library.
There are downloaders that can pillage whatever audio you need, and vlc is shockingly full featured on android.
They get used when needed. I love me some VLC.
Mmmmmmm too many alternatives on desktop, and their integration of media collections isnt as good/extant, so I didn’t mention, but oh my god the android version is such a perfect fucking app. One of those things that reminds me not everything has to be shit.
You don’t have to pay for YouTube revanced. There are also versions of it for PC.
Anyone know a good alternative to amazon? I fucking hate them so much, they have fucked me over countless times, but I keep crawling back…
Ebay? They have all the same shit
partake aswell
“Aswell” isn’t a word. Are you using to suggest someone’s riding a swell, like on the water? Are you saying something’s inflamed?
Can’t really escape assholes like you eh?
I wonder if they just forgot to press the space bar…
yarr harr fiddle dee dee, do what you want 'cause a pirate is free!
Sorry, I love that song. What are we talking about?
This is gross. I cut my cable because of ads. Have about 3 types of adblockers on my computer to stop them. This hyper marketing is why so many have turned away from traditional entertainment to begin with.
I am more than the ability to spend money and it’s goddamn time everyone say this and boycott companies that do shady garbage like this
I have ubo, what are your other kinds of ad blocking? I always want to block as many ads as possible
I suspect they might be talking about a DNS based ad blocking solution. Like Pi-Hole or AdGaurd DNS.
They work by blocking DNS requests made by ads so the content can never be accessed. They’re theoretically more powerful than browser extensions as they have the opportunity to block ads anywhere.
While we have one (Pi-hole) I can’t use it right now because some of my roommate’s work software won’t run with it and we haven’t had time to troubleshoot. So I have a bunch of extensions in my browser on my pc
You could configure the DNS only on devices that don’t have issues with it rather than the network as a whole?
That, and you can also decide what (if anything) gets blocked on a per MAC/IP/FQDN basis, so you can explicitly allow ads for specific devices.
Adblock plus, flashblock, ublock, and one that stops videos from autoplaying but i can’t remember it’s name right now.
My roommate has raspberry pi but it messes with his’s wife’s work software so we never have it active. Which is a shame because i’d rather use that.
Oh, and Brave browser on my phone. It’s lovely.
The Pihole has groups that you can separate devices with and remove blocks for those devices.
So you can have your stuff fully blocked and then her device can have the problematic blocks removed.
The shittiest of enshitifications.
A TV is a device that shows you what you want. This is no TV.
that’s a monitor.
Nope, a monitor is an expensive small TV that gets font rendering right =D
A piece of history
