Kodi 18 "Leia" Enters Alpha With Thousands Of Changes

[starshipeleven]

Then what is the point in providing addons? If you don't give 2 shits about content then why develop a media center interface at all? Isn't content the -entire- point?

Then what's the point in providing a stable kernel API for userspace? If you don't give 2 shits about what runs in userspace why develop a kernel at all? Isn't the program run by the user the entire point?

Really, stop making no sense at all and go back watching pirated shit like little kiddies that steal gums at the mall.

[starshipeleven]

Google assistant? Are you fucking kidding me? I go out of my way to keep the "do no evil" serial-liars google and the like off as much of my stuff as possible and they added it into kodi now? Are the devs that insane?

There is a ton of its userbase that like that. Kodi isn't a semi-dead GNU project for Stallmanites only.

I haven't use v18 yet but I'll bet it will have some blob on there (or downloads one quietly) that does the GA and we'll catch it very quickly sending a dump of the entire hd contents back to google's servers. The content will be the entire hd not just media. Google will of course play it off initially as a bug but people will start reverse engineering the code and see that it was clearly intentional. Google will "apologize" in their own special way but at no point will they ever delete their ill-gotten metadata off their servers let alone claim to. They will drag it out just long enough so that only the most Stallman types will still be raving about it. At that point everyone else will be tired hearing about it and just ignore it. Chrome all over again.

cool story bro.

For the curious:
-Google Assistant is an API that requires 0 blobs client-side as bulk of the job is done server-side
-Google has no use for the content of your hard drive, they make/sell statistic data over large numbers of people interacting with, your stuff would only clog up their storage servers for no reason
-Chrome never did anything like that at any point in history

[Cape]

"Google Assistant support"
🤢

Why shooting your own self in the balls?

[ParticleBoard]

-Chrome never did anything like that at any point in history

I'm not going to argue the future, but I will argue the past.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/17/debian_chromium_hubbub/

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=786909

[ruthan]

I hope that one day would my Avermedia TV card work out of box..

[duby229]

That doesn't matter - lets not get into the whole copyright debate.

Point is Kodi's primary purpose is not to provide you with streaming media, it's primary purpose is to facilitate you being able to organise and play back content residing on your local hard drive or network. Addons are a supplementary benefit and it's very clear that the stance of the Kodi developers is not to support or endorse addons with (shall we say) questionable legality, they have said this many times, they have also said they wouldn't bat an eyelid if everyone who used Kodi for this purpose suddenly ditched it.

So fundamentally to call something crap because it doesn't idiot proof the already easy method of adding functionality that it was never intended to be used for, is well... just plain incorrect. You should really be directing your criticisms towards addon developers who have not had the foresight to develop their own media centre from scratch... oh wait that would be ridiculous .

And I think that's a major problem. You don't apparently and that's very weird to me. Let's face the facts here, all multimedia content is stolen, not a single person that views or listens to it is the legal owner of that content. It does -not- matter where or what you watch it on.

[duby229]

Only thing not in its default repo is pirate/illegal plugins.

BS. Who decides what is legal? It isn't Kodi. It isn't the RIAA or MPAA. Is it you that decides?

The bottom line fact is that anyone anywhere has access to everything for free in mere seconds. It's a fact, get used to it.

[duby229]

Kodi has never been a content provider, the reported issue is invalid.

CLOSED WONTFIX

No it's just a media center designed for no content at all! Duh, obviously a media center designed to ignore all of the content in the world! I should'a thunk it....

[dkasak]

And I think that's a major problem. You don't apparently and that's very weird to me. Let's face the facts here, all multimedia content is stolen, not a single person that views or listens to it is the legal owner of that content. It does -not- matter where or what you watch it on.

That's quite an exaggeration, and it harms your zealous argument. Lots of people pay for content. In fact, most people pay for content. Kids pulling billies in their parent's basement aren't the only people on the planet.

[horizonbrave]

I'd love to consider project like Kodi for extending the capabilities of non-smart TV.. but they don't seem to provide a browser or a way to watch service providers like Netflix.
Are Plex, OSMC and alternatives any better?
Cheers