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72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

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Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#601

Post by octoberfranklin »

canofbars wrote: post #552
gxqoz wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I read somewhere that it will soon be more cost effective to build in cellular chips into "smart" devices like this to circumvent people who don't connect them to the internet.

This is the main use case of 5g iirc. Enabling millions more devices to connect to the network. What an absolute nightmare we are about to enter. "Just don't connect it to the network" is no longer a valid answer.

I will start building 5G jammers. The FCC can eat a bag of dicks.

Apparently even 5G-NR has an equivalent of the wifi "unauthenticated deauth" intended for emergency quench of uncooperative devices.

The cellphone location data abuses revealed over the last three years have led to a remarkable increase in the number of GPS jammers out there. Gaussian-noise blurred, the good ones that can't be notch-filtered.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#602

Post by Too »

smileysteve wrote: post #390
Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

Disagree. My 75 yo parents still have a dumb tv. They have different remotes for cable, sound, blue ray player ( some smart apps), fire tv, and apple tv. Their life is not easier because of this, they don't watch what they want when they want because it takes minutes to get to a different source. I know what I'm getting them for Christmas

My single Apple TV remote with only 7 buttons and a trackpad controls everything. The AppleTV itself wirelessly, the TV power on/off and source via HDMI-CEC, and finally the external amplifier volume via IR, which powers on/off itself when sound is received or idle.

The TV automatically switches source to the game console when it's turned on and vice versa.

Couldn't be easier.

I haven't done any fancy hacking or special hw to get this working, just basic Samsung, Apple, a decent amp and a few minutes adjusting the settings of each.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#603

Post by octoberfranklin »

twblalock wrote: post #544
kzrdude wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation should intervene when smart tvs come with non-obvious downsides like data collection. Consumers don't get informed and have no possibility of making an informed choice here.

People know about data collection. They don't care. The first thing we need to do to have productive conversations about privacy with non-technical people is to stop pretending they are ignorant or unable to understand trade-offs. People know that their online activity is tracked. They know that their Alexa devices record their conversations. All of this has been on the news enough times that you'd need to be living…

> The first thing we need to do to have productive conversations about privacy with non-technical people is to stop pretending they are ignorant or unable to understand trade-offs.

And then those same people complain about folks who won't vaccinate their kids, saying they're being selfish.

Without realizing they're doing exactly the same thing.

They are ignorant. They do not understand the trade-offs.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#604

Post by octoberfranklin »

tylergetsay wrote: post #509
ThePhysicist wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's annoying. But at least they still have a normal HDMI input, so I could still buy a smart TV stick to plug into that (or use a laptop). That seems more and more attractive as well since after a recent software update my TV now takes around a minute to boot to its smart OS, I suspect because the old hardware can't keep up with the new software.

And with CEC you can control the TV, I particularly like my scripts to turn off the TV's when I leave.

It really sucks that most GPUs don't have CEC. Even the high-end ones.

The price for CEC-USB dongles is outrageous too.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#605

Post by octoberfranklin »

xurukefi wrote: post #212

I always found it puzzling that DNS blacklisting for adblocking purposes works at all . I mean I'm not a webdev or anything like that, so what I'm saying might be a bit native, but couldn't you simply serve your ads using the same domain you use for your content? This immediately defeats things like PiHole completely.

There isn't one "you" here, there's two: the website and the advertiser.

They don't trust each other; each has an incentive to defraud the other.

That's why they run separate servers. Auditability.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#606

Post by octoberfranklin »

erentz wrote: post #191

I’m kind of surprised there isn’t an OpenWRT style project out there to provide a replacement OS for common Smart TVs. At least I couldn’t find one. I’m obviously lacking in understanding the massive difficulties such a project would likely face. But it sure would be very nice to be able to replace my TVs firmware with something open source. I don’t want a dongle or extra box or extra remote. There’s a perfectly good…

Netflix and all the other streaming apps insist on locked bootloaders.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#607

Post by octoberfranklin »

mojo982 wrote: post #30
CraneWorm wrote: post #22

Just don't buy smart TV, or any of that IoT crap. It is possible to buy 58 inch dumb TV, connect that to a machine you own.

Is it? I’m still holding onto my TV from 2014 because it doesn’t have “smart” functionality. Every time I look at new ones I can’t find good dumb ones.

Same here.

Also, 40-inch 4k screens don't seem to exist anymore. The 43-inch and above have a MUCH larger inter-pixel gap which I can easily notice when using them as a monitor. 50-inch and above are too big for desktop monitor use.

I think the panel manufacturers realized they torpedoed their high-end monitor market with the 40-inch 4k screens which is why they had to nuke them and make the 43-inch displays so crappy.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#608

Post by BorisMelnik »

on a separate note I think smart TV's are either going to completely die or a massive operating system consolidation is about to happen. I work with a lot of consumers directly and so many of them just hate their smart TVs and opt to use a roku/fire stick/apple TV instead. add to that most major cable providers have so many streaming services baked into their own cablebox OS and there is a lot of redundancy.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#609

Post by octoberfranklin »

Sunspark wrote: post #268
hanklazard wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I worry about this sort of “annoy the customer into connecting” behavior becoming more common as integrating ads becomes more a part of the business model. Also could connect to open wifi networks in more densely populated areas The real problem will be integrated cellular connectivity with no option to disable.

If it comes with an unlimited data plan, I'd happily buy that TV just to open it up to take the SIM out of it and use it in another device.

SIMs in IoT devices are soldered down. They look like a regular surface-mount chip, black package and all. It's called an "eSIM".

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#610

Post by octoberfranklin »

mlacks wrote: post #126
mojo982 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I’m still holding onto my TV from 2014 because it doesn’t have “smart” functionality. Every time I look at new ones I can’t find good dumb ones.

The term you are looking for is “professional display”. NEC/sharp, Sony, and Samsung off the top of my head have a division for this. I work in a classified military space where the security of our equipment has been verified; our 80 inchers are all NEC and work wonderfully

> The term you are looking for is “professional display”.

Those cost way more than dumb displays did back before there were smart displays. Look at the 40-inch/43-inch models. They're like $800. I bought all my 40-inch 4k screens for under $300 in 2016.

The insane price gouging in these "professional displays" cannot be explained by advertising subsidies. We weren't paying those prices for equivalent-spec dumb TVs back when those were available for sale.

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