Backfire TV - Take back control of your Firestick by andreabenini

Take Back Control of Your Amazon Firestick.
Tired of Ads, a cluttered launcher, and buttons you can't change? BackFireTV is a project to liberate your Firestick from Amazon's walled garden and make it truly yours. They call it the firestick. To fight fire with fire, you need a backfire.

That's the soul of BackFireTV. To truly liberate it and return back to its core capabilities this project uses a linux script, one Android app and ADB access against Amazon's restrictive policies. We leverage these internal tools to create a "backfire" against the incessant ads and locked ecosystem, transforming your Firestick back into the useful, customizable device it was always meant to be.

The Problem

The Amazon Firestick starts as an excellent, affordable streaming device. However, Amazon's aggressive Ad policies and restrictive ecosystem have turned it into an increasingly annoying and a less useful device. It comes with frustrations:
- Messy interface. The less the better was probably the best slogan for the early device, its interface is now cluttered and chaotic when you probably need just a couple of buttons for starting your favorite applications.
- Constant Ads. The default launcher is filled with commercials and sponsored content.
- Bloated Interface. A cluttered and slow home screen you can't customize.
- Locked Buttons. Dedicated buttons for services you don't use (like popular streaming providers) that can't be easily changed.
- Lack of Control. A closed ecosystem that limits what you can do.

I could overlook them all if the device was provided for free. But since you pay and you own it it should be legit to do whatever you please in your personal device and network.

The Solution: BackFireTV

BackFireTV hacks your Firestick to give you back control. It uses a clever system of DHCP hooks and ADB (Android Debug Bridge) commands to remotely manage your device, block annoyances and customize your experience from the moment it connects to your network.
The dhcp lease action starts a nohup command on the firestick and forgets about it, the daemon then manages running programs, hacks remote control features and keys. It can be paused or resumed, no rooting required.

Features

• Custom Launcher. Automatically replaces the default Amazon launcher with the lean and clean Wolf Launcher.
• Ad-Free Experience:. Blocks annoying ads and sponsored content for a cleaner interface.
• Button Remapping. Reprogram the physical buttons on your remote. For example, make the Disney+ button launch Kodi or your favorite application.
• Works on every firestick 4K. Tested on: Firestick TV 4k (1st/2nd gen), Firestick TV 4k Max.
• No rooting required. It runs on basic user permissions with standard privileges. It also works on standard devices: latest firmware, with or without external hw attached (usb storage, network cards, usb hubs, ...).
• No banned apps. This hack relies on the linux subsystem underneath, no matter what Amazon does on the AppStore, this script can always be sideloaded and cannot be banned (no fingerprints on android app layer).
• Toggle to default anytime. Standard amazon launcher can still be toggled any time for administrative tasks or just as a comparison. Feel free to manage it as usual and switch back to

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Create an Android app for Syncthing as part of the Syncthing Tray project by mkittler

Description

There's already an app but code/features already in Syncthing Tray could be reused to create a nicer app with additional features like managing ignore patterns more easily. The additional UI code for the app could then in turn be re-used by other parts of Syncthing Tray, e.g. to implement further steps in the wizard as requested by some users. This way one "UI wrapper codebase" could serve GNU/Linux, Windows and Android (and in theory MacOS) at the same time which is kind of neat.

Goals

• DONE: Learn more about development for Android and development of UIs with Qt Quick
• DONE: Create an experimental app reusing as much existing Syncthing Tray code as possible
• DONE: Build Syncthing as a library also for Android and use it in the app (already done but needs further testing and integration with the rest of the app configuration)
• DONE: Update the Syncthing Tray website, documentation
• DONE: Extend the app so it has at least a start page and an import
• Update forum thread
• DONE: Upload an experimental build on GitHub
• DONE: Improve documentation
• DONE: Improve/fix many details so the app is generally usable
• Extend tests
• Extend the Syncthing API to download single files on demand (instead of having to sync the whole directory or use ignore patterns)
• Bring back parts of the newly developed mobile UI back to Syncthing Tray on the desktop to fully benefit from the cross-platform development
  • Add UI to add/edit folders and devices in desktop tray app
  • Add UI to show out-of-sync items in desktop tray app
  • Create an alternative "AppWindow" tailored for desktop platforms reusing UI components developed for the mobile app

Resources

• Android SDK/NDK and emulator
• Qt Quick

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GenAI-Powered Systemic Bug Evaluation and Management Assistant by rtsvetkov

Motivation

What is the decision critical question which one can ask on a bug? How this question affects the decision on a bug and why?

Let's make GenAI look on the bug from the systemic point and evaluate what we don't know. Which piece of information is missing to take a decision?

Description

To build a tool that takes a raw bug report (including error messages and context) and uses a large language model (LLM) to generate a series of structured, Socratic-style or Systemic questions designed to guide a the integration and development toward the root cause, rather than just providing a direct, potentially incorrect fix.

Goals

Set up a Python environment

Set the environment and get a Gemini API key. 2. Collect 5-10 realistic bug reports (from open-source projects, personal projects, or public forums like Stack Overflow—include the error message and the initial context).

Build the Dialogue Loop

1. Write a basic Python script using the Gemini API.
2. Implement a simple conversational loop: User Input (Bug) -> AI Output (Question) -> User Input (Answer to AI's question) -> AI Output (Next Question). Code Implementation

Socratic/Systemic Strategy Implementation

1. Refine the logic to ensure the questions follow a Socratic and Systemic path (e.g., from symptom-> context -> assumptions -> -> critical parts -> ).
2. Implement Function Calling (an advanced feature of the Gemini API) to suggest specific actions to the user, like "Run a ping test" or "Check the database logs."
3. Implement Bugzillla call to collect the
4. Implement Questioning Framework as LLVM pre-conditioning
5. Define set of instructions
6. Assemble the Tool

Resources

What are Systemic Questions?

Systemic questions explore the relationships, patterns, and interactions within a system rather than focusing on isolated elements.
In IT, they help uncover hidden dependencies, feedback loops, assumptions, and side-effects during debugging or architecture analysis.

Gitlab Project

gitlab.suse.de/sle-prjmgr/BugDecisionCritical_Question

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Bugzilla goes AI - Phase 1 by nwalter

Description

This project, Bugzilla goes AI, aims to boost developer productivity by creating an autonomous AI bug agent during Hackweek. The primary goal is to reduce the time employees spend triaging bugs by integrating Ollama to summarize issues, recommend next steps, and push focused daily reports to a Web Interface.

Goals

To reduce employee time spent on Bugzilla by implementing an AI tool that triages and summarizes bug reports, providing actionable recommendations to the team via Web Interface.

Project Charter

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HbAvgrg8T3pd1FIx74nEfCObCljpO77zz5In_Jpw4as/edit?usp=sharing## Description

Project Achievements during Hackweek

In this file you can read about what we achieved during Hackweek.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14gtG9-ZvVpBgkh33Z4AM6iLFWqZcicQPD41MM-Pg0/edit?usp=sharing

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issuefs: FUSE filesystem representing issues (e.g. JIRA) for the use with AI agents code-assistants by llansky3

Description

Creating a FUSE filesystem (issuefs) that mounts issues from various ticketing systems (Github, Jira, Bugzilla, Redmine) as files to your local file system.

And why this is good idea?

• User can use favorite command line tools to view and search the tickets from various sources
• User can use AI agents capabilities from your favorite IDE or cli to ask question about the issues, project or functionality while providing relevant tickets as context without extra work.
• User can use it during development of the new features when you let the AI agent to jump start the solution. The issuefs will give the AI agent the context (AI agents just read few more files) about the bug or requested features. No need for copying and pasting issues to user prompt or by using extra MCP tools to access the issues. These you can still do but this approach is on purpose different.

Goals

1. Add Github issue support
2. Proof the concept/approach by apply the approach on itself using Github issues for tracking and development of new features
3. Add support for Bugzilla and Redmine using this approach in the process of doing it. Record a video of it.
4. Clean-up and test the implementation and create some documentation
5. Create a blog post about this approach

Resources

There is a prototype implementation here. This currently sort of works with JIRA only.

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Bring to Cockpit + System Roles capabilities from YAST by miguelpc

Bring to Cockpit + System Roles features from YAST

Cockpit and System Roles have been added to SLES 16 There are several capabilities in YAST that are not yet present in Cockpit and System Roles We will follow the principle of "automate first, UI later" being System Roles the automation component and Cockpit the UI one.

Goals

The idea is to implement service configuration in System Roles and then add an UI to manage these in Cockpit. For some capabilities it will be required to have an specific Cockpit Module as they will interact with a reasource already configured.

Resources

A plan on capabilities missing and suggested implementation is available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZhX-Ip9MKJNeKSYV3bSZG4Qc5giuY7XSV0U61Ecu9lo/edit

Linux System Roles:

• https://linux-system-roles.github.io/
• https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory/ansible-linux-system-roles Package on sle16 ansible-linux-system-roles

First meeting Hackweek catchup

• Monday, December 1 · 11:00 – 12:00
• Time zone: Europe/Madrid
• Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/rrc-kqch-hca

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