Louis Rossman’s Fulu Foundation has a few bounties available to to those who are able to come up with methods for removing ads from your fridge, making the Xbox Series X repairable, getting the Nest 1&2 to work with Home Assistant, etc.
More details here: https://bounties.fulu.org/
How about… not… buying those fridges? I mean surely they aren’t so far ahead in fridgonomical technology that you can’t pass them up?
- These fridges didn’t have ads when people first bought them.
- If you’re renting, usually the landlord picks the appliances.
If you’re renting your landlord probably got your fridge out of an alley, they wouldn’t spend 2k on one.
They should be worried about you smashing the screen anyways the second an ad plays
If you’re renting, usually the landlord picks the appliances.
I guarantee someone is working real hard on making ad supported appliances targeted specifically for rental properties a reality.
I’m reading Radicalized by Cory Doctorow and this starts to feel too real since it’s the same plot of the book
Great story! I loved it.
The landlord thing really depends on the region I guess. I just moved to another state and most of these listing don’t have appliances. My sister said that’s just how it is here.
Which I guess is fine if you know about it ahead of time but I’m like “damn i guess I’ll save up for a fridge now”
Louis made a video explaining why they are doing this, currently anti consumer laws don’t even allow someone to publish a fix for things like this, tech lobbyists keep pushing this agenda that allowing people to repair their own devices is not necessary, the point of this bounty program is to gather data to show why right to repair is necessary so that they can take it to the courts as evidence and get those laws repelled
Haven’t read the article, but the snippet seems to suggest all those are old stuff that got enshittified or stop working altogether(like the Nest)
Edit: it seems like there’s also new stuff there that got DRM build in, unlocking it might actually be helpful for some people who already bought it but didn’t know about the DRM.
Yeah, concerning the DRM part, the main goal of this bounty system is to help change legislation so that people are allowed to legally modify the things that they own.
Specifically reforming section 1201 of the DMCA. Right now, if you break the digital locks on the fridge to remove the ads and then publicize that information, you can get 3-5 years in federal prison. (With this bounty system you keep the information private between you and Futo).
So when they hear lobbyists say things like, “We believe this legislation is in search of problems that do not exist…” Louis can respond with “Well actually, millions of people use these products and if this person releases a solution to it, he goes to prison”
Louis talks about that in more detail here: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/after-17-years-of-repair,-i’m-doing:d
I don’t know if this would be possible given the bounty’s requirements.
Let’s say you come up with some new firmware for the fridge that replaces all the hostnames on the advertising calls with ‘localhost’. Great. But if all other features on the device need to keep functioning, including any phone-home firmware update functionality, the fridge will re-enshitify itself on its next update. It either needs new fridge hardware (not allowed in the bounty requirements) or some kind of network container (like pi-hole, also not allowed).
So the entire bounty is an exercise in futility. But… perhaps that’s the point.
This is a demonstration of why the law, as written, is fucked and needs to be changed. I think that may be the main point.
Yeah, one of the main points of this project is to help them reform Sec 1201 of the DMCA.
As far as for how to do it, I’m not sure if you would have to come up with something that would work even through an official Samsung update. From what I can tell, it would be enough to have it work with Home Assistant instead while blocking future updates. It’s definitely worth a question to the bounty team to get clarification on that point though.
Following up on this. I sent an email out to the team and got a response already.
To summarize, they would rather the solution work through updates for security fixes, but they were willing to compromise if automatic updates were disabled with the option for users to manually update somehow:
Tap for email/response
Initial email:
Hi,
Just a quick question about this point in the bounty:
- Restore the fridge to its original functionality, by removing any possibility of adverts being presented on the display (all other smart features must be retained)
When you say, “all other smart features must be retained” does this mean that the solution must retain the ability to allow the fridge to automatically update its firmware if Samsung pushes out a future update?
Would it be okay if, instead, we disabled the automatic update but still allowed the end user to manually update if they really wanted to?
Or would it be okay if the end user could just reapply the solution after an official firmware update?
Thanks,
<Redacted>Response:
Hey
<Redacted>,Just chatted with the team, and we think it would be better for it to have updates, and optional ones sounds like a sensible compromise. We don’t want to sacrifice security for control. I hope that answers your question. Thanks!
