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?
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
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