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I’m Terrified of My New TV

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Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#271

Post by TeMPOraL »

imgabe wrote: post #214
enobrev wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google led me to Samsung. Under the "Voice Recognition" section [1] Voice Recognition You can control your SmartTV, and use many of its features, with voice commands. If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a thi…

Isn't that exactly how Google's voice recognition works? And Siri's too I assume? Your phone doesn't have the processing power to do speech-to-text on the fly, so it sends it to a server to do it. I don't see a vast government conspiracy behind this. If they can make the TV a bit cheaper by putting in a less powerful processor and taking advantage of the always present high speed Internet connection, of course they w…

> Your phone doesn't have the processing power to do speech-to-text on the fly, so it sends it to a server to do it.

This is what I don't get. I used to play with Microsoft's SpeechAPI back in 2007 and it was pretty decent at real-time speech recognition - almost perfect, if you limited your program to a pre-defined command grammar. It was all done completely off-line, real-time on a machine that had much less processing power than your average smartphone of today. I don't see anything inherent in speech recognition that would require so much processing power that the phone can't handle it real-time. The only reason I see is that continuous moving of everything to cloud because it's easier to capture revenue stream that way.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#272

Post by talmand »

"Users may have the ability to disable data collection, but it comes at a cost. The device will not function properly or allow the use of its high-tech features."

In that case, the best thing to do is to return the TV to the retailer explaining exactly why you are returning it. If the result of disabling a possibly intrusive feature is as bad as this person suggests, it's a broken TV anyway.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#273

Post by jabjoe »

sysk wrote: post #236
jabjoe wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Government needs to have laws against this. We can't leave it up to ignorant and fickle consumers. This is a failure of the system of law, thus government. Consumer action is no substitute. Voting with wallets is not equal in anyway to voting. And never should be. We shouldn't be trying to herd consumers to punish companies, we should be asking governments to do their job.

> We can't leave it up to ignorant and fickle consumers. People like you infuriate me to no end. The fact is that a lot of consumers are willing to trade privacy for convenience, price, etc. Privacy just doesn't weigh much in those people's list of priorities. I'm glad we still have a semblance of free market capitalism because if people like you had their way, a lot of modern technologies simply wouldn't exist. That…

You can not expect them to understand the ins and outs of every purchase. You judge a society by how it looks after it's people. You are arguing to leave them to the wolves.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#274

Post by mrweasel »

lurchpop wrote: post #24

Went through this recently at Best Buy. The salesperson said by next year they may no longer carry any "dumb" tvs. Currently, those options are almost gone. I didn't see any dumb tvs over 40" and there were no 4Ks without "smart" features. I plan on just blocking it in my router, but who knows if the TV scans around for open hotspots. If I were a "smart" developer Id store everything locally if offline, then dump to…

Most of the "smart" features aren't going to be used anyway, so I assume that they are dirt cheap to put in or that most manufacturer tries to add them to differentiate from the competition. Since most TV manufacturer put in "smart stuff" it isn't really a differentiating factor, at least not to the extent that they would like.

Most of the features are also stuff that I don't even know what does, it's just confusing. The plan might be to confuse customers into buying the most expensive TV, so they don't feel like they're missing out on something.

The first manufacturer to produce a cheap TV marketed as "HD TV, it does Netflix too" should in my mind be able to get a good number of customers.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#275

Post by tmuir »

freehunter wrote: post #261
tmuir wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe that people buy integrated media players with their TVs. They are usually multiple hundreds of dollars on top of the base TV model price, have terrible interfaces, and are crippleware, using apps with very few services. I suppose the economics aren't as straightforward, but I'm of the opinion that Chromecast, Roku, AppleTV, etc are the next layer of crippleware. A small form factor Windows box or a Ma…

>A wireless mouse always trumps a remote. Absolutely not. I do not want a mouse being used at my couch. I do not want my movie interrupted with Windows Update. I do not want to fiddle with XBMC or some other hacked together, unintegrated system. I subscribe to the Unix philosophy when it comes to my home entertainment. I have a stereo that only plays audio. I have a TV that only plays video. I have a set-top box that…

Perhaps Windows would be a problem, but I've been using a Mac Mini in this fashion for 3 years now, and have never once been interrupted by OSX.

Would you at least concede that everything else being equal, there is no faster input to start media than with a mouse? Every TV/Set Top remote interface I've ever used requires at least 3x the steps of the equivalent with a mouse, because you have a D-Pad. Maybe DVD players are even, but any menu based system is crippled by design, because you cant scroll or point.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#276

Post by [deleted] »

downandout wrote: post #155

I wasn't particularly disturbed by this article until I got to the following passage regarding the "Voice Command" feature: "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party." I don't think there is a prison horrible enough to send these people to. There is NO legitimate reason that an always-on…

[deleted]

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#277

Post by snowwrestler »

downandout wrote: post #246
imgabe wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that exactly how Google's voice recognition works? And Siri's too I assume? Your phone doesn't have the processing power to do speech-to-text on the fly, so it sends it to a server to do it. I don't see a vast government conspiracy behind this. If they can make the TV a bit cheaper by putting in a less powerful processor and taking advantage of the always present high speed Internet connection, of course they w…

Yes, phones do this too. But the massive difference is that you have to consciously bring up Siri and you know when it's listening and when it's not. The TV appears to be constantly listening for audio commands and is sending whatever it hears upstream for processing. Someone in these comments said that you can turn the TV on through a voice command, which means that it is listening even when it is off and merely plu…

Isn't Siri listening by default now in iOS 8 whenever the phone is plugged in?

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#278

Post by listic »

nl wrote: post #198
corford wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.pfsense.org/hardware/#pfsense-store

Yeah, I saw that. Not exactly consumer prices are they? Reading the forums there are some dual LAN Atom based mini PCs that seem OK. Edit: Also http://store.netgate.com/Desktop-Systems-C83.aspx has some preconfigured options at under $300.

Those are the same things.

If you do not want to financially support pfSense, you can buy hardware from Netgate directly, starting from $299. Even cheaper as a kit or with older hardware, but you decide for yourself whether it will be adequate for you. I'm planning on buying an assembled APU from Netgate for myself; right now I'm using m0n0wall on a separate P3 PC (Celeron 1000), modded for silence. Probably will try out pfSense beforehand, on a separate CF card I just ordered.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#279

Post by click170 »

habitue wrote: post #179
userbinator wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily most things use HTTP The irony is that as people justifiably push for "more security", more and more of them are going to use HTTPS or other encrypted transports, making it impossible to determine what information they're transferring just from network inspection. End-to-end encryption is a good thing only if you trust both endpoints and don't want MITMs to interfere. Otherwise, it's security being used again…

Yeah but theoretically, you should control your own devices, and be able to decrypt what they're sending because you have access to the keys they're using. (of course I realize this is complete bs, they're black boxes). Richard Stallman is looking less crazy now with all his warnings about "tivoization"

This.

When I said HTTP, I meant to include HTTPS. Intercepting HTTPS and filtering it is actually rather simple, and avoiding certificate warnings only slightly less so by deploying your own CA.

You're correct that some devices may use certificate pinning to prevent me from doing this, but for those devices my solution is simple: They're denied Internet access entirely.

Edit: As a manufacturer/vendor you have zero expectation of privacy from me the consumer. I bought the device, I bought the equipment that runs the network, I pay to keep the device connected to the Internet, I get the final say on which packets your app receives. Any vendor who believes otherwise is mistaken and should be named and shamed.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#280

Post by sp332 »

keenerd wrote: post #231
count wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder when we'll get commercials that run voice commands on those TV's themselves... 'TV Install Samsung Super Social Awesome App, Yes, Yes Yes'

If it is anything like the last time this happened (google 1-900 santa) the commercial will be pulled in under 10 minutes.

Wow, this happened already? I only remember an ad recently that turned on people's Xbox Ones. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27827545
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