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I’m Terrified of My New TV

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Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#311

Post by hackinthebochs »

maratd wrote: post #259
TerraHertz wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is a button on the remote to activate voice." More likely: There is a button on the remote to make users believe they have the ability to disable voice data relay to someone's remote servers. What are the chances such TVs will have network controlled power-up capability? You only think you turned it off. It's funny that people seem to be accepting always-on GSM network connectivity of the electronics in contro…

> oh my god, not the TV! Dude. I stare at my TV. If it stares back, that's scary! And if it's listening to me!?!? All the time? The messed up part is that ALL of our devices will soon be watching and listening to us. Our thermostats, our smoke detectors, our TVs, our phones ... I just installed a fancy internet connected lock on my door. In fact, I installed a fancy electronic toilet seat too... oh well.

DEA: this household hasn't had a decent bowel-movement in a week and they have no active prescription for narcotics, deploy SWAT.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#312

Post by im2w1l »

authatheist wrote: post #174
rhizome wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some historical examples of "waking" people up to a "fact?" I'm not so sure lack of belief is enough to dissipate authority. As the old saying goes, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Within my lifetime, the surest way to invite a tiny war into your life is act as if political and/or legal authority doesn't exist. Hell, just implying that authority should change was enough to get…

If a large enough percentage of people decide to disregard govts and forcefully defend themselves against their enforcers if necessary, then govts just cease to function and exist. I'm not saying we're there now, or even near a point where that's feasible, but it is one way out.

We are there now. "A no-go area or no-go zone is a region where the ruling authorities have lost control and are unable to enforce their sovereignty."

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#313

Post by gohrt »

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…

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2839743?hl=en

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17616994/offline-speech-r...

Sadly, it appears that Google voice recognition follows yuor network connection, so you can't keep it in offline-recognition mode unless you turn off networking when talking.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#314

Post by JoeAltmaier »

tmuir wrote: post #310
freehunter wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don't want to point. That's far too interactive for any media player design. Even PC-based things like Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media player, it's just a list or at best, a grid. I don't need to have more than eight directions of movement, and just four is sufficient. If I'm going through a list with a mouse cursor, there's a chance I can move the cursor off that list, necessitating that I have to then move t…

Too interactive? That's like saying a type of food is too healthy. Pointing is essentially random access. It's the difference between RAM and cassette tapes. Why punish me for having lots of content? It is _completely_ about how many steps it takes.

Sure you can be too interactive. Consider paying by card, sliding the card thru the machine, then it prompts. 1 prompt, ok. 2, hm, 3 or more - get out of my face!

It can go the other way too. UI is there to get out of your way. Lesser clicks is ok; but not at the expense of too many option, because I have to think about options. Like the gas pump that asks if I want a car wash. Wha? How did car washes get into the conversation?

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#315

Post by matthewmacleod »

aragot wrote: post #252
matthewmacleod wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really agree – I'm very nervous about the idea of government banning technologies. If I want to provide a real-time audio feed from my home to Samsung, then that is my choice to make. If government is to do anything here, it's to make sure that there's a minimum standard of notification which is required for these devices. Maybe something like an explicit opt-in for any feature which transmits data to third p…

In Europe we don't really believe in "it is your choice you make" (on other topics) because there are so many factors which prevent you from making this choice freely. For example the choice of accepting Samsung's TOS could be bundled with the choice of flatsharing with someone. Or being a guest of someone. If you need to refuse attending a party because you've made the choice of disagreeing with Samsung's TOS, you'r…

That's just unconscionability, which is a common legal concept.

You can solve this problem by making consumers being informed – by forcing manufacturers to provide clear information about the services which are being given, and any privacy risks. That's something I thoroughly support.

But I absolutely reject the idea of outright banning technologies. It's not even a slippery slope – it's a vertical cliff.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#316

Post by EpicEng »

tempestn wrote: post #64
EpicEng wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I was going to say. Do you guys really find the "smart" features on your television to be useful? I just, you know... use it as a television.

I find Netflix and YouTube built into the TV extremely useful. Also the fact that it has a half-decent DLNA client (which I connect to Plex on my home server), and can accept screencasting from my phone. I considered building a HTPC, but realized these features cover 99% of what I would use it for, and for the rest I can just use a laptop.

That's a good point. I have an HTPC, so I don't need any of that.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#317

Post by crdb »

I was just at a conference where I had a nice conversation with a new, but already profitable company that builds face recognition for advertisers. Their customer base basically all wanted the same thing: to be able to target ads to the people walking past them, such as at bus stops (it's live in Singapore, if you're wondering).

They eventually admitted they were working on voice recognition after strong customer demand, because that was much more promising; the machine vision stuff could only detect things like age, gender and income level. Yes, that's mining the content of conversations in the public space (like aforementioned bus stop) and generating ads on nearby real estate accordingly. Launching in Asia in 2015.

Also had a 1 hour conversation in a private meeting room at another conference a couple years ago with three sharp representatives from a certain Asian TV manufacturer that may or may not have been mentioned in this thread. I was stuck by how far they had already gone applying machine learning to their customer activity. They were multiplying their efforts and investments in the space and were very excited about the new generation of TVs that go beyond passively showing you content, because of all the data they would be able to get as a result...

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#318

Post by freehunter »

tmuir wrote: post #310
freehunter wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don't want to point. That's far too interactive for any media player design. Even PC-based things like Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media player, it's just a list or at best, a grid. I don't need to have more than eight directions of movement, and just four is sufficient. If I'm going through a list with a mouse cursor, there's a chance I can move the cursor off that list, necessitating that I have to then move t…

Too interactive? That's like saying a type of food is too healthy. Pointing is essentially random access. It's the difference between RAM and cassette tapes. Why punish me for having lots of content? It is _completely_ about how many steps it takes.

For certain definitions of healthy, food can certainly be too healthy. You wouldn't want to live off celery and iceberg lettuce, even though they are low fat, low carb, and high in fiber. Likewise, things can be too interactive. No one seriously looks at a car and says "if only I could turn my front wheels a complete 360 degrees." It's only safe to turn them a few degrees in each direction most of them time. Sure that might mean you need to put the car in reverse and try again, but at least you don't need to worry about getting yourself into unexpected situations like starting off with your wheels pointed straight (but straight behind you). However, I have seen some specialty vehicles (like some trucks, semi trucks, and forklifts) where these rules don't apply or only weakly apply.

I'm happy you have the options you want. I also have the options I want. I don't want a mouse to navigate my media player, and I can't agree that the mouse is the best option for that use. A mouse is great for navigating a web page where the links are scattered everywhere or through a document where you might need to click at any point to begin editing, but for structured lists, even on a computer, I navigate with the arrow keys (and occasionally pgup/pgdn/home/endm giving me an 8-way d-pad). My list is straight up and down and straight side to side, I don't need to go 10 degrees up and to the right.

I use an iPhone and iPad because I don't want to dick around with file structure and patching and rooting and rom'ing. I use a Roku because I don't want to organize my own content and make my own media player. I get enough of all of that when I'm working.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#319

Post by marcosdumay »

res0nat0r wrote: post #284
spacefight wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hardly an argument to shit on your customers privacy.

Even your iPhone when you ask Siri questions sends your data to be processed in the cloud. People are buying a TV because they want a TV, not a mini computer. Why would TV manufacturers want to jack up the price of their product with non-essential TV components to have onboard voice recognition?

They are already jacking of the price with nonessential components by creating a smart TV. Why shouldn't they jack it a couple more dollars (because that's really the difference) to have on that responds quickly?

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#320

Post by narrowrail »

nl wrote: post #124
click170 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I say this I feel like a shill because I worked for them briefly, but Sophos has a Home version of their UTM firewall (0). It has pros and cons, but overall I think it's pretty good (even after working there). Some other options include Sonicwall and pfsense, and I encourage others to post their suggestions as well. I haven't used SonicWall, though I have used pfsense strictly as a firewall. (0) http://www…

Any hardware solution recommendations - or things that will run on a RPi/router? I don't like the idea of having to keep a desktop/laptop computer on 24/7.

I've been looking at this AMD-based barebones machine with dual LAN: newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856107110

Reviews suggest pfsense runs well, and with 4GB RAM and a decent SSD one could probably run snort and squid as well. Probably about $330 all assembled.

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