I’m happy with my $200 non-wifiable Insignia and hope it lasts a long time.
Imagine believing that they need “AI” to record us.
These TVs don’t incorporate enough power to do any kind of serious LLM. The “AI” they’re referring to here is likely an embedded speech-to-text engine. And that probably is pretty necessary for this–it would take too much data to send actual recordings to Samsung, but text transcripts are tiny and easier to search and index. It’s easy to forget, but reliable speech-to-text has been around less than 20 years, and the tiny ones that can run on embedded chips are even newer.
If you choose to hack your own TV, you can just stream this mp3 to servers:
First send this:
Then stream this:
On repeat
To record us? Nah, to make it more useful than just metadata analysis, yeah, I could buy that
Samsung is the second Electronics maker I’ve started boycotted, after Sony.
Sony was all the way back since the Rootkit scandal, Samsung was about a decade ago when a small tablet I bough from them have filled with unremovable applications and after a few updates became pretty much unusable because it’s didn’t have enough memory (clearly planned obscolecence).
Patting myself on back (and a little gloating) aside, Samsung has been clearly abusive towards their customers for a while (it was maybe the second electronics make to enshittify, after Sony) and this is not at all surprising.
People should have been imprisoned over the Sony rootkit scandal.
For those who don’t know - their music CDs had malware built in that automatically installed itself on PCs without prompting or notification that gave unsecured root access to any PC through a hidden service that couldn’t be detected or disabled from within Windows. It was as bad as bad gets. There was no hidden EULA or anything. They just straight-up installed viruses on millions of PCs that opened the door for other malware to install itself at the root level where it couldn’t be detected.
Sony should have been shut down entirely over it.
Wow. Yeah, fuck Sony. Seems they’ve always been in a race to the bottom. Now their insistance on a digital-only future makes so much more sense. They want to control any and all access to their products and don’t want them changing hands IRL.
It’s even a little worst than parent post makes it seem, it’s worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
Wow! I remember the thing but never knew all the dirty deals.
Steve Heckler’s quote on Napster sounds like Churchill after Dunkirk, “…we shall fight the users, we shall fight in the firewalls, we shall fight the cable companies and the phone companies, we shall fuck up your PC; we shall never surrender…”
Find me in my living room, reading aloud SQL injection attacks and AI jailbreak promps like the newsreader from Rome
Little Bobby DropTables has entered the chat.
True Hacker SQL for True Hackers
Ancient ass news.
Mmmm… ass news.
It’s ancient-ass ass-news, yes.
Drink verification can!
I really hope one day people will look back at those practices the same way we look back at the normality of cigarettes being pushed on everyone back in the 50’s.
Now we push vape pens. Not much has changed.
Doctors aren’t making corporate vape ads. There are no ads at the movies and on TV. People aren’t openly vaping indoors and their way to the vape vending machine. Vapes are a whole different deal than old-time cigarettes. And kids sure aren’t vaping with teachers in the vape hole between classes.
Gotta admit, I got a grin thinking someone out there find the two comparable. You should have seen the 80s after smoking was “dialed down”!
what about no. too many people are smoking today.
If you think it’s bad now, come on over and we’ll take my time machine to 1988 when I started. My friend taught me walking around the indoor mega mall.
i mean, why wouldnt they?
life sucks, society sucks, world sucks, who wouldnt want to check out faster.
there are better ways for that. smoking just makes the rest of your life worse
there are better ways for that. smoking just makes the rest of your life worse
Because it’s excessively slow and painful.
yes, but its much more socially acceptable than putting a gun to your temple.
the same sucky life is even worse with heart disease, not that I don’t sympathise with the desire to get out but that’s a really dumb way to do it
One of my favourite people used to say “you gotta die from something” whenever the topic of his smoking would come up. Then he got a stroke that didn’t kill him.
Ya if it was just death itd be one thing, but becoming mentally disabled or something from a stroke is scarier to me
how about weaponizing your willingness to die against the world that made you want to instead of just dying peacefully
WHY BE THE [[Little Sponge]] WHO HATES ITS [[$4.99]] LIFE WHEN YOU CAN BE A [[BIG SHOT!!!]]
Google has been doing this for years, by the way
With their google tv’s?
If these tvs are capturing private conversations for advertising, where’s the consent for that?
It’s all in the EULA no one can opt out of, and no one reads, and they can change at any time.
You can blame companies who make hardware, but the laws on privacy are terrible.
EULA has T&C that the first users agree to when they fast forward with the accept accept accept accept screens
Those things aren’t legally valid for consumer electronics or software in many countries (possibly most of the World) because they’re considered an attempt at forcing a change in the terms of the sale after the sale.
They would be totally valid if they’re presented to the buyer for confirming acceptance during the purchase BEFORE they pay which, “curiously”, they never are.
Still it’s the state of the industry.
IANAL, but EULAs are mostly enforceable in the US as they’re contracts. BUT, not every provision is a slam dunk win for the company. As I understand it, much law is decided on what a “reasonable person” would act, think or find fair at the moment action was taken, such as clicking “I Agree”. Would such a person expect the EULA to provide for spying on their voice and snapshotting their private viewing? Dunno, but I’d love to see a test case move forward.
Someone should sue on behalf of a minor, who cannot agree to a contract, or another third-party in the home who did not agree. Bet there’s case law on this sort of thing in other contexts.
From what I read, the point of Law in the countries were EULAs have already been deemed not enforceable by courts (such as Germany) is that one can’t hold something one has sold to a customer hostage to the customer accepting a NEW contract after the sale (the sale itself is considered an implicit contract with certain rights, such as the right to freely use what was sold) before they can use it, so even if people click “I Accept” on such a thing it’s does not form a legally binding contract.
Doesn’t matter if you technically consent, that shit is still illegal (at least in the EU)
yes and I believe national courts in the EU are actually obligated by the EU unfair terms directive to look for any provision in these terms that are harmful to the consumers (I think it’s called ex officio review) when any of these terms are challenged in court. I am not sure how much protection this actually gets the consumer in practice though.
Legality is pointless when the laws are not enforced.
Then there should be consequences any day now, right?
Illegal only applies when the law is an enforced deterrence. If the fine is low enough, it’s the price of doing business. If it’s hard to sue or there’s no enforcement, the law may as well not exist. Unfortunately, with these large companies it’s been both: low fines and long lawsuits, so by the time they pay a fine, they have earned 100x the fine in a month or so
They don’t need consent, none do us can afford to sue them.
Isn’t that what class action law suits are for?
Or better yet, consumer protection laws?
Yep! If this would be a meritorious case, I’d bet lawyers would be salivating over it. There are also plenty of firms working for our collective good, pro bono. Witness Elias Law who is slam dunking voter rights cases, wins in state after state, not sure they’ve lost one.
That’s why we should all support FULU.
The first doesn’t exist in most of the eu and the second need to be enforced or they will be ignored
wrt the former most t&c’s mandate forced arbitration to dodge class actions wrt the latter good luck getting consumer protection under this admin.
How do I find the camera to cover it?
Look AI code gets a ton of hate. And rightfully so. But you can use a coding agent to basically completely take control of hardware you own. It takes minutes.
Could you go into more detail for those of us who don’t want to brick their tv? I think you’re over estimating some of our knowledge base.
There’s a repo with ready-made APKs for many TV models: https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv
And if your specific one isn’t supported, it has instructions how to do it with AI yourself
Oh cool, I’m sending that to my programmer wife to let her try if she’s interested when the Samsung TV version is out. I’m an engineer and thus not allowed to mess with the programming of anything shared.
So bascially use adb to debloat and configure a custom launcher apk? But instead of manual installation, agent using MCP?
Was watching gamers nexus. Opened up codex. Gave it network permissions. It was able to fully take control of the TV in minutes. It even navigated to the admin panel and gave me the code to plug in. Very quickly had figured out some of the major API’s. In a half hour, I was able to get a container/ program set up to just “send” any stream I wanted to the TV without having to use any Samsung services. Then, scramble/ poison telemetry data/ advertising data. Whatever you like. None of it is worth publishing. But I wanted to control the TV I bought. The one I own. In my house. That I paid for. And I think its royally fucked up the world we live in that there are any barriers to that.
So, this all sounds completely plausible, but at the same time it also sounds totally crazy right! I mean that anyone could do that without actually knowing a lot about the specific system being compromised… Nuts.
I guess I’m just curious, how much experience do you have with writing software, reverse engineering or hacking? Because I just can’t wrap my head around how a layman could accomplish this. The possibility of being able to un-enshitify the devices we purchase is really very exciting.
I had the tv for ages and I basically never turned it on because it was so enshittified with their shit software anyways.
I do have experience with software and reverse engineering but it’s not what you think. It’s mostly trying to reverse engineer pin outs for old scientific equipment or rat tailed sensors that come from China with no documentation. Check my post history.
I didn’t need to do shit for the TV thing. I just finished watching the episode of GN and was like " well I’ve got a Samsung that’s basically a brick anyways because it’s so enshittifed, worst that could happen is it stays a brick.
What I found out is I don’t need to rewrite the firmware to take control. There are basically APIs for most things.
Just go try it.
Just don’t use OpenAI or Anthropic cloud models for reverse engineering your TV’s APIs. This guy got banned from OpenAI for doing this research on his Samsung TV, and there are reports of Anthropic models starting to refuse reverse engineering tasks, having been given new guidance. Apparently proles learning about the corporate surveillance they’re under is a step too far.
Hence the point about not fucking advertising it.
You made the same exact statement yesterday and got buried in downvotes. Man, this fucking place sometimes…
Just gonna throw it out there that at least one of the parties to this interaction is being consistent.
They are saying that if you are using a cloud model, you are advertising it by default.
There is a mile of difference in that and blasting it on Twitter.
It’s how you get them working in blocking our ability to use these these for a legitimate and useful purpose of taking back control of our own devices.
Not today, no, no difference at all today.
I assume all your interactions with AI are being analyzed continuously and they will keep getting more restrictive about what you can use it for.
Which models would you recommend from whom to get this done?
True, but it may also allow malevolent people to take control of hardware they do not own.
Well the malevolent people I’m concerned about are the ones who sold me a TV I can’t control and who stole the Internet to make you rent our collective knowledge we built together.
Examples/HOWTO?
Just open up any coding agent you like, locally hosted or otherwise, give it network permissions and the model number, and let it cook. These TV’s are basically unsecured.
Assume I’m a newb. What kind of prompt would you give it? “ I have model x. Please find it and fix the apps on it to not record my information”?
My conversation literally started like:
I have a local Samsung TV that is a good TV, but the Samsung software is absolute shit and I hate it. I dont want ads. I don't want their shit software. And I want to poison any telemetry streams they might be using to spy. I recently watched a gamers nexus video on hacking TV's. Can you look on my network and find the TV. and then do a research project to look into what it would take to de-shittify this TV?software. And I want to poison any telemetry streams they might be using to spy. I recently watched a gamers nexus video on hacking TV’s. Can you look on my network and find the TV. and then do a research project to look into what it would take to de-shittify this TV?
So, “local” would require a pretty powerful machine here and “cloud” might eventually stop being an option because they don’t want you to do such things using their cloud models.
Other than that, you are starting to attain that tone of a person who thinks they are starting to understand something in depth, like a Linux convert that has learned that one can write shell scripts. Don’t. You’ve used a glorified combination of Google and StackOverflow copypaste and it worked.
I litterally had the TV unplugged and sitting a basically a brick because it their software was such shit.
Worse that could happen was that it stayed bricked. I didn’t “do” anything other than express what I wanted it to do, punch in the code it told me to to give it developer access to the TV, and then finish watching Gamers nexus.
Like I genuinely don’t care what you think about this. I bought the 120 gb strix halo machine specifically for hosting local LLMs.
You have strong opinions. That’s fine. But they are your opinions. Not mine.
OK, sorry, got emotional and wrong.
What even is this comment? Someone asked how, person above simply replied how it started, and now you attack him because…?
Got excited and wrong.
Your prompt*
One can’t converse with a non-entity
Edit: downvote me all you want, your computer and chatbot are inanimate, they don’t think, you cannot converse with them, and they do not “know”.
Well, if you’re being pedantic: prompt doesn’t seem to fit as it refers to the “user” turn, and not the thread resulting of the back and forth communication between the “user” and “assistant”.
Prompt is the generally accepted terminology in the relevant professional field
Language policing is very Woke 1.0
I’m not policing
I’m trying to help you not look like one of those dumbasses who thinks their computer is sentient
I was considering buying a Samsung OLED, but crossing that brand off my list.
I just need a TV I can hook my PS5 up to and, once I set it up, an old desktop that I’ll use for SmartTube and Emby.
That’s it.
I mean I would at this point consider the hackability of the TV a feature, not a bug.
i mean, Samsung has enough bad practices and bad rep to wipe off your list long before this current shit
I just haven’t been paying attention, so this has been a good wake up call.
You can always just not connect it to the Internet.
Any restablished connection sends telemetry data.
I wasn’t planning on it, but, many models try to find open networks to connect to.
I’ve never seen anyone substantiating that, only rumors.
I gotta figure out where I heard that. I may have conflated different issues with different tech.
Tv reaches some unprotected wifi and there goes your data.
remove the network card
Everything, often even the PSU, is now baked onto a single board.
There’s no card, the modem is inside the and you have to perform surgery and peel off the panel, because they’re super fucking thin there’s no unscrew it and grab it from the empty middle part, which will very likely crack it if you’re not good and lucky.
Get a cheap projector and connect it to a pc with jellyfin
I have an old desktop that I’m going to do that with.
Unfortunately, a projector won’t work in my room. There’s a whole list of reasons but it boils down to I need a bigger space that I own, not rent.
That hasn’t been the same since OLED which are better
You don’t need the world’s best display to watch your prestige tv slop. Projectors are a pretty good viewing experience with some minimal setup.
You can think something is shit but if someone wants to watch it with HDR and deep blacks your opinion doesn’t matter.
Fine, you can watch it was nice deep telemetric blacks
If they want to watch something with slightly better quality for ten times the cost plus included spyware it is indeed up to them lol yes.
just don’t connect it to the internet.
Tv reaches some unprotected wifi and there goes your data.
why would it reach an unprotected WiFi access point?
I can barely get WiFi to work in my house let alone one of the neighbors.
Look at the tech Jesus video, they aggressively scan networks and connect to anything they can because doing so makes them money.
Guest with open hotspot on phone.
Because someone having better devices than you or your neighbor getting some long range access point.
Y’all think my 2017 is okay? 😬
Had a Samsung from 2014 (iirc) that was absolutely collecting telemetry to feed supplemental ads.
I get those ads on the actual TV part, but I never use that part.
It’s also only had the internet once (that I know of) so the ads are comically old
It may not use ai but I’d be shocked if it wasn’t still collecting
It’s never been allowed internet access. I suppose it could be looking for open networks 😳
if it is android, you could have a look at this: https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv
