Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#931

Post by elp »

duped wrote: post #856
johnnyanmac wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't really have alternatives, period. LG is the one in the news today, but pretty much any TV this decade has been doing similar things. Computer monitors max out at 32 inches and the idea of a modern dumb TV is non-existent.

I meant alternatives to connecting your TV directly to the internet. As in "why would you ever connect your TV to the internet?" is a stupid question - "because I want to watch things on the internet." And it's not like a roku, firetv, or chrome cast dongle is much different (and Apple TV is $200, normal people don't add 20-50% the cost of their TV to do something built in). > the idea of a modern dumb TV is non-exis…

A cheap 4k generic android media box is less than $70 on Amazon. There are dozens of them. I use one because half the apps on my old smart TV don't work anymore. The android ones are always up to date and the UX is better.

Is there any TV on the market that flat out wont work if it can't see the internet?

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#932

Post by klausa »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #917
klausa wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can turn it on/off using Home Assistant and my phone.

What a useless feature. Reinventing a worse remote.

It is precisely so I _don't_ have to touch the actual TV remote ever.

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#933

Post by klausa »

hatch_q wrote: post #927
klausa wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can turn it on/off using Home Assistant and my phone.

Why not use cheap $10 IR blaster for that? it will connect to home assistant in same manner.

Because it's one more thing that I have to own and maintain; versus a built-in feature?

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#934

Post by cr3ative »

alex_duf wrote: post #924
cr3ative wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple TV.

To the risk of contradicting myself, the less time I got, the more tempting it's been to jump into Apple's ecosystem. I love the hardware, I appreciate Apple's apparent care for privacy, but I just love my linux too much both in terms of UX and for what it represents.

Ha, and I completely missed the "Linux" part of your post, sorry. I do enjoy both. Apple, like you say, is a nice default for me because they clearly care about privacy to a reasonable extent.

Plus, the HDMI-CEC "just works".

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#935

Post by jacquesmouton »

jwr wrote: post #902
Animats wrote: post #572

Here are LG's contract terms for appliances.[1] They are awful. Not only can they listen in. You have a contractual requirement to tell everyone in range of an appliance that they may be eavesdropped upon. CONSENT REQUIREMENT: You acknowledge and agree that it is your sole responsibility to obtain all necessary consents from any third parties whose voices may be captured by the Product and to notify household members…

I have an LG TV. It has been pestering me with those licensing agreements from time to time, but interestingly enough, I was only required to agree to fairly reasonable basics, everything else I just ignored and left for later. I'm guessing this is an oversight and the TV does record, but then this is criminal. But, nobody will bother to prosecute them I guess...

They are not the only ones doing it. What about Android?

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#936

Post by naikrovek »

gruez wrote: post #822
digi59404 wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Samsung fridge. It’s not a smart fridge, it doesn’t have a screen, bluetooth, or any way to connect to it. I logged into my UniFi stack to monitor devices and it showed up. It had gotten the connection details from my wife’s phone, the other Samsung device and was transmitting data back to Google and Samsung.

The far more likely explanation is that your unifi dashboard's device identification logic is broken and is misreporting the device. Otherwise it doesn't make sense for samsung to engage it a massive conspiracy of putting wifi hardware in non-smart devices (driving up the BOM cost), creating a massive botnet that can share credentials between devices, all so they can... maybe run a residential proxy network? Then sub…

> The far more likely explanation is that your unifi dashboard's device identification logic is broken and is misreporting the device.

that does happen, but if this fridge really is connected, it is far more likely that one samsung device used Bluetooth LE to communicate its wi-fi credentials to another samsung device when they were in extremely close proximity.

This is how a new apple device can get logged into the same apple account as another device, you bring them close to each other and they communicate over BLE everything that is needed to bring the new device online and into your device ecosystem.

samsung probably isn't running a botnet, that's not why the fridge is connected; your guess is as good as mine as to what it is, but i would be surprised if it were a botnet.

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#937

Post by agos »

mitxela wrote: post #664
empyrrhicist wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can that kind of clause really be enforceable? It really doesn't seem legal in any jurisdiction I'm aware of. (not a lawyer)

LG probably can't sue you for failing to get consent from a guest, but the guest can sue you, not LG, for being recorded.

I’m sure this would not work under GDPR. The host surely isn’t a data processor.

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#938

Post by mschuster91 »

skerit wrote: post #326
Sophira wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, you're not crazy. I'm also someone who actually reads terms documents, because I find that they're often the only thing that will be truthful about a company's intentions. And keeping it completely disconnected from the internet should be the default, in my opinion.

I never understood why any of the smartness had to be built into the TV in the first place. Sure, it's useful for the first year, and then the seriously underpowered hardware they installed into it will have trouble with just about anything. I bought a Philips Ambilight OLED TV probably over 8 years now. Brilliant tv, great quality, I still see no reason to replace it at all. But its built in AndroidTV is garbage.

> I never understood why any of the smartness had to be built into the TV in the first place.

Because technology got ever more complex. A TV of yore? That thing operated on (relatively) simple physics alone, at the cost of requiring an absurd amount of broadcast infrastructure to make sure a TV signal could be received across the country.

Modern TVs however... digital modulation schemes with a lot of signal processing wizardry allow TV reception with far less broadcast towers and far better quality. You got satellites and with these a myriad of control schemes (DiSEqC, Unicable, ...). You got Pay-TV that requires decryption. You got HDMI CEC to allow your TV to remote control your DVD player.

And all of that complexity requires firmware which means it can have bugs which means you need a firmware update capability and when you're at that point you can just go and slap something Linux on it and get all the apps for streaming services.

Re: 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]

#939

Post by konfusinomicon »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #605
Animats wrote: post #572

Here are LG's contract terms for appliances.[1] They are awful. Not only can they listen in. You have a contractual requirement to tell everyone in range of an appliance that they may be eavesdropped upon. CONSENT REQUIREMENT: You acknowledge and agree that it is your sole responsibility to obtain all necessary consents from any third parties whose voices may be captured by the Product and to notify household members…

Can you actually even turn and keep the microphone off or does it toggle itself back on like Apple's Wifi and Bluetooth one-touch toggle off for now buttons?

there is a tiny physical switch right next to the power button on my lg tv that supposedly turns off the tv microphone. the remote mic has no such switch though
Post reply on HN