Hello!
Regarding what Gamers Nexus recently disclosed regarding LG TVs in their latest video I think its finally time to do what I can to mitigate it.
I cant root it since the firmware is too new and I cant afford a new TV either. My best bet would be blocking all LG IPs network-wide and disconnecting it from the network. (Although I understand even that might not be enough, its the best I can do right now)
I was thinking of using an old Raspberry to atleast access youtube and my media server, however I dont know what would be a good OS/distro to run this on. Preferably I would want to use something like an old PS4 controller as the remote.
Anyone here who has any suggestions or living room setups to suggest? Any and all tips are welcome.
Not a popular answer, but Apple TV is the best out of the box experience. Zero ads, massive longevity. Mine is like 7 years old and still running the latest tvOS.
If you have the cash and inclination, Nvidia Shield is the hackers choice. Zero hardware upgrades in years tho, but software aplenty.
Just don’t let your smart TV access the internet in any situation, there’s no need. It’s just a stupid display.
The launcher is a massive ad for Apple’s services though.
What? There’s one icon that says “TV”. You can move it to the bottom and you won’t see any apple stuff beyond that.
Apple TV’s launcher was recently “updated” to showcase whatever latest content is being pushed through Apple’s own services. Which is advertisement.
What ”launcher”? The TV app? You can just move it away. There is no launcher anywhere, every service along with AppleTV+ is just a separate application
Launcher, home screen, app screen, whateveryouwannacallit of an Apple TV unit.
Remember, we’re talking about a replacement for shitty ad-infested “smart” TV interfaces - not an app. Apple’s TV app is not relevant here.
Are apple TVs not phoning home?
If anything I’d imagine they’re one of the hardest companies to block, considering most apple users have a thousand idevices that could smuggle messages, even with all communications turned off.
Not at this scale. Remember that Apple is a hardware company first. They make money from hardware and app stores.
Google is the worlds largest ad company who dabble in hardware and services to increase their ad revenue.
They’re still a public company, and Im sure the heat is on their C suite cause they haven’t had any successful hardware releases since the M series processor was first released.
Not selling “anonymous” data would look to shareholders as thrown away profit, which they’re even able to sue for.
So I’d be insanely surprised if they weren’t surveiling their users - but unlike google and all, they own their entire closed-source software and hardware empire, so the likelihood of catching them is also valuably low.
Just to check, would Apple’s commitment to DEI policies look as thrown-away profit to shareholders?
I got an even better question for you: Is that relevant here?
Cause I don’t think it is at all, but to answer anyways I think DEI is a valuable tool to assist picking the best person for a job, independent of race - as there is a racist bias in many hiring positions. I don’t think its perfect, but honestly I don’t think anything in US is.
And I think apple cares about DEI cause their marketing team said it makes money. Full stop.
People love when their obsession might align with their morals, but its important to remember if 2028 goes Republican in US they probably won’t even do a logo change that pride month, cause all rainbow capitalism ever is is marketing.
Yes, it’s relevant, because DEI inherently limits what the company does, and yet the shareholders voted to keep it. Apparently Apple’s shareholders aren’t bigoted idiots.
Nice job showing your ass here, because Apple never ‘changed the logo’ for the pride month. Where the fuck are they supposed to change it, on the Macbooks?
And Google spyware is all open source?
Google’s just using linux for its price, but the GPL of AOSP does a lot of heavy lifting for reverse engineering efforts like this.
edit: not that that matters at all to apple spying on users - like them scanning all Iclouds openly wasn’t even that long ago
Every cloud provider scans their storage, because the law is like that.
People have gotten their MS accounts closed when Onedrive was still called Skydrive due to automated scans finding suspicious activity
Damn, I forgot we all live in America - and so do all tech companies in the globe
The person in question was German. Microsoft found suspicious images on their Skydrive and shut down the whole MS account, Xbox and all.
What was it? Pictures of his kids on the beach, which the puritan American algorithm determined as evil
People do pick up Pixel phones to install GrapheneOS on. How many people pick up Apple phones/tablets and are able to install another OS on it and have it as functional as GrapheneOS?
Same with smartwatches which from the Android side can be used offline with apps like Gadgetbridge to retrieve data without giving your watch internet access and not using the official apps.
Apple is very account and OS centric wanting to funnel everything through them. Exception has been MacOS devices which has had better luck with stuff like Asahi Linux.
“Find My” network is pretty strict by its nature, if you’re talking about that. Realistically speaking, I wouldn’t be scared of it, because I can’t see any vector from which it can be dangerous to the end user.
Nonetheless, “Find My” is an optional feature and can be fully disabled. Other Apple web-services can be blocked on a network level, if you want it for some reason. But, IMO, at this paranoia level, the only right option is OSS with a strict firewall.