irotsoma

I distance myself from companies run by people who say or explicitly support people who say that I don’t or shouldn’t exist. There are a few other things that make me distance myself from companies, but that one is a pretty hard line. (I’m gender “non-compliant” and on the Autism spectrum among other things that have been explicitly said don’t exist, shouldn’t exist, or need to be “cured”). Otherwise, I try to distance myself from any companies who explicitly collect and sell my information and other things that I find problematic, but that’s not always possible.

I have it set up with “only not embedded” and then I let the preview load and click on the YouTube link to make it pop out and it redirects to Invidious and works. Not directly watching it embedded, but it works well enough for me. I just tested this site on my phone and it worked. Should work on desktop similarly. Just with this you have to get to the point where it loads the preview of the video at least, so you can click to open it outside of the embed.

I use librewolf on desktop and IronWolf on mobile with the libredirect plugin. And I have a pihole that does ad blocking, so eventhough I don’t have YouTube totally blocked, it refuses to play even with a wide open browser.

I’ve never gotten the embedded option to work, but Google is constantly fighting Invidious, and pop-out is a minor inconvenience for me.

But the shithead exec is supportive of fascists which means privacy is secondary to the desires of the current regime. That’s just a standard part of fascism. And if the current regime is allowing untested backdoor code to be inserted in the Treasury department and NASA and the CDC and most major social media to strip out protections for people they don’t like, climate change, etc. Just imagine what someone who actually supports them ideologically would be willing to do.

That’s for use of the website. Not the device.

I said from the beginning it’s a deal breaker for me. You’re the one trying to convince me it’s not the issue I think it is.

And I’m not talking about the license to modify the firmware software itself. I’m talking about the EULA of the device itself. Pretty much any device you own that has any kind of software on it is not owned by you outright to modify as you wish. This website doesn’t show the agreement, but if it has a paid feature to unlock, it has to have one somewhere.

But i have no desire to compile and maintain a fork of software just to set a URL and auth token. And again, this is a license to modify the firmware, so they could at some point decide to revoke the license to modify the firmware or stop publishing security updates on their git repo to allow for merging into the fork I have to maintain. Probably won’t if they are reputable and don’t get acquired, but still a risk. It’s just not worth it for me for any open product I purchase.

Two issues I have:

1. There is a license on what you can install on the device. Open means no licenses on owned things, regardless of how open that license is initially, it can be changed.
2. The server it connects to is not configurable. You have to build your own firmware and maintain it and that goes back to the first point in case they decide to change the license.

Problem for me is that there is some kind of restriction on accessing the device’s API at all and you pay extra for the key that will get created when you unlock it. This may mean that some kind of lock is in place on the device that has to have a key for it created. Even if they give you a key, what happens if an update removes that key’s validity, even unintentionally. I’ve had this happen with products in the past. A bug will restrict access to things or worst case, will totally brick the device because the lock is stuck in place.

Not saying this device has that problem, but the concept of a lock existing means it could intentionally for profit, maliciously by hacking, or unintentionally end up locked later, so I’m just against the concept in the first place. It’s a potential point of failure for no good reason but profit on a device that is supposed to be open. I’d happily accept if they changed a little extra for a device that had no lock at all. Just I don’t want a device with a lock on it.

Also, I’m not sure how having my own server helps here, in fact that’s my plan in the first place as I want to get the thing to interface with my own internal systems. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the implementation, but my understanding from the very brief information available is that you get on your device, connect to their server to pay a fee, and then a key is created for you and then you can access the endpoints running on the device either through the server or directly with REST calls. The alternative is to teardown the device and build your own custom firmware that uses different authentication mechanisms. I don’t really have the interest to mod the firmware and then have to maintain a fork for getting official updates. I just want to be able to be able to interface any servers I have with the device as I choose.

$20 to unlock the API killed it for me. If it has a built in way yo lock it down, it’s not an open platform and is a great way for bugs to brick a device.