Don't bring one into your house?
TV Manufacturers: “oh no!” *proceeds to remove all dumb TVs from the market*
There's a second hand market.
Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
71–80 of 548 posts
Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
#72Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similarly, I had a workplace dental provider ship me a ‘smart toothbrush’. Turns out they track the aggregate of everyone’s brushing and if every employee brushes their teeth, the plan gets a discount. ”Lower rate based on group's participation in Beam Perks™ wellness program and a group aggregate Beam score of "A". Based on Beam® internal brushing and utilization data.”
Technology is starting to become genuinely terrifying. Computers used to sit on desks in full visibility, and we used to be in control. Now they're anywhere and everywhere, invisible, always connected, always sensing, doing god knows what, serving unknown masters, exploiting us in unfathomable ways. Absolutely horrifying.
Time to turn your house into a giant Faraday cage
Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
#74Don’t ever connect your TV to the internet?
I'm expecting that later ones will contain methods to get out however they can, whether that's connecting to xfinity free wifi, connecting to a satellite, or having a cheap cell connection that is always on. They want your data and will do their damnedest to get it with/without your permission. Geolocation will be found. I'd expect they'll scan your local wifi SSIDs and send those too and ethernet MAC address to figure out who you are. There must be methods of using this info to wrangle your identity for marketing purposes.
Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every series you've ever watched with the Apple TV -- of course, they keep track of what you watched with them! (/s).
It would be a horrible user experience if it didn’t keep track of the series I’ve watched and where I was in shows so I could pick up and watch where I left off on a different device. This isn’t the iPod days where you would sync your watch history with iTunes.
The entire point of the remark is that you can throw these pseudo-justifications for any and all forms of tracking, since "tracking all the shows you watch" is precisely the issue that motivates TFA.
At the end of the day, they could be taking screenshots of everything you do with your TV and argue it's because of some AI system that will allow you to more easily launch whatever it is you normally do at that time of the day. If you do not see any issue with that, why would you be on this thread?
Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's worse? I don't want my car to track me, I'm def not going to volunteer that information to Uber.
Your car is tracking much more than rideshare apps even can. Uber, Lyft, whoever gets point to point trip information, maybe audio recording in the car. Modern personally owned automobiles are getting everything, all the time. It knows when you're home, when you're not, many record all audio all the time, some are recording video, some are tracking your sexual activity in the car. At this point, I treat rideshare lik…
Also, for what it's worth, you don't have to use same service on each leg of your trip, you don't need to have it pick you up at your front door, and you don't need to have it drop you off at your exact destination. While for some people, these are admittedly imperfect improvements (you can't really effectively conceal your destination as easily if it's, say, an airport, there's also absolutely nothing stopping you from calculating the cost of your full trip with an equidistant destination, ordering a short trip (not to your final destination), and offering your driver a reasonable amount of cash to take you the rest of the way. Uber/lyft themselves are con artists charging riders WAY more than they pay drivers anyway. You can get away with paying a fraction of what the app would charge you, paying the driver way more than they would otherwise receive, and cutting the parasite (the multi-billion-dollar corporation providing zero value after connecting you with a driver) out of the middle.
Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be a horrible user experience if it didn’t keep track of the series I’ve watched and where I was in shows so I could pick up and watch where I left off on a different device. This isn’t the iPod days where you would sync your watch history with iTunes.
The entire point of the remark is that you can throw these pseudo-justifications for any and all forms of tracking, since "tracking all the shows you watch" is precisely the issue that motivates TFA. At the end of the day, they could be taking screenshots of everything you do with your TV and argue it's because of some AI system that will allow you to more easily launch whatever it is you normally do at that time of…
No the justification for the article is TVs that track your watching no matter what you watching and selling it to advertisers.
Apple tracks what you are watching on AppleTV only.
I’m on this thread because I understand technology.
Are you saying that if you are watching something like “South Park” you wouldn’t want the service that you are watching it on to keep track of where you are in its 25 season run?
Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
My work health insurance recently offered a free scale and blood pressure monitor, I thought that's a nice perk, I'll use that, so I ordered with the intent of never using their app, just using it for my own tracking. The first time I used it, I got an email from my insurance company congratulating me and giving me suggestions. Both devices have a cellular modem in them, and arrived paired to my identity. I destroyed…
I'd have tried to disassemble it, locate the SIM card or cellular modem, and see if it could be used for other traffic. A wireguard tunnel fixes the privacy problem, and I can always use more IP addresses and bandwidth. Until people start abusing these "features", they will not go away.
Be very very careful if you do that.
The data plans on some embedded modems are quite different from consumer plans. They are specifically designed for customers who have a large number of devices but only need a small amount of bandwidth on each device.
These plans might have a very low fixed monthly cost but only include a small data allowance, say 100 KB/month. That's plenty for something like a blood pressure monitor that uploads your results to your doctor or insurance company.
If you are lucky that's a hard cap and the data plan cuts off for the rest of the month when you hit it.
If you are unlucky that plan includes additional data that is very expensive. I've heard numbers like $10 for each additional 100 KB.
I definitely recall reading news articles about people who have repurposed a SIM from some device and using it for their internet access, figuring that company would not notice, and using it to watch movies and download large files.
Then the company gets their bill from their wireless service provider, and it turns out that on the long list of line items showing the cost for each modem, a single say $35 000 item really stands out when all the others are $1.
If you are lucky the company merely asks you to pay that, and if you refuse they take you to civil court where you will lose. (That's what happened in the articles I remember reading, which is how they came to the public's attention).
If you unlucky what you did also falls under your jurisdiction's "theft of services" criminal law. Worse, the amount is likely above the maximum for misdemeanor theft of services so it would be felony theft of services.
Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
#79I gave up on televisions about 10 years ago, they were all slow as molasses in January, underpowered, with atrocious interfaces. Nothing fluid or positive about any of them. I've got a 30 inch iMac in the bedroom that we watch everything on, much better than a television. I would be interested in purchasing a 52 inch iMac, hang on the wall, has all the media sharing and everything that televisions fail so much at.
Buy a Roku TV, never connect it to the internet, set it to come on on the HDMI channel your AppleTV is connected to and you get a fast fluid user experience.
Right - I'm wondering why this article is so important and maybe I haven't seen enough intrusive "smart" TV's -- but is it not the case that for the vast majority of smart TVs, you can still just connect whatever to the HDMI (e.g. a computer) and keep it on that? Mine are Roku's, but I feel like the Samsungs et al are the same?
Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
#80What I'd really like is a TV with DisplayPort. How is this not a thing? IIRC you cannot buy a display with DP that's larger than 45 inches, give or take - they just don't exist. I think this is really weird. Like, I'd pay an extra $100 for that port, but I'm just not allowed to have it.