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Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

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Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#341

Post by olyjohn »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #336
arduinomancer wrote: post #287

This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble? Why is everyone so confused that smart TVs are popular? Being able to just turn on your TV and open Netflix without messing around with inputs/other devices is a huge benefit for non-technological people. And it probably costs <$50 for the manufacturer to include whatever chip is running linux in the TV, its a no-brainer.

> This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble? Smart TVs is one of those recurring HN topics where it’s clear that people made up their minds years ago, likely from a single bad experience. Now they can’t imagine that any progress has been made since then. There’s not much reason to buy a new TV these days if your old one still works (with an external TV box) You can still find terrible smart TVs out there, of course…

I don't think so. I think regardless of how good they are... a lot of people don't want to sell their viewing habits in exchange for using an app that you have to pay for to watch shows.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#342

Post by Tijdreiziger »

karteum wrote: post #122

No-one forces you to connect your "smart" TV to the network... You can just use it as a "dumb" TV and connect anything on it (such as a Raspberry Pi) to do the "smart" things. I have an old Toshiba smart TV from >7 years ago that I bought second-hand for 100€, and while it is doing great as a dumb TV I would never connect it to the network considering there have been no firmware update for years and that the current…

Are you sure?

https://thehometheaterdiy.com/hdmi-with-ethernet/

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#343

Post by iso1210 »

rock_artist wrote: post #289

Looking at some comments, I was surprised seeing many complaints about Samsung ads but (as of writing) no one mentions Google doing same thing lately: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643208

Google are an advertising company, it would be like complaining about McDonalds selling fast food.

Samsung are an electronics company

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#344

Post by acdha »

Santosh83 wrote: post #56

The larger question for society is do we even want smart everything? I rarely see this issue debated. Undoubtedly, software enables complex/rich functionality for what were hitherto relatively "dumb" devices, but the same flexibility can also lead to exploits, backdoors, bugs and place too much control in the hands of the manufacturers and many other nameless parties. The most important aspect here is remote connecti…

The companies want it because they make money selling your viewing activity, and that means that these devices will be popular with everyone who buys the lowest priced item in the store.

What I’d like to see are mandatory privacy disclosures on the front of the box and minimum lifetimes based on the primary function: full support for the advertised features for, say, the 10-15 years that the display lasts or they buy it back at a significant fraction of the original purchase price. We have a ton of usable equipment going to landfills because the manufacturer refuse to ship updates for things which aren’t generating ongoing revenue.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#345

Post by blibble »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #336
arduinomancer wrote: post #287

This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble? Why is everyone so confused that smart TVs are popular? Being able to just turn on your TV and open Netflix without messing around with inputs/other devices is a huge benefit for non-technological people. And it probably costs <$50 for the manufacturer to include whatever chip is running linux in the TV, its a no-brainer.

> This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble? Smart TVs is one of those recurring HN topics where it’s clear that people made up their minds years ago, likely from a single bad experience. Now they can’t imagine that any progress has been made since then. There’s not much reason to buy a new TV these days if your old one still works (with an external TV box) You can still find terrible smart TVs out there, of course…

unless they've stopped adding ads to my other programmes then I'm not plugging the TV back into the internet

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#346

Post by jmcgough »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #336
arduinomancer wrote: post #287

This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble? Why is everyone so confused that smart TVs are popular? Being able to just turn on your TV and open Netflix without messing around with inputs/other devices is a huge benefit for non-technological people. And it probably costs <$50 for the manufacturer to include whatever chip is running linux in the TV, its a no-brainer.

> This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble? Smart TVs is one of those recurring HN topics where it’s clear that people made up their minds years ago, likely from a single bad experience. Now they can’t imagine that any progress has been made since then. There’s not much reason to buy a new TV these days if your old one still works (with an external TV box) You can still find terrible smart TVs out there, of course…

Some of these comments have a real "old man yells at cloud" vibe. Modern, mid-range or better Smart TVs are great. They let me enjoy streaming content or gaming without wasting time trying to configure something, torrent something, fiddle with subtitles. The newest models offer unparalleled gaming experiences via HDMI 2.1 features.

There's (justifiably) privacy and other concerns on HN, but no one else is aware of those concerns or cares too much. The market has spoken.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#347

Post by Levitz »

avhception wrote: post #329
com2kid wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Front loading washing machines just seem like an all around more fragile design that is also less usable. I have an HE top loader. It uses just as little water, but it can wash a lot more clothes when needed. I can push a button and it stops being HE and can fill its tub up to wash blankets and comforters. Also front loaders just can't clean synthetic fabrics that water beads off of. I've seen fabrics come out of a f…

I think it's mostly about being able to stack other appliances on top of them to save space. Especially dryers.

Here in Spain I've never seen anything but front loaders, they are almost always embedded into the distribution of the bathroom or kitchen, kinda like dishwashers. Front loading allows you to use the space above it for the kitchen counter or such, washing machines rarely have their door opened anyway.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#348

Post by jychang »

olyjohn wrote: post #341
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble? Smart TVs is one of those recurring HN topics where it’s clear that people made up their minds years ago, likely from a single bad experience. Now they can’t imagine that any progress has been made since then. There’s not much reason to buy a new TV these days if your old one still works (with an external TV box) You can still find terrible smart TVs out there, of course…

I don't think so. I think regardless of how good they are... a lot of people don't want to sell their viewing habits in exchange for using an app that you have to pay for to watch shows.

I mean, most people just use Netflix and Hulu and Plex from their smart TV anyways.

The former 2 are already collecting your viewing habits, and the latter is uncollectable since it's just streaming from your own server.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#349

Post by rock_artist »

mithusingh32 wrote: post #296
rock_artist wrote: post #289

Looking at some comments, I was surprised seeing many complaints about Samsung ads but (as of writing) no one mentions Google doing same thing lately: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643208

The big difference is with Google you can disable ads for the most part with an ad blocker. Samsung TVs however you cannot. For example I have a pihole server running on my network. I cannot use Disney+ or Hulu on my Samsung TVs. But Nvidia shield and my phone work perfectly. Samsung injects ads into all their apps. Even if you lay for Hulu with no ads, guess what you're still going to get an ad. It won't be a stream…

> The big difference is with Google you can disable ads for the most part with an ad blocker.

At least from my perspective, any product I buy that impose regression in functionality is a bad practice.

It’s the same as if you buy an app and then gets ads in an update.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#350

Post by iso1210 »

danlugo92 wrote: post #310
speeder wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For cars stuff is even harder now. EU for example has regulations that make mandatory for all new cars to come with tracking devices and logging of what you do with the car. EDIT: just remembered the name of one of such things. It is "eCall", now mandatory on EU. It mandates all cars must have GPS, Galileo, microphone, logging, cellphone transmitter, and be able to detect a serious emergency happened and call the pol…

Sounds like something out of China.

Do China have a society built on advertising stuff you don't want or need on TV and radio and in magazines and movies, and at ballgames, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written in the sky?
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