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

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

#971

Post by avodonosov »

adrian_b wrote: post #30
avodonosov wrote: post #14

Telescreens. Can anyone recommend a non-spying TV brand or a model? (Modern)

I have stopped using TV sets more than a decade ago. Instead of a TV set, I use a very big monitor, which is connected to a mini-PC (an old Intel NUC with Linux), which also has a TV tuner and an infrared remote control receiver. Besides just showing a TV channel, a mini-PC can also record it and it can play any other kind of movie or music files, or it can stream some video from the Internet.

Can you watch youtoube in that setup? If that's Linux, what desktop environment do you use? How does infrared remote control works, like mouse - point and click? Of you can select applications with Up, Down, Left, Right buttons on the remote, like on usual TVs?

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

#972

Post by Obscurity4340 »

bayindirh wrote: post #692
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Apple's Wifi and Bluetooth one-touch toggle off for now buttons? This comparison rubs me off the wrong way every time I see, because. 1. The notifications clearly tell the behavior (doing $THING until tomorrow). 2. There's a way to turn them "really off". What LG does is completely different. IIRC from the teaser of this video, the microphone is never "completely" off or apps can re-enable them somehow.

The user expects it to turn off bluetooth or turn off wifi, the backwards way is saying the user presses the toggle and the disclaimer sets not only their expectation but in what I think you're saying, the "reasonable" or logical expectation, which thats not how it works, and its not even logical.

There is a toggle showing the Wifi symbol and the bluetooth symbol, you toggle it means you want to turn it on or off, it doesnt show wifi connections glyph or bluetooth connections glyph, it shows the symbolic representation of that underlying larger function/mode of your phone. You expect when you turn it off it disconnects and stops trying to send that particular signal since you made a concrete choice (you thought) to turn it off. Same with Low Energy mode, if I toggle that it means I want it on until I toggle it off, not when battery is 80% or when phone is turned off and on again. You expect state persistance until you change it.

Its like saying when you try to unsubscribe from a service, ok you've disconnected from your subscription (but in fine print) it will be back next month or some other arbitrary merchant prescribed date. No, it will be back when I say I want it back and make the necessary active effort to reestablish or change that.

I want you to try this experiment:

1. Toggle WiFi and BlueTooth from your command centre thing 2. Go to > Settings 3. What information is shown for Wifi and for Blutooth?

It will likely say something "No connection". Phew, I guess it worked. Alright, lets call it a day.

But wait?

4. Tap each one and voila, both should show the green On toggle status. You have not turned off Wifi or Bluetooth, it has merely "disconnected" them, depending on your Wifi settings it will likely try to autojoin your known hotspot and they're back in business likely well before the automatic "tomorrow reconnect" comes that the toggle ostensibly sets in motion

Its not technically lying but the expectation when you turn off a toggle is it turns off that which you physically and intended to toggle. This abdicates that reasonable expectation and twists it ridiculously.

Its bad enough that theres no easy optionto actually turn it off short of automating it, its just sneaky and a clear conflict of interest

Same deal with Low Battery Mode or whatever, it always tries to get you off it, back to the Green battery icon at the top bar of your screen. Battery is 80% charged, thats enough for you, back to waste energy doing more of the stuff thats good for us and bad for your battery, Mac at least has always but its always trying to assert what is sufficent or enough for you even when there is a clear preference of the user, if it mattered to them that they were aligning with your preference and not working against you they could easily evaluate that but thats contrary to their interest

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

#974

Post by autoexec »

tjoff wrote: post #964
phkahler wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but without concent I think LG is comitting a crime here. The owner who ostensibly agreed to obtain concent through the ToS might be breaking their agreement, but wouldn't that be a separate issue? ToS and other click licenses have been making shit up for way too long.

If I'm a passenger in a tesla, does the owner and/or tesla break a law when neither informs me that I'm being spied on?

Maybe? If they aren't we should change our laws so that they would be. We don't have to normalize or accept companies wiretapping and spying on people just because spying makes those companies more profit.

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

#975

Post by godelski »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #969
godelski wrote: post #873

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norman Doors. Good design communicates even without language. It is reasonable to see a toggle switch and think it... you know... toggles. The same reason you see a handle on a door a pill before you read the sign that says push. The sign is literally there because the physical design is telling you something different. It is literally mixed signals. Apple could have done many different things to make the design clea…

Notice the bluetooth toggle only says it disconnects bluetooth devices until tomorrow. It doesnt turn off bluetooth because there is a profit incentive to keep all devices meshing for use in FindMy and AirTags and all that. Same with WiFi. It doesnt even turn WiFi off, it just "disconnects" but keeps WiFi searching and whatever else. Why not have the option to make the toggle actually do the same thing as having to g…

I'd claim it is a bit worse. They use dark patterns here. You can see in another sibling's comment that we disagree on this but I think Apple is teaching the user the wrong thing. And I agree with you that actually disabling is confusing and difficult unless you've already learned their pattern. But at that point it is still needlessly cumbersome, which I'd still call a dark pattern

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

#976

Post by Obscurity4340 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #889
callc wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully disagree. Toggle buttons have an expected behavior that everyone understands. It should work just like a physical button. I don’t appreciate the “we know better for you so we’ll adjust the behavior accordingly” MITM.

> we know better for you so we’ll adjust the behavior accordingly 9/10 times I've used this setting, what I've actually wanted was to temporarily change the behavior. This just saves me from the need to remember to undo it (which I won't remember in a timely manner). This isn't "we know better than you" paternalistic control - the default/easy behavior should cater to the actions and situation we do regularly. I'm su…

It should be symmetrically facile to do both behaviors, assuming there's not an invisible thumb on the scale that wants to procedurally force you to make the choice most in the company's interest. But its not.

It is more effortful, more complex, and requires greater care to actually get Wifi and Bluetooth to the OFF state than ON, or ON+CONNECTED. Respectfully, that is backwards, it should be the easiest thing to turn something off.

Yet, here there is needless nuance added because there is a benefit to the company that the device is either chronically or as much as possible connected to the internet, connected to bluetooth, low battery mode is off, and if they cant have it connected to the internet and bluetooth, well, at least keep the beaconing on and sending out signals and at least meshing so advertisers and stores and their own Find/lost services are still able to benefit.

Thats not even getting into passive Fingerprinting and secondary furtive location tracking. I was surprised to learn that having bluetooth on identifies your device to stores and anyone else who can track bluetooth devices in range. Even when you toggled off bluetooth, you're still being profiled. I wonder if actually going into settings and turning off bluetooth or wifi even totally stops the device from continuing to signal in all ways, it would be unsurprising if thats another UI nicety that doesnt actually mean what it says or implies

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

#977

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

avodonosov wrote: post #970
BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been searching for one hour, and the only truly safe thing is an HTPC linked to an OS-free commercial display like these large VAs from ViewSonic: https://www.viewsonic.com/global/products/commercial-display... (goes from 45" to 100").

What software would you install on the HTPC? User will typically want to have a remote control and have applications like youtube.

At first I thought about something like https://libreelec.tv/ but Kodi instead of the much more powerful mpv is not an option.

So probably a custom lightweight distro with mpv outputting to DRM directly and a game controller to navigate some file explorer ? Maybe try to script around some speech-to-text LLM to be able to say "Play me X", heh.

Or just control it via ssh because that's actually simpler for me.

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

#978

Post by ASalazarMX »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #929
TonyStr wrote: post #899

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but only the owner can consent through the TOS. The owner does not collect or process the data, so it's entirely on LG to ensure proper consent, not the owner. Breaking a TOS is not a crime, and can only be punished by restricting or disallowing access to a service, but collecting personal data without consent is a huge problem in the EU.

It’s clearly unreasonable to assume that LG can know and procure consent from everyone you choose to allow into your living room. It’s reasonable to push the burden of procuring that consent onto whoever controls entry to the space, with terms like this. As a thought experiment, let’s take a service like Zoom where you can record video of participants. It’s reasonable to say “you’re operating the camera, if someone a…

> It’s clearly unreasonable to assume that LG can know and procure consent from everyone you choose to allow into your living room.

If only they had a big interface to ask the user to push [AGREE] to consent to be spied upon. I would call it a RemoteVision and put the button in a wireless TeleControl so the user can easily agree every time they turn on the device.

We might not have the technological capabilities for this, but one can dream.

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

#979

Post by spockz »

autoexec wrote: post #974
tjoff wrote: post #964

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm a passenger in a tesla, does the owner and/or tesla break a law when neither informs me that I'm being spied on?

Maybe? If they aren't we should change our laws so that they would be. We don't have to normalize or accept companies wiretapping and spying on people just because spying makes those companies more profit.

Is a tesla spying on you by default and uploading onboard audio and video? If so, yes definitely that is a crime.

If the Tesla is monitoring for whether you are awake behind the wheel and sounds the alarm without that information ever leaving the car, that is another thing entirely.

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

#980

Post by ASalazarMX »

trashb wrote: post #921
dghlsakjg wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are limits. You can’t waive certain rights, and you can’t overwrite certain laws. The issue is that we haven’t made this shit against the law yet.

The problem is the ToS can be overruled by the law. But you can still put wild stuff in there without consequence, it just won't hold up in court of course. However this makes it so that companies use the ToS as a scare tactic to deter people going to court in the first place, "look you agreed to us being able to do something illegal, you will lose court against our expensive lawyers". ToS from a lot of tech companie…

What's even crazier is that companies doing this have a full team of lawyers, they know it won't hold up in court, but they also know there are no consequences for deliberately put things there that won't hold up in court.

A bit more crazy that they are gambling on the likelihood of winning in case they are actually challenged, cementing a twisted precedent just to keep the next quarter on trend.

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