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- Hacker News
- > https://www.s-config.com/microslop/
For that link only TFA is worth it.
- > Oh, there's a driver update for the LG television. Makes sense, right? It's a fairly recent television, and the drivers will help us take advantage of all of the TV's features. Of course, I'd like Microsoft to download it.
At this point I assume the author was making intentionally bad choices out of morbid curiosity. I can't imagine anyone technical thinking drivers should be required to connect to a TV via HDMI. (or maybe I'm not technical enough)
by hahajk - Windows does similar normal monitors. Often just a color profile, sometimes more…by BobbyTables2
- A technical person might think this TV uses HDMI vendor extensions and so a driver would help.by kccqzy
- Windows used to always give a little popup saying it was installing drivers when you plugged shit into it. Now, apparently, TVs are for some reason trojan horsing this.
There's no reason to expect a normal user to think "Yes, this port is the USB port and thus commonly needs driver updates, but that HDMI port does not ever need driver updates." Most people don't even know it's called a USB port, let alone whether it should host driver updates. Besides, I could imagine a scenario where there's some outdated HDMI decoding thing on it. Or maybe just some tech for home theater stuff I'm not aware of.
by kulahan - > You know what? There's really nothing good to watch on TV anyways
In Australia TV is colloquially called “the idiot box”
A foreign friend asked, “is that because there are only idiots on there, or because you turn into one if you watch too much?”
Yes.
by testing22321 - > Amid the overall electronics boom thanks to A.I.
What is it talking about? What boom?
by fg137 - I guess theyre talking about all the electronics being used to populate the various data centre's popping up about the place. The GPUs, RAM and what notby Dfiesl
- maybe they mean the price inflationby tripleee
- Moreover, how could any past and positive "electronics boom" be attributed to "AI"?
If anything it's the opposite, as memory components become obscenely expensive.
by Terr_ - A periodic reminder that you can buy a TV that's not smart. It won't be the fancy Samsung wall-art one and it won't be the absolute shiniest display tech out there, but it will be good enough, it'll be dirt cheap, and it won't have a network port or an 802.11 radio.
[Sceptre](https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...)'s 4K series is sold at Wal-Mart, often for under half the web-listed prices. I’ve bought a few at the 42” scale for like $180 shipped. They’re fine and they’re incapable of all the spyware bullshit.
by Arubis - Let me know when they (or anyone else) comes out with an oled model.by gigel82
- Problem is, smart devices are heavily subsidized in an expectation for future profit from data collection.by nobody42
- A bit into tinfoilhat territory but just because they don't advertise that they have an 802.11 radio doesn't mean the devices can't have one. Or an LTE/4G/5G radio.
If the user data is worth that much then I wouldn't be surprised if some manufacturers put such radios in their non-smart TVs in order to try and gather such data.
I live in a densely populated part of a large UK city and (checks `nmcli dev wifi list`) there are 14 distinct wireless networks near me that aren't mine. There's a good chance that any IOT device could find something nearby, and there's even a whole load of LoRa nodes that it could use for a very slow uplink.
by alexfoo - Yep! Our family is on our second one. First was 42” and lasted five years. Current one is 55” and is going on seven years. Both were around $200-250. Picture quality is great for us. Apple TV takes care of streaming. And easy connection to our stereo gives great audio. Cheers!by AvAn12
- The reason this keeps happening btw is because we haven't sent anyone to jail over it. Not even when it's clearly criminal, like when Google tracked location data despite opt-out [1], or when LG did what they're doing now but forgot to bury something about it deep in the EULA [2] (we're all totally on board with click-through EULAs having such power, right?)
The 2nd story is crazy - I wonder if I hack LG and start downloading all their trade secrets, when caught, the government would just let me stop the download and face no punishment, if I say I just forgot to ask them for consent. Or maybe it's different if I do the hacking through a backdoored cable I sell them, like they hack us through backdoored TVs.
[1] https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/how-to-stop-google-from-...
[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/smart-tvs-that-send-data-wit...
- The solution for smart TVs is to not connect it to the Internet and attach an Apple TV. Sure they’ve gotten expensive, but how much is your privacy worth?by pico303
- Shield TV using Android means you can install any apps on it you want. I would never want to go back to watching YouTube without Sponsor blockby Larrikin
- Apple products may be less compromised, but generally apple has one big anti-consumer hole - any app can talk to the internet unfettered.by m463
- what privacy? my smart TV/Android TV stick both don't have camera/mic and only thing I use them for is watching Youtube through Smarttube with dummy account signed in and to watch freely available IPTV streams you can find online, only reason I use the Android TV stick is because the TV OS was not updated at all, slow and didn't even allow to install anything with basic Android system apps removedby Markoff
- But the stuff I want to watch isn't on Apple TV. I don't need another way to pay someone for entertainment.by kulahan
- I took an old HP all in one, installed a linux distro, put kodi on it with some custom applications and now I have a smart TV that I control.by batch12
- Wait, the solution is to attach a device that is ultimately controlled by a bunch of shareholders?by amelius
- What if you want to hook a gaming PC up to a smart TV? Linux has come far in recent years, but Windows is still the most broadly supported gaming OS.
Once awareness of this side-loaded crapware gets out, I'd expect the community to come up with fixes to ensure it doesn't get loaded. In the meantime, this should blow up in the faces of MS, LG, etc. just like things blew up for Sony when they put root-kits on CD's.
by beloch - The article addresses that. This is about the recent controversy where plugging an LG display into a Windows machine caused unwanted software to be installed as a "driver update". Disconnecting the TV from the Internet is completely irrelevant to the article.by bigstrat2003
- Wise words "Never give ANY smart device internet.".
That is just stupid to give internet access to a "smart" tv or a "smart" phone. You have zero control over it.
by roscas - Except... some of us like to stream content on TVs. And some of us really don't like the idea of maintaining yet another extra piece of hardware for that.
And so your TV does need Internet access.
The same holds for many other devices, in different shapes. Sure, you can opt out of civilization completely to avoid all the side effects of late stage capitalism, but maybe it's worth applying a bit more nuanced thinking to find a balance that doesn't throw you back to the 1800s. (Unless you like the 1800s, in which case, enjoy)
by groby_b - Well, nowadays the purpose of a TV is usually to watch content over the internet, so I wouldn't call it "stupid" to connect the TV to the internet.
You might say it's naive, but is it really naive to buy a TV and expect it to be a device to display audiovisual content and not a spyware/adware machine?
I feel like it's not the user's behavior that should be put into question here, but the borderline criminal behavior of the manufacturer.
by afarah1 - They are likely going to have access. Lots of things have built in cellular modems these days, and your cable provider already uses your cable modem as a hotspot for other people.
You can do things like physically modifying your TV, or seeing if there are undocumented settings to disable things.
by ____tom____ - "Never give ANY dumb device internet"
The smart here really isnt the issue.
by blitzar