Sorry but this article is just false and misleading.
The company currently has no ability to see what users might be doing when they switch away from its proprietary streaming platform. This is apparently a problem, in that Roku is missing monetization opportunities!
Roku is already doing this and has been since last year. This is not a threat. It is a promise to shareholders and advertisers, and they have already fulfilled it.
I fail to see the claim that the article is false and misleading?
It sounds like what it states is what it is. Replace the phrase “currently has” with “didn’t” and your issue evaporates.
Which seems like unfair criticism given that the present or past tensing of an article’s statements are dependent on when it was written and is a rather fluid and interpretable thing. It’s a reasonable expectation that readers can understand and adjust their perspective of past vs present tense without failing to understand what the article is conveying…
Especially to such a degree where the confusion from the past tense versus present tense of a statement is great enough to be considered “false and misleading”…
I’m glad that The Atlantic is covering this issue. Nothing groundbreaking here for anyone who follows these issues, but the Atlantic’s audience overlaps a lot with actual policymakers and their staffs. The tech companies don’t want to be regulated by the government, so coverage by these types of publications may be a good starting point for reform (whether voluntary or regulated).
Reminds me of those gas stations that play commercials at the pumps. More and more of them are disabling the mute buttons. I only stop at stations with the TV-free pumps now.
They used to let you mute them. But everyone started doing it, so of course they disabled it. Sometimes you can get into the admin menu with the right combo of button presses. I don’t recommend trying this, as most stations have multiple security cameras and your locale might have draconian laws about tampering.
But going into the admin settings and turning them off will probably get you investigated. Just like you're not allowed to walk into the back of the store even if the door is unlocked.
I've literally never seen one of these in southern New England. Even brand new 7-11's and Cumberland Farms' don't have ads on the pumps, nor any mounted TV's.
I just want to emphasize how loud these can be for the unfamiliar as well. Like blaring into your ear while you pump. Also, some of the really loud ones are not synced pump to pump so you’ll get this shouting weird echo while at the pump. I think Tesla probably gave the gas stations a grant to put these things in. It seriously has contributed toward my motivation to go go electric for next car.
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
We managed to pick up some off newegg.ca as recently as a couple of years ago (RCA branded). Only 32-inch panels, though, so if you’re looking for a living room centerpiece, you’re better off going the digital signage route.
My TV has never been near any Internet connection. The source button on the remote has been clicked once, the color settings has been changed once. The only button in regular use is the on/off button. This is the way.
Hopefully they won’t start standardizing TV’s that have to phone home periodically and if they are denied this for long enough, refuse to work until they’ve established a connection to their servers. I’m not aware of anything that does this but it’s definitely what will start happening if enough people disable network connectivity to circumvent smart features. This wouldn’t worry me too much since I’d likely want to use the device as just a display anyway and plug something useful in to the HDMI but if the whole machine is somehow tied up in these sophisticated operating systems, what if they just disable HDMI until they get their way?
There really needs to be laws requiring any smart device to have, like, 20 years of security patches, customer support and liability if anything goes wrong. If they want to place a device, that they insist needs internet access, in my home, they need to, at the very least, pay their way.
I’m one of the crazy people who spent 4 grand on a 85 inch dumb display meant for stores to use as digital signage. Honestly a great decision. It’s no home theater display but damn if it isn’t just as good as any smart tv I’ve seen. I just have it hooked to a raspberry pi running librelec.
My parents’ Sharp has lasted more than 10 years and it’s even a smart tv, but it’s probably way more dumb than the current ones since it could only do Netflix.
Unfortunately some modern TVs do stuff like constantly pester you to connect to the internet, or have offline ads. There have even been trials of Amazon-powered TVs connecting to nearby Echo devices and gaining internet connectivity that way.
Rooting an Android TV gets you there, plus you get a TV that you actually own. It’s super niche and difficult to do, though. Hard to find info on which TVs can be rooted.
Is any of that information centralised anywhere? I still have and love my old dumb TV, but I want to be prepared for when I am inevitably dragged in to the “smart” era.
To understand how unhinged our society is one only needs to understand how we constantly improve our technology, but don’t use it to improve us as a society.
Primitive metallurgy was used to create weapons for millennia before it became commonly used for cookware. Technology has always been primarily used as vector for human beings to control and dominate one another, rather than to assist/improve society.
To be fair, that was back when wildlife was much more of a threat. And probably also a lot more risk of criminals or other bandits. Making a weapon to protect your tribe is not really in the same ball park as this.
I see your point, but I would argue that in a world with nuclear weapons, climate change, and all sorts of shit that seems to be an existential risk, plus the media barrage, people today aren’t exactly feeling safe or comfortable. Hence the desperate hoarding of resources and brutal competition.
Oh man, this is a thing I wish more people understood. The day of the first real human flight and the day a human being walked on ground that wasn’t earth only have about a 66 year gap. A lot of old folks who watched the moon landing saw the invention and proliferation of the airplane in their lifetime.
However, the engrams and algorithms that make up the human mind have been in constant development for tens of thousands of years. Far, far longer if you want to count previous versions that led up to what we’re packing. A popular trope in some older fiction was to displace prehistoric critters into the modern world and detail the chaos. But that’s us. We’re it. We’re the cavemen in a world of microscopic circuit boards.
Our achievements have far outpaced our ability to constrain them. Like, when we discovered radiation, we started putting that shit in everything. Fucking toothpaste. And sure, we learn, we improve, we adapt. Humans are exceptionally good at that. But it just seems to me as it has seemed to far bigger minds than my own that we’re still banging rocks together and fighting over resources, it’s just now the rocks have a faint glow and the resources are measured in GDP
I want to read articles of interest to me easily. Subscriptions to print /text media sources often don’t work out on a value analysis though. The best way to consume media is through specialty sources now. I want the Atlantic for tech articles, another source for fashion, another for sports, and an occasional glance at NYT or the post for key articles. I don’t want to lock myself into a source for subscription. My intrest in this article is worth about 6 seconds of my time to access, about three or four non obnoxious ads, or about 7 cents as an instantaneous micropayment. Exceed any of those limits and I walk away never to return to it. I’m guessing a lot of readers fall somewhere in that range of tolerance. Until micropayments are a thing I think text media like this actually still make sense for ad. Support really. Will block it as much as I can, and I won’t tolerate anything too obnoxious, but the model more or less makes sense. Fuck the paywall - Im surprised that model is sustainable, i walk away instantly with that.
Yup, I’d pay if there was a nice micro payment option. I’d put $X into my browser each month and then websites can get a small payment based on what I read. Ask me the first time to authorize payments for a site in a certain range, and then ask again if you need more than the for some content.
That is much more preferable to ads or a subscription. Until that happens, my ad blocker is staying on and I’m avoiding paywalls.
Our records indicate you haven’t received your Neuralink implant yet. Please report to the Elon Musk Centre for Compulsory Happiness next Thursday at ten. Failure to comply will result in your arrest.
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