I’m writing this as someone who has mostly lived in the US and Canada. Personally, I find the whole “lying to children about Christmas” thing just a bit weird (no judgment on those who enjoy this aspect of the holiday). But because it’s completely normalized in our culture, this is something many people have to deal...
I’d like to start a discussion about TV privacy in 2023. I’ve never been interested in having a TV, but recently I was thinking of getting one. Looking into it, the privacy implications seem horrible. All the major brands seem to have cameras, microphones, and content recognition software. I can’t believe how dystopian it...
Wow that’s another level of deceptive. Do you know if the major brands like Samsung, LG, and Sony do things like that? Or are they all equally shitty at this point?
It didn’t cross my mind that I could run Linux on a tv. (I figured, however, that the pre-installed software is built on Linux.) Are you talking about something like LinuxTV.org
I’m aware of and OK with the idea that Netflix (or whatever) knows what I’m watching on their service when I’m logged in. I’m not OK with the TV itself collecting extra data, especially automated content recognition or my private conversations with their microphone. It’s nuts that that’s allowed.
I thought PC monitors would be higher priced than commercial displays, but I haven’t really looked into it. It sounds like I should get a pihole either way.
I think projectors are great. In fact, I currently have one. But there are lots of trade offs. They’re big and take up lots of space, especially the good ones. Placement can be awkward even if you get a short throw, unless you ceiling mount, which isn’t always practical. Relatedly, it can be a pain to hook up to sound because the projector is in the back while you need sound from the front. Image quality can be decent but is still way worse than pretty much all modern TVs. (I hear laser projectors kinda fix this but they’re even more expensive.) It doesn’t turn on instantly; there’s typically a significant warm up period for the lamp. Some units have a noisy fan because the lamp produces a lot of heat. You need a large clear wall space or a rollable screen. I think there’s a reason why projectors are typically in movie rooms and not for more casual spaces.
All this to say, projectors are great but not for all contexts. I wish the decision to get a projector and the decision to get a privacy respecting device were two completely unrelated decisions.
Great detailed comment. My concern is that I’m not clear on whether the TV tries to collect data even without an internet connection, and sends the collected data if you ever connect it in the future (e.g. for a firmware update). It’s such a poorly regulated industry, I have no trust in the companies imposing any reasonable limits on their own behavior.
Right, these seem like reasonable hypotheses. I see a LOT of “innovation” happening in this space, though. In the future, or maybe even the present, I think it would be trivial to use speech to text and store conversations as small text files. Let’s say anytime it hears a specific brand name, “Cheerios” or “Toyota”, it records the conversation in a text file and sends it to marketers for research. It’s really not unthinkable.
The recent Mozilla report confirms that cars are using your microphone to determine what song or podcast you’re listening to, and listening to your conversations, so it’s not as if this is paranoid conjecture. If there’s money in it, and no rules to stop them, I think it’s almost inevitable.
I think automatic content recognition works by capturing still frames at strategic moments, so it may not take as much data as we think. For example, studios apparently hide watermarks that identify shows and movies. Then you would just need to make the tv detect the watermarks, not store and send screenshots of the screen. Then it can send a tiny CVS file of when and for how long you watched the show. It wouldn’t even need to know the name of the show. The watermark could be an alphanumeric code, and so even new shows would be detectable.
May I ask why you updated the firmware? I keep seeing people say that they disconnect the tv from the internet except for firmware updates, but if it works fine on day one and it’s always off line, why upgrade the firmware at all?
The best thing to do is to demand better public transportation and walk ability. We’ll always have some cars but we should move away from car dependence anyways.
This article doesn’t mention that the last straw was a tweet where he joked “You’re free to leave at anytime”, by which he meant “kill yourself if you’re so concerned about the planet”.
I don’t understand these “That’s just how the world is. Shame on you for discussing it” comments. I think it is very much worth discussing this, even if the conclusion of the discussion is that it’s not worth changing after all.
You point out similar dynamics on Reddit, but it’s obviously not exactly the same. The design of Reddit is such that there is a much stronger tendency for main communities to arise. By contrast, lots of smaller communities on Lemmy look like ghost towns, where they would be much healthier if they combined numbers. “You’re free to do whatever” doesn’t address the systemic issue.
That said, I don’t think this is obvious either way. There are tons of benefits to the current system too. That’s why it’s worth coming back to this topic every once in a while. If these sorts of nitty gritty design discussions bore you, why are you on this community?
I hate that cars can go around running over people every single day without making the news, but this e-scooter accident is supposedly worthy of national news.
Every accident is regrettable, but the number of accidents we tolerate from scooters and bikes can’t be zero. Micro mobility is still MUCH safer than cars. I bet if the e-scooter driver was killed by an unnecessarily big truck on the road, it would still be called an “e-scooter accident” if it even made the news at all.
So long as they aren’t going full speed while on sidewalks and they’re adjusting their speed according to the number of pedestrians, I fully agree. Sometimes you have to go at a walking pace on a crowded sidewalk, and if it’s an empty suburban sidewalk with clear visibility, I see no problem at all.
Should you have to walk your scooter on an otherwise empty strip mall sidewalk whenever there is even a single pedestrian in eye sight? I think it’s fine to walk the scooter before crossing paths and then get back on.
The article expresses multiple views. Half the article highlights a call by various groups to enforce the ban on scooters completely. The title obviously implies that the solution is an enforcement of Toronto’s ban, not better infrastructure.
Too much is made of the shrinking user base. I’m sure they’ll come back with a vengeance come the start of the school year in the northern hemisphere.
Also, maybe a tool like this shouldn’t be privately funded? Most of the technology is based on university funded research we all paid for. mRNA vaccine research was similarly funded with public money in mostly universities, and now we have to pay some private company to sell it back to us. How is that efficient? AI should be common property.
Less than a million dollars a day for everyone who wants to in the whole world to use AI right now? That’s peanuts. A single city bus costs $5-800k to buy. Even if costs goes up to several tens of million a day for access for the whole world that’s incredibly affordable.
It’s crazy that something so useful and so cheap to run can’t be sustained in the current system. This seems like an argument against a market based solution to AI.
Even if costs goes up to several tens of million a day for access for the whole world that’s incredibly affordable.
With how many people are already using AI, it’s frankly mind boggling that they’re only losing $700k a day.
You’re also ignoring the fact that costs don’t scale proportionally with usage. Infrastructure and labor can be amortized over a greater user base. And these services will get cheaper to run per capita as time goes on and technology improves.
Finally, there are positive economic externalities to public AI availability. Imagine the improvements to the economy, education and health if everyone in the world had free access to high quality AI in their native language, no matter how poor or how remote. Some things, like schools, roads and healthcare, are not ideally provisioned under a free market. AI is looking to be another.
There are positive economic externalities to public everything availability. We don’t live in this kind of world though, someone will always try to claim a larger share due to human nature.
Saying “Things are inevitably bad because of human nature” is just very weird, since we obviously do have good policies and we try to solve other problems like crime and poverty. It sounds like you already agree that this is good policy? You’re just saying it’s not politically feasible? OK, sure, we probably don’t disagree then.
That being said, I’m not really interested in arguing about the political feasibility (or lack thereof) of having every resource being public.
I am obviously NOT arguing that every resource should be public. This discussion is about AI, which was publicly funded, trained on public data, and is backed by public research. This sleight of hand to make my position sound extreme is, frankly, intellectually dishonest.
there’s also a cost people pay to use these LLMs.
OK, keep the premium subscription going then.
What you’re missing though is that there is an extreme shortage of components.
There’s a shortage, but it’s not “extreme”. ChatGPT is running fine. I can use it anytime I want instantly. You’d be laughed out of the room if you told AI researchers that ChatGPT can’t scale because we’re running out of GPUS. You seem to be looking for reasons to be against this, but these reasons don’t make sense to me, especially since this particular problem would exist whether it’s publicly owned or privately owned.
It’s no secret that Lemmy is shaping up to be a viable alternative to Reddit. The issue it faces however is that it’s still relatively niche and not many people know about it. I propose that we change this. By contacting the mods of large subreddits and asking them to make and promote relevant Lemmy communities we could...
At what age and how do you tell children about the truth of Christmas?
I’m writing this as someone who has mostly lived in the US and Canada. Personally, I find the whole “lying to children about Christmas” thing just a bit weird (no judgment on those who enjoy this aspect of the holiday). But because it’s completely normalized in our culture, this is something many people have to deal...
About 100,000 turn out in London for pro-Palestine rally (www.theguardian.com)
Trump-appointed judge rips Texas law setting up book-ban regime for state's schools (UPDATE: it's going into effect. see blurb) (www.lawdork.com)
“This is textbook compelled speech,” U.S. District Judge Alan Albright ruled in halting enforcement of the law. Texas is appealing....
Is privacy possible with smart TV?
I’d like to start a discussion about TV privacy in 2023. I’ve never been interested in having a TV, but recently I was thinking of getting one. Looking into it, the privacy implications seem horrible. All the major brands seem to have cameras, microphones, and content recognition software. I can’t believe how dystopian it...
Can we prevent cars from sending data to servers if we remove their antennae?
I don’t know anything about cars....
Decision coming in Jordan Peterson's court battle with Ontario college of psychologists (www.cbc.ca)
Should we decide to have a main fediverse community or should we keep posting everything twice?
Hello everyone,...
She was hit by an e-scooter despite Toronto's ban. The city needs to step up regulation, she says (www.cbc.ca)
[❓] ChatGPT's fate hangs in the balance as OpenAI reportedly edges closer to bankruptcy (www.windowscentral.com)
Investors are barely breaking even as the venture is hardly making any profits due to a shortage of chips, divided interests, and more....
It's time to take advantage of Reddit's decline
It’s no secret that Lemmy is shaping up to be a viable alternative to Reddit. The issue it faces however is that it’s still relatively niche and not many people know about it. I propose that we change this. By contacting the mods of large subreddits and asking them to make and promote relevant Lemmy communities we could...