When the EULA is blocking the content, the monitor isn't working as advertised. And they willingly shipped it like that.
I would start with selling 50" and 65" inch "dumb" TVs. Just the panel, a nice enclosure and a board with an IR receiver, TV tuner and HDMI outputs. BYO top box and Soundbar. I wonder how fast it would take to get 10000 orders.
It won't ever happen obviously, but I wonder if it would solve these types of problems? Consumers collectively boycotting something is the most powerful way to fight things like this, but I can't think of a successful example of that in recent times. Even "viral" boycotts on social media platforms are likely to get limited reach due to algorithm fuckery. Or is it that nobody but us tech nerds actually cares about stuff like this, and even a blatant in-your-face boycott feature on Amazon wouldn't make a difference?
Why would a device, monitor or TV or refrigerator, randomly reset it's AD ID?
I believe this is just your stock standard X (formerly known as Twitter) ragebait post.
Congratulations, you fell for it.
It's a shame ragebait is now popping up on this site.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Microsoft+employee+Talking+R...
The blue one actually tasted really good. Was available on campus for several years in nearly every building. :)
They are mad expensive because presumably they are not subsidised by the shitware that "smart" tvs ship with.
https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/products/topre-realforce-r2-...
It's neat, but not this dystopian neat.
I had no idea a Thunderbolt hub could serve as a parallel Ethernet hub, nor that there were devices that could or would want to take advantage of this.
It's hard to sympathize with someone buying one of these in 2024 and then being outraged that it wants to do ad tracking. 'Smart' monitors are so easy to avoid right now, they are all clearly marketed as such and it's still the case that premium 'dumb' monitors are available in every category.
One of our customers detected a risk in an audit - it hadn’t occurred to anyone. Now we log display connections and customer facing folks can be terminated for violating the rules.
But my Dell P2423DE monitor has a USB-C “dock” built into it so that I plug a single cable into my laptop which connects it to 2x 1440p monitors, power, mouse, headset receiver, keyboard and a wired ethernet connection.
Quite frankly, it’s awesomely convenient.
It’s totally legitimate to have a network port on a monitor.
I also think there could be a good opportunity to expand this to kitchen appliances too. Premium quality but really dumb. I would be a loyal customer
A feature that simultaneously discourages sales, encourages retailers to pull products from the platform, and heavily incentivizes abuse from competitors who would benefit from convincing customers to boycott their competitors products? For some reason I don’t imagine Amazon product managers are going to like this idea.
Boycotts are wishful thinking in the modern era of online shopping. The Venn diagram of people who would actively boycott a product like this and the people who would seek it out on Amazon has no overlap. These products are targeted at people who do purchasing for their office or who click the buy button without taking 1 minute to glance at reviews. The people who care enough to actively boycott have already read reviews of a product before they seek it out for purchase.
BTW if you want a TV that doesn't have any of these smart features you can get one of those commercial displays used in malls, train stations, and such. They're expensive though.
This is for advertising plain and simple (and probably selling user data to some extent). That's direct income for the manufacturers so they care about it a lot.
Honestly? Doesn’t even need a remote provided CEC works fine with my Apple TV.
I'm on the fence regarding a "likely boycott" for Ooni pizza ovens, specifically the Karu 16 dual fuel. There are many videos about defective or improperly installed thermocouples. Ooni has some really helpful FAQ guides for fixing it on your own, but I was amazed at how many videos exist about this problem for an $800 pizza oven.
Why streaming devices need to be so ad-infested is a different interesting topic, but IMO this “my monitor has an EULA” thing is just engagement bait.
It may be cheaper and even easier to just buy and somehow modify Onn/Hisense into dumb displays, though I've never explored the idea myself to know how feasible it even is.
See the LG 48 CX OLED television versus the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U OLED monitor. The LG was a jump in quality and performance (4K 120Hz) and many people bought it to use as a computer monitor. But it's smart (cannot disable advertising itself over Bluetooth while on), cannot be woken up over HDMI (requires using the remote control to turn on each day) and it does not have displayport in.
The Aorus is the same panel but not a TV, functions as a monitor should, and I would have bought that instead had I known.
If a product finder like alternativeto.net existed, where you find non-shittified alternatives to a popular appliance, I would use it every time I shop.
Google Photos wants you to turn on backups so you blow through your 15GB quota and buy storage from them, so once in a while when I open the app it screams "Back up is not turned on! You risk losing your photos!" (ok maybe not that hysterically).
Then the "Back up photos" slider is active, and I just have to hit "Continue". I'd have to slide it to off, and the button changes to "Continue without backup" and I have to hit it.
It's freaking disgusting that software companies now change your settings (ok, thankfully it still asks for your confirmation) and nag you about it every few weeks.
BTW Google, I have a Google Pixel 1 phone that has lifetime unlimited photos backup, and I intend on abusing that functionality by using automated transfers between my daily phone -> my NAS -> Pixel 1 -> your servers until you fuck me over and delete my account.
https://i.redd.it/wb7lhfporqj91.png (sorry for reddit pic link, poked around a bit and this was the one I could find)
https://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-NRMO7YW6A-Countertop-Microw...
The problem in that segment is that it's basically the same disposable, non-repairable tech that's destined to the dumpster in a couple of years. The company is selling the appearance of having a different design philosophy, and it works because the consumer has no way of telling.
So, if you want to do anything more profound in that space, it's going to be hard to compete.
Why the fuck would anyone buy a "smart monitor" that is hooked up to a computer? Are they too incompetent to directly watch Netflix/Prime/etc on the computer? What is LG's target audience here?
I'm guessing snwy_me got the monitor from someone else and forgot to factory reset it and disable WiFi.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35484594
also, check this one from yesterday:
From a previous comment of mine:
> … my Insignia TV (best buy store brand) with fire tv built in is basically unusable. Echoing a previous comment I made too, about “smart tvs” and the “streaming sticks”: Hey, have you ever thought of why even the $149 Black Friday loss-leader no-name-brand TVs all have Amazon Fire, Roku, or are now "Smart" in some way? Certainly isn't because they need to incentivise you to connect it to the internet so it acts as a Nielsen-esq measurement device of all media you view on the screen via digital fingerprints that exist in all commercial media and advertisements. [1][2]
Did it not occur to Samsung that people might have their computer in the same room as their television?
Similar applies here: incredulous that, in various aspects of the tech industry, customers/users are often being sold out for such small amounts of money.
(Though manufacturing is easier to understand than a lot of software-only businesses, which aren't about cost engineering.)
You might argue that showing these "boycotts" would stop people from returning these products, but it would also curtail a whole lot of buyers that would consider it "good enough". Amazon deserves their fair shake by the FTC but if you think this is the reason then you've got pretty bizarre expectations.
This has exploit potential. If a properly crafted ad can successful take over a monitor, the attacker now owns a USB-C device with an Internet connection. From there, it can make the device pretend to be some other USB device, such as a keyboard, mouse, and USB storage. From that point, they can do almost anything.
That Samsung/LG/etc. are sulfurous pits of spyware is a completely different and well understood problem (but coincidentally too pedestrian to garner the desired rage induced upvotes).
Funny thing was after the software updates, the next day the TV prompted me to install a firmware update on the remote. First time I’ve ever seen that one.
That one you linked has actually quite a lot of features - the 12 presets, auto cooking mode, weight setting, the potentially confusing buttons like "express" and "micro power".
Unluckily, so many care less than nothing, buying whatever is the cheapest and loudest in praising itself with the biggest lies or misdirection. There is a huge and successful market for these kind of customers. Actually it overwhelms the small group of conscious costumers. So manufacturers are making less and less 'honest' products.
IANAL, but I always found that kind of loophole fascinating.
You have this backwards. The consumer "smart" units are subsidized by the monetization of the data they hoover up as you use it. This subsidized price has become accepted as normal price, but they clearly are discounted prices.
Yeah yeah, economy of scale on consumer vs prosumer+ units, but if you really believe that is the sole reason you are sorely mistaken
The relevant subthread really is this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35487062
Industrial panels make horrible TVs. Even if you use an appropriate panel, there’s more than just designing a sheet metal case.
Based on people suggesting commercial large format displays, apparently some don’t understand this. The market for someone foolish enough to drop $3k on a large screen without Dolby Vision is very small though. People that are absolutely cost conscious will continue to buy the loss leader crap TVs.
I’ve had Microsoft Teams interrupt my presentation to a CEO to force me to click through some stupid dialog that a self-important developer put in there at the direction of an an even more self-absorbed manager.
“STOP TALKING NOW! You are nothing! Only our imagined legal risks matter! Click here to accept. DO THIS NOW.”
It didn’t exactly say that, but it may as well have. That was the meaning.
[1] https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/
[2] Command line tools used in unattended workflows will hang, waiting for EULA acceptance from a human who isn’t there: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5151034/psexec-gets-stuc...
It is actually really weird how popular this business model has become (I guess it is a thing because people don’t read the fine print). Invasion of privacy is, I think, extremely asymmetric, so the business model of spying on people is a huge destroyer of value.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/01/smart...
It’s the only way to get a good hidpi panel in the 5K space without breaking the bank. They also have DEEP integration with the Samsung ecosystem like dex integration.
LG has been getting into this market; their target market appears to be folks that want to have a miniature tv at their desk in small (studio) apartments to watch Netflix, etc on without fiddling with a pc. Which makes sense: in Korea and a lot of other places now, 200sqft apartments are becoming more common and the affordable option without splitting with others.
The reason it's probably still legal to have in California is that California bans a lot of largely cosmetic or non-functional items. For example, many states ban threaded barrels which by itself doesn't change any characteristics of the barrel other than the fact that it has a thread on the end of it.
Browse to the article, click reader mode, click refresh. Might need to be in a private window, in case of cookie shenanigans.
They sell single-shot .50 BMG uppers, non-semiautomatic AR15 uppers do exist.
I believe the majority of stuff California regulates attaches to the upper anyways, which isn’t a firearm under federal law (unsure if Cali is weird about that). Bump stocks and responsive triggers are the only things I can think of California might regulate that go on the lower, and last I heard the ATF was tracking those down as an NFA violation.
I think smart monitors are convenient multi-purpose displays and make a lot of sense for home use. Not so much for office use like in the source tweet.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...
[*] - edited reason after rereading; this wasn’t 2nd amendment, but ATF misinterpretation of the law
If Vizio can’t arrange that alone, they could pool together many manufacturers and devices, offer the phone companies a copy of the data, or wait until the cost drops low enough.
Unless a CA-licensed attorney knowledgeable in California gun laws and ATF regulations specifically told you that a particular CA law applying to "semiautomatic firearms" does not apply to your AR-15 lower in isolation, do not listen to random internet comments about it especially when they begin with "I believe." Regardless of where you fall on the issue politically or ideologically, it's an objective fact that California's government is hostile toward its citizens possessing and bearing firearms, and being fuzzy on what is or is not a felony is a risky proposition.
If you're wrong, best case scenario you will lose all your guns, worst case you will end up in federal prison.
Show me the commercial equivalent to the LG G4.
And even these commercial TVs may be “dumber” but they still have firmware and it can still have some of the same nuisances. Meanwhile you can opt out of most shit on the smart TV and just not leave it connected.
For clarity, are you meaning "Technical Project Manager"?
A lot of people here are probably more familiar with TPM being "Trusted Platform Module":
I'm not sure about using it as a TV (no speakers, matte display), but as a monitor it looks really nice.
The higher cost is because the hardware is designed to run for years 24/7, and the compute hardware is (a little bit) more powerful than regular TVs.
Honestly at this point I consider VESA one of the good guys. At least compared to the alternative, spits, HDMI
But no, my understanding in CA is unlike the Feds, California does not have the concept of constructive possession as it applies to assault weapons. As such, separated parts cannot constitute a CA AW, unless the lower is already registered as such, or said lower is on the list of named CA AWs.
It is technically not an assault weapon in that configuration; however, depending on the DA, they may still come after you under PC 12280(a), stating that you are attempting to possess an assault weapon. The sticking point for them is showing intent, but they have convicted on possession and research of how to assemble an assault weapon.
They certainly could charge someone, and maybe even win; I’m not suggesting anyone rely on this as a defense, but that is what the law states. Short of any other aggravated reasons to charge you, it’s unlikely a DA would have any interest.
Manufacturers would rather get $15 for every TV than only $15 for some TVs. If they were to let you pay your way out, you'd have to pay significantly more in order to subsidize the people who won't pay.
Edge controls would be easier to reach. Side edge controls can be a problem because people often want to have things right beside their monitor, such as another monitor. Bottom edge might be reasonable.
For people with bigger monitors than mine (mine is 27") their arms might actually be too short to reach bottom edge buttons comfortably, assuming they sit farther back from the screen than I do from mine.
Anyway, the remote can be faster than buttons would be because it allows for voice commands. If I want to set the brightness to say 6 I just pick up the remote, hold down the mic button, and say "brightness 6". That's faster than navigating to the picture settings menu and adjusting the brightness there.
https://github.com/RedBalloonShenanigans/MonitorDarkly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32634467#32635631 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA4_POi9rsg https://web.archive.org/web/20160809063532/https://www.redba... https://web.archive.org/web/20160809062931/https://www.redba...
Obviously , en-masse we need to be buying these things, opening them, losing the manuals and packaging, and returning them explaining very clearly how there is unwanted shit in the firmware that was not made clear upfront before purchase.
Each of us doing it over and over at every store we have access to.
In other words, they not hubs (or switches) in the Ethernet sense, just a different physical connection to an otherwise ordinary PCIe NIC.
I imagine non-Thunderbolt USB docks are similar, presenting as a USB hub with a garden-variety USB Ethernet controller attached to one of its ports.
With that said, I imagine a "smart monitor" with integrated dock would additionally include Ethernet switch-like functionality, to enable sharing of a single physical Ethernet port (or wireless connection) between the connected host and the smart TV subsystem, just as some servers allow sharing of a single Ethernet port between the installed OS and an onboard BMC.
On LG TVs, at least, you can also completely disable the WebOS UI via a command sent through an onboard RS-232 interface, at which point the TV displays no overlays at all.
Buying 'smart' TVs also sends a signal to the manufacturers that this is what people want (as some here have suggested). It perpetuates the delusion that ad-ridden TVs are acceptable. Vote with your wallet and buy something else.
It's also somewhat profligate to buy hardware and deliberately disable it (although I entirely understand the motivation and hacker ethos). That hardware represents sunk resources. Buying it to ignore it leaves a bad taste for me. Electronics manufacturers are ecological bad news, in general. I'd rather not contribute to unnecessary manufacturing if I can avoid it.
Regarding quality of image, I kinda suspect that the necessity for ultra-high def TV has been over-sold. Sure, for gaming, home cinema, etc it might be a real concern for some. For me, I've got a genuinely dumb TV and nobody has ever commented on the image quality for TV or movies or gaming (Switch). But maybe this is one area where the visual equivalent of audiophiles will never be dissuaded :)
A state puts restrictions on semi-automatic weapons (one model which has been used to kill hundreds or thousands of people in random shootings) and here it's described as "being hostile to people possessing firearms". For most non-americans (which is my case) this will always sounds so strange
I am not an expert, but this[0] looks like a commercial equivalent. And on my searches seems to be less expensive (although both are quite expensive)
(SAMSUNG 65-Inch Class OLED 4K S95B Series Quantum HDR TV(QN65S95BAFXZA, 2022 Model)
Nothing about this is aimed towards commercial:
https://www.samsung.com/latin_en/tvs/oled-tv/s95b-65-inch-ol...
That is a 2.5 year old model (out of stock on Newegg), standard high end consumer smart TV, not sure why you think otherwise:
“ Amazon Alexa Compatible / Bixby Compatible / DLNA / Dolby Atmos / FreeSync (AMD Adaptive Sync) / Google Assistant Compatible / High Dynamic Range (HDR) / Mountable / Samsung SmartThings Compatible
SMART TV WITH MULTIPLE VOICE ASSISTANTS: This TV comes with your favorite voice assistants built-in and ready to help. Choose from Bixby, Amazon Alexa, or Google Assistant”
It’s less expensive than a G4 because it’s is generations older than a G4. Samsung is now on the S95D.
Christ
(Insert sarcasm here.) /s
On the other hand it won’t burn in, just color shift. It’s built for a different purpose (digital signage), neither movies/entertainment or gaming.
I maintain there’s a very small consumer market for those willing to forgo a decade (but even 1 or 2) of flat panel advancements just to not leave WiFi or Ethernet off. But good luck to anyone who tries.
LG used to make a commercial HDR OLED large format in one size (65 inch), it's was $20k, now $10k for new old stock. Still not as bright as newer consumer displays (it's 3 gens behind), therefore not great for HDR, and no VRR. It's just not a market.
If people decided to take the time to simultaneously take this issue before a judge who will give them a default judgment when a company like LG no-shows it'll start to hurt them and the publicity from this will force change.
I know relatively little about European gun laws, but I imagine that the gun laws in Romania and the Czech Republic are quite different, and that the Czech would argue Romania is "hostile toward it's citizens possessing and bearing firearms."
Texas would argue California is. California would argue the UK is.
> You got a cheaper TV, didn't hand over any of your info...
But you are still enabling Surveillance Capitalism. Even if you think you personal data is safe, the system still exploits the majority of the consumer market.
There are other kinds of very cheap TVs with forced ads and tracking that require an internet connection to function at all, but those are a whole other story entierly, and we aren't talking about those here.
I was responding to this portion of the comment, where they referred to the ATF and NFA - a federal agency and law.
I was updating them that was no longer true as of a few months ago.
I was grateful to find a totally dumb 4K 48" TV that had the same firmware as the decade (at minimum) old 1080i 23" TV it was replacing. Its image quality would offend TV nerds but I will never ever own a smart TV and they don't really make actually dumb TVs any more. You could not pay me to use a decade old android or tv os device, let alone the considerably younger TV we borrowed. Absolutely not.
And it's also why premium streaming, which consumers chose as an ad-free alternative over cable TV, does not have ads.
You can't buy your way out of ads because paying just means the advertisers have extra incentive to put shit in front of your eyes.
This is not accurate unless I'm misunderstanding your intent--absolutely possible, which is why I am responding over a day later :)
The lower is the firearm, and if it has CA-illegal features on it, it will remain illegal.
If you're referring to things like a threaded barrel, or a vertical foregrip (no idea if these are actually illegal in CA, just examples), or other things that are attached to the upper, when they're separated those things are no longer attached to a firearm because they're attached to the upper, which is no longer a firearm when it's separated.
This isn't a loophole, this is a natural consequence of the fact that if you take a firearm and separate it into two pieces, at most one of those things can legally be a firearm - you can't turn one firearm into two firearms by breaking it in half.
Which unfortunately means not buying a high end TV at all because there are none without "smart features".
> Regarding quality of image, I kinda suspect that the necessity for ultra-high def TV has been over-sold. Sure, for gaming, home cinema, etc it might be a real concern for some. For me, I've got a genuinely dumb TV and nobody has ever commented on the image quality for TV or movies or gaming (Switch).
Most likely people are just being polite - kind of a dick move for a guest to diss your TV.
> But maybe this is one area where the visual equivalent of audiophiles will never be dissuaded :)
Size, resolution (up to 4K at least), true blacks from emissive display technologies and real HDR are all things immediately noticeable to the average user. Color space and bit depth are also very real improvements. This is very far from audiophile territory.
Of course if it did come with a simple remote that'd be fine too. I'm not against a remote.
I never intended to make the claim that separating the upper and lower somehow makes neither a firearm. That was not my intent at all. Of course the lower is still a firearm, still needs to be serialized, legal, etc.
There are also some named firearms in the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989 and those would be illegal no matter what, broken apart or not. Obviously naming specific weapons was idiotic and not going to last a very long time, since keeping the list up to date was impossible, so...
In 1999, the act was amended (P.C. 35015), and named specific features that would make a firearm an assault weapon. The amendment states that a semiautomatic, center-fire rifle that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine, and any of the features below, is deemed an assault weapon:
* a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon. * a thumbhole stock. * a folding or telescoping stock. * a grenade launcher or flare launcher. * a flash suppressor. * a forward pistol grip.
All of which are pretty clearly target AR and AR-like firearms.
Now, to be specific about what I was trying to say: California does not have the concept of constructive possession, unlike the federal government, as applied to assault weapons. As such, separated parts cannot constitute a CA assault weapon, unless the lower is already registered as such, or said lower is on the list of named CA assault weapons. If it is disassembled, it is considered to be weapon parts, and not the actual weapon itself.
However, depending on the DA, they may still come after you under P.C. 12280(a), stating that you are attempting to possess an assault weapon. The sticking point for them is showing intent, but they have convicted on possession and research of how to assemble an assault weapon in the past.
Your data is still getting collected, just not through the TV.
> I really don't care what you do.
What if you were told that ad companies are still going to be able to target you just by collecting data from others like you?