Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick • Hacker News Board

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#241

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:17 PM UTC

ahahs wrote: post #216

ur-whale wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mmmh, I've always wondered ... as much as VLAN's are a very useful tools to - for example - route two separate LAN's traffic through a shared physical link ... are they any good when it come to security? I mean, I don't believe VLAN's were designed with security as a goal, and I wonder how "strong" the virtual wall between two VLAN's actually is? Can't a device on VLAN1 not peek at VLAN2 traffic if it sits on physica…

this is a good question, i asked claude sonnet 5 and the answer is too big and complex for me to type out on mobile. but long story short, you absolutely need separate VLANs and Firewalls in conjuction to secure traffic between networks

Yeah, I've been using Claude to help me secure my home network. I applied to Anthropic's cyber program and got accepted despite being a hobbyist. I'm not very good at networks so I'm gonna try to make the most of it.

Really wish I could point Mythos at my router and just loop it until my router becomes literally unhackable.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#242

Post by doctorspazz » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:21 PM UTC

brewdad wrote: post #182

mmooss wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find younger people are more likely to trust whatever they read - social media rumors, LLM output, Reddit threads - and older people looking for credible sources.

When my kid was young I set up a basic web server and taught him how to make a VERY basic web page. I let him write whatever nonsense he wanted to and then we made it live. It was both a gateway into learning how the web works but also that literally anyone can post anything to the internet and it doesn't make it true. I like to think he's more savvy than many of his peers but we all have our blind spots.

was the url for the website you set up for him www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#243

Post by drnick1 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:22 PM UTC

ephemeral67 wrote: post #220

al_borland wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main value propositions for retailers in a world of endless cheap garbage being sold online, is to vet products so customers can trust that what their buying is from a legitimate company and not junk or stuff like these streaming sticks. This is the problem with being an “everything store”. “Everything” includes a lot of things most consumers would like to be protected from, and assume they are due to the…

interesting bit of information: most EV mower companies now do not provide replacement parts - if a mower dies within warranty, a 'certified' warranty repair shop does basic troubleshooting, and if it's beyond a piece of cheap plastic, the mfr just ships a new mower to the 'repair shop'. Once out of warranty, you're on your own.

Thank you for reminding us that electric mowers are garbage.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#244

Post by hnav » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

frollogaston wrote: post #113

alistairSH wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be a marginal effect, but fake clicks impacts the ad buyer, which then impacts their financials and pricing. The only winner here is the scammers running the fake affiliate sites on which these sticks are "clicking". Or, am I missing some facet of this enterprise?

What this misses is the person buying the TV stick doesn't care about the impact on the ad market. The bigger problem is residential proxying, because their IP will end up getting used for something bad.

most residential proxying these days is used by the purveyors of AI

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#245

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #16

fred_is_fred wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you offered most people free streaming for a $37 USB stick but directly told them it would be faking ad clicks when the TV is off, would any of them really care?

No, and that's is the root of the problem. The buyer is happy and so is the seller. They don't care to understand what they're allowing and everyone is allowing it to happen.

> They don't care to understand what they're allowing

If you told normal people that they could get free content with a TV streaming stick that would also constantly fake clicks on AI generated websites to screw advertisers over, they would think of it as a bonus. Also it would make them trust the stick more (fallaciously), because they would know how the people who sold it were getting paid.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#246

Post by bdamm » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

ephemeral67 wrote: post #220

al_borland wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main value propositions for retailers in a world of endless cheap garbage being sold online, is to vet products so customers can trust that what their buying is from a legitimate company and not junk or stuff like these streaming sticks. This is the problem with being an “everything store”. “Everything” includes a lot of things most consumers would like to be protected from, and assume they are due to the…

interesting bit of information: most EV mower companies now do not provide replacement parts - if a mower dies within warranty, a 'certified' warranty repair shop does basic troubleshooting, and if it's beyond a piece of cheap plastic, the mfr just ships a new mower to the 'repair shop'. Once out of warranty, you're on your own.

My electric mower has lasted longer than the gasoline mower before it, which literally had plastic valves inside the carbeurtator.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#247

Post by Gigachad » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #243

ephemeral67 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting bit of information: most EV mower companies now do not provide replacement parts - if a mower dies within warranty, a 'certified' warranty repair shop does basic troubleshooting, and if it's beyond a piece of cheap plastic, the mfr just ships a new mower to the 'repair shop'. Once out of warranty, you're on your own.

Thank you for reminding us that electric mowers are garbage.

Everything is garbage now. It’s the end state of unrestrained capitalism.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#248

Post by StilesCrisis » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #214

boondongle wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just being realistic here; many of these are of Chinese make so how exactly would you stop it other than blocking them from being sold. They certainly don't advertise to the big box retailer that buys them "and it uses the customer's internet connection for fraud." Hell, there's a section of comments that would probably going "hey, RELAX guy" because it's not US companies doing this. For any American companies that d…

> Just being realistic here; many of these are of Chinese make so how exactly would you stop it other than blocking them from being sold. You already answered it: block it from being sold. 1) Make Amazon responsible for the products they are selling. 2) Introduce a law banning malware tv sticks 3) Sue Amazon for a percentage of their yearly revenue when caught violating it 4) Amazon will finally start caring and do s…

If it's malware, maybe existing laws apply already. I think the bigger problem is enforcement. In China, it's easy to close up shop if anything goes wrong and then just start over. Any liability dies with the brand name.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#249

Post by xorcist » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:33 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #210

awakeasleep wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem I see with your analogy is that the dangerous lawnmower can cause an easily quantifiable harm. You have to be able to show damages you incurred and assign a dollar value to them to sue people. That doesn’t work at all for a something that sells your bandwidth to a proxy service. People wouldn’t even be aware that it was happening they weren’t told.

What about when the police show up because some highly illegal content was traced to your IP address? Will they believe that you were the unwitting victim of a rogue proxy server running on your streaming stick? Would you have even been aware of that possibility?

There's also always the flip side: When the police shows up because of your illegal acitivities, you have a rogue proxy server running. All bought in good faith of course.

Not legal advice.

(It would surprise me greatly if we as a society let these gadgets be sold openly from here on.)

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#250

Post by chihuahua » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 10:34 PM UTC

paultopia wrote: post #104

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

> generic TV boxes that promise unlimited content streaming for a one-time fee I don't want to blame the purchasers of these things - who are some of the victims - but at the same time, it does seem like a Too Good To Be True situation.

Yeah, isn’t this a classic kind of scam the would-be scammer situation? If you think there’s some way to buy one cheap device and somehow get around subscribing to streaming services[1], then of course you’re going to be in a market with fraudsters… [1] Can someone explain what the theory of the product is here? It sounds like they’re marketing these things as ways for the customer to commit fraud, for example by con…

It may be the case that these devices are front-ends for pirated content that's hosted in various places. They're not streaming it from Netflix servers. It's content similar to that offered by Netflix and other streaming services, pirated by someone else, and hosted by someone else for streaming by anyone who can figure out how to find it.