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I’m Terrified of My New TV

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Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#71

Post by coldtea »

ilaksh wrote: post #58
tedks wrote: post #47

We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance. You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). You know what will? Taking these TVs into the street, smashing and burning them. Mobs storming Best Buy and smashing the s…

Well, in my "bat shit insane" reality, the Arab Spring was actually mainly a cyber-intelligence operation on Facebook designed to get Mubarek out of the way so they could get better access to Libya. Mubarek had blocked a previous Libyan invasion attempt in the 80s. And actually Gaddafi was the ultimate non-boring active protester. If you knew what he actually did, instead of the mythological version of events, he is…

All those are almost impossible to comprehend if you were brought up with the same BS "US national interests" version of the News since the eighties, but laughably trivial for most Europeans.

That's how you get Bush twice re-elected, or believe that Obama is some kind of great "hope".

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#72

Post by Canada »

RadioactiveMan wrote: post #61
Canada wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those examples you mention exist mainly because interests with money decided it was cheaper to support communal infrastructure upon which they could build proprietary offerings. Even if they started for the joy of hacking, a lot of people were paid good money to make those projects what they are today. That will not automatically happen for a lot of classes of software. You point out that any desktop computing task c…

Those projects do have a lot of money behind them. The point there is that there is room to make money with open source projects. There are business models besides selling software directly. You make an excellent point about mobile computing. However, interest in free mobile software is growing and we'll see more options available to mirror the demand.

Definitely. We've certainly seen great examples of open source projects turning into successful commercial ventures, while remaining committed to free software.

What I'm trying to say here is that I hope to see even more business models that work well so we can get free alternatives in more areas of computing sooner rather than later.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#74

Post by jsaxton86 »

tedks wrote: post #47

We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance. You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). You know what will? Taking these TVs into the street, smashing and burning them. Mobs storming Best Buy and smashing the s…

Do you think destroying technology and flipping cop cars is going to end the surveillance state? While an interesting thought experiment, it seems unlikely. If anything, it would give the pro-surveillance lobby enough political capital to further reduce whatever legal privacy protection we already have.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#75

Post by ElDiablo666 »

tedks wrote: post #47

We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance. You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). You know what will? Taking these TVs into the street, smashing and burning them. Mobs storming Best Buy and smashing the s…

I'm totally fine with your exciting-as-fuck politics but it will be difficult to get people to that point any time soon, me thinks. I think the problem is that when you say things like "these things don't work" you're glossing over the key to why they don't work: people aren't organized. That's it. It may not be glamorous or fun like tossing over the pigmobile but it's proven to work every single time throughout history.

Let's look at boycotts. The problem with boycotts isn't that they're not effective; they can be. My family participated in a successful one against Iceland's whaling policies in the 80s and even though I was young, I never forgot why we did it and that it was right. So what's the problem? They ignore institutional structures that persist despite our actions. If one particular corporation strays too far, boycott pressure is effective. Don't forget how it played into bringing down South African apartheid.

My point here is that we don't need to go looking for new solutions. Good old fashioned organizing works. It does combat LG's bought politicians--remember my friend, we still have democratic institutions and we can vote anyone we want into office. People don't like to be reminded of what really works, I think. We need socialism. We need to vote them into office and make good privacy laws. That's that. No need to reinvent the wheel. Then we can talk about an informal technocracy democratically dissolving the state into libertarian socialist anarcho-communism.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#76

Post by doctorshady »

pmoriarty wrote: post #68

The author is afraid of his smart TV, but probably doesn't think twice about carrying around a smartphone. Smartphones have virtually all of the capabilities that make the author fear his smart TV, only the smartphone is, if anything, even more dangerous because it is more ubiquitous. People carry their phones around everywhere, and the phones are usually constantly on and equally capable of monitoring your every wor…

Not to detract from your point, but wouldn't that apply to cell phones in general?

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#77

Post by rtpg »

tedks wrote: post #47

We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance. You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). You know what will? Taking these TVs into the street, smashing and burning them. Mobs storming Best Buy and smashing the s…

The thing that's missing in this is not that people don't care , it's that a lot of these things are attached to _useful things_.

I like my webcam. I can have a skype video chat with someone halfway across the world. Sure, the NSA might watch me in my sleep, and that sucks (I do think rule of law works), but hey.

I like that google is data mining my emails. Google Now is amazing, reminds me of things like my flights because it goes through it. If that allows them to show somewhat creepy ads, so be it (google is a lot more subtle with their ads than they could be). The service is cool

Also, Rule of Law works. Consumer privacy protection laws exist in the EU, and companies that don't respect it can suffer greatly. So the NSA might not fall under that, but I'm much more comfortable with the NSA looking at me than corporations (though I'd rather have neither). And we _can_ push back on the surveillance apparatus (Church Commission and the like).

Really don't need to burn down everything to get things done.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#78

Post by psychometry »

tedks wrote: post #47

We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance. You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). You know what will? Taking these TVs into the street, smashing and burning them. Mobs storming Best Buy and smashing the s…

It's easy to implore others to commit crimes on behalf of your personal philosophy. It's much harder to lead the way and do it yourself.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#79

Post by d23 »

tedks wrote: post #47

We need a Butlerian Jihad against surveillance. You know what will never stop this? Posts on hacker news. Letters to your congressman (LG can donate a fuqton more to his re-election campaign than you can). Voting with your dollar (people who know what a privacy policy is are few and far between). You know what will? Taking these TVs into the street, smashing and burning them. Mobs storming Best Buy and smashing the s…

If you don't think you're going to be able to get people riled up enough to stop purchasing the TVs, what makes you think you're going to have them vandalizing private property?

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#80

Post by maerF0x0 »

bruce511 wrote: post #19

I'm probably not normal, but frankly I would just leave it unplugged from the Internet. At the end of the day my current tv does what I need to do (ie act as a big monitor) without an internet connection. Given the number of devices already floating around here for browsing the web, I don't really need my tv to do that. For streaming I have Chromecast or whatever. I get that tv makers want to sell me something, but t…

And go old school like my mom-- put it on a powerbar and truly turn it off when your done.
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