Show HN: RootMy.TV
rootmy.tv
rootmy.tv
This site is a spoof of jailbreakme, so using Apple devices as a defense is an somewhat amusing choice.
Aside from the newsletter which can be unchecked during registration, I’ve not seen any evidence they’ve on sold the mail accounts at all.
And apps have fine print, there’s a big difference between an EULA and Sony/Samsung scraping screenshots, adding dynamic advertising etc.
are you able to point to exactly which parts of the plex eula are bad?
Plex may also use third-party advertising companies to serve ads, which may, directly or indirectly, collect or use information about user visits to websites and mobile app usage over time and across non-affiliated websites and mobile apps to display advertisements more tailored to users’ interests on this browser or device, and those browsers or devices associated with it.
You can see the laundry list of data they harvest and share with advertisers under the "Data We Collect" section, it's too long to quote here: https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/30j7ye/plex_media_bro...
Also, Sceptre in the US and Swedx in the EU still make dumb TVs.
If anyone knows of other brands making dumb consumer TVs, please let us know.
Serious question: Which sticks don't spy on you? My understanding is that all of them do, but I could be wrong.
In addition to better privacy (don’t SmartTV manufacturers make 30% of the profit on a TV from your data?), the user experience is so much better, no comparison really.
My wife is not 100% happy with the screen quality so I might replace the TV with a studio monitor, but for my tastes what we have is close to perfect.
I'm not sure about all manufacturers but in the case of Vizio, selling user data:
- accounts for 65% of their net profit
- is double the amount of money they make from selling actual TVs
- grew 134% year over year as of Q3 2021
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...
https://investors.vizio.com/news/news-details/2021/VIZIO-HOL...
Okay but...
>In addition to better privacy
I'd very much like a source on that. I filter and block everything (via whitelist) from my TV and streaming boxes. Apple hardware and services are by far the ones that makes the most connections in both amount of connections and amount of sources connecting to. A Xiaomi android box is on a far second-place.
IMO "Apple privacy" is a myth with no proof ever published unless you think Apple for some reason is a better data collector end-point. I don't believe they are and it is also beside the point. Data collected is staying collected forever which makes the collector irrelevant. They can always change their opinion - you cannot. Amount of privacy related info collected is the only thing that matters and since I cannot see the excact data collected there's only amount collected left. In that Apple is definitely #1.
What are some concrete harms to the individual viewer in anonymously sharing TV viewing data?
I do think the more compelling reason not to connect it is because as a general rule the updates they put out make the user experience worse over time and it's better to have a connected device that's easier/cheaper to replace when the cumulative security/compatability updates cause a slow down (Without getting in to anti user features like devoting more screen space to ads each update).
Some hypothetical concrete harms that are technically possible when the data is being collected:
Targeted advertising outing someones behaviour because they watched a video related to that topic on the tv.
The TV reporting you for piracy for playing a home video of your kids dancing to copyrighted music.
Reported to the government for watching speeches from an oposition party.
Looks like you can't change the root password (error writing /etc/shadow), but as the documentation says, you can load your authorized_keys and the password login is no longer allowed.
I was sort of hoping that the cpu would still be reachable from the (wired) network while in standby, but it does not seem to be.
I'm wondering if we could use WireGuard on these TVs now. That would be sweet... Guessing the userland golang client would be trivial...
$ export GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm GOARM=7
$ make
# /tmp/wireguard-go wg0
# ip l show dev wg0
8: wg0: <POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST,NOARP> mtu 1420 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 500
link/none
This keep resetting the timeout - the dev mode app still shows the wrong countdown but apps will still open. Been using this for ad free YouTube for a few months.
Last year I think the back-light started breaking down - I see big square sections where the colors are less bright and purplish. The display seems to have a grid of 4x2 of these individual regions.
And the remote buttons are getting harder to press too (it's not the battery). I had remotes which worked for 12 years, this one is barely 5 years old.
I had my TV (similar to yours) fixed by replacing those bars, check with a TV repair shop in your area.
I will warn you however that it's quite an involved process - I know a fair few people who have managed to crack their LCDs or rip ribbon cables in the process of trying to fix backlights.
Unfortunately it seems that backlight issues are becoming more and more common - especially as most sets have a "Dynamic" mode or similar which sets the backlights to full brightness and drastically shortens their lives.
Hopefully, we can find this on Github mentioned in the part of the OP article that says “ I have compiled all you'll need here. “
I tested it briefly yesterday evening, seems to work fine.
In the just-for-fun department, you can replace the default screensaver animation with a bouncing DVD logo. [2]
You can see a list of currently available homebrew apps here: https://repo.webosbrew.org/apps/
You can also block telemetry, updates, etc. (without relying on something like a pihole).
I also want to install my own CA to the TV but the obvious location is read-only.
Custom CA certs are possible, which people on older models have been using to work around issues stemming from the X3 cert expiry [2].
[1] https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io/issues/19
Thanks for the links!
Disable the dynamic DNS options for DHCP on the DNS resolver to avoid problems with Python modules in the DNS resolver (unbound).
Untick the box for leaving config behind and uninstall pfb not devel. Install pfb devel.
Go to Firewall -> pfblockerng-devel and you will be presented with a wizard. Take the defaults but do indicate your WANS and LANS when they are asked for. You'll get a great basic PRI1 ruleset setup and DNS blocking too, out of the box. I recommend adding "TOR/Tor Project Bulk Exit List" - block inbound on WAN as soon as you work out how to do it.
There is a vast amount of built in rule set links. Give them a go.
If you want easy then go for block on inbound and/or outbound on all rules but if you need some flexibility then go for aliases and make your own rules.
Note that recent WebOS software (not sure which version) supports airplay 2 mirroring, works pretty well in my experience.
- Support for simultaneous audio output on both headphone port and internal speaker
- Support for arbitrary bluetooth headsets instead of only LG-approved headsets
... sometimes I just think StallmanWasRight.
That broke Plex on my LG TV.
I also loved WebOS since it's mobile days, will definitely consider getting an LG WebOS TV as my next.
They do have a button. It's on the bottom direct center, tiny and slightly further back than you would expect. Press it and you can cycle through your inputs, and turn it off.
You may have already known this -- but it's pretty clear that they're not interested in making this a popularly known thing. Or I'm just the idiot :)
My point is if you SSH in it's a good start to understanding more of just what it does and how it works.
I haven't rooted my Sony Android TV since it already lets me install apks and emulators.
I can here for general TV rooting advice hoping I could sort out my rubbish Samsung. Anyone know anything about that?