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Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition

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461–470 of 711 posts

Re: Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition

#462

I'm getting ready to go full Battlestar Galactica in all of my appliances. It's now difficult to find high end washers and ovens without these features. At least right now we can choose not to connect the devices, but what happens if iot LTE connections get cheap enough that the choice is removed altogether, like with Tesla and other high end modern cars? I don't think I'm just being a Luddite. This really seems like…

My wife's CPAP machine has LTE and phones home her sleep patterns to her doctor and presumably insurance company. Whole thing makes me really uncomfortable.

Re: Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody should buy the tooling for early 90's Camry's/ES300's and sell them indefinitely. You could get a reliable, brand new car for a couple grand. Sort of like the original VW Beetle sales model.

They wouldn't be legal to sell in the US for a variety of reasons. Vehicle safety laws are updated pretty regularly. Off the top of my head, they probably wouldn't meet: FMVSS 126 (ESC), FMVSS 111 (rear camera), FMVSS 138 (TMPS), FMVSS 226 (occupant ejection mitigation) Although, like the beetle, you could sell them in countries with lower safety standards. I'm pretty some joint ventures in China are/were actually do…

You’d still have a better car if you took modern drivetrain with 90s knobs.

The touchscreen revolution in cars is a dumpster fire. Literally every aspect of the controls on my last couple of cars has been a regression.

Re: Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition

#465
Not trying to downplay Samsung's sinister behavior, but could you just not connect it to the internet?

I was recently shopping for TVs and found it impossible to find a model I liked without this kind of stuff baked in.

Then you could plug your Apple TV, Xbox, Chromecast or what-have-you and avoid being tracked — oh wait...

Re: Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition

#466
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully it isn't quite that simple for electronics in the US. If it is sold commericially, it has to be registered with the FCC. In this way, you at least know if it has WiFi, LTE, etc, and can see the module that is installed on it. This makes it much easier to go into the device and physically disable the radios on it. Heck, maybe that is something like iFixit could do, have a how to to completely remove radio c…

The average consumer won't be able (or even know) to disable built-in telemetry. As you can see from Facebook, invasive ads, DNA kits, and Alexa, most won't even care. We've lost this battle. Our warnings weren't strong enough to win over those interested in convenience.

I disagree. See the CA privacy law (CCPA) and the successor that will be on the ballot in November. Those give us the chance to establish meaningful defaults.

Re: Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should just ddos these endpoints, they don't deserve anything better.

Would it note be relatively trivial for the manufacturer to just filter incoming requests by whitelist of registered ids of their appliances?

Not really - either you send the ids unencrypted and they're trivial to falsify, or you send them securely, in which case it takes a lot more power to decrypt each request for filtering than it does for the attacker to send each new request.

DDoS protection is surprisingly challenging - usually it's relegated to a CDN provider, but that would be more difficult when the actual consumers are the same people most likely to be hosting botnets.

Re: Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition

#468
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is a counterargument, but if a company did this in an open way I could trust, I would buy EVERYTHING from them. Fridge, washer, dryer, dishwasher, televisions, small electronics, cars, whatever. You name it I'd buy it. I don't have enough information to determine how many people are like me, but the profit you could make on me as a customer would be ridiculous. You'd get the kind of platform loyalty…

100% this. I would be another loyal customer buying everything from such a company. I place high value on not fucking over fellow human beings, and I'd happily put the money where my mouth is, but the market seems essentially devoid of ethical companies these days. I'm sure there is many more people like us - perhaps enough to sustain a company. (FWIW, if you extend this past issues of ads and privacy, and into makin…

> Being ethical means no planned obsolescence, or otherwise churning out new variants of the same thing to keep sales up.

If you buy "TV as a service" instead of as a product, the effect is basically that the company providing the service will do the opposite of planning for obsolescence.

Perhaps this is the kind of company you are looking for?

Re: Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition

#469

I'm getting ready to go full Battlestar Galactica in all of my appliances. It's now difficult to find high end washers and ovens without these features. At least right now we can choose not to connect the devices, but what happens if iot LTE connections get cheap enough that the choice is removed altogether, like with Tesla and other high end modern cars? I don't think I'm just being a Luddite. This really seems like…

Just wrap all your appliances with tinfoil. Problem solved!

Re: Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition

#470
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can there be a balance? I'd love to remotely control and view the status of my appliances without sending the telemetry to the OEM. Physically disabling all the radios would prohibit this functionality.

I reckon that, given enough time, it’ll go the same was as everything else. Either you pay a subscription to remote it (and the inevitable ads that will appear), or you pay a premium for something without that functionality. I don’t see how this stops. Advertisers will stop at nothing to invade your life, and businesses are more than happy to facilitate them if they get some more money out of it.

Won't this create an opportunity for someone to enter the market with a TV that uses no ads or telemetry? Surely it is obvious there are millions of people who don't want smart TV's you would think a company offering a dumb TV would thrive. Are we just not at that point yet?
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