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A comment on I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in with a Lenovo laptop. Parent comment

Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by UI_at_80x24 on Monday October 24, 2022 @08:26AM (#33315784)
Nvidia shield perhaps?

Just side load an Android app called "NetGuard" which is a free firewall app on Android (though it's only available on the Android phone, but you can still sideload it on the Shield TV). Download the NetGuard APK file and then install it on your Shield TV using a 3rd party file manager app (you can find the NetGuard .APK file on Google search, or you could use an APK extractor and extract the NetGuard app from your Android phone after downloading it from the Play Store). You might need to also download a 3rd party launcher to see the side loaded Android apps as it will not appear on the stock Android TV home launcher. Then open the NetGuard app and disable network connections to the "Software Upgrade" app, then switch on the NetGuard toggle and it will block the "Software Upgrade" system app from accessing the internet, therefore it cannot download the software update and then prompt you to install it with an annoying pop up screen message.

If you get a software update message and the software update gets downloaded, just go to the app settings of "Software Upgrade" and delete the app cache and data.

Once you have the NetGuard app enabled, it should auto start every time you boot up the Shield TV and it will always run in the background. I suggest that you regularly open the NetGuard app and have it in the background so just incase Android OS puts it to sleep.

Additionally, I suggest you go to Google Play Services and the Google app and disable all the app permissions to access storage or change system settings (though if you use things like Google Assistant or voice search, you may need to leave the microphone permission on). Do the same for the other Nvidia apps which you might think may try to control or change settings on your Shield TV without your permission.

I'm still on Android 8.0 on my 2017 Shield and I'm happy with it. I don't really need any extra features and nothing needs to be fixed. This is the only method I found to work. I have tried to delete the "Software Upgrade" app package from my computer using Android ADB but I just couldn't do it (maybe Nvidia blocked it). So the firewall method is the only option. I don't know if Nvidia made changes and blocked this method in newer updates, but try it and let me know if it works.

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by sdiq on Monday October 24, 2022 @08:51AM (#33315991)
Samsung has now decided that for me to use the camera on my Android phone, i must give full permission to something called Nearby Devices. Thankfully, i can live without the camera but for the first time, i mulling over moving to Apple.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by galangalalgol on Monday October 24, 2022 @10:11AM (#33316859)
Samsung has fallen far. I switched to a cheap version of the pixel last time I got a new phone. Much longer os update cycle, and they essentially always get rom support first of all the phones. There is certainly better hardware put there but it only has google adware not the vendor's and Google's adware. And roms with no google are am option. I think I may consider an iphone when it gets usb-c but I would miss having a fedora install on my phone to do weird stuff. If they gave me a way to get a terminal where I could have rootless docker or jails on an iphone. I'd be on it. Bonus for having the usbc recognize keyboards, thumb drives and Ethernet adapters.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by RunSet on Monday October 24, 2022 @07:38PM (#33324127)
> I switched to a cheap version of the pixel last time I got a new phone.

Recommend GrapheneOS for your Pixel phone. It is so good I wonder how long it will last.

https://grapheneos.org/

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by P5fRxh5kUvp2th on Monday October 24, 2022 @10:15AM (#33316907)
Apple's privacy stance is why I'll never move to Android.

And yes, I get it, they're not perfect, but they're the better of 2 bad options.

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by folbec on Monday October 24, 2022 @12:48PM (#33319098)
Don't count your chickens yet :

https://www.thespl.it/p/apples-sleeping-advertising-business

" For the past five years, Apple has been setting up for what will soon be its most profitable product line. It's not a new phone or computer: it's advertising. "

As some C-suite suit bonus will depend on that, you can be sure that the various protections will evaporate over the years.

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by throw10920 on Monday October 24, 2022 @02:35PM (#33320555)
> they're not perfect, but they're the better of 2 bad options
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by ztjio on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @07:33PM (#33337663)
Fearmongering or maybe you just haven't been watching? Apple has already been doing advertising for years now. They make it quite easy to disable any tracking you might be concerned about. There's zero reason to think they'll change that.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by citizenpaul on Monday October 24, 2022 @04:58PM (#33322606)
Apple has been sliding. It is unavoidable. Your privacy is simply too valuable to let you keep it.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by ben_w on Wednesday October 26, 2022 @04:19PM (#33348833)
Fortunately, there are now laws to make privacy rather less profitable to violate.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by citizenpaul on Thursday October 27, 2022 @07:41PM (#33365568)
Perhaps in Europe or Canada. As far as the US I'm not aware of any laws with teeth.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by ben_w on Friday October 28, 2022 @06:57AM (#33369810)
"With teeth" is something I can't comment on as I'm not a lawyer, but I thought California had something similar to GDPR?
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by secondcoming on Monday October 24, 2022 @11:36AM (#33318092)
Nokia do android phones. I've not noticed any privacy-creep in mine.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by _carbyau_ on Monday October 24, 2022 @06:53PM (#33323708)
Nokia did the Android One for all their phones at one point. Now they don't. That doesn't mean anything in itself though.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by z3t4 on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @02:41AM (#33327030)
> i mulling over moving to Apple.

Pest or cholera - that's what happens when there is a monopoly and the monopoly buys out or sue every competitor. Google and Apple are laughing all the way to the bank, Just like Microsoft for PC.

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by egypturnash on Monday October 24, 2022 @09:48AM (#33316556)
Damn. That is a hell of a lot of inobvious, complicated stuff to "just" do.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by aasasd on Monday October 24, 2022 @09:53AM (#33316614)
> I suggest that you regularly open the NetGuard app and have it in the background so just incase Android OS puts it to sleep.

Shouldn't happen since NetGuard works as a ‘vpn client’ to pass connections through the app—so afaik reasonably it should stay working as long as the pseudo-vpn-connection is up.

(Not to be confused with actually connecting to a vpn server, which it doesn't do.)

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by zem on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @12:43AM (#33326334)
I run blokada on my phone, which also acts as a pseudo vpn, and that does have problems with dying randomly and needing to be restarted. not sure if it's a bug in the software or a general android issue.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by aasasd on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @07:41AM (#33329187)
Perhaps Blokada doesn't properly run the background service, with a persistent notification. The notification is necessary since around Android 9 or so—and while NetGuard's ‘vpn’ is indicated in the status bar, it also still has a notification.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by zem on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @10:46AM (#33331159)
no, it has a persistent notification, but maybe they do something else wrong if other vpns work fine
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by aasasd on Sunday October 30, 2022 @05:07PM (#33398710)
By the way: I semi-randomly landed again on the dontkillmyapp site, and it notes that killing background apps works differently on different phones—presumably first of all between various manufacturers, since they tend to modify Android somewhat deeply: https://dontkillmyapp.com/google

More to the point, the site reminded me that you might want to verify if Blokada is exempted from ‘battery optimizations’ (works via app info —> ‘Battery’ —> ‘Battery optimization’ for me). I checked NetGuard on my phone, and sure enough I have the ‘optimization’ disabled for the app.

(Let me know if you see this comment, or I'm gonna notify you manually.)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by zem on Sunday October 30, 2022 @05:13PM (#33398767)
hey, thanks for following up! I checked and blokada is set to "unrestricted battery use", so I'm going to guess it's just buggy (the previous version didn't have this issue)
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by Damogran6 on Monday October 24, 2022 @10:46AM (#33317360)
I hope you see the irony in your post. Do you expect the average consumer do this?
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by jsight on Monday October 24, 2022 @04:48PM (#33322509)
I see neither irony, nor any indication of an expectation for average consumers. This is s̵p̵a̵r̵t̵a̵ hackernews.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by alanh on Monday October 24, 2022 @12:17PM (#33318662)
Call me petty, but I’m downvoting for your use of the word "just" to introduce paragraphs of highly technical work-around.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by qikInNdOutReply on Monday October 24, 2022 @03:26PM (#33321251)
Its a unjust world. But each of the Startwords increases diffulty. Simply just quickly ..
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by jsight on Monday October 24, 2022 @04:49PM (#33322520)
Hi petty, Sometimes the word just isn't meant to imply that a task is easy. It can be a little tongue in cheek too.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by rsanheim on Monday October 24, 2022 @01:42PM (#33319840)
Wow. I think your reply demonstrates the crux of the issue perfectly. I can't tell if its satire or not.

It is insane that this level of workaround and hacks is required to avoid advertising and crapware on a £500+ _television_. Normal people have almost no hope for a good experience when you consider something like a Lenovo laptop from the OP.

You have the manufacture-installed adware, windows 10 + edge nonsense constantly nagging you, and then there is just the state of the web itself. Its all just too much.

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by ghostbrainalpha on Monday October 24, 2022 @02:07PM (#33320190)
It's not a joke. Remember you are still on "Hacker News".

A lot of us love this stuff, irony acknowledged.

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by unethical_ban on Monday October 24, 2022 @04:52PM (#33322545)
It should be a joke, though.

It's one thing to hack for fun or to find new uses for hardware and software. It's another to live in a world where we purchase devices for hundreds of dollars, only to have a bait-and-switch on the software and suddenly we get ads on our splash page and a slower UI.

I'm glad there are workarounds, but they _shouldn't be needed_.

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by qikInNdOutReply on Monday October 24, 2022 @03:16PM (#33321115)
Dystopian capitalism, living the scream.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by api on Monday October 24, 2022 @08:17PM (#33324488)
The thing that amazes me is the sheer amount of money that seems to be in advertising. It’s sometimes more profitable to surveil or shoehorn in ads than to sell products.

Could this be somehow related to two decades of cheap money and the bloated corporate budgets it created?

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by cheq on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @05:00PM (#33336125)
It works, there wouldn't be so much advertising without the gains. Of course in this process lots of companies and business, amateurs in advertising, loose money, and of course big companies try new stuff everytime and they loose money too. I'm a marketer and I really feel the ad sector is like a disservice to humanity, trowing money to the script driven money factory when lots of people can't even eat every day.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by soulofmischief on Monday October 24, 2022 @03:20PM (#33321181)
It's extremely hilarious that this wall of detailed instructions begins with "Just".
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by _dain_ on Monday October 24, 2022 @03:31PM (#33321341)
It's a load-bearing just.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by JamesianP on Monday October 24, 2022 @05:36PM (#33322978)
I really don't think it was that bad. I'd put it in a DIY category with self-install of internet service or hooking up your own car alarm or other such "beneath the surface" technical things non-technical people manage to do for themselves every day by following youtube videos or whatever.

Either way do we need a new post every hour making this same point from yet a different angle?

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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by bdowling on Monday October 24, 2022 @05:35PM (#33322955)
It's so simple, I don't understand why everyone's grandparents don't do this.
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Re:I help seniors with technology issues. A regular came in ... by Animats on Monday October 24, 2022 @06:43PM (#33323624)
It's getting harder and harder to turn this stuff off. Firefox wants to talk to its Sync and Pocket servers. I still have an Android phone with F-droid, no Google account, and all Google services turned off, but I don't know if that will work in my next phone.
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