@hansolo@lemmy.today

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• Ah shit, Android. You’re right. I’m using mostly FOSS/F-Droid apps and totally forgot about that. Good catch, I’m a liar.

  Front ends for YT, so I never actually touch it. Try and use OpenStreetMaps/CoMaps as much as I can,

  on Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain in c/technology@lemmy.world · 10h ago

• I haven’t touched a Google product in months. Pretty sure I’m good.

  Edit: Totally forgot about Android, dur.

  on Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain in c/technology@lemmy.world · 17h ago

• This should be the universal takeaway.

  on LibreOffice developer explains why it cannot display some Microsoft Office charts in c/technology@lemmy.world · 1d ago

• It’s a throw away computer. They went out and got a random shitbox from Andrei Blahblahnov at his corner computer repair shop that no one from any intelligence service would ever think to go to ahead of time.

  Use the shit once, literally set it on fire in a field 30 minutes later.

  on Putin casts online vote using unlicensed Windows on an American Dell PC in c/technology@lemmy.world · 3d ago

• Hey, so first, off, I watched the entire GN video today. You’re correct about the SSID and MAC address stuff - fair point. And holy shit, LG. It’s like a creepy fuck competition.

  Something that’s interesting is that it’s not always for every single TV from the company. FWIW.

  From this manual on Samsung TVs on how to turn off the microphone (I’ve had a good run with Samsung equipment (I know, I know) which I never let touch the internet. Maybe I just bought my last TV from them).

  You can turn on or off the microphone by using the switch at the bottom of the TV. If microphone is turned off, All voice and sound features using microphone are not available.

  This function is supported only in QN7C/QN8C/QN9**C/ Q7C/Q8C/QN8C/QN9C/S9*C Series.

  manuals.plus/…/q60c-qled-4k-smart-tv-manual

  Which is only 70+ inch TVs. I went looking for one on my TV, and there isn’t a switch - but there’s also no voice options for me to enable, either. Meaning there’s no microphone to start with. I don’t even have enough money to creep on, I’m only buying some pissant, baby-sized TV! (It’s also the biggest TV I’ve ever owned).

  I’m also not in the US, so it’s possible that privacy laws being what they are in some places, it’s not universal.

  on It’s not just LG. Every TV company is spying on you in c/privacy@lemmy.world · 3d ago

• But the TV will think it’s their conversations, that Bob Jones. It has no way to know it moved houses. It will attribute it all to someone else.

  Also, just get power strip with an off switch and cut power to the TV when not in use. No power, no data collection.

  Once again, a solvable problem if you just think it through.

  on It’s not just LG. Every TV company is spying on you in c/privacy@lemmy.world · 4d ago

• Sure, but you’re selling a TV to someone else. What better way to obfuscate your own data then letting someone else have their “Bob Jones TV” connected to Bob_JonesWifi, and wow, we got 3 years of data? It’s not exactly going to catch you.

  on It’s not just LG. Every TV company is spying on you in c/privacy@lemmy.world · 4d ago

• This is sort of a solvable problem is the thing. If you just check there’s no open networks in/near your home, and do a factory reset when you sell it, you’re covering both of the hypotheticals you mentioned.

  If the TV can’t talk to anyone, it can’t talk to anyone. It’s too expensive to insert complements into millions of units for edge cases when so many people connect their TVs anyway.

  on It’s not just LG. Every TV company is spying on you in c/privacy@lemmy.world · 4d ago

• Right. So, I’m a privacy advocate, and there’s a looooooot of conspiracy theory stuff like this out there. Yes, there are real versions of this, but companies are also notoriously cheap. There’s a point of diminishing returns on how many components they’re going to slap on a board in hopes of netting data on 1000 more users. Something that costs 2 cents more per board will go into millions of devices and cost hundreds of thousands over a production run… To net $30,000 of data? Experiments usually fizzle based on that math. They’re very often glad to have the fools that connect the TV themselves, which is an increasing proportion of consumers, I think about 65%+ of them last I checked. They’re already eating well without getting overly silly and crazy about how these things work.

  on It’s not just LG. Every TV company is spying on you in c/privacy@lemmy.world · 4d ago

• Is there evidence of that? Or is this also like saying an unconnected TV might be slipped the WiFi password by a connected dishwasher through a series of ultrasonic beeps? Sure, not impossible, but also not likely in every home.

  on It’s not just LG. Every TV company is spying on you in c/privacy@lemmy.world · 4d ago

• Lol, this is like both sides praying to the same god before a battle.

  The other guys are doing the same thing as you.

  on Iran and Houthi rebels used Anthropic's Claude AI to target US warships and build hypersonic missiles — Houthi rebels also used the bot to code ballistic missile guidance systems in c/technology@lemmy.world · 14 Sep 2026

• My answer was taking the piss, it at least I thought it was.

  on Wait, there's books and classes on linux? in c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world · 13 Sep 2026

• Pink guy should be “Me who asks Claude to fix the things I broke asking ChatGPT what to do.”

  on Wait, there's books and classes on linux? in c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world · 13 Sep 2026

• Brilliant!

  on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in c/technology@lemmy.world · 7 Sep 2026

• It’s fair to make it “you don’t watch TV, TV watches you!”

  Which I feel like might have been a real Yakov Smirnoff joke way back when.

  on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in c/technology@lemmy.world · 7 Sep 2026

• Willing to bet $10 the next guy drives it straight into the ground harder and faster.

  on [Opinion] Apple CEO Tim Cook's Legacy Is Dull Products And Spineless Capitulation in c/technology@lemmy.world · 5 Sep 2026

• I recommend listening to the podcast Darknet Diaries. It’s about sketchy things online, and very often has real accounts from real criminals talking about what they did and how they got caught.

  Very often, people only get caught because 1) they get huge and greedy enough that many governments are actively trying to hunt them down, 2) they make a stupid mistake that tracks back to them personally.

  There is no “the government can trace everything!” In reality, it’s more like “if someone does something egregious, a few people will spend months or years trying to find them. And maybe they’ll catch a lucky break.” Hacker OpSec is typically more than enough to frustrate the FBI for years. If they even care to look for attackers. The FBI can’t just show up in Romania and arrest people, either, so it takes international government cooperation. Which is slooooooow to move.

  on I rented a car, and within hours, my driver's license was for sale in c/technology@lemmy.world · 4 Sep 2026

• And yet, so many people had their retirement totally boned by the surprise collapse. A looooot of people missed the signs of 2007 as they turned into 2008. It wasn’t some clear sign that everyone talked about. Things just felt off and wobbly.

  I dunno, man. I’ve been hearing about the bubble popping for half as long as LLMs have been in popular use. At least 18 months, almost up to 2 years of bubble doomerism for something that’s only been out and really in common use for 3 and a half years or so. To me, that’s closer to the sky is falling doomers that at every year is an economic collapse. Say it 20 years in a row and you’ll get a hit eventually. It’s not skill or accuracy, it’s simply statistics.

  on How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? in c/technology@lemmy.world · 4 Sep 2026

• The data gets sold in blocks usually. Could be for identity theft, or SIM swap attacks or any number of things. A lot of things online want an ID scan now, so this is a huge benefit to scammers.

  on I rented a car, and within hours, my driver's license was for sale in c/technology@lemmy.world · 3 Sep 2026

• The problem with making doomer predictions is that eventually you either need to be right about doom, or keep moving the goalposts.

  AI crash and burn economic apocalypse doomer posts going back two years have aged like milk. (Insert Caddyshack “Well? We’re waiting!” meme here)

  I grew up in deep red conspiracy theory territory. I’m sorry to tell you that 90% of the time, Ed Zitron is functionally no different than l all the people on Art Bell in 1997 or 2003 predicting UFO disclosure and full civil war and giant earthquakes and economic melt down. They believed it themselves. They spoke with conviction. They said what people wanted to hear. And they said it all again the next year, and the next, and the next. The only people who did get it right were the ones that took a pretty chill, middle of the road “well, not really” perspective. Or who said it enough times that they happened to say it in early 2008 and timing was on their side one time.

  What’s even worse is that Zitron gets insider info quite a lot. And yet can’t help but make overly dire predictions in spite of his genuine advantage!

  He’s an Anti-AI preacher. That’s it, and anyone unwilling to see that doesn’t mind.

  on How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? in c/technology@lemmy.world · 2 Sep 2026

• Sure, but that’s just a software choice. A shitty, sneaky software choice, but still. That’s not adding in a SIM card, data subscription, radio, etc.

  on Stopping the smart TV from being used against you. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 31 Aug 2026

• My friend, we don’t need to speculate. The industry gives us all the info we need.

  prnewswire.com/…/sixty-one-percent-of-us-internet…

  worldscreen.com/majority-of-u-s-viewers-use-smart…

  Right now, it’s about consolidating power at the TV operating system level. Make the TV replace devices like a Roku box and you get all that data. 61% of US households use the TV as their main streaming device. So that’s about 82 million households. Some stats get as high as 70%

  www.aidigital.com/blog/connected-tv-stats

  So connected TV use is growing at a huge rate.

  It’s a hard number to get, but I’ve seen estimates that smart tvs are subsidized by about $200 per unit based on a value of $120 per viewer per year on days collection when they’re connected. Average about 2 people per household and a 3 year lifespan of the TV, and that’s $720-$200, so $500 net profit from data sales on average per unit. So already that’s close to $40-$50 billion in data sales alone across the smart TV market in the US. Without adding in hidden bells and whistles to collect more data.

  But the gap the industry sees isn’t people wisely not connecting their TVs. It’s that there’s so many connected devices! They want the TV to just replace some of them.

  mediapost.com/…/89-of-us-households-now-have-stre…

  And it’s working. Simply causing TV OS bloat to try and get ahead of human laziness and undercut Roku is the goal. With huge gains to be made without spending a penny on things like embedded sims cards and cellular service for 40 million TVs sold annually in the US to collect data on a group that’s already shifting patterns to the TV as the primary device. Why bother? It’s wasted money for most units sold. If companies just sold cheap, subsidized TVs that demanded they must be connected to work, then that’s the easiest, cheapest, highest profit angle to play.

  on Stopping the smart TV from being used against you. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 30 Aug 2026

• I’d genuinely love to see real evidence of any of these things being used in a wide range of models.

  These are mostly expensive options (a SIM card for every TV? really?) and require maintenance and finesse, and aren’t needed for the majority of units shipped. Occam’s razor would suggest they’re happy enough with anyone stupid enough to connect the TV that all this work for 5-10% of their market isn’t worth the additional marginal cost to each unit.

  on Stopping the smart TV from being used against you. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 29 Aug 2026

• Lenny, never let that TV touch the internet. Who’s that mic going to talk to with no connectivity?

  on Stopping the smart TV from being used against you. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 29 Aug 2026

• Only items with the price subsidized by the speculative price of data harvested from the consumer.

  Pay full (real) price for a higher end product and you skip the game entirely.

  on Stopping the smart TV from being used against you. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 29 Aug 2026

• No, my friend. Maybe it’s future news!

  on finally, some sane news in c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world · 27 Aug 2026

• And spent $50 million in legal fees before ever donating a cent.

  on finally, some sane news in c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world · 27 Aug 2026

• Dozens, ya say?

  From a company that has 164,000 employees?

  OK. I mean, that sucks for them, but that’s about it.

  on Dozens of engineers laid off at Apple headquarters in c/technology@lemmy.world · 27 Aug 2026

• Not me!

  • average person
  on YOLO in c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world · 22 Aug 2026

• Not when on the other side is “jump through these hoops and give us this data for a $40 discount!!!”

  They’re leveraging information asymmetry. It’s as one-sided as it can get.

  on Delta Will Use AI To Cut Costs And Set A Different Ticket Price For Every Passenger—CEO Says Profits Could Rise 50% in c/technology@lemmy.world · 22 Aug 2026

• 100% true. When I visit my parents, Home Depot is like the Best Buy of home stuff. No one knows shit, no one cares. Ace is where you go to have someone take a minute longer to give you real info. It’s like some secret third space where if they served coffee or beer, people would spend half their day there.

  on Best Buy 'repairs' customer's gaming laptop by simply removing half the RAM— claims unit in question only accepts 32 GB of RAM despite listing a 64GB configuration in c/technology@lemmy.world · 20 Aug 2026

• Not really. If confirmed, it means someone somewhere was smart enough to do something like drive across a border in a truck with fake papers. It’s very, very unlikely that Nvidia directly sold to anyone in a way that would get them in trouble.

  on Nvidia AI Chip Found in New Russian Missile, Ukraine Says in c/technology@lemmy.world · 14 Aug 2026

• A clone of MS DOS Shell and maybe Win 3.1 is all anyone really needs.

  on I can't use Linux! It's too hard! in c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world · 13 Aug 2026