3guk

At this stage, these threads are getting kind of boring, it's clear that almost all manufacturers are in a race to the bottom in terms of cost - and now the only way that they can compete on price is by bundling adverts into your internet connected set.

All talk of "voting with your wallet" doesn't work when there are literally no "smart" consumer sets that can compete on features and are without adverts.

If you really wish to have your smart TV connected to the internet - I've listed some of the adservers that you can block at : https://factory-reset.com/wiki/Smart_TV_Adverts - however this is also going to be a tiresome game, as manufacturers will just seek to find more creative ways to serve adverts.

The reality is though, if you want to avoid this behaviour - buy the set that has the screen that you want and only connect it to the internet if you wish to do a software update. Only software update if your set has a bug that the advertised firmware actually fixes, as newer updates tend to add more "features" - adverts, slower apps etc etc. Use something like and AppleTV or a Roku device connected via HDMI if you really need smart features - but be aware even the likes of Roku / Nvidia Shield / FireTV will at some point in the future also be serving you adverts.

I've also heard that some sets are trying to find open wifi networks - if you are really that worried, cut the traces on the wifi card inside the set and hope that manufacturers don't start to use ethernet over HDMI.

Ahhh the joys of Samsung TV Plus - one of the most irritating "features" that they've added to sets in all my years of providing tech support for them.

I've listed a few ways to disable TV plus at : https://factory-reset.com/wiki/Samsung_TV_Plus - without having to disable the other smart features on your set by disabling the internet connection.

In December:

1. Google (82.75%) 2. Direct (6.33%) 3. Bing (3.63%) 4. DuckDuckGo (1.85%) 6. Yahoo (0.94%)

Kind of upsetting that as of January 1st my website was delisted from Bing + DuckDuckGo for no apparent reason meaning that my traffic is down by 5%. If anyone has any contacts within the Bing team I'd be really interested to know why my site was removed.

I've tried to use DuckDuckGo a few times now - I really wish that they would write their own indexer and maintain their own index, it frustrates me that they rely on the Bing Index - which frequently favours low quality SEO optimised content or doesn't have the result you are looking for on the first page...

Each time I find myself going back to Google as it frequently surfaces the result I'm looking for on the first page.

Yes the O365 integration is relatively seamless and we were forced to move from Dropbox to Onedrive after our IT guys consolidated all of our subscriptions.

But damn, the OneDrive client at least on my MacBook is complete garbage, it seems like basic features compared to the Dropbox Client are completely missing, and OneDrive regularly likes to randomly use so much CPU that the fans spin up.

Given how heavily OneDrive is targeted towards businesses and offices, you'd think that LAN syncing would have been one of the first features to include....

Sad to hear - I never quite realised how awesome Dropbox was until we were forced by our company to migrate to OneDrive / Sharepoint.

I can't help but feel that 2021 is going to be full of companies who are re-structuring and announcing layoffs...

I must admit - Ubiquiti has lost some of it's shine in the last few years, whilst AP and routing hardware seems to still be very good in terms of pricepoint, it does feel like the software side of things has been going in a very strange direction for quite some time.

I'm still quite annoyed by the fact that I was forced to migrate from Unifi Video to Unifi Protect - due to vendor lock in and the fact that the remote interface for Unifi Video was switched off this month.

I guess on the plus side - no one who is still using Unifi Video has to worry all that much.....

Hopefully it is just a case of resetting passwords and enabling 2FA if you haven't done it already - not entirely sure how much damage could be done otherwise, unless there is an undocumented backdoor into Ubiquiti products ?

Sadly ACR is a thing that most manufacturers are using / employing - https://factory-reset.com/wiki/Disable_ACR

As much as it pains me to say it - lack of demand is probably one, as much as it seems like a hot topic on HN, as it stands the vast majority of people don't care.

It frustrates me that they still haven’t figured out that perhaps a users language is not tied to their IP address and that perhaps other indicators should be considered.

Whilst I hate adverts - it seems like a waste of both advertiser spend and my time, to show me adverts that I do not understand....

Unless I’m mistaken it just appears to be for Android phones ? I guess I can see some value in it, but will no doubt be heading for the Google graveyard in 18-24months !

Whilst it's a little less common - I've found that most of the sites that I enjoy reading still have an RSS feed.

Those that don't, typically have some sort of email newsletter - at least with Feedbin you have your own email address that receives the newsletters and shows them in your feed, which I find to be a fairly decent way of keeping up with my favourite non RSS sites.

After seeing the last few posts on in menu advertising bothering Hacker News members, I decided to look a bit further into the service menu to see if there was an easy way to disable them.

Your milage may vary with this one - it seems to work on the vast majority that I've tested, although some of the newer sets appear to revert back after an unknown amount of time.

I've been using Unraid - https://unraid.net/ - for the past few years now (after playing around with countless FreeNAS and custom setups).

I'm really impressed with how stable it is - never had any issues with it and no dataloss, even with a couple of hard drive failures along the way.

I know many of you will prefer to customise everything and take a deep dive into the way things are set up, but I really do enjoy the simplicity of Unraid.

Honestly with remote work I don't find it all that important, we've tried at various stages in the last few months to set aside time to virtually chat - but it just feels like enforced fun and whats worse is that group video/audio calls always end up with 2 colleagues being able to chat at once.

We have however done a few remote team building challenges, which I was prepared to hate - but actually they've been really enjoyable and have certainly lead to some better friendships being formed ! If you office or workplace offers them out then I would highly recommend them, even if it seems like your personal idea of hell !

I've mentioned it on a few of the other recent threads about this topic but, for those who use piHole or other network wide ad blocking, I've compiled a list of servers to block: https://factory-reset.com/wiki/Samsung_Telemetry_Servers

For sure it's a game of cat and mouse, I guess the added revenue stream of direct to consumer advertising is too hard to ignore for most manufacturers and the demand from consumers for a decent dumb TV isn't high enough to justify a production run.

There are plenty of ways around HDCP - some cheap HDMI splitters completely bypass it and will allow you to use your other screen.

Typically the review section of a given HDMI splitter on Amazon is a dead give away as to wether they bypass HDCP. Failing that you can buy a HDFury device - which I've used plenty of times in large AV installs to avoid HDMI/HDCP problems...

Only discovered this a few months back - and I must admit it has tidied up my inbox significantly.

For those who use piHole or other network wide ad blocking, I've compiled a list of servers to block: https://factory-reset.com/wiki/Samsung_Telemetry_Servers

Typically I would suggest not connecting your TV to any sort of internet connection - firmware updates don't typically tend to add or fix much on these devices. If you really have an issue, update the firmware, factory reset and then disable wifi / unplug ethernet.

https://feedbin.com works perfectly for me. I like the relatively clean design and the pricing isn't outrageous.

I use the Reeder app on iPad and iPhone to interface with Feedbin.

For those who use piHole or other network wide ad blocking, I've compiled a list of servers to block: https://factory-reset.com/wiki/Samsung_Telemetry_Servers

Learning how to cook would be fairly near the top of my list. More specifically learning how to cook a few dishes well (ideally ones that you like).

I’m gonna guess it was Le Relais de L’Entrecôte, I went a number of years ago and I must admit I really enjoyed the simplicity of it all !!

I’m not sure I agree - I’ve always been a fan of FS for fibre stuff, at least in europe - their prices and support are both excellent !

Thanks for creating this, just tried it in my local area and it generated a route that I already enjoy !! I shall no doubt get a lot of use out of this, whilst it’s not the intended use - I will cycle a few of the routes over the next few weeks !

I know it sounds fairly simple - but making sure that I hit 10,000 steps per day, I've ended up going on some really long walks around my local area and have discovered a load of interesting places.

Whilst I'm based in the UK and have access to (and use) Premium Bonds - this seems like a fun product, congrats to you guys for making saving fun !

Doesn't seem like a particularly bad idea to me - I'd much rather they were making money from paying corporate customers, rather than making money selling users data....

I highly suspect the vast majority of home users, who are using Zoom to host weekly quiz nights with friends, particularly care about strong encryption....

Not to function - but it certainly helps at the moment when the majority of the world is in crisis mode.

The UK health service is one of the few things I’m actually still proud of about the UK.

I must admit I’m a big fan of the UniFi stuff too - for prosumer use it’s excellent, has a tonne of features and for the most part is fairly stable. Just a shame that sometimes they abandon hardware a bit too soon, or promise features that never materialise.