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Comment by rickdeckard | Hacker News Reader

Yes, unfortunately the investigative video is implying (or explicitly stating) malice on every detail they discovered, which is harming the overall message IMO.

They hacked the TV OS, then used the TV UI to do a web search with voice-input and observed (still on the UI!) that the voice input didn't stop immediately on silence but kept extending the search prompt with everything said [0].

The OS-hack was irrelevant for this, the whole sensationalism that a listening process is running (and therefore the device is listening to everything) is just drama added to the sober fact that someone started voice-input, the input field is still displayed on the bottom of the UI and keeps getting populated with new input.

There is an important message in this about security hardening, privacy, data protection, but this conspiracy theory that everything is made to spy on you is not helping...

[0] https://youtu.be/6IFVTcM28KA?si=OCmfai2KXSaQt1Bk&t=2958

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I really wish Steve would not have befriended Louis to the degree he has, but.. well.

Or rather I wish Louis would limit the "bulldozing" persona to the context in which it is necessary instead of all contexts ever at any time.

No issue with people being friends. Just issue in standards deteriorating.

___

Is this how Twitter felt like for journalists back in the day? You see a story, and you think "ah yes, that guy's signature"?

End me.

I think the friendship is spectacular, and I think Rossmann should go even harder than he does!

| but this conspiracy theory that everything is made to spy on you is not helping...

Have you actually looked at what is being discussed? There is no conspiracy theory, these are simple facts. Just about every electronic device is made to spy on you in 2026. Thinking otherwise is naive, at best.

| but this conspiracy theory that everything is made to spy on you is not helping... Have you actually looked at what is being discussed? There is no conspiracy theory, these are simple facts. Just about every electronic device is made to spy on you in 2026. Thinking otherwise is naive, at best.

You've accidentally proven my statement: If you're not specific, you're not helping.

Nothing about my previous statement was accidental, and it’s proven nothing to your point as far as I can tell. What exactly are you being specific about here? You started with a baseless claim that anyone who believes we live in a surveillance state is misguided, while I stated that the discussion was surrounding facts. Meanwhile, there are numerous citations throughout the thread, go read them; I’m not going to reproduce them here.

> You started with a baseless claim that anyone who believes we live in a surveillance state is misguided

Oh I made no such claim whatsoever. My complete statement was this, in context of the original research the article is based on:

"There is an important message in this about security hardening, privacy, data protection, but this conspiracy theory that everything is made to spy on you is not helping..."

To translate:

It's important to raise and emphasize matters of security hardening, privacy, data protection, and there's alot to raise here.

But doing so by implying broad malicious intent on even the most trivial use-case observed on the device (like user-initiated voice-transcription, as I also elaborated as an example) is not helping to emphasize the actually important findings of that research.

Meanwhile, you started a broad strawman-argument "that anyone who believes we live in a surveillance state is misguided". You need to find a opposing position to argue that, you won't find that with me...

He's right, you're coping.

You don't understand - it's not meant to spy on you, it's only meant to spy on you.

It's only meant to spy on you in the way that won't get really bad viral press right now. If it spies on you in the way that people notice and object, it was clearly a honest mistake.

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