They (ETA nvidia shield) added ads many years ago. Really left a bitter taste in my mouth after paying for an ad-free "premium" device to have them shoved out there.
horsawlarway is correct regarding the nvidia shield. I'm not sure how much is nvidia, and how much is google in the "they". I kinda blame nvidia more than google (if I bought a google device I would expect google ads as part of the purchase), but it's hard for me to say. "they" the people who actually own the streaming device (nvidia shield) I "purchased" updated the software and added a lot of ads.
The ads showed up when the launcher got a major redesign, and the Google TV (or whatever they call it this week) launcher is a Google product. I seem to remember that nVidia delayed shipping the new enshittified version for quite a long time, so I'm pretty confident Google gets the blame here.
I'll also echo my general disappointment with the direction of these devices. A decade ago, they were one of the best streaming devices you could buy.
then a couple years back it was "there's a new discover tab, filled with ads! Don't you love it?"
then it was "not enough people are viewing the discover tab, so we're merging the discover tab with the home tab! Don't you love it?"
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They're still decent hardware for a streaming device (although somewhat dated at this point), but now you have to go out of your way to make the software not shitty.
Removing the stock launcher helps a lot, but requires ADB access. (easy enough, and [insert llm of choice] can both generate a minimal replacement launcher and install it for you for about $10 worth of tokens, so technical users are fine, but I can't really recommend them to non-technical family anymore.)
Are there solid existing launchers that can be swapped in? Changing the launcher is one of the first things I do when I get a new Pixel phone and highly recommend it, but I don't really want to have to maintain a vibe coded one.
I've used Projectivy for years on every Google TV stick I own (Google/Onn). Works perfectly with full customization/zero ads on the free version and has a workaround to take over the Home navigation to bypass the built-in launcher without ADB or rooting. I chip in for the premium version to help out the dev since I get so much value out of it but the freemium features are mostly just cosmetic and the free version has everything you need.
At this point if I'm dealing with that level of hassle I'm much happier running linux on a computer. The value add of these devices was plug and play, and if it's not that why bother.
ADB is rarely actually a requirement unless you really want to do it the "right" way and fully remove the launcher.
I always use a custom launcher (Projectivy) on my Google TV devices, lately typically the $20 Onn stick and intercept the Home navigation to open the launcher either using the option built into Projectivy or with a free app from the Play Store/Fdroid.
Takes <5 minutes to setup everything once and then I basically forget the native Google TV launcher exists. Pretty much unbeatable value for a $20 ad-free Jellyfin/Plex/Kodi/Stremio setup. YMMV with different models but I also had no issues remapping the remote buttons from Netflix/etc to my own apps (including the "Free TV" button to launch Stremio which I always enjoy).
Also (somewhat ironically) the best smart TV OS to look for on cheap/subsidized TVs is built-in Google TV. Since they can easily be configured as 100% "dumb" on startup without any ads/nags/etc (it's the first question you're asked). The TV never hits Wifi to update and the remote/menus just do normal TV stuff without any "smart" features. Otherwise, it's luck of the draw how miserable/impossible the manufacturer makes avoiding Wifi/updates.
(Or you could do the same process installing the custom launcher on the TV's built-in Googe TV, but then you're at the mercy of the CPU/RAM the OEM included in BoM some # of years ago and lose the clean seperation between dumb TV/replaceable stick).
$20 Onn stick + $199 "smart" Google TV in dumb mode goes really far these days for a locally hosted setup without ads/annoyances.
I have a pine note. It lives up to that description. It's "fine", but I like to use it as an e ink laptop (well terminal with occasional other uses) with a bluetooth keyboard. I don't know that I would even want to start on using it as an ebook reader. It's bulky / heavy, and just doesn't match my kobo. I imagine asking it to do DRM ebooks would just be a non-starter.
I tried to turn a kobo into an eink terminal, and basically failed at getting it to the state I wanted it to be in, so the pine note is nice, but as a plug and play ereader it would be a hard sell for me.
I don't really push it. A couple of hours is all I really ask of it, and I get it.
I feel like it's not great given what I'm asking of it, and that it's an eink display. This is just vibes because I play on it like a few hours a week. I think I'd be very uncertain about getting a real work day out of it as an ssh client.
This is an interesting article. It has a very strong AI accent.
I really wish I could tell how real it is. When some part of it I can tell is AI slop, how much of it is AI slop? Inside GNSS has always been a marketing rag with sometimes some interesting articles.
The author is a security researcher, so maybe poking at GPS bits makes sense, but talking about floating point bit depth? There's too much slop for me to figure out if there's anything of real interest or if this is just a hallucination.
Edit. After reading more carefully this is 100% AI slop. Inside GNSS published Steven Murdoch's chat gpt session. Maybe some data was transmitted? The only way you'll actually know is to redo the research your self. There are many fabrications / confabulations that clearly happen with AI in the text.
I've worked with the guy credited in the article before, so I'll vouch for his general credibility and the underlying information likely being solid: there's good evidence for this field being some kind of encrypted data stream, probably key distribution, and the behaviour has changed over time. But the breathless LLM-tone really did make it hard to read.
Cool. Some data may have been transmitted over GPS. That's interesting and note worthy.
If only that was all that was posted.
Instead there's this stuff that makes me question Steven Murdoch's research practices. If you're willing to publish slop are his research practices slop? Can I trust any paper he creates in the future when I can tell this one has factual errors? Why should I bother reading it?
I actually think he's a good researcher from a little reading. I wish he hadn't done this.
The code is all available and every claim is traceable back to the statistical analysis. Results are reproducible from the original data which is archived on Zenodo. Further analysis would be very welcome. https://github.com/sjmurdoch/gps-special-messages
So much AI. I stopped immediately. He might have something interesting to say, but apparently not important enough for him to write about it himself, so not important enough for me to read it either.
I have a few boxes that I switch between, but for some software it's nicer that my "main machine" be on DVI, and everything else HDMI. I may have to look at some scripting option where if the keyboard / mouse disappear (KVM switched away) change the display to use the HDMI input.
I do worry that would just add more trouble / race conditions / issues around this stuff. I feel like nvidia + linux + monitors doing anything other than staying on + attached all the time causes some headaches.
OFDMA just makes the channels smaller. Sure there are now 10 transmitters on channel 5, but there's one transmitter on channel 5.1, one on 5.2, ... and each 'channel' has 1/10th the capacity of "channel 5".
Yes, and? If a device only needs 26 tones, that's what will be assigned; if it needs 52 or 106, then that will assigned:
> RU allocations can happen with a combination of tones. For example – if there are three stations associated, then the AP can assign 106 tones to the first two users and 26 tones to the third user. The AP can also assign 52 tones to the third user. These RU allotment decisions are dynamically made by the AP based on the client’s traffic type and its available amount for transmission. The AP learns the client’s buffer status by using a periodic sounding mechanism.
> In the first scheduling interval, the AP allocates the whole 20 MHz channel—a single, 242-tone RU—to Client 1. And in the third interval, it allocates two 106-tone RUs to Client 2 and Client 3.
Why give one client more than it needs (when another client can also share the transmission time slot)? If it happens to need the entire x MHz channel, it may be given it (all the RU tones).
All my old software before AI was self documenting and didn't need comments -- it just was obvious. Today my prompts never make slop. I'm a really good driver.
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