One way to get Congress to act on this would be to remind them of how Robert Bork’s video rental history got released. They very quickly realized that they all had the same sleazy movies on their rental list and passed a law making it illegal to share them.
Call your Congressmen and tell them that their smart TV is sending screenshots of whatever they’re watching back to home base, including stuff that’s not streamed, and there might be swift action.
Better yet, hack Samsung and leak it to the press. That’ll definitely light a fire under them.
I blocked my two TVs from phoning home via my pihole. They are the two noisiest devices on my network, by leaps and bounds.
On a day of heavy usage, my phone and desktop may get ~2000 blocked requests combined. That’s high, but not unheard of. It just means I did a lot of browsing, with a lot of blocked ad requests. My TVs average somewhere around 7500 blocked requests per day, on days that I haven’t even turned them on. That’s an attempt to phone home every ~12 seconds. And it is much worse on days that I actually use them.
Jesus dude, what brand TV do you have?
My LG issues a few hundred blocked requests throughout the day with heavy usage. I’ve never seen it wake up and phone home (my Nintendo Switch does it every hour for some stupid reason)
One is a Samsung, and the other is a Roku. The Roku is a little bit noisier, but not by much.
Maybe i’m stupid, but why would a TV even do that? All it’s know is what you’re watching today, right? How is that information useful? If you’re living with other people, the TV couldn’t even know who’s watching, that would make the data useless.
Data mining. They know what you watch, when you don’t and any other habits you have.
If you have a microphone on your remote or tv, then they also send that data over.
Knowing the distribution of what entire households watch is very useful. It’s not about spying on you personally.
And what other devices are on the network, and what they’re chattering about
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I’m more than happy to buy a TV that uses post-purchase monetization, because I am never going to connect that fucker to the internet. It’s a display. I shall use it as a display. I do not care that it can replace my streaming box. I fully control my streaming box, and I will use that.
If I catch it doing any sketchy shit like trying to use unsecured/Comcast/etc WiFi to phone home, it’ll be time to pull out the screwdriver, though.
What happens when it no longer needs your WiFi and uses something like LoRa to phone home with your data and location? It may not know who you are exactly but it’ll have a good guess.
What’s Lora?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa (Long Range)
It’s a low power, large range connection technology, working a bit like a mesh network. It can achieve data rates between 0.3 kbit/s and 27 kbit/s and enables geolocation services. According to the LoRa Development Portal, the range provided by LoRa can be up to 3 miles (4.8 km) in urban areas, and up to 10 miles (16 km) or more in rural areas (line of sight).
As soon as your LoRa-Device is in range of another LoRa-Device, it will probably be able to phone home.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa
Long-range radio protocol
What happens when it no longer needs your WiFi and uses something like LoRa to phone home with your data and location? It may not know who you are exactly but it’ll have a good guess.
I mean…what happens when it becomes sentient, sprouts legs and you catch it sleeping with your spouse?
Let’s deal with the here and now.
You know LoRa hardware is getting cheaper and the reliability of these TVs are just terrible. This is likely to happen sooner rather than later. For now just don’t plug it in to WiFi unless you’re willing to go further and desolder its module? I don’t think we can do much via legislation other than write to our congressional reps.
Fuckingcapitalists
The non-capitalist solutions have been here all along, mostly things licensed under copyleft. But people just need to have the wherewithal to actually use these solutions.
Why do we continue to be ok with this? Where is the outrage and call for change?
Because it works and provides a use case. Most “simpletons” do not want to invest any more time in than putting some Account Data and start watching netflix or whatever. “We” (e.g. the people that care about data privacy and stuff) never have been okay with that shit…
the overwhelming bulk of humanity cant be fucked to care about shit like this… until it personally affects them.
Then they will wail like banshees about the great injustice of it all, and how could anyone let it happen to them.
It’s there, but people forget about it when they can get a 4" bigger TV for 100 bucks less.
Don’t forget that if you connect external devices to them, they’re also taking snapshots of the content “so they can serve targeted ads”.
They called me crazy.
My current tv is a 42” I got in 2012. I would love to upgrade to a bigger one, but I don’t wanna get a lame smart tv.
I’m on the same boat 44" tv, from ages ago. Connected to my linux reinstalled asus chromebox. Freedom baby yeah!
My next purchase will be a dumb tv with a media stick.
Unfortunately it’s very hard to buy a decent dumb TV these days.
For smart tv, they recommend just never give access to internet. And look if it has some kind of monitor mode so it always launch display on the hdmi port.
They still keep searching for some open wifi to send their stuff through.
This has never been proven in any way. It would be really easy to show that a smart TV will automatically connect to an open WiFi connection and send data, but nobody has done it.
I wonder if a software that just generate gibberish data could be made, just to fuck with them.
Meh, it’s not like the data is monitored by people, it would probably just be like dropping a needle of bad data in a haystack of automated data.
Video projectors are available, though.
They’re all smart too, unless I’m missing something?
not the optoma uhd35, it’s the one I have. 4k60fps or 1080p240fps for when I game.
we have to support the companies that give us what we want, and I voted with my wallet. Im very happy with it
Aorus fo48u here. Dumb as fuck, sometimes too dumb (no remote input processing without hdmi signal), but I’d rather have that than a smart monitor with all the bullshit
Not at all. The better ones are dumb. You have to stay away from cheap chinese drek, of course.
yup, this is what I do. costs about as much as a good TV.
Buy a monitor, not a TV
Lemme just pluck a 52" monitor from the 52" monitor tree where 52" monitors grow bountifully.
Plenty of 48inches though, so compromise
I just checked. In the online stores of the 3 largest tech chains in my country, there’s exactly one 16:9 40+" monitor model available, and that’s a 43" VA panel. The other 40+" stuff are weird absurdly wide curved monitors and some smart whiteboard type thing. So forgive me if I am extremely doubtful of your claim.
can we just ban online features from tvs, cars, printers, light bulbs etc.
Cars being online has some tangible benefits in that they can transmit location data to emergency services, especially if the driver is unresponsive. Might save someone from dying in a ditch in the middle of nowhere.
Arguably, some of the data collected while driving is also very useful for maintenance and development (e.g. if a lot of vehicles start having a similar issue after X miles).
That said, this data should be limited in scope and use (e.g. must not be sold, especially not to insurance companies), as well as anonymized as much as possible. Which is currently not the case, and that definitely needs regulation.
You don’t need a high bandwidth connection to do emergency notifications, and considering it might be in a remote area satellite would be better than LTE.
For the diagnostics you could log events internally and then collect them with OBD-II readers, though I’d like to force car makers to use open data formats so people can see for themselves what’s collected.
That said, this data should be limited in scope and use…
Yep, anonymized, limited, non-distributable, and secured, with severe penalties (on the order of tens of thousands of dollars per person, paid to the harmed party) for failure to adhere.
That ship, my friend, has already sailed.
Civilians used to own canons. For blowing up ships. And the occasional home invader. Doesn’t matter if it has sailed if we sink it. We should sink that ship.
What would you guys recommend for a dumb TV with a good quality panel in the 65-75" range that’s a available to buy in the EU? My intention is to hook it up to my own device (probably a mini PC running some Linux distro with Kodi and some other stuff).
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Eizo or iiyama monitors are very good imo. The other use raspberry pi ( or anything else ) + tv card
Thanks. Anything more specific in mind? I know Eizo for their monitors for colour-critical work and from looking on their site I’m only able to find a 50 something inch model that’s probably very expensive (I think it was in their medical lineup). As for iiyama, they have some 65 and 75" models for e-signage, but they’re running Android.
I just use an Apple TV connected to my TV which isn’t connected to any network. I hook it up every now and again to update the software when there are new features available related to picture/sound.
I also run a Jellyfin server for most of my streaming needs.
Apple TV most certainly collects information too…
Do most smart TVs still allow performing updates via USB? I have an older LG TV which does this.
If only our fucking government would do something about this and actually regulate these evil bastards.
But their
constituentscorporate donors would not profit as much. Won’t someone think about my profits? 🙃but then the market would be ever so slightly less free. the horror!
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First you’d need to ban money from politics and change the voting system to better represent the people living there instead of wealthy elites, but that would just be the start.
Whenever wealthy elites have even a tiny bit of power (as they do in any capitalist system, including social democracies like what the Nordic countries have), they will seize as much control as possible. We saw this happen many times.
Nico Semsrott (Kabarettist and member of the EU parliament. Yes, both) proposed in jest sponsoring placement on the jackets of the political members that got donations by companies.
The jackets should then look like the race overalls from Formula 1 or (not US) football players.And I am fully supporting this.
Edit:
Like this:
I dumbedcmy smart tv by disconnected it from the internet. The stupid thing is the tv was requesting internet connection to work, so I had to put it on my network and then block everything so the tv pouted and then shut up.
Now I switch to a Fire tv usb stick on it but god I hate it…
the tv was requesting internet connection to work
What tv is that? Just so I know what to avoid
For example, Amazon Web Services and ad-tech company TripleLift are working with proprietary models and machine learning for dynamic product placement in streamed TV shows. The report, citing a 2021 AWS case study, says that “new scenes featuring product exposure can be inserted in real-time ‘without interrupting the viewing experience.’”
Peacock is also working with TripleLift to develop “In-Scene” Peacock ads that owner NBCUniversal says it’s currently testing:
When a user plays episodic content, your brand’s product or message is dynamically placed in the frame of targeted scenes, creating a non-interruptive ad experience that aligns the programming with your campaign theme/goals.
This could be hilarious when your omegaverse softcore porn drama gets plastered with prune juice, old people pill adverts, and trump propaganda on everyone’s shirts, tattoos, jock straps, voice lines and whatever else the AI can scrounge up. “It totally fits with the narrative!”
Kind if reminds me of the scene in The Truman Show when they talk about the cereal to the hidden camera.
Am I reading this wrong or are they literally hijacking a shot in the content by placing a product in there?
Sounds like they could literally go in there and replace the kid watching tele-shopping in a movie with watching a literal ad made to look like it’s genuinley in the movie.It’s exactly that. Detect where there are ads in a scene ( a panel for example) and replace the space with their own ads.
Tbh could be worse replacing an ad placement with another (say adidas to nike).
Personally actually be worse would be replacing an ad relevant to the movie (like an advertisement for the newest tool the protagonist always needed to progress)
omegaverse softcore porn drama
😏
