What is really annoying though is that you are their customer. It's sort of understandable when Google or Facebook spy on you and monetise your data to profit from the services that they provide you free of monetary charge to you. With Samsung, you've already handed over a few hundred dollars at least for the product. Spying on you as well is like having their customer and eating it.

I've always used Samsung's flagship smartphones, since the Galaxy S4. However, as I've become a more conscious consumer in recent years, I've decided that my next phone won't be a Samsung.

I personally don't like that line of reasoning. If you start to justify abusive behavior in the name of making money you're not giving someone for a "service", it's a small leap to reach the conclusion that abusive behavior (and profiting from it) is justified no matter what as long as you've been provided some kind of service.

Either it's a gift, or it's a paid service. In neither cases does abusive behavior ever become justified, whether it's from a friend, a neighbor, or a multi-billion dollar company. If your company wants to offer me free donuts, that's your company's choice and does not grant you the right to follow me home and steal my books. Why would it be any different with Silicon Valley companies?

But it is absurd to insist the only two valid transaction models are offer paid service (which I assume means for money) or gift. Even in your hypothetical, it would not be unreasonable for them to give me a donut in exchange for taking notes on which donut I like and handing me a coupon for my next donut.

To me, the issue is not the data collection. It is the lack of transparency.

I don't exactly disagree, but it's hardly comparable. As a human being, i can grasp the notion of giving you 30 minutes of my time to try different cookie flavors and tell you what i think.

I could likewise understand the notion/consequences of filling a one-page questionnaire for Facebook's advertisement engine in exchange for free service. But i don't think implicit background data collection on anything they can (my phonebook, really?!) is a reasonable contract, because it's hard to comprehend what are the limits and consequences of that.

So it's not just "lack of transparency". I would consider it abusive behavior even if the sign up form read "I WILL FOLLOW AND WATCH YOU EVERYWHERE YOU GO AND TELL ALL MY FRIENDS ABOUT YOUR GREAT ADVENTURES"... especially considering they would probably make it look like a cute pet saying that. I would not consider it abusive behavior if their ad business was *not* collecting any information from the users (except maybe like i said a sign-up questionnaire) and was just doing advertisement.

Since everyone refuses to _directly_ spend money, companies just move to taking money from us indirectly. To me "free services" is like a casinos, its easy to say that you should "just not do/use it lmao" but its extremely hard to think back and consider why Reddit/Hackernews/Youtube/Twitter/Facebook is free and what are the consequences/incentives of it being "free" will mean to our society. It is simply too enticing.

And beside that I'd very much not want to give google money either. So I don't.

(yes, watching the ads gives them money, and blocking the ads and use youtube reinforces their monopoly. But it still feels better than also giving them cash directly).

Most of us don't. But we would like it to be:

- easy and anonymous: if i have cash i should be able to find a local reseller taking cash for a token of X€ (a token that's not specific to your platform would be even better)

- easy to decide where the money goes: i certainly don't want to give Google any money at all (and they don't need it), and i certainly don't want my money to be used against my will to finance a reptilian-aware neonazi whose video i clicked by accident (or because i had to debunk it)

But, to be fair, i would much rather prefer a system based on cooperation and free sharing. Is there a reason why we have to pay to live? The reason artists need money is the same reason bakers or FLOSS devs need money: because everyone else does and we're trapped in this nightmarish system. I feel that as a species we can do better.

And I hate it too, and for all the reasons given here. (Did not check them all, but it is a pretty safe bet.)

Hating it all means I am on board with activism, advocacy, law, whatever we need to do in order to establish / extend the Bill Of Rights into digital spaces.

Society, tech and the law have collided and that mess is ongoing and expanding. Imagine one of those cars smashing into a train with the dummy in it.

It crumples, folds, then pieces fly off, the dummy takes damage, and just down the track is a truck, and a bus with kids in it, and so on...

That train is heavy, well powered with spiffy tech, and it is powering right through the public!

Hate it, but I am quite sure I can't do much, even resisting, doing all the work to anonymize, is a total PITA. Drains the value right out of it all, out of me, my life, and I just do not have time for it, unless a lot of us have time together somehow.

And I think dollars are the only language our oppressors, abusers, and the like will both hear and act on because they must!

Lessig wrote about things that regulate our behavior:

Norms. They do not prevent anything, but do reward or punish.

Law. Like norms, but with real teeth well beyond praise and shunning.

Physics. The rules of the world will prevent actions. The more we understand, the more this world permits.

Money / markets. These also can prevent things. If we cannot afford an action...

It will take a lot of us setting norms, doing things that cost, and all of that rolling up into law more relevant than this current "wild west" is.

I really like it because I get to do things, have access to information that was the stuff of dreams not so long ago.

It is all as empowering as it is exploitative.

Yes, let's do this. Let's get together and create new, more humane standards. Get involved with an educational/cultural copyleft non-profit like Framasoft, a legal/lobbying organization like LQDN/EFF, a local hosting cooperative that provides GAFAM alternatives with a sustainable model (libreho.st/chatons.org networks), a local self-organized/DIY ISP (guifi.net/ffdn.org/freifunk.net networks), a self-organized FLOSS coop, etc.

That aside, yes! In my view, right now those of us able to do what just happened here need to continue. More will pick up on the, to us all too obvious dark patterns...

What to do in order to have this aspect of tech make better sense, augment, empower, add value, serve, rather than enslave, exploit, diminish, create dependence, is going to be the product of discussions we will not have, unless enough of us arrive at this all being an priority and understand the time is now, ish.

New law, and in that place where tech, law and society collide.

We are the ones, and we are because many remember times before all this, many may know nothing, this being all they have known.

It is the timing, mix of perspectives, newness of the tech and more which make this time special. We go too long and the inflection points may just evaporate...

A very similar thing happened with labor, resulting in the likes of the New Deal, by way of what I am trying (poorly, I feel) to get at here.

When we attempt solutions, those form a basis to build on and momentum to get it right, and have it work better for everyone. That matters.

The law is well behind, like we are leaving a "wild west" kind of time and that exit could have us see far worse before people move to address it. Or, it all could go better, sooner too.

I agree! Getting involved matters. Sharing it, particularly among "normies", who sense real trouble,,but do not understand well enough for that momentum to build matters too.

Great comment. Wish I had more and better answers. They will come as more of us seek them and amplify the good potential more than we currently amplify the growing bad.

Google Rewards

I use both and am yet to find the "monetise your data" stuff abusive. It's mostly things like trying to show an ad for mortgages if they figure you need a mortgage. Honestly with the various forms of death and hunger and real bad stuff in the world I'd feel a bit of a snowflake freaking out over someone trying to show me an ad for something they figure I may need.

Fair point, but it's all related. The global wealth we have as a planet could provide everyone with decent housing, food and healthcare. Instead it's being owned by a minority who dedicated resources to making things worse for everyone else.

The IT industry in particular largely benefits from human rights abuses in mining operations and in the factories on the hardware side, and from big contracts with tyrannical regimes on the software side (Amazon + ICE? Google + China?).

The problem is we largely live in a globalized culture in which "exploit others before they exploit you" (the paradigm we're taught in schools/media) is the norm. We are enough technologically-advanced to have a world without war and hunger, but not as long as psychopaths are socially rewarded.

Although I've become more privacy conscious in recent years, I'm not even sure I can agree that the bargain offered by the ad tech companies is objectively unreasonable. What I can conclude is that it is highly opaque, many people are sleepwalking into it without fully considering its ramifications, and I personally am not comfortable with it.

Samsung's practice of taking your money, offering you a product and then taking your data as well is a particularly dark pattern because it strays even more from the reasonable expectations of consumers.

I don't know where you live, but here in France it's the other way around. You can pay with cash pretty much in any shop, but it's expensive on vendors to provide card payments. And the real problem is millions of people don't have a credit card due to being blacklisted (for debt) or undocumented immigrant. That's why for example Lycamobile/Lebara are the most popular phone service providers among the lower classes in France: you can find SIM cards and "tip-up" cards pretty much everywhere.

Of course, this raises the question on how to pay on the Internet with cash as i know a lot of people who can't buy stuff online. For people who want to pay online (and have a bank account), taler.net seems like the most promising R&D in the field of "digital cash". For the rest, i can't see why we couldn't have a tip-up card system like we have for phone providers, but as a generic means to pay for online services with cash.

I had a samsung active2 watch. It advertised ECG, which didn't materialize until almost 2 years after the device was launched. When it finally got released you were only allowed to use that feature if the device was paired to a samsung phone.

For the longest time Samsung Pay was showing ads inside the app, like some random third party play store app.

Then, one day, I decided to go for a swim and the watch crashes, the speaker sucks water on boot and the device bricks. No button combination allows you to turn off the device without the touch screen. Even though it was an issue for the (IP68 rated) device samsung wanted to charge me $180 to repair it. Basically the price of a new watch 1.5 years ago.

Nowadays I look at Sony and Samsung devices and think, man such great looking devices, but wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.

EDIT: some people say that in the EU they cannot lock you out of warranty for rooting the device, because non hardware modifications are not cause for warranty removal. But I haven't tried that, so I don't know.

Even if it’s not allowed in Europe, IIRC, unlocking and tripping the e-fuse comes with a new boot screen with a huge "unsecure device" that you can’t get rid of. And you are also definitely locked out of device encryption and Samsung Pay.

So even if warranty is not void, you are paying it by not being able to resell your phone (at least at a normal price).

Doing so would be comitting the cardinal sin of "leaving money on the table".

The only way to deal with this is to accept that the only calculus these companies make is a calculus of tradeoffs.

Then make sure that the tradeoffs are correct.

Do they collect and monetize data beyond those ads? Not that I've heard of.

does apple make money off your private data now or will it ever try to do so in the future?

I stopped buying Samsung after two phones. About 18 months or so after I got them, some update would make things so slow I needed a new phone. Second time I figured it wasn't the phone being old, it was the update slowing it on purpose.

Other phones I've had don't seem to have this problem, updates seem to not change the speed of the UI at all. But I also don't appreciate the customised Android, there doesn't ever seem to be a benefit.

My Note 8 is going on a lot of cycles. Have had it for too long probably. Battery still holds up solid.

Older device, Note 5 had a 5 percent warning. Battery went to crap quickly.

Avoiding the fast charge helps too. I use it when I need to and just go normal otherwise when I am not time constrained.

No charging port trouble. Wireless charging just works.

Recently, I got a battery back. Doing it now before I really need it. So far, a year in and a lot more plug in charging and I cannot recommend one more highly.

I find I can often run the phone off the back and pretty much never have to allow a deeper discharge.

Battery time leveled off and is in a very, very slow decline.

YMMV, of course.

Unfortunately, i find it hard in this day and age to find a hardware manufacturer that's not abusive. Do you know of a hardware manufacturer that has a reasonable warranty policy, makes it easy to repair the hardware (no screws or standard screws, definitely no glue), publishes datasheets (specs) and does not lock the bootloader?

I think when it comes to mobile phones, Fairphone Librem and Pinephone are the only three that get close, but none of them checks all the boxes. I'm all ears for suggestions, whether it's for phones, networking equipment, or whatever.

System76 and Framework seem to have this reputation. I've yet to buy from them, but they're on my list of potential vendors.

Fairphone, Librem, and Pine, similarly.

I'd look to Louis Rossman for reviews and recommendations.

- I've owned and/or used Thinkpad laptops for over 20 years. Occasional others, including MacBook Air and Dell. Old-school ThinkPad is damned hard to beat.

- In the phone space there's virtually nothing that appeals, with much of that being the technology, carriers, and practice. If I have to carry one ... I probably won't anyway.

- Android is a disaster on numerous fronts. The fact that it's also the best contender running (PinePhone / Librem, please up your game* is ... well, it just is. Based on over a decade of use and multiple devices.

So yes relative to the current market, my expectations are high. But in absolute, and if you forget about all the crapware we've been fed in the past two decades, does that sound actually unreasonable?

PS: it appears iOS does plenty of background data collection too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741262

I don't. I want my phone to be reliable and receive updates for a long time. I have no intention of taking it apart and I think that is the case for most people.

If more glue makes the phone more resistant to water damage or breakage when I drop it then that is better for me.

The only way to ensure that if to publish the complete datasheets so that operating systems can maintain drivers. You cannot rely on a hardware manufacturer to provide updates, as it could go out of business any day.

> If more glue makes the phone more resistant to water damage or breakage when I drop it then that is better for me.

There's plenty of hardware design techniques (disclaimer: not my field) you can use for structural integrity and you don't need glue. Even if you don't have intention to take it apart, if it's glued it probably means that it will be really hard to replace the battery when it dies after 2-5 years.

If you want durable hardware, you need hardware that you (or a skilled shopperson) can take apart and where you can replace individual parts. That's why cars can 100% be taken down and why electronics in cars (over 100 microprocessors in an average car?!) are a worrying development for maintainability/durability.

EVGA has had even better warranties in the past but still have a decent one and I have always had good experiences with their customer service.

I have an LG dishwasher, and it has a service manual inside the housing and I can and have bought parts online.

Consumer reports has data about reliability of various household goods and appliances.

IFixit is a good source to check before you buy a cellphone and other various things.

I know many people who use Fairphones and they've never been disappointed. You can still find the spare parts, remove the battery, and setup the OS you want. Be careful though the "setup your own OS" part may not be supported for a few months after a new model comes out so be sure to check the compatibility list on lineageos.org.

Unfortunately to my knowledge all other vendors are just scammers who will sell you half-functioning phone due to spyware bundled as part of the system (just try to remove Google Play Services :)) where you can't unlock the bootloader to setup your own system.

Second, because this is primarily due to economies of scale and predatory behavior from economic giants: if consumer/environmental protections don't outlaw ethical abuses from the few corporations who capture the market (see also planned obsolescence [1]), the "ethical" alternatives are always going to be more expensive and less attractive.

Third, because there are simple ways to have a strong impact immediately. For example, by forcing all hardware manufacturers to publish the entirety of their data sheets / schematics / research, you'd find a much better OS support for older devices (and new devices too), which would bring a practical incentive (cost) to use older hardware which currently has to be thrown away (for example if the OS does not support newer TLS standards [2]).

The situation is only bad because we let it be. Going with big tech for short-sighted, individualized gains, fails to address the elephant in the room that we as humanity can do so much better and everyone would be better off.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

[2] https://f-droid.org/pt/2020/05/29/android-updates-and-tls-co...

https://www.motorola.com/us/smartphones?ds_rl=1242193&ds_rl=...

Honestly Pixel should be the only android you consider as its the only phone that doesn't come loaded with trash spyware (outside of niche phones like Fairphone)

For those inclined for more privacy, Pixels are one of the only phones that allow you to install de-googled Custom Roms without compromising the Android security model.

Google might have some spyware (e.g. play store). But it's not trash. I trust them to not get hacked (definitely more than Samsung or Huawei)

They also afaik have better support for replacing the stock firmware (although I've never done that)

I stopped buying Sony back in the late 90s when all the DVD copy protection started. Then they added Cinavia, and so on. I don't agree with piracy, but I certainly don't agree with being told how I can use something I've purchased.

And just yesterday there's the story about Dymo crippling their label printers if it does detect... RFID in their own paper.

It's going to get worse.

The industry is heavily monopolized, and the regulations are outdated.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25018225

So I've banned the TV from my WIFI network, and I just have a PC plugged into it. Its less convenient this way - we need to pull out a wireless keyboard & mouse to watch netflix. But I think its the right call for sure.

In some ways I think I win on all counts like this. Modern smart tvs are subsidized by creepy advertising. This way I get a cheap TV, and I don't give up any privacy in doing so.

But I worry about a time when TVs ship with cheap 4G modems, and start doing telemetry that way. It might just be a matter of time. I can't be the only one who doesn't connect my tv to wifi; and I bet samsung has run the numbers.

I've actually come to appreciate the wireless keyboard though, it is awkward and bulky (even though it's a lightweight slim model) but the kids constantly lose the actual remote whereas the keyboard's size make losing it very difficult.

No comment about the 5G thing though. If that's where consumer is heading you'll find me shopping in the advertising/DOH display panel section and trying my hardest to ignore the irony :D

I run Kodi on a Raspberry Pi for this exact reason. The Pi's HDMI has CEC support built-in, which means the TV's remote works seamlessly with Kodi's UI. This works great for my Netflix needs.

Unfortunately, most (all?) PC graphics don't do CEC out of the box. I've seen USB adapters that can add this functionality to PCs but I've never tried any of them.

There are some wireless keyboards that looks like a remote, but with qwerty keys on the back, a touchpad / air mouse, and IR blaster with programmable key so you can ditch the original tv remote.

There is also an IR module you can hook into homeassistant to act as universal remote, so you can ditch all remotes and use your phone to control everything via homeassistant.

Monitors. I have a 40" monitor in my living room, connected to the cable company's STB. Not that that's regularly used, most of the time I use my HTPC instead, which runs Kodi.

Replacing it with a monitor of a comparable size would be prohibitively expensive.

Edit: or maybe a pi hole or something like nordvpn cybersec.

A smart TV wouldn't straight-out spy on an external use like this, would it?

I would love to upgrade from the 10 year old dumb Sanyo to something with a better picture. But, a friend who's in AV install and TV resale did some digging and there aren't options out there to buy.

I'm hoping some larger monitors will come out and fill in this gap for somebody spec hungry like myself, but doubtful.

They control your phone, you don't. On some older Galaxy phones, you could at least unlock the bootloader and install LineageOS (which is much faster due to not running all this malware) but apparently it's not supported on S7. Samsung is slowly becoming the new Apple where you can't remove your battery without a screwdriver and there's a "Knox" security where if you lose your password (or somebody donates a phone without donating the password) the hardware will go straight to the (non-)recycling bin.

Is buying a PinePhone the only option to get decent hardware without lock-in for under 300€?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

I think we can agree this perfectly fits the definition of "spyware"? There's probably countless other examples i'm unaware of, and to be fair Apple is certainly not the only actor engaging in such outrageous behavior (Microsoft is another, perhaps more famous one).

EDIT: It appears there's studies of iOS data collection and it's really scary. Previous discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741262

Sadly we have been made believe that it could be much cheaper, but there are hidden human, privacy and environmental costs.

Hopefully we finally start paying the actual cost for our smartphones, and our planet, the kids and our privacy will be grateful for it.

That will also stop the updates, and it gives you an option to uninstall all updates when you disable it.

Also, since those apps are usually on the system partition, if you did have a way of removing them that space still isn't as useful as the rest of the space on your phone (not read/write except when updating/installing).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

Which is a shame, I love the roku for how easy it is to use. I'll continue to use it, since there isn't a easy to operate OSS alternative, but it is disappointing.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55674712

I’ve tried giving them second chances after they turned me off after the first set of tv spying the did. They opening lied about it saying they don’t inject ads or tracking or monitor what you watch. This was back when they put ads into content people watched on Plex.

Unfortunately LG is going the same way too.

I may be old school but I don't think its wrong of me to expect at least a decade out of an appliance, especially when you go mid-tier or higher. Samsung is priced at mid-tier or higher, where is the commensurate reliability?

They do make good SSDs though, I'll give them that.

I think, nowadays and given the trend, it is safe to assume that all closed and networked devices already do that: phones and tablets, closed software and hardware subsystems in computers, SmartTVs, personal assistants, cars, household appliances, etc.

The prior ones, and this one up until about 18 months ago, were only used as displays for my cable TV box, DVD player, Blu-ray player, game consoles, and streaming boxes. I then cancelled cable and hooked up an antenna to watch actual TV broadcasts on it thus actually using it as a television instead of just a monitor.

It's terrible at that. First, it doesn't have a good way to quickly check the signal strength of multiple channels, so it is awkward and tedious to deal with setting up channels where you need careful antenna positioning to receive them.

Second, when you bring up the channel guide it continues to show the current channel you were watching in a picture-in-picture (PIP) inset. This is good so you can check the guide without interrupting what you are watching. However, if any of the channels listed in the visible part of the guide do not have a good signal the PIP inset freezes for 5-10 seconds while it apparently tries to get information about those channels. You only get the uninterrupted PIP is all the channels on the guide are giving good signals. I've got some that vary depending on weather and atmospheric conditions, and I've got some that I need to change antenna aim to get, and these are scattered throughout the guide so I tend to get the interruption on every page of the guide.

Third, there doesn't seem to be any way to delete a channel. Some of those weak channels causing some of the problems mentioned above were channels I don't care about, but happened to be strong enough when I did the channel setup scan that it added them. Nor is there a way to explicitly add a channel, although I think that if you manually direct it to a channel that it has not auto programmed and it finds a good signal, and you repeatedly do this, it might add it.

So for example, everyone has local admin access, or even network-wide admin access. Instead of Active Directory accounts, users are tracked by their client IP address. In effect, you are your IP address on the network.

Most activity is logged, and then correlated by IP address so that blame can be assigned after-the-fact.

So for example, if you're caught editing a production web page live on the server while 40K people are scratching their heads wondering why they can't log in that morning, you'll get blamed because the remote connection came from your desktop IP when that happened.

Nothing stops some random junior developer editing the production web site on the fly. He'll just be reprimanded or fired.

(NOTE: Some of the specifics above may be out of date now, but the security culture likely remains)

Seems ripe for an insider threat - Sure, they'll catch and fire all the people who slip up or stupidly overstep their authorization or do some vandalism. But a determined and skilled attacker could come in at a very low level and install all kinds of interesting stuff... wow.

It does contact Panasonic but I have blocked the domains with a Pihole and closed outgoing port 53 other than traffic from the Pihole so nothing can make DNS requests directly (eg. hardcoded to 8.8.8.8).

The TV itself is great though. It runs FirefoxOS I believe.

The TV is not as bad as the LG I had before it which sent a web request to LG every time you pressed a button on the remote control... volume up.... web request to LG. Volume down... TV sent a web request to LG.

> It does contact Panasonic but I have blocked the domains with a Pihole and closed outgoing port 53 other than traffic from the Pihole so nothing can make DNS requests directly (eg. hardcoded to 8.8.8.8).

I don't understand - you've blocked it from contacting Panasonic; does that mean that none of the services work any more? Or is there another domain that it has to keep in contact with that you've allowed? If so, why block the Panasonic domain when you allow it to chat to some other third party?

ichnaea.netflix.com collect-eu-fy2017.myhomescreen.tv x2.vindicosuite.com

But it is allowed to access other domains such as: nrdp.prod.ftl.netflix.com api-global.netflix.com vcs.vdspf.com push.prod.netflix.com uiboot.netflix.com appboot.netflix.com auth-ctv.digitaluk.co.uk c09.api.freeviewplay.net secure.netflix.com

Nothing on the network other than the Pi can get out of port 53 (DNS).

My OLED has Netflix etc. I used the built in Netflix a few times but don’t anymore since because I don’t use Netflix altogether and not subscribed to them. I put it on a special VLAN that has no internet access but can still send and receive traffic to my home assistant instance so as far as the tv is concerned, it’s offline. But it’s never nagged me about it. And when it was fully online (when using the Netflix app), I never received any ad anywhere.

I had been looking at Sony before that and saw that they had promised their users for a couple years to release the same 4k 120hz VRR update for a number of bravia models. to date they either didn't release it, or released flawed implementation. There were so many complaints online it steered me clear of Sony.

I then went into the store thinking to buy LG but Panasonic looked very nice. I watched a ton of reviews from HDTVtest on YouTube and took a gamble with the Panasonic. The calibration of the set is very much better than my old Samsung. Night and day.

In the end it was cheaper and I've been very happy.

I admit, I think my source was probably HN comments. I tend to trust them more than they deserve.

I did a Google, and it seems a very sketchy claim.

Why yes, this is a ludicrous amount of technical work to expect the average consumer to do, and it is fucking disgusting that this is even a concern. I'll continue to use my 8 year old TV, I don't need 4k for something I'm watching from 8 feet away anyway.

I had to DMZ a friend's smart TV, since it was booting excessively slowly waiting for a response from the (Sony) servers, which is why I have a work around. Still, spending $35 and polluting the 2.5ghz band even more seems stupid. The TV in question had an ethernet port, but providing 400 responses on that didn't improve boot times, since it tried to find a wifi signal after that. Just stupid that a TV will be slow to turn in depending on what external servers it can contact.

Edit-stated this was an LG TV, it was a Sony.

Got any suggestions on external streamers that don’t have the same problem as a smart tv?

I also trust Google to have fewer glaring security issues than Samsung.

Source? On Android with Google Play Services, which almost always applies to Android TV as they’re essentially the same OS, there are no UI toggles to turn off the spying. You can check this using a DNS proxy, for instance, and viewing the log after blocking Google domains using such a proxy might prove quite alarming. Android devices even with location and search tracking disabled contact Google every several minutes.

If you turn these off, particularly "Web & app history", your TV (and all other Google devices) will obey the settings if it is logged into that Google account.

It will still be contacting Google's servers, but it won't be recording anything.

Or are they just not showing you, via your UI, what they're collecting into their data pools anymore?

I currently use an Apple TV 4K for all my apps, it integrates perfectly with the TV using HDMI CEC and has a clean content-focused UI that's not stuffed with ads (had been considering Android TV).

I will never use a Samsung TV again after my last experience of performance-crippling firmware, nagging, confusing/off-screen opt-out UIs for spyware features, attempting to bypass DNS if telemetry is blocked, and ad-stuffing (KS8000) - nor allow a TV to have a persistent network connection.

i mainly use it with the jellyfin plugin so all of my media is stored on a NAS and kodi just acts as the player

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29990910

TL:DR- LG CX tv, never connected to the internet, "smart" functions come from a separate device. It's also behind a pihole for what it's worth.

Doesn't seems like I have much choice.

I have been thinking for some time, what does it take for a third Mobile OS platform. While there are millions of Apps, The absolute essential Apps on smartphone seems to have concentrated to less than a hundred?

Misread something, one of us.

My question is about their phones - what info do we have on Samsung's spying vs Google or others? I won't touch anything Chinese made for the same reason, but worse. Fairphone doesn't seem to be usable in the US.

So yeah I agree with your friends that data mining your dishwasher in itself is rather innocuous, but why allow it to happen altogether and open yourself to all the above?

According to them, for laundry, they don't want clothes to sit there longer than necessary without being dried or folded. For the dishes, they want to make sure that they remembered to start the dishwasher without having to go check

like which?

you can either buy an over-priced apple iToy, inferior samsung clone, or some chinese android with buggy bloated software

Sure, they're huge companies - somewhere, some one is probably doing this for some edge case.

Either way - even at FB - I would be highly surprised if this data didn't get auto-deleted within a few weeks (at the latest).

And if you're telling me that Samsung is really that much different - I'm surprised - because there's not any way for them to monetize this data. They're just wasting storage and in the process creating a massive liability for themselves...

That or the TV companies are intentionally making previous TVs slower with updates they know old TVs can't run with any modicum of speed.

This is what happened to the Nexus 7 tablets, I owned one and the experience, which was great at first, became terrible over time.

Smart TVs are a mistake, unfortunately most (maybe all current productions) are smart TVs nowadays. TVs are something that can last a long while - I kept my old dumb TV for 10 years before the backlight became too dark for my liking -, smart components on the other hand.. plus, it's not like it's a huge inconvenience or extra expense to add something like a chromecast or fire tv to get literally the same experience the smart components provide, except that this time, if the stick dies, you don't have to replace the whole tv.

This really doesn’t bother me at all.

Who’s talking about illegal stuff?

When you write "this doesn't bother me" when people complain, what should they think?

No, it doesn't bother me that they show me ads about products I'm actually interested in based on what they know about me. Not only it means that I don't get bothered with things I would most likely not be interested in, it also means that advertising costs go down significantly allowing the market to produce very niche products which would otherwise not be viable. Targeted ads is the best thing that has happened to the economy in the last decades.

What I'm saying is that Facebook, Google and Samsung companies are not in the business of selling data like the common disinformation messaging would have you believe.

I recon from an individual perspective, ads are not a game changer to consumer behavior. They only burden the individual with more decisions to make when choosing a product to buy. Infact, in today's standards they only serve as a way to guess-timate person X bought toothpaste B because of ad campaign Z. Therefore, give us (ad broker Y) some of that kickback. When I still would have bought the toothpaste anyway.

Why would they let you disable ads on their ad-supported platform? There are plans like YouTube premium if you want no ads in there, which I think is worth it and I do pay for it because it is a much better YouTube experience.

By using ad blockers, you are merely taking away from everyone else using the platform. I wish these companies did more to stop ad blockers.

>I recon from an individual perspective, ads are not a game changer to consumer behavior.

That's because from what you wrote, you don't seem to understand how these ad platforms work.

Because they stand to gain (immensely) from building my trust about their model of advertising if I choose to participate in it. Or maybe am being too optimistic and everyone would disable ads 100% of the time given such an option? Would be an awesome experiment for Google :)

The problem with these platforms you call ad-supported, is even when you pay a subscription for premium the content creators are allowed to slot in sponsored segments which isn't exactly my definition of an ad-free experience.

> By using ad blockers, you are merely taking away from everyone else using the platform. I wish these companies did more to stop ad blockers.

Taking away what exactly? If you could be a bit more specific. Also, you are free to dream in your utopia where ad blockers don't serve a need, just don't expect everyone to follow you there.

> That's because from what you wrote, you don't seem to understand how these ad platforms work

Would be happy if you could explain where I got it wrong.

They're not gaining out of thin air. They're making a commission on how much they are saving for the advertisers (and hence the advertisees). They're creating immense value, of which, they are taking a small commission. If they were not creating immense value, the advertisers would have no need to use them. They would continue to make their businesses big enough to buy Superbowl ads (or equivalent).

> Taking away what exactly?

By blocking the ads, other people are paying for YOUR use of these services. It's the moral equivalent of not paying taxes, although it is not illegal... yet.

> Would be happy if you could explain where I got it wrong.

For example, you think this is how ad targeting by Facebook and Google works:

> in today's standards they only serve as a way to guess-timate person X bought toothpaste B because of ad campaign Z

And you think this is true:

> ads are not a game changer to consumer behavior.

It's a complete waste of time for me to debate with someone who thinks ads don't affect consumer behavior.

I will just leave this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623858

You fail to prove why my logic is wrong and answer your own questions instead, then on top of that make sure to sprinkle vague insults at me! I won't bother providing rebuttals to the rest of your arguments. You make sure you have a good day, moron!

Those are the REALLY creepy ones, and yet, we never talk about them ...

The issue you raised about getting targtted ads is fine, I don't think many will dissagree with you, but its about having the option to turn it off. Theres the disconnect. When you're forced into an ecosystem that you cant tailor, it leaves a bad taste.

Facebook, Samsung and Google let you turn this functionality off. They're legally required to do so in parts of the world but they give this option to everyone.

Edit: From the links you sent it doesn't explicitly say it sends screenshots. It sounds more like the ACR is run on device and then the result of that is sent to Samsung.

- I'm angry because people let their dogs poop on my garden

- People let their dogs poop on my garden too and I'm not bothered by it!