Comment by arca_vorago | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arca_vorago | Hacker News Reader

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It's nice to see GNU Manifesto get some love. I have a hard time seeing the ideals of RMS and Free software get run over in conversation so easily, even on HN, while almost every experience I have reinforces the idea that GPLv3 is the future.

For example, I made a bad purchase and bought a Samsung SmartTV. Now I have a TV with a quad core ARM in it but I can't put my own distro on it because even though they are running Linux and hence GPLv2, Samsung has made recent patches likely to brick the TV with any attempts to install your own OS...

I think too many people have bought into the idea that GPL code makes for complicated legal issues that isn't worth the trouble, but I don't think that's the case at all. Neither is it the case that you can't profit from GPL code. All you have to do is provide source!

Anyway, I'm just saying I think RMS is a man ahead of his time even today, and as corporations and governments extend their tentacles of power into the digital world the last bastion of freedom for hackers is going to be GPLv3+ and not BSD (which enables putting users in prisons, eg Apple).

You can thank Linus for that, i.e. for refusing to upgrade to GPLv3.

GPLv3 deals with this problem exactly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

Not his call. Every individual kernel developer owns their own contributions.

Even if Linus were to move his own contributions to GPLv3 and require GPLv3 for all new contributions, he'd still have to get permission from every single individual who ever contributed code from the kernel. Some of these people are dead, so he'd have to deal with their next of kin (or more likely, their lawyers), who might be even more difficult to deal with.

>Not his call.

The mistake was leaving out the "or, at your option, any later version" clause. That would have allowed new kernel code to be GPLv3+ licensed.

"Linus Torvalds says GPL v3 violates everything that GPLv2 stood for"

https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU

I understand, sorry about that.

> For example, I made a bad purchase and bought a Samsung SmartTV.

Is that one of those TVs that spy on your conversations as if 1984 were a fucking manual to be followed?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/09/your-samsung-tv-is-...

Yep, one of those... which is why I wanted to put something I could control on it, but alas I have updated too recently and am afraid of bricking a $3k tv...

Always take software ownership of your devices as soon as you buy them, so you're well within the return period if it doesn't work out. You have a much better opportunity to assert your modification rights during the return period rather than having to beg the manufacturer to honor the warranty.

(I know this doesn't help you now, and your next chance is when the device is old enough that you're comfortable losing it. I'm posting this so others don't make the same mistake. I'd personally just forget about the computer in your TV, and setup a proper HTPC).

Thank you for this information, I wish I had thought about it in that manner at the time of purchase, and it is something I think more modern techlectuals should consider.

Only the conversations that you have while holding down the button on the remote control that tells it to start listening to you.

That's not what this sounds like, but it doesn't say which brand they bought:

http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/im-terrified-my-new-tv...

I would bet $10 against $20 that the line

> Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.

was removed from a context which says that this data is only transmitted to a third party when the voice control feature is explicitly activated (e.g. by holding down a button on a remote control, or by saying a command word).

I'd bet $20 against $10 that regardless of whether the privacy policy says that, that's what actually happens. (I.e. I'm assigning significant weight to the possibility that the privacy policy does not explicitly rule out them doing it, but they still don't do it.) But that seems harder to pin down. E.g. I'm not going to say that no Samsung Smart TV has ever transmitted any speech outside of that situation.

What I find most interesting is that I'm quite eager and happy to believe that Samsung is spying on us, while you seem to be eager and happy to assert that they wouldn't do such an evil thing.

What's different about you and me? Why do you want to trust Samsung, but I don't?

Just to be clear: I think that currently, these TVs do not record audio and send it over the internet except when voice control is specifically activated (and not just enabled). I'm not saying they don't have that ability, or that they never will do that, or that they're not spying on people in other ways.

To answer your question: If they were, I'm pretty sure we'd have found out by now. I don't think they'd be able to hide the fact that they're sending audio data over the internet. If you connect your TV to a wireless router that you control, you hopefully can't tell exactly what data they're sending to the internet, but you can probably distinguish between "currently sending audio data" and "not currently sending audio data".

(Also, are capped internet plans still a thing? Someone who gets a smart TV and then finds their entire data quota used up in a week would probably notice.)

And it's somewhat plausible to me that this kind of news would break and I'd miss it. But then I'd expect you to be posting articles about how it actually does happen, instead of one which says that they probably aren't listening in on things you say when you're not using the remote, but here are some things you can do just in case.

What's different is that you seem to conflate "trust" and "likely". I can distrust Samsung while still finding it unlikely their TV is spying on me.

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