[tor-dev] Tor on TV (hemm, on WDTV!)

[Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)]

Hi all,

i got a WDTV Live
(http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?groupid=1003&lang=en) that's
part of bigger family of consumer mediaplayer from Western Digital
(http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?level1=10&lang=en).

It seems it can run Tor without any major issue.
There is a very nice hacked firmware community around WDTV users, that's
a very cheap hardware (retail price 70-80EUR).

What's about making a "promotional" campaign like for the Tor Cloud to
have people running Tor Relay "right on their TV" ?

I mean, the "hacked firmware" installation process of WDTV works that way:
- Plug an USB Key formatted FAT32 with 3 files (boot, kernel, image) on WDTV
- Poweron

So it may be possible to make a campaign where users are invited to "run
their tor relay" on their TV in 3 simple steps:
- Get a USB Key
- Load that files on it
- Plug to your WDTV
- Poweron your WDTV
You are now helping poor sirian, iranian and chinese censored people.

That way even the average fat guy sitting on his couch drinking beer and
eating wing chicken can support freedom of speech.

That kind of user can just "poweron" the WDTV and with his "remote
control" after seeing his favorite telefilm on paytv, can just "zap" to
see how his Tor Router is working: On TV!

This could be defined as the "very lazy Tor user" who doesn't even want
to use a computer, but just do TV zapping :P

So, the idea could be to do a custom hacked firmware of WDTV and a WDTV
Apps that you can "click" via remote control, seeing the statistics of
your Tor Relay.

# uname -a
Linux WDTVLIVE 2.6.22.19-19-4 #28 PREEMPT Mon Mar 22 20:08:14 CST 2010
mips GNU/Linux

# tor --version
Jan 01 15:41:37.533 [notice] Tor v0.2.2.32 (git-877e17749725ab88). This
is experimental software. Do not rely on it for strong anonymity.
(Running on Linux mips)
Tor version 0.2.2.32 (git-877e17749725ab88).

# free
              total         used         free       shared      buffers
  Mem:       199056       193664         5392            0        10832
 Swap:            0            0            0
Total:       199056       193664         5392

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type             : Sigma Designs TangoX
processor               : 0
cpu model               : MIPS 24K V7.12  FPU V0.0
Initial BogoMIPS        : 332.59
wait instruction        : yes
microsecond timers      : yes
tlb_entries             : 32
extra interrupt vector  : yes
hardware watchpoint     : yes
ASEs implemented        : mips16
shadow register sets    : 1
VCED exceptions         : not available
VCEI exceptions         : not available

System bus frequency    : 333000000 Hz
CPU frequency           : 499500000 Hz
DSP frequency           : 333000000 Hz


-naif