This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
See, it turns out that the Rabbit R1 seems to run Android under the hood and the entire interface users interact with is powered by a single Android app. A tipster shared the Rabbit R1’s launcher APK with us, and with a bit of tinkering, we managed to install it on an Android phone, specifically a Pixel 6a.
Edit: Someone also got doom and Minecraft running on this thing
R1s statement in response from the article:
“rabbit r1 is not an Android app. We are aware there are some unofficial rabbit OS app/website emulators out there. We understand the passion that people have to get a taste of our AI and LAM instead of waiting for their r1 to arrive. That being said, to clear any misunderstanding and set the record straight, rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications, therefore a local bootleg APK without the proper OS and Cloud endpoints won’t be able to access our service. rabbit OS is customized for r1 and we do not support third-party clients. Using a bootlegged APK or webclient carries significant risks; malicious actors are known to publish bootlegged apps that steal your data. For this reason, we recommend that users avoid these bootlegged rabbit OS apps.”
So there's literally no reason for this to have been a device at all.
AOSP and lower level firmware modifications
But it's android, so linux, so GPL2, so they have to share these modifications (if they really exist). It's bootleg until soneone sues them.
You'd be surprised how many companies ignore GPL. Providing broken links to the source code tarballs, telling you to send an email request to get the code then proceed to ignore the requests, etc. Only the most famous case got sued, the rest simply got away with it.
Yes, I know, but that shouldn't be a norm.
There was a case this year, where SFC, a nonprofit organization won against Vizio for LGPL violation. It's important, because SFC was just a normal consumer, not the owner of the original code. So now just a random user can sue this Rabbit company, and they should win, more details here: https://blog.lukaspanni.de/2024/01/09/the-significance-of-the-vizio-judgment-for-open-source-compliance-programs/
Edit: the case is not settled yet, but ongoing since 2021: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
And there are other funny solutions, like when a Chinese "tech influencer/diy maker" Naomi Wu aka SexyCyborg just simply walked into the office of a Chinese manufacturer, and requested the source code in person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ
The Linux Kernel is GPL2, the Android OS is Apache.
AOSP is not GPL
They wrote "lower level firmware modifications", AOSP runs on Linux kernel, and firmware modifications usually mean they modified the Linux kernel. This device seems like a regular Android phone, and afaik this rules apply to all Android phones, that's why Android rom cooking can exist.
They may be compelled to release any driver code associated, however firmware is not covered by relation to kernel. Linux runs on mostly proprietary firmware. The "linux-firmware" package in many distributions that contains hot plug firmware is mostly proprietary blobs.
That said I doubt they had much significant firmware work, it may just be logo and some tweaked configuration from their SoC vendor. They likely had to modify AOSP a bit more to allow their launcher unfettered access to the device in ways not modeled by standard AOSP, but that's user space that isn't GPL.
Was that in question? I thought it was clear from the beginning that it does pretty much everything in the cloud.
No rea$on at all, except for that one little rea$on that we alway$ $eem to keep coming back to...
Technically you can't call it "Android" without paying Google for certification and play store/gapps license. It's AOSP.
Dude, maybe it was meant to be a joke, but that doom picture is so fake. C'mon.
His point still stands as the image in the thumbnail is as fake as it gets.
what else would it be? it’s a pretty common embedded target. dev kits from Qualcomm come with Android and use the Android bootloader and debug protocols at the very least.
nobody is out here running a plain Linux kernel and maintaining a UI stack while AOSP exists. would be a foolish waste of time for companies like Rabbit to use anything else imo.
to say it’s “just an Android device” is both true and a mischaracterization. it’s likely got a lot in common with a smartphone, but they’ve made modifications and aren’t supporting app stores or sideloading. doesn’t mean you can’t do it, just don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work 1-1
You are missing the point. The point is that there is no need for such a device, a simple android app can do everything that rabbit r1 does.
Yeah, but everyone could see that as soon as they released it.
It doesn't matter how it's implemented, it could have been done as an app from day one.
But they made it a device instead because it makes it easy to raise funds and to get journalists to talk about it. As simple as that.
i didn’t think people would really be surprised. but maybe i’m jaded by my experience in the industry.
if we’re arguing whether or not it’s objectively stupid, i think that’s up to the market to decide.
kinda seems like a toy to me anyway, and it’s kind of priced that way
I saw the Marquess Brownlee review of this thing last night and I wonder why companies make this crap and who is fool enough to fund it. It's obviously doomed to fail, as are most "smart" gadgets & devices. The best that can be said for it, is at least there is no subscription to use it and it's not outrageously expensive but that's damning it with faint praise.
VCs will just follow the hype of the day and invest in anything that spouts the right buzzwords. But they're aware of course, that most of those will fail. It takes just one out of ten to make it for it to be worthwhile.
This is the second time I've read about this specific reviewer having a sane perspective on way overhyped gadgets. Sounds worth checking out. I'm used to videos being completely worthless because they are usually trying to get product affiliate money and YouTube ad revenue at the same time.
I heard about this thing but couldn't really tell what the idea was. I think I want to carry less, not more on me.
Do you not carry 3 phones already? Just swap one out.
Do you guys not have 3 phones?
Wait until people realize that it’s just ChatGPT.
It’ll be cool when the concept of “Large Action Model” works well. But def not worth it to tie your money to a single horse this early; a lot of people want that concept to work well, so I’m sure there’s a lot of work being done in that area. Rn I agree that it’s just a worse ChatGPT.
Rabbit is paying for processing those Ai requests. If everyone starts to download it to their android devices they will literally go bankrupt
As a former Android developer, you can't just do anything in an android app on a modern smartphone. The system is fighting you for resources the whole time. It makes sense to have something like this running as root on a device that you control.
Not that I'm sold on it, just saying..
Haha can’t run R1 on an iPhone. Take that Apple. Absolute gamechanger.
Challenge accepted. I’m going to get an IPhone, load up an Android cloud emulator, upload the Rabbit R1 app, then use it to access its orange version of ChatGPT.
Note that this is mostly due to the closed source drivers and nonexistent Linux support for smaller SoCs. Some manufacturers are quite good in that front (e.g. Broadcom/Raspberry Pi, Rockchip), with others you're lucky if they allow you to use Linux at all, with no GPU drivers (which you often have to pirate the binaries, thanks ARM for making Mali a completely closed source project from its open source origins).
Note that since it's just an Android app, there is no purpose in selling this e-waste device other than increasing the price, since it does nothing you can't already do on your phone.
Broadcom is actually terrible, the Rpi foundation just had an in.
NXP deserves some credit for good board support packages and documentation.
Broadcom is also closed source (I think). I have to use closed source drivers for my broadcom wireless adapter on Linux.
Watched a review of this thing. Don't see the appeal. Especially don't see why it needs to be a separate bit of hardware.
How many android apps are designed by teenage engineering?
Yeah in the presentation of it was clearly idiotic. I often wonder how seriously these silicon valley people actually take themselves privately.
"Duh"
Big whoop. MediaTek eval kits offer either Linux or Android AOSP. Why is this news?
