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Comment by 51Cards | Hacker News Reader

Simple solution is just don't log it into your WiFi.

It just takes one neighbor to temporarily create a public WiFi connection for your regularly-scanning-for-open-hotspot "smart TV" to dump its entire cache of logs over HTTP.

(Now it may not be designed to do that, of course, but we're both responding to <lurchpop>'s hypothetical.)

This is what I was going to say. Do you guys really find the "smart" features on your television to be useful? I just, you know... use it as a television.

I find Netflix and YouTube built into the TV extremely useful. Also the fact that it has a half-decent DLNA client (which I connect to Plex on my home server), and can accept screencasting from my phone. I considered building a HTPC, but realized these features cover 99% of what I would use it for, and for the rest I can just use a laptop.

I've had all these features for years thanks to a netbook with a busted battery and a projector I got off some business or other closing up shop. The netbook runs linux mint and runs what I wants it to, and no more.

This stuff doesn't need a butlerian jihad, it needs a DIY surge.

I bought a Raspberry Pi for 40$, configured it for my needs and never use the features of my Smart TV.

Certainly I could hook up a netbook or raspberry pi or whatever to my tv and get this stuff, after some amount of configuration and likely some amount of debugging now and then. And indeed I've gone that route in the past. But when the TV does it all for you, it's hard to argue that that isn't more convenient.

Of course, one could certainly rationally choose to forgo that convenience in favour of increased privacy. I'm just saying the smart features aren't worthless.

Normal folks are simply going to want this stuff integrated into the TV. It's convenient and doesn't require any more assembly.

Heck, I can DIY it myself but I don't, because smart TVs have the apps and features that are baseline useful. And because it's integrated, I don't need to make sure to turn on some other device to get access.

That's a good point. I have an HTPC, so I don't need any of that.

Or plug it in to a dumb network so it thinks it's connected and just never succeeds, or log everything that it saves about you, so it thinks it's connected AND is sending traffic, but doesn't get anywhere. There's plenty of options

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