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I’m Terrified of My New TV

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Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#331

Post by tedks »

vacri wrote: post #85
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…

Pretty sure this will get downvoted because anything outside the blandly acceptable boring-as-fuck politics always gets downvoted. I love how people set themselves up to 'win' like this if people don't like what they're saying. "If people vote me up, I'm right. If people vote me down, I'm right". Frankly, it's a 'boring-as-fuck' ploy and unfortunately it's on the rise at HN. Learn to take your lumps like a damned adu…

You can look at my post history and see I'm totally comfortable with getting downvoted. Downvotes or upvotes don't make me right or wrong, though. I'm actually totally shocked that comment is above negative right now. But it doesn't make me any righter.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#332

Post by tedks »

ElDiablo666 wrote: post #75
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 hist…

White people love to talk about South Africa. But white people had fuck-all to do with South Africa. The thing that stopped Apartheid wasn't a boycott, it was sustained armed and unarmed struggle on behalf of the black majority in South Africa. It was Nelson Mandela's property destruction, sabotage, and open contemplation of guerrilla warfare.

>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.

I have to think this is sarcasm. But it's well-done though. Anarchist communism via liberal reform? Classic. The 'good old-fashioned organizing works' is such a great layer on top of that.

10/10 trolling, comrade.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#333

Post by traitorjoe »

rsync wrote: post #136
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…

Why not take it a step further and only buy monitors ? None of my tvs have anything but video inputs. I use dell monitors, and for my large screens, NEC commercial displays. They are as dumb as dumb can be.

How does the price of a monitor compare to the price of a televisions? I looked into buying monitors without tuners or speakers in order to save money, but it seems that inch for inch monitors cost at least as much as a regular television.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#334

Post by ezy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #271
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…

> 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 proces…

Uh, this is just a total misunderstanding of how and why these systems work the way they do.

Of course command grammars are recognized on the device, otherwise you wouldn't be able to turn your TV on using a command or use basic functions in a speedy manner.

And, of course they send audio data to a server -- because your TV does not have a complete language model for up to date web search or even tv guide installed a priori. i.e. good reasons that have nothing to do with "capturing revenue stream".

Sigh...

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#335

Post by nl »

listic wrote: post #278
nl wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Netgate APU2/APU4 devices don't appear to be available directly from pfsense. They do say money from them goes to pfsense though (and they advertise them on the pfsense site)

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#336

Post by authatheist »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #298
authatheist wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the remaining cartel members cause harm to the defector by badmouthing him? If the guy is selling X for half the cartel price, and can point to the cartel members and tell people how they've been screwed by them, what do people care aboit what the cartel scum is saying anymore? Nothing. They'll just buy X for 50% cheaper. You know you would too. Who are trashing the planet? Ordinary people, or big corporati…

It's not just about price. It's about quality, durability, planned obsolescence or lack thereof, external costs (like pollution overseas or child labour). Many important things that are often hidden from the customer, preventing a fair evaluation of the true price: total cost of ownership, including external costs. > Who are trashing the planet? Everyone of course. Some people more than others, and as you suggested,…

"It" what isn't about the price? If you feel like pointing out that cartels are more specifically about the profits (increased through raising the price), I'm afraid that's an irrelevant distraction.

We both know how cartels work. I pointed out that cartels don't last without state support. You don't feel like accepting that, just like you still haven't addressed my point about rulers.

Cartels are created and maintained by governments through prohibitively costly licences that are just denied to pesky outsiders that would actually compete with the other producers.

We're not going to get anywhere if you keep side-tracking the conversation, but that's exactly what staunch statists always do. Why? Because they can't handle reality.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#337

Post by authatheist »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #292
authatheist wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We keep having to tell people that having no ruleRs doesn't mean having no ruleS. If by "no system" you mean "freedom", that's fine with me. Sure, we need rules and negative consequences for breaking them, but that does not require rulers.

You're different from that straw-man libertarian I once met. "Freedom" is an ideal, not a mechanism. The question is, which mechanism promotes freedom? Personally, I currently bet on democracy. Not representative governments, but democracy , which we don't currently have. Like in ancient Athens, where people where chosen by random trial, instead of elections. (Plus a host of checks and balances, before during, and af…

A straw-man libertarian you met?

Freedom just means that no one forcefully intervenes in your life, assuming that you're not harming anyone yourself, of course.

Demoracy is just mob rule. You'll find it unacceptable any time you're being forced to comply with what the majority wants. You know most people are idiots, right? You don't want idiots making decisions that affect your life. Does that help?

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#338

Post by javert »

Canada wrote: post #55
javert wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not the argument RMS has made. The morality of RMS is an abstraction that is disconnected from empirical truth, just like any religion is. Maybe he would have done some good (other than the software he's written) if he had actually made the argument that we need open source for privacy reasons.

He did. Privacy is merely a byproduct of having the freedom to control your computer. We should all feel deeply offended at not having that control, if we know what's good for us. Looking at the current state of affairs, I'm starting to think RMS wasn't radical and fanatical enough!

> We should all feel deeply offended at not having that control, if we know what's good for us.

No, we should all choose to use products and services that protect our privacy (potentially by being open source), and educate others to do the same. NOT "get deeply offended." Getting offended is what you do when someone goes against your RELIGION. That is why Stallman's message does not work: it is like a religion.

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#339

Post by vsl »

jabjoe wrote: post #193
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…

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.

> No. Government needs to have laws against this.

Or you could just, you know, not buy that crap, and let the market sort it out?

Re: I’m Terrified of My New TV

#340

Post by philwelch »

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…

Except for Siri (and presumably Google), you have to actively press a button and trigger it to listen. It's not constantly listening and uploading.
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