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So, if I buy a so called Smart-TV (not because I like it but because traditional ones are getting harder to find) but don't set up it on my home network so it can't phone home, it could scan around anyway and find other open devices more than willing to participate in my personal data exfiltration? If the Amazon project succeeds, I would expect in a few months most home devices manufacturers, to partner to implement it so they have a way to circumvent users choices.

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IMO. There should be a market for:

- Dumb panels (not monitors). Perhaps stripped down recycled smart tvs.

- Smart tvs but with user replaceable firmware. Think OpenWRT for TVs. Maybe the same guy who does the dumb panels could sell those but with a raspberry pi in place of the logic board.

Of course a monitor solves these issues but these are normally smaller and more expensive.

"Dumb TVs" would cost more. It's hard to market something that costs more and has what most people would perceive to be fewer features.

They would cost more because post-sale content sales and advertising generate revenue for TV manufacturers, which they use to subsidise the device sale price, because it's such a competitive, low-margin, market.

It isn't hard to market something that costs more and lacks a flaw.

This is why I saw "what most people consider". It's easy to market this to HN but most people don't know or care about this sort of control over their devices.

> It's hard to market something that costs more and has what most people would perceive to be fewer features.

I'd pay for privacy and control.

The other option like I've said is to recycle and mod smart tvs and rewrite their logic so that the user can do wathever he wants. Maybe marketing the modding kits. That would be more akin to those people who install custom open source bios on IBM Thinkpads.

Recycling and modding would be great, but I'd also like to be able to buy a new high-end TV without smart features.

You can, sceptre makes a number of models, all of which have no smart features at all. Aimed for the home market

Thanks for the tip. Sadly it doesn't look like they sell in the UK but for the US market this might be a good option.

> I'd pay for privacy and control.

Then buy a monitor. They have HDMI ports so they can get whatever video feed you need. Some even have speakers.

Monitors are designed to be used closer to your eyes. Probably have more pixel density.

So I believe there would be a huge price gap between a huge 50"+ monitor and a TV that is more expensive because some extra work on software had to be made.

Monitors lack remote controls.

A lot of functions you would use a remote for can be managed by the connected device.

HDMI-CDC (Consumer Device Control)

I, my wife, her parents, as well as the majority of people buying TVs, want a remote.

If you're using a dumb TV (monitor), and a device feeding it (Apple TV, Roku, Firestick, Chromecast), they typically come with a remote which will handle those needs.

I will admit, OTA TV (that is, via an antenna) will be... harder.

I'd rather be protected by regulation than pay more for what I shouldn't have to pay for in the first place.

When was the last time regulation protects anything?

The Security Act of 1934 created the SEC and look at the past 20 or so years and see how many scandals has happened under their watch. All big players. Look at Madoff. Whisper blower after whisper blower to the SEC and what did SEC do? They looked the other way.

You're not engaging in good faith, but I'll offer this: I have not died of botulism thanks to regulation.

Do you seriously need someone to provide a laundry list of all the ways government protects you and your interests? Or are you just being obtuse?

I disagree that it's hard to market. There are plenty of privacy conscious people that would pay extra. I see billboards every day for duckduckgo that advertise their privacy features. I think a privacy focused TV or IOT device would do well.

Privacy is only one angle, a lot of it is about selling you content like TV/Films that can be promoted via the TV. Often goes hand-in-hand with advertising that has privacy issues, but much of the money comes from the consumer not advertisers. That's a more subtle one to market: buy this device that has fewer choices about buying content.

I may be living in my own small little bubble but I don't know anybody shopping for anything because their smart TV showed an ad. Everything ads seem to do is just piss some people off.

Then again I remember that if commercials weren't successful, TV as we know it would not exist. People gobbling up ads and buying stuff because of that is why ads are still being used after all.

After all... https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

There's also the factor that whoever owns the platform showing the ads doesn't care whether the ads are effective. So long as your eyeballs are tracking it, they'll get paid anyway.

Only in the sense that restaurateurs don't care if the food is good. If it's selling... sure, they'll keep selling something that sucks. But generally, advertisers aren't quite the fools everyone thinks they are. There are always fools around, but prices tend to be rational enough long term. If ads aren't effective, revenue will dry up eventually.

All that effort to track people for ads... these are all attempts at improving effectiveness.

I don't entirely agree. A better analogy might be that a restaurant's landlord doesn't care if the food is good. I've run into the problem that sellers of adspace will often prefer to work more with customers who have lower conversion rates. Makes perfect sense when you think about it, people with the crappiest products need advertising the most, while the best products can lean on word-of-mouth.

Edit: Come to think of it, the fact a product is advertising at all might come to be seen as a negative signal of value by the public at large.

There are 20 equally good product brands for 99% of things you buy and use everyday. But you have a clear favorite amongst those 20 that you have already chosen to buy and use consistently. And you don't change your preference unless you are repeatedly reminded of those alternatives. This is advertising 101. Then there are products that you don't yet use because you don't yet think you need or want them. And you don't feel you need/want them until you are repeatedly and subtly/overtly "sold" this product.

Please don't act as if you know me. Advertisers don't know me nearly as well as they'd like their bosses to think and neither do you.

Please don't take it personally. I obviously don't know _you_ and the "you" in my sentences isn't referring to you specifically. With that "you", I was referring to the typical user in general.

Fair enough. I intentionally cultivate a preference for novelty which is at odds with that description. Between that and the presumption a lot of the hype around advertising has, I can get defensive around the subject.

Alternatives as well:

- There are things you buy infrequently or on a whim where the options are equally good, and the advertisers just want their product to be the last of the competitions' logos to be associated with a positive feeling. For example, I rarely drink soda, but when I do I'm choosing between Coke and Pepsi with no real brand connection (other than both companies feeding feelings into my brain on occasion). How can I know whether the advertising is some part of what influences me to pick one?

- Products whose function is partially social signalling, where the advertising can serve to establish the signal/brand connection. I care virtually not at all about pickup trucks, but I have a mental connection between Ford and Denis Leary's voice talking about "toughness". Ford pays for all that because you're much more likely to buy an oversized truck for your grocery runs if your community's overriding association with the F150 is "tough" than "small hands".

Your last statement runs contrary to centuries of business evidence. "Build it and they will come" is a myth.

That is only true while people don't know your product exists. Once they know it exists they try to get an unbiased review; advertising can't provide that.

This isn't how regular people think though. When presented with X products, with different features but generally good quality, people choose with their gut. You are an extreme minority if you deviate from this pattern.

Not to mention, most products can't carry themselves by word of mouth. Only a select few. Advertising prevents concentration of mindshare.

I don't think advertisers are dumb. I think they're immoral, unethical, despicable jerks.

for every 10 people like you, one is affected by it and buys something.

economies of scale and all that

>> Everything ads seem to do is just piss some people off.

This is an eternal sentiment. For the more analytical, there are many examples of advertising millions demonstrably doing nothing. Ha, BMW turned off their ads for a year and nothing happened. So and so blew squillions on ill conceived ad campaigns, etc. It's very easy to cherry-pick advertising stories. To bastardize the adage, "half of the advertising tree is always cherries."

And yet, advertising is one of the biggest economic forces of our time... as you say. It literally rivals oil, shipping and other traditional giants. FB & Alphabet are, as businesses, $trn advertising businesses. That's the market proof that advertising does affect your choices.

The simple proof is easily visible to anyone on the advertiser side of the advertiser-consumer relationship. You open an online business. No one shows up. You advertise. People show up. It may or may not be profitable, but the causality is plain. Even without tracking/analytics/snooping... it's a plain fact that many or most customers for many businesses or even whole sectors are attributable to ads.

Consumers only notice that ads piss them off. Advertisers only notice that ads make consumers do stuff. Both are extremely dismissive of the others' intelligence.

To be honest, if it was just "hey, here's this show on Netflix!" or "Try this new streaming platform!" type ads, I could deal. I've never had too much trouble disabling this sort of thing on my Sony TV.

The thing that always worries me is that it's essentially a low end smartphone with a really sweet screen. I still don't know what will happen if the OS/firmware ever gets borked. Will it just fail over to the last input I used, essentially rendering it a monitor? (not the worst thing that could happen)

Or will it just boot up to some error screen and become useless because the "smarts" broke and now I can't use a perfectly good display anymore?

I know a lot of people prefer the ease and convenience, and that's why they sell so well. But I'd always prefer to have the display be the display, and then use whatever box or dongle or PC I choose to provide the content. Those can be swapped and upgraded. The 2014-era smartphone SoC built into the TV can't.

Ads are not primarily about making the user consciously _like_ a product. They are about making the user _know_ a product or brand. Once they are in the mood or need of buying something, product X "feels" vaguely familiar. This is supposed to give them more confidence in the potential purchase.

> I may be living in my own small little bubble but I don't know anybody shopping for anything because their smart TV showed an ad. Everything ads seem to do is just piss some people off.

I don't think you're living in a bubble, but I do think that advertisers will pay for completely ineffective ads. Therefore, Samsung and LG have to compete to make the worse product so they can win the free money these naive advertisers are handing out.

I assume that investors simply won't accept one-time sales as a business model anymore. They want continuous growth with no employees on payroll to grow things. Ads are that. (You can see this everywhere. Apple wants 30% of Spotify subscriptions just for making the iPhone. Games are designed for esports and the associated sponsorships. Amazon wants $99 a year for shipping, rather than $10 on top of each order. Easy money, and people say "yes!!!!" to it all.)

Well, they might cost more, but TV/monitor prices have dropped so much over the past couple of decades that it can't be that much of a deciding factor.

That seems extremely unlikely. The "smart" portion is hundreds of dollars in most TVs. A quick search proves that out:

https://www.cdw.com/product/Samsung-40-Full-HD-Non-Smart-Hos...

https://www.cdw.com/product/samsung-hg40nf690gf-nf690-series...

The bill of materials for the "smart" parts in a smart tv costs less than $20-$30 US. Nothing more than that.

I suppose that the smart part's hardware is below $10, it's not much more advanced than a RPi. OK, $20 if it includes a decent camera for video calls.

But its presence can be sold for a hundred more, because the consumers apparently... want these features? Things like YouTube, Netflix, video calls, etc. And, of course, voice control.

> I suppose that the smart part's hardware is below $10, it's not much more advanced than a RPi. OK, $20 if it includes a decent camera for video calls.

Citation? Because I find that assumption outlandish.

I've watched them replace the control board in my 7 year old Vizio TV, the hardware is significantly better than anything but the highest end current RPi. Dual core cpu, quad core gpu, AC wifi, 8gb of memory, and the ability to push 4k HDR video at 120hz.

You keep saying they're all selling personal data for hundreds of dollars, citation?

My idea is that chips themselves, sold in bulk, are but a fraction of the cost of the complete control board. Assembly and testing easily double the cost. For a consumer device like RPi, also shipping, packaging, and markup add, say, 50% on top.

For a TV manufacturer, most of these costs don't appear because they just need to add a few components to an existing PCB, and add more tests for them.

The other part of costs is licensing and/or development of software, its ongoing maintenance, extended tech support (online, phone), maybe sometimes content deals (a free month of Netflix, or something).

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2017/02/...

Must be nice to be a corporation so when 6o7 hack into people's computers and wiretap their homes you only pay a fine of $1 per victim.

> You keep saying they're all selling personal data for hundreds of dollars, citation?

Since you are talking about a Vizio tv, here's some straight from their CTO's mouth:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit...

"So look, it’s not just about data collection. It’s about post-purchase monetization of the TV.

This is a cutthroat industry. It’s a 6-percent margin industry, right? I mean, you know it’s pretty ruthless. You could say it’s self-inflicted, or you could say there’s a greater strategy going on here, and there is. The greater strategy is I really don’t need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost."

Let's imagine the bill of material is about $30, and that's cheap knowing they have mid to high end embedded SoCs or DSPs being able to move 4K video.

To that price, you also need to add a continuous software development for the OS and some apps (even if they are Open Source, because they need to do at least some modifications). Minor bugs will happen and you would need to solve them.

Also, more complex hardware and software usually equals more complex testing and debugging, and with this more person-hours and a bigger cost. At the end, it might not be $100, but it will be near enough to round it for $100.

To be clear, this is said without having ever worked in a TV manufacturing company, but knowing how this kind of things are made, I think I'm not too far from reality.

That was a part of my point: BOM is not dominating the difference in the price.

No, it's common industry practice that "Smart TVs" (i.e. ones with built in ad tracking) are sold at-or-below cost and companies make up the difference by showing ads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18905408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781481

So, maybe a business model of buying a bunch of smart TVs, pulling off the wifi module and reselling them?

Perhaps better yet, install a switch -- a big red toggle on the rear, with even bigger lettering -- to physically dis- and, if desired, re-connect it?

I think you might be underestimating the cost of developing or licensing smart TV software.

Privacy paradox at work.

People say they cared about privacy and then don’t if it’s more expensive?

There is a huge market for 'dumb panels', under the moniker of 'digital signage'. Nearly every major TV vendor has 'dumb' displays SKUs on offer in many different configs. The only problem is that they aren't always easy to get one's hand on, as they usually are sold through b2b channels instead of consumer-facing retail outlets.

They are oftentimes way more expense, I'm guessing because you aren't subsidizing the cost with your data.

I think the bigger factor is that they are b2b, though certainly selling the crapware helps subsidize the consumer models.

More likely market segmentation- it's a lot easier to sell a panel to a business for $2000 than it is to sell the same panel to a consumer for $500.

There's regular dumb TVs around too, and reasonably priced.

Walmart's site lets you filter for "Smart = N". Sceptre and RCA are the main brands.

For example https://www.walmart.com/ip/RCA-65-Class-4K-Ultra-HD-2160P-LE...

To offer a non-walmart option, I've been using the Rtings table tool to find consumer TVs are potentially more respectful of privacy. Although I get the impression a number of sets aren't captured here (maybe walmart has some listed that Rtings doesn't), they are fairly thorough.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/tools/table/53948

The trouble with looking at a "no ads" rating is that smart TVs can always put more ads in later: https://twitter.com/JobPlas/status/1235537095755739136

You could say "I'm not installing software updates" and be safe from ads as long as you don't need any bugfixes, but then you're also missing out on security updates. If you keep it off the internet maybe you're ok, but your TV might start connecting to a neighbor's wifi to give you more advertising.

And with a smart TV, in addition to ads you may also want to be on the lookout for Automatic Content Recognition: https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...

I'd be much happier just not having a wifi antenna in my television.

I don't understand - every set listed on that page has a nonzero score for "Smart Features".

No, your average home tv is not designed to run 24/7. These Digital Signage Monitors are supposed to do this. Try running your average costumer tv 24/7 for half a year and see how the color & sharpness is. Also they are repairable (normally).

Sharpness? How does sharpness go down on an LCD panel??

I don't believe for a second that data is subsidizing anything. It's a revenue stream, sure, but prices haven't gone down as data collection went up.

Prices haven't gone down? So before smart TV's were a thing 70" 4K TVs could be had for $650?

That's the usual price drop as these SKUs achieved mass market and got economies of scale.

I worked at a company that was attempting to sell software to consumer electronics manufacturers as per the divx model - some of us remember when you couldn't buy a dvd player without that logo. But when streaming began to replace physical media, I was told that services such as Amazon and Netflix began paying to have their software in the devices. I'm curious whether that's still a revenue source for manufacturers.

This might be out of date now, but 10 years ago I purchased a couple of monitors for a digital display. IIRC the monitors were more expensive because the screen wouldn't "burn" in images if left on the same image for a long period of time.

This is significant. Current OLEDs at full luminance burn in within 100 hours. The problem is mitigated somewhat by the variety of details displayed during typical TV programming, but if you use an OLED TV as a daily driver computer monitor or with a gaming system to play the same games for hours you will notice burn-in quickly.

I have an OLED TV and after thousands of hours of use, sometimes hundreds on a single game, there is no burn-in. However, I do not set the TV to full brightness.

Edit: I suspect an OLED digital sign WOULD burn in though as I imagine that content is much more static and displayed many more hours per day. I just wanted to make the point that I do not fear OLED for common consumer use cases.

Anecdotal but I had burn in on my LG B7 within a year or less of usage. Chrome and windows start menu button in the taskbar.

Its even getting hard to find digital signage that isn't connected at this point. IIRC all the samsung stuff moved to having little fleet management computers some time ago.

https://www.sceptre.com/ has a nice selection of dumb TVs at reasonable prices

There’s a Samsung firmware hacking community: https://forum.samygo.tv/

Maybe finding a line of televisions we could reliably lobotomize would work in the short term (a la Librebooted ThinkPads).

I replaced my TV with an LG 43” 4K monitor which cost AUD$700 (similar price to a TV of the same brand/size here). It’s not quite the 50” my TV was but it’s big enough for my purposes.

It has 4 HDMI inputs and zero smart features. Turns on in under a second, etc. Before that I had a TV that required almost a full minute to start up before I could change AV input or change channel or do anything because it had to load it’s bloated smart crap.

Some years ago SamyGO was started towards replacing TV firmware, not sure how far they got though:

https://www.samygo.tv/

Since most TVs probably run Linux it probably isn't hard, but will have the usual problems of non-mainline drivers, blobs etc.

I've been buying "Sceptre" -brand LCD TVs for use around the house the past several years. They're "dumb" with just a basic remote and basic settings firmware like TVs from a decade or two ago, and they tend to be reasonably priced, and of reasonable quality. Plug a streaming stick or your RPi in the back for your choice of $Streaming_TV service. They now also make units with Android TV built in, but so far they're still making non-smart models as well!

I don't know about OLED and other fancy panels (like Micro LED, QLED, etc.), but for common LCD panels there are plenty of controller available to use them, even with 4K resolution [1]. And panels aren't difficult to find because they are used to repair other television. The problem here is to protect it about dust and dirt, also not having a convenient and easy to use user interface.

IMO the best middle point is buying a LG Smart TV. They have Amazon Prime, Amazon Alexa, Netflix, and other platform installed, but IIRC you can uninstall this apps and you can't use them until you accept the terms and conditions. If you don't accept them you shouldn't worry about them.

I haven't used Wireshark to know if that apps use the network even without using them, but at least isn't the same to some Samsung TV that insert ads in the menus when your TV is connected to the Internet.

[1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33001887592.html

In addition to the privacy benefits, you could potentially build a controller that actually turns on Really Fast. Modern smart TVs just feel slow in every way.

"Smart tvs but with user replaceable firmware" THIS, I've never thought about it before, but I'd definitely pay extra for a TV that has a open firmware for users to replace.

Here's a company that sells dumb panels with a HDMI input and Pi Compute Module attached to them: https://www.distec.de/en/products/monitor-solutions/iot-moni...

This.

That move is just one step further in removing control. They now have sealed devices that can have who knows what functions but are confined to the network. Next step is to have a concealed upstream. After that they will somehow get a legal mandate to force such devices on you (like the EU did with cars). Maybe they will use smoke detectors or "emergency" services. In the end, this is exactly like in 1984.

Less 1984 and more Fahrenheit 451. There is no central authority imposing this to exert control on the masses: consumers are imposing it on themselves willingly and industry is just giving them what they want. Juvenal redux.

> consumers are imposing it on themselves willingly

Without reasonable alternative and without consent is like a LEO version of 'willing'.

I never own a tv, I don’t plan to own one ever.

I tossed out my OTA TV in 1992. I've never had Cable TV.

You can buy commercial displays (ie. the ones used for signs). It's worse and more expensive, but it's still an alternative.

TVs without smart features used to be priced like TVs still are now; the one I'm still using cost me something like $300 several years ago.

Those commercial displays are priced for businesses to afford. It's not something the average consumer is going to reasonably buy - especially not lower-income people.

(As an aside, it's fucked that the cheaper devices that low-income people can afford are always the ones with the most surveillance.)

This is similar to saying, if you don't want to be filmed in the street move to a private island. Doesnt solve the problem for most people. Brands don't care about the few exceptions that know their dark side. What they care about is that tens of millions don't.

The existence of "reasonable alternatives" is largely irrelevant. Firefox is a reasonable alternative to Chrome, and yet very few of the people I tell about Chrome's tracking switch - they just don't care. Same for Protonmail/Gmail, iOS/Android, Linux/Windows (yeah, yeah, not everything runs on Windows - nobody I know will even attempt to dual-boot and do what they can on Linux), dumb/smart TVs (yes, reasonable dumb TVs exist - the Spectres, most notably). This is a willingness issue, not a lack of reasonable alternatives, in the majority (not all) of markets.

I don’t remember much backstory in 1984 for how the surveillance state came to be, but I think it’s totally plausible that a government could co-opt this self-imposed setup and use it for 1984-style control.

IIRC there wasn't much backstory on how it came to be other than a war between continents.

It's 1984 and we're the proles

So armed Amazon goons kicking down your door and bringing you to the dungeons of the Ministry of Customer Obsession to be tortured with fake cattle prod knockoffs?

Nope. Much more like this:

You are legally obliged to install a smart meter, smart smoke detector and smart heating control in your home. If you rent, your landlord will install these things. If you own the authorities will inspect the presence and operation of these devices and fine you if you don't comply.

All these devices will be offered by companies like amazon. Coincidentally, amazon lobbyists shape the laws that make these things mandatory.

I don't think they have to make it mandatory, all they have to do is remove all the other choices. Simple to do if you have amazon or google amounts of money. Politicians are surprisingly cheap but they aren't as reliable as narrowing customer choice behind a mask of competition. Once the barrier to entry is lifted sufficiently high the job is done.

Mandatory installation comes 3-5 years after insurance discounts for smart smoke detectors or whatever, to prod the last few hold-outs into "compliance".

"We find that tracking the smoke levels inside a house using the smart fire detectors gives firefighters an early warning system. For the safety of your pets and your children, who may not know how to use 911 or may not have a phone they can reach, and since you don't have a landline they can use, we are requiring all houses to be equipped with a FireProtection 2.0 capable smoke alarm."

I would get worried when the FAANG companies start buying insurance businesses. Since a lot of have "smart speakers" and mobile phones listening to us and whatnot lying about our houses we installed voluntarily, lobbying for something like this seems completely unnecessary.

I really think the fears of government over-reach are something that has receded into the past. We didn't need to be forced into a surveillance society, we willingly paid for and installed it ourselves in exchange for "likes" and "upvotes" and being able to discuss big budget TV shows in real time with our fake internet friends.

Big brother turned out to be our dopamine circuits.

Rural life never looked so good...

> You are legally obliged to install a smart meter, smart smoke detector and smart heating control in your home

If that's all they do, what's the problem here? All three have big and direct positives for everyone ( you, your home, your community) - a smart heating control saves energy ( climate catastrophe incoming, so could be useful), a smart smoke detector can alert the fire department if smoke is ongoing for more than X time, and a smart meter can be used to accurately predict, distribute, reduce and bill energy consumption. And if they all stay in their lane, there aren't many privacy downsides.

Edit: I'd appreciate a response to go with the downvotes and tell me what i'm missing

You're missing the whole concept of choice.

Being forced into something "for your own good" is still being forced, and is anathema to some.

And yet people are generally fine with seat belts, driver's licenses, etc. being "forced" "for your own good" in modern society.

A seat belt isn't capable of spying on you. Pretty sure people would have an issue with "smart" seatbelts that contain microphones and cameras.

Which is why i explicitly qualified that the smart stuff in question should only be smart to do its job ( e.g. a smoke detector to alarm you and the fire department, not to have a microphone and camera to spy on you), like the French smart electric meters, which only report consumption to the utility ans nothing else.

Except even if they can only do that, it's still possible to spy on the consumer's habits through their electricity consumption. What time do they sleep, are they really sick at home or did they they leave town, are they on holiday,...

And since they are connected to the internet, they're vulnerable to hacks, so this information could not only get into the hands of governments and energy companies, but all kinds of random people.

Btw in reality it's much worse than that. Many of the smart smoke detectors have microphones in them, which is a really smart idea. Sometimes companies even "forget" to tell the victims, er... I mean users about it: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/googles-nest-securit...

What you are missing is the motivation of the seller. The company is not interested in making your house a safer place and helping you living your life. Instead they want your data. And they want your data to essentially extract more money from you. This setup sees you as an obstacle that needs to be overcome and it is just a short step to sell that data to a third party. And no one, repeat: absolutely fucking no one, that collects your data clandestinely is doing this because they think you would agree with their motives. In the end, they always want to get an advantage over you.

And nobody is talking about a company, the whole premise was that there's a mandate to have a smart meter/smoke detector/etc.; if that were to happen, it isn't a company selling you something for their interest, it's a government telling you to get something for everyone's interest.

E.g. in France the smart electric meters are mandatory ( they don't belong to you but the utility in the first place), and are of a specific type that does nothing but collect electric consumption. I'm sure that if it were left to a private company there'd be a microphone or two just in case, but that really isn't the scenario we're talking about.

Do the amazon knock off cattle prods hurt more or less than genuine ones? Like, do they just not work? Are they just bricks in boxes? Or do they instantly cause death? I’m joking, but I go through this logic each time I regrettably make an amazon purchase: what’s the knock-off failure mode. Vitamins? Heavy metal poisoning. No go. Pens? They don’t write well. Acceptable for amazon purchase.

Time to invest in companies producing faraday's cages for houses.

You jest, but all I'm thinking about is just how unpolluted the 2.4GHz spectrum would be if everybody's house had a built-in Faraday cage, and how nice that would be...

And as long as the faraday cage wasn't in interior walls, wifi would work really well on 2.4 inside your house, with such a nice low noise floor. You'd need it though, since cell service would be rather poor.

Couldn't you have a cell antenna outside of the cage?

My father used a foil as part of insulation and the wifi in that house is amazing.

The fact that you can say this without being hauled off to Room 101 and tortured until you recant proves that this is in fact not exactly like 1984.

I just got a 65” UHD sceptre brand TV with no smart features at Walmart for $329.

It’s pretty great that such a desirable feature is at the bottom of the barrel

100%. We just got a sceptre from walmart. Stupid big for the price, great picture, and did I mention the low price. Oh, and not one smart feature; just television with various inputs.

I haven't TV shopped in literal decades. It astounded me that there was (a) a market for more advertising on your television via smart features, and (b) seemingly low-end models are the only ones that are available as 'dumb'. Other manufacturers have regular tv's, but they are never available, and cost as much as the smart versions. The whole thing is weird.

Low end TVs also skimp on HDMI ports. I didn't think of this, purchased a cheap LG (with only 2) and then had to buy an HDMI hub. Obviously still cheaper than paying $2-400 more on the TV itself, but next I'm I'll count the ports.

Fun fact - I got the sceptre because it listed 3 HDMI ports. Opened it up, and it has 4. No idea why the difference.

How are they vs. LG OLED panels? Lack of dumb option is what's stopping me from getting a LG :(

Compared to any OLED, they're just as good. A bit bright, but everything else is solid. The speakers are what are often complained about, in that they're small and not that loud. Ours is loud enough that we keep it on 7 (out of like 50? I've never gone above 10) for a room that is 14'x28'.

I'm sold on them for future purchases.

Sceptre picture quality was pretty shit though, last time I checked...

Coming soon, YouTube video guides on how to locate the rf ICs on the motherboard of your smart tv, and take a Dremel cutting disk to the section of the PCB that has the copper traces for the antenna.

Don't forget to cut the HDMI Cable too :)

Dystopic cable cutting is weird

Most have a dedicated WiFi board that is separate from everything else.

And then the tv bricks when it can’t access the network for 10 days.

Is this true? The GUI on my smart TV is so slow and laggy, that I planned on getting a Roku and disconnecting it from my network.

Makes me want to sniff the traffic and see what kind of replies it's getting. Maybe just spoof it.

That's what I did with my newer Samsung smart TV. Really would like to just kill the network capabilities of it physically, though.

I know you jest, but a simple x-acto knife will usually do the trick

There is nothing stopping TV manufacturers from putting a 3/4G modem in their products. The billing is likely insignificant compared to the value of the data they can exfiltrate.

Wasn’t the entire point of 5G to reduce the cost so that this dystopian ‘internet of phone home day bypassing all your security controls’?

I figure that this scenario is all but inevitable at this point. Most people just don't care -- and those that do can go live in Faraday cages like weirdos.

Our only recourse at this point are very strict laws that require all devices that do this to periodically and very explicitly state they are doing so, also providing the option to turn the 'feature' off.

The important part then is that failure to comply needs to result in personal liability for retailers, distributors and manufacturers.

That second part is the one that will probably never come true but it is the only thing that would bring any sort of meaningful change.

I disagree... can you honestly tell me that you absolutely require to have an Amazon device? Or a smart TV?

I can understand if they were putting microphones into the electrical sockets when your house was being built... you need to have electricity.

The solution is don't fucking buy the items... when they see a drop in sales, even a few percent, they'll take notice. Or, god forbid, get your old TV repaired!

Mandating that the government steps in is crazy... we're talking about governments that are paid, openly, by lobbyists from these organisations.

This is definitely one of the more naive free market takes I’ve seen recently…

Repair is not always possible.. Consider a TV with a shattered panel. You'll have to depend on the manufacturer to make this party available, which usually they won't because they'd much rather sell you a new one.

I don't think there's anything wrong with government regulations. Yes they listen to lobbies too much but it's a different issue that should also be addressed.

Amazon Sidewalk has a huge radius, so many people's neighbors likely have these devices. So if _any_ of your devices talk to them, you have no control even if you don't have an amazon device.

I own amazon devices (none that have sidewalk) but if my neighbors came to me and told me to remove them for their privacy. I'd probably laugh them to the door. I live in a building with 500 units, and its almost 100% chance that i'm within sidewalk range (I also live near to the alexa office in seattle so there's that too).

Point is: You can't control your neighbors.

Not everyone can afford to or wants to move to the middle of no where such that their neighbors are out of radio distance.

The first part will probably happen in Europe, but I can't imagine it in the USA, the lobby is too strong.

Can't wait for when aluminium foil wrapping your TV is the new normal!

Your comment is less facetious when you realize how many people (including tech-savvy ones like Zuckerberg) put a piece of tape over their laptop cameras. Yet, the industry doesn't care.

queue the need for ifix to show how to remove 5g antennas.

Well there is a cost and the challenge of having to deal with all the various carriers across the world. Wifi is mostly universal.

If Amazon Kindles can do it, it's probably not too hard for the likes of LG, Samsung, or Sony either.

Good point.

They don’t work worldwide though.

I mean, sure, but my TomTom 5000 which I bought like 8 years ago for £200 has a sim card that works worldwide, I've used it all over Europe, briefly in North America and in Martinique, it just has seamless GSM connection wherever you go. If a small satnav manufacter can produce such a device for £200 and clearly afford to pay the subscription fees for nearly a decade(I don't pay anything for having this) then I think it's literally a matter of time until we start seeing this in TVs.

There's a lot of carriers around the world, yes, but they're often "subcontractors" to some of the bigger ones like T-Mobile and Vodafone, which often operate a network covering a whole country. Those are more than happy to offer a long term data contract for purposes like this.

If data from TVs is so valuable, manufacturers will just include 5G modem and phone home directly.

This isn’t tech problem. This is legal and regulatory issue.

This is totally plausible and I imagine some manufacturers will try it. Alternatively they can simply make the TV not work unless it has been connected to WiFi...I believe there may already be some sets that do this.

My answer is a home projector. It’s not 4K but it’s cheap and puts out a great display. It’s also just a projector without any applications or network access.

This is the route i went (though admittedly mostly by accident), unfortunately do have a "smart AV receiver/amp" but the functionality there's too convenient for me to kill all networking.

If i had to buy a TV now I'd avoid a smart one like the plague.

4K projectors are getting cheaper, although some reviews doubt the quality improvement.

Yeah but the instant you plug in a chromecast to watch netflix or disney+ they got you. Blu rays are drying up at an alarming rate, at least it feels that way.

That tracking is limited by account and/or access device. It is not bound to the display. I use a Roku and who knows what data they share with the channel providers, but at this time I doubt they are giving unfettered network access, outside of content request/response, to the channel providers.

I think I can accept the tracking Chromecast does when I stream Netflix through it. I have it behind a remote switch so that Chromecast only gets electricity while I'm watching something, then it just gets switched off again.

Or am I underestimating the tracking Chromecast is doing?

I know Apple has rejected offering a TV panel, but to offer continuity of privacy into this domain I suspect they still may need to.

Maybe the future is having some kind of Faraday cage around your devices.

Or maybe even around the house. This might be possible in apartments.

A faraday cage around a TV kind of defeats the point. Although it would improve some films a great deal :-)

I think this has to get sorted out in the wash with regulation. If you collect data about someone, it needs to be treated at HIPPAA levels of paranoia. That just makes so much of this rubbish go away.

It might increase the costs of TVs. Certainly there are many areas of global markets that have incredible deep tech that just are not seeing expected market pricing.

(Off topic but eye-tests. In the UK there are branches dedicated to performing a medical test by post-graduate trained operators, for token cost, just so they can upsell me on expensive frames. I mean I would rather pay for the eye test and buy online.)

Perhaps people will start covering their homes in copper mesh.

But then give it a network.. just no public internet access :)

Shhh the first rule of wifi black holes is that you don’t talk about wifi black holes.

I tried that on my LG tv. The result was a 60 second timeout before I could use the tv when turning it on. I ended up figuring out how to factory reset it and then never set up the wifi. No firmware update, but I don’t care since I only want a dumb monitor.

fwiw you can often update the firmware via USB anyway—not sure about LG specifically but Samsung TVs support this. It's often worth updating the firmware as, like a lot of software these days, it sometimes ships half-broken.

My advice: connect it to a restricted network, where it can successfully ping home and assert internet connectivity, but everything else (except maybe updates or whatever you want to allow) just fails.

A better, more useful approach is to have a DNS server on the home network (something like a pi hole), where all analytics go nowhere, Youtube isn't capable of downloading ads, etc., but you can still use the smart TV features you want. IIRC some TVs have internal DNS servers and only use those, so an ARP spoofing may be also needed.

I thought most TVs overwrote the network dns settings?

“Smart devices” have been trying to phone home for awhile now. I don’t have any stats or research to cite, but my own evidence from reverse-engineering TVs and other IOT devices.

I suspect the business motivation by Amazon is to become the “middleman” between these devices and the manufacture.

Amazon is known to sell the ring data, i suspect this could give amazon more data that they can sell and make more money. It is almost like a mesh tracking in a neighborhood if this is enabled.

I think amazon might be more focused on owning the middleware for smart home devices to improve the features available (compared to say zigbee) and improve the experience... and sell chips to device makers for $$

Edit: I was wrong. Please disregard this comment. Someone links the comment below. And the sub thread that I remember being removed appears to still be present.

——

I commented the other week about enjoying my LG oled smart tv. Someone mentioned what about the evesdropping. (Which I’m aware of) and it started a small thread of people discussing that. These replies were removed about 24-48 hours later. I found it odd the comments about smart TVs evesdropping were removed. So I’m commenting to bookmark this, and see if this discussion is also removed.

Removed from HN? I have some doubts. It’s not impossible but I don’t think HN’s reputation would survive if they’re removing comments in service to … anyone else.

Edit: this[1] looks like what you’re talking about. Has anything been removed (by HN) from this conversation?

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996739

Thank you! I am going to edit my original comment, but I was completely wrong. I see the conversation that I thought was deleted. My mistake.

I run pihole on my network. I monitored requests made from my tv and blocked the ones to LG one by one.

That’s a great move and I applaud you and also I wonder whether LG would start disabling TVs unable to get their requests through if they noticed a critical mass of them doing that.

“We noticed you’re using an ad-blocker” ...

As well as this, there are simple ways around things like pihole. Such as DNS over HTTP or even just hardcoding IPs as a fallback. I expect these to become more common as usage of pihole and similar methods increase.

They probably wouldn't be allowed to disable the basic functionality of the TV, at least not without marketing it as "online only TV", which wouldn't look good (your internet may fail, or you may want it in a place without internet). LG will disable your "smart features" if you refuse the EULA. But that's actually the optimistic and desired outcome.

The undesirable outcome is that they just hardcode some IPs or DNS in which case PiHole would be of no use. At best you could create a NAT port forward to redirect DNS requests to the PiHole, assuming it's not DoH.

And the worst case scenario is if they build in 5G connection and take the whole connectivity aspect out of your control.

You can fix the hardcoded dns IP addresses.

I just blocked all DNS traffic outside of directed to a dnsmasq container allowing only whitelisted hosts (I just allow netflix on smart tv)

Next step is to block all traffic to IP Addresses that have not been resolved by that. That would fix DoH but it seems overkill for now.

You're right but as I said above:

> they just hardcode some IPs or DNS in which case PiHole would be of no use. At best you could create a NAT port forward to redirect DNS requests to the PiHole, assuming it's not DoH.

The idea is that you'll need more than just a PiHole for all of this which further reduces the pool of people who can pull it off. You have to redirect DNS requests to your own DNS server, and/or block 443/DoH completely, neither of which the PiHole or a regular ISP router can do on their own. At this point if you can you're probably better off blocking all outside connectivity from you TV anyway.

I strongly recommend everyone to just reject any and all EULA screens ever presented. At this point at least legally the manufacturer can no longer legally do much which is why they'll disable almost every smart feature, which is essentially "dumbifying" the TV.

It's much more likely it was removed for some unrelated reason (flamewar, spam, or just a mistake - btw you can email the mods if you think it was a mistake, it seems they're very responsive)

HN is full of discussions on these matters and I've never seen them get removed.

And you can always use Archive.org's Wayback Machine to periodically save the page.

I have a smart tv but never signed into my wifi from it, does it still have privacy issues. I use firestick to access netflix etc.

I assume the next versions of the tvs internet connection may be mandatory for it to work.

Have a look at big "business monitors" like NEC E657Q [1]. I was able to find some 55, 65, 75" 4K monitors without smart functions. It is probably not THAT bad after all...

[1] https://www.nec-display.com/ap/en_display/e657q/index.html

I had assumed with was happening with Comcast's wifi option already. Manufacturers just have to have credentials and someone nearby to have a comcast network device.

I think I've already heard of TVs connecting to the available open wifi networks.

Any examples? I recall HN convos discussing this as an eventuality but no examples yet.

I am starting a startup which builds (stylish) Faraday cages for household appliances!

I read the wikipedia page on shellcodes a few days ago.

It said the first thing they do is find a way of phoning home.

Use tinfoil wallpaper.

No need... the builder used tinfoil-based insulation when they built my house.

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