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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

#541

Post by SilverRed »

mminer237 wrote: post #171
josephcsible wrote: post #3

This technology was used for good this time, but there's nothing stopping it from being used for evil next time. The fact that Samsung is even capable of doing this means you don't have control over your Samsung TV even if you do own it legally.

This is generally the purpose of the law. It's not like this is some life-or-death thing that can't be rectified. Samsung has no legal authority to disable a legally-purchased TV, and they would be sued to death if they used if for evil.

I feel like the law needs to take a greater role in this stuff. If you looted a TV you have no rights at all over it but if you purchased it legally it should be your device, and it should continue working like the day you got it outside of hardware failure which can be covered by repair and warranty.

Technical solutions will never work because the exact same feature can be used for good and bad.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#542

Post by malikNF »

They mention TV license is needed to reactive the device if it stops working, and I remember back when I was in uni they told us we need to have a TV license to watch TV in the U.K.

So I am wondering would this mean any government that wants to collect money for people watching TV, Samsung TVs will provide these gov with the power to do TV licensing automatically?

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#543

Post by SilverRed »

smoldesu wrote: post #251
akira2501 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good was served here? The products are still stolen and are still going on the books as a loss. Since they can't be used, they're likely going in a dumpster. And none of this apparently led the arrest of any perpetrators. Hard to imagine what purpose was served here, other than Samsung broadcasting what kind of power they have over devices you own.

Apple has done this fairly successfully for years. The simple answer is, they'd rather deprive someone else of a good than have it themselves. Same goes for Samsung, and pretty much any other company that weighs their bottom line over general benevolence.

A similar situation I heard about; a local pizza shop used to have a policy that if an order is messed up, the staff would be allowed to eat it for free. They then changed it so that all messed up orders would have to be thrown directly in to the trash.

A waste of that pizza, but they found that order messups reduced dramatically when the staff were not allowed to eat the "mistake".

It's the same situation here. You brick a few stolen items and it prevents future theft since there is no longer a reward for it.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#544

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #497
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sucks. The smartest capability I want is the ability to mount network storage, play video from USB, etc. Give me options for playing my media. Unfortunately nobody owns media, they stream everything, hence TVs with "smart" features.

That is because the root problem is excessive copyright terms lasting 100+ years. Bump that down to 10 or even 20 years and you will see a market emerge for the abilities you are looking for.

I think if you eliminated all copyright right now, people would still mostly choose to stream rather than deal with the hassle of managing a media library. It's a huge pain in the ass.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#545

Post by SilverRed »

crackercrews wrote: post #536

> Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com So if you can't find your receipt, you're SOL?

Proof of purchase can usually be obtained from the store if you give them the time of the transaction which would be saved by your bank.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#546

Post by SilverRed »

ant6n wrote: post #436
bluGill wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ecological impact of this shouldn't be ignored. Pretty low so long as they only use it for theft. Thieves will soon learn not to steal TVs as there is no value in it. As such it is only a small number of bricked TVs that are landfilled early - nothing compared to all the TVs already landfilled. Now if this is used for something other than theft cases it can get bad, but in this case at least it is a good thing…

Thieves will still steal TV's, they will just end up in panel repair shops. iPhones still get stolen as well, even though they are worth much less.

iOS 15 takes things up a level. Your phone will remain trackable on the find my network even while the phone is turned off and it will remain trackable for weeks after the battery is "flat".

Sure there are still methods you could use but it makes theft another level harder. The serial numbers and authentication on each part could also be used to brick each part of the phone if it is marked as stolen making them useless for resale as parts.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#547

Post by naikrovek »

pessimizer wrote: post #325
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.

> Why is everyone so confused that smart TVs are popular? Also the real reason that they're popular: there are no non-smart TVs available.

there are no dumb TVs available because Joe and Jane consumer want a Smart TV, because why the hell wouldn't they? The price of a dumb TV and anything to plug into it to give the same functionality is more than the cost of the equivalent Smart TV alone, AND THEY GET THE SAME STREAMING SERVICES. That was the case when Smart TVs were introduced, anyway. it is an easy choice when you don't know the minutia.

Television manufacturers are always looking for a new thing that will prematurely render existing sets obsolete, triggering a new television purchase. Smarts embedded into the TV are one of those things that is very inexpensive to add at scale, but convinces many consumers that their existing devices are no longer "good", which starts that itching that can only be scratched by purchasing a larger TV with the hot new feature du jour.

it was only after Smart TVs gained wide adoption that the abuse of network connectivity was capitalized upon by manufacturers, and dumb TVs were virtually made extinct.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#548

Post by rgoulter »

grosswait wrote: post #524
arriu wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you block samsung.com at the DNS level and be alright or do the issues go deeper than that? Honest question as I don't have a Samsung tv...

How about never connecting it to a network?

I've seen comments report that it gets ethernet over HDMI if they plug in their internet-connected gaming console.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#549

Post by exporectomy »

rodgerd wrote: post #291
nicolas_t wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal but I've had very good experience with Samsung front loading washing machine, might depend on regions of the world though, I've had one in Asia and one in Europe.

Australia had a spate of house fires caused by Samsung washing machines whose electronics weren't properly waterproofed, shorted, and then burned. I have avoided Samsung products since then.

Trouble with this way of deciding is that it's biased by the number of individual products a brand has. Samsung has a lot so they're exposed to more risk of some bad ones even if they're safer on average than their competitors.

You used to see this with car brands back when everybody worried about reliability. Somebody would hear a bad story and go round saying "Don't buy BMWs because their fuel injectors fail". Fortunately, most people have goldfish memory, so people still buy Ford cars despite the Ford Pinto's fuel tank fires and they still buy Toyota despite the Prius's uncontrolled acceleration or whatever.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#550

Post by SilverRed »

kybernetikos wrote: post #318

When I was young, you could steal a TV, or a VHS or CD or DVD collection, or a phone or (a little later) a GPS or media unit in a car or books. Now almost everything can be remotely disabled, and nobody really owns anything anyway, they just pay for subscriptions to things. I wonder what it does to society if crime becomes effectively impossible. A lot of writers have suggested that some level of deviance is essentia…

It's an interesting question. Some kinds of crime do seem necessary since many things we consider essential human rights or at least harmless were once criminal. But I can't imagine this applies much to theft. I can't ever imagine a society where we are worse off because people couldn't steal TVs. And anything where it might make sense, a protest against the government in general would be more appropriate.
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