It’s mind boggling that in the UK there’s a law that says:
> “A plank of wood must not be carried along a pavement. It can only be moved if it is being unloaded from a vehicle or taken into a building.”
But big tech cannot be regulated at all.
We used to regulate any minor thing that was annoying enough, but a whole industry spying and prying on the whole population is fine.
I remember watching this [1] couple of years ago wrt to capital; market; China; US and I'm starting to believe China's model is one we should strive for. Why isn't there AI scare/doom/replacement talk in China? It's because of that - the capital does not raise above the political authority.
In the interests of accuracy, the law (the Metropolitan Police Act 1839) actually states
"""
54 Prohibition of nuisances by persons in the thoroughfares.
Every person shall be liable to a penalty not more than level 2 on the standard scale, who, within the limits of the metropolitan police district, shall in any thoroughfare or public place, commit any of the following offences; (that is to say,)
...
8. Every person who shall roll or carry any cask, tub, hoop, or wheel, or any ladder, plank, pole, showboard, or placard, upon any footway, except for the purpose of loading or unloading any cart or carriage, or of crossing the footway:
The plank of wood is one element in a much broader statute, rather than an example of hyper-specificity. And it might have been strictly applied at the time, but that doesn't mean you're definitely going to get into trouble nowadays.
In a similar vein, the UK *does* have laws that affect big tech. UK GDPR places requirements on processing of personal data:
Whether that's properly enforced is (as with the plank) a completely different matter.
In the UK, at least, we don't need new regulations, we need to more effectively apply the regulations we already have in place. But there is also a balance to be made between enforcement through fines and enforcement through changing behaviour: it's much better to work with companies to bring them into compliance than it is to just fine them and without actually changing anything.
Samsung is starting to be a little too much creepy.
I don't know if it's just greed or.
I refused to create an account on their galaxy phone because of the mandatory phone number needed. Yes, I know they can harvest it in other ways, it's just a stand.
i wonder if the Samsung / LG stuff is how the stock market seemed so "predictable" to some people in early morning trading for a while... imagine having the keys to buckets containing all the plaintext gathered from all the tvs listening in conference rooms on earnings days...
> confirmation bias, eg. "facebook is secretly listening to you"
Agreeing with your general point - don't jump to conclusions without evidence - but I don't like if we're now establishing the "Facebook/Google/Apple is secretly listening to you" rumors as the canonical example of that behavior, and thereby making those companies immune to further scrutiny.
We've seen that by now there exist both the will and the technical means to pull off stuff like this, so even if it used to be a baseless rumor and urban legend, it deserves to be re-checked periodically, because companies might start to do it for real at some point. Samsung here actually did.
(Google also came awfully close with its "song detector" which is now a stock Android feature I think)
Maybe it's time for something like that, a shared baseline standard of "this thing won't spy on you", with massive financial penalties for companies caught lying about it. Prime adoption by making it a requirement for anything bought by the government.
Then consumers can reliably comparison-shop for a "TV" that doesn't turn into a traitorous 1984 telescreen the moment it breaks out of the LAN or you fail to click "maybe later" on its incessant dark pattern pop-ups.
This is the answer. Lots of people (myself included) are happy to buy a big, cheap TV, but it's cheap because the manufacturer gets money by paid app placement, ads (sometimes), and selling information about you.
A senior friend has bad vision, so I recommended an inexpensive but enormous TV that they can use as a display, and never let it connect to the network. Unfortunately, every few months the display tries to coax them into connecting to WiFi, and it confuses the heck out of them. But, that's the game.
Do a search on X on the topic, the news about Samsung was broken on there by a guy who had rooted his Samsung TV using AI tools and he and others created guides for neutering the stuff out of it
I believe Mistral models are fairly capable at cybersecurity tasks, but I don’t think you could get anything useful out of anything smaller than Mistral Large 4.
It’s mind boggling that in the UK there’s a law that says:
> “A plank of wood must not be carried along a pavement. It can only be moved if it is being unloaded from a vehicle or taken into a building.”
But big tech cannot be regulated at all. We used to regulate any minor thing that was annoying enough, but a whole industry spying and prying on the whole population is fine.
> “A plank of wood must not be carried along a pavement. It can only be moved if it is being unloaded from a vehicle or taken into a building.”
Is that a good law or is it a barnacle? Is it enforced in the UK?
> But big tech cannot be regulated at all.
It cannot be regulated because we let dollar/capital rise above political authority.
I remember watching this [1] couple of years ago wrt to capital; market; China; US and I'm starting to believe China's model is one we should strive for. Why isn't there AI scare/doom/replacement talk in China? It's because of that - the capital does not raise above the political authority.
[1] Eric Li on the CCP and Capital's role in America, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzz5swYfVKk
There are a lot of things you don't have to worry about in China because someone else makes the decision for you. Sure you want to strive for that?
I feel sorry that democracies are failing their citizenry like this.
Any rule is as good as its enforcement.
The plank rule just exists, not enforced, so nobody observes it.
Same will happen with the high-tech regulation. In fact, it is already happening left and right where it does exist.
In the interests of accuracy, the law (the Metropolitan Police Act 1839) actually states
""" 54 Prohibition of nuisances by persons in the thoroughfares.
Every person shall be liable to a penalty not more than level 2 on the standard scale, who, within the limits of the metropolitan police district, shall in any thoroughfare or public place, commit any of the following offences; (that is to say,)
...
8. Every person who shall roll or carry any cask, tub, hoop, or wheel, or any ladder, plank, pole, showboard, or placard, upon any footway, except for the purpose of loading or unloading any cart or carriage, or of crossing the footway:
... """ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/2-3/47/section/54
The plank of wood is one element in a much broader statute, rather than an example of hyper-specificity. And it might have been strictly applied at the time, but that doesn't mean you're definitely going to get into trouble nowadays.
In a similar vein, the UK *does* have laws that affect big tech. UK GDPR places requirements on processing of personal data:
""" Personal data shall be:
(a)processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject (‘lawfulness, fairness and transparency’); """ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2016/679/article/5
Whether that's properly enforced is (as with the plank) a completely different matter.
In the UK, at least, we don't need new regulations, we need to more effectively apply the regulations we already have in place. But there is also a balance to be made between enforcement through fines and enforcement through changing behaviour: it's much better to work with companies to bring them into compliance than it is to just fine them and without actually changing anything.
Samsung is starting to be a little too much creepy.
I don't know if it's just greed or.
I refused to create an account on their galaxy phone because of the mandatory phone number needed. Yes, I know they can harvest it in other ways, it's just a stand.
If people can hustle for a little side money, corporations can do it as well. Why not?
Corporations are considered persons and they need to pay shareholders.
Seriously, it’s pure greed and people who love money enable this, because they think they are immune to this, or harmless.
If they're doing this to TVs, what are they doing with phones?
https://twstalker.com/mike64_t/status/2114150399406202896
Who needs DRM like HDCP if you can just use the capabilities baked into the TV to your advantage?
i wonder if the Samsung / LG stuff is how the stock market seemed so "predictable" to some people in early morning trading for a while... imagine having the keys to buckets containing all the plaintext gathered from all the tvs listening in conference rooms on earnings days...
>how the stock market seemed so "predictable" to some people in early morning trading for a while
Has this been quantified? Otherwise it's easy to fall for confirmation bias, eg. "facebook is secretly listening to you"
> confirmation bias, eg. "facebook is secretly listening to you"
Agreeing with your general point - don't jump to conclusions without evidence - but I don't like if we're now establishing the "Facebook/Google/Apple is secretly listening to you" rumors as the canonical example of that behavior, and thereby making those companies immune to further scrutiny.
We've seen that by now there exist both the will and the technical means to pull off stuff like this, so even if it used to be a baseless rumor and urban legend, it deserves to be re-checked periodically, because companies might start to do it for real at some point. Samsung here actually did.
(Google also came awfully close with its "song detector" which is now a stock Android feature I think)
Y'all remember the Energy Star logo on computers?
Maybe it's time for something like that, a shared baseline standard of "this thing won't spy on you", with massive financial penalties for companies caught lying about it. Prime adoption by making it a requirement for anything bought by the government.
Then consumers can reliably comparison-shop for a "TV" that doesn't turn into a traitorous 1984 telescreen the moment it breaks out of the LAN or you fail to click "maybe later" on its incessant dark pattern pop-ups.
https://ryf.fsf.org
How else will they subsidize the cost of the jumbotron in your living room?
This is the answer. Lots of people (myself included) are happy to buy a big, cheap TV, but it's cheap because the manufacturer gets money by paid app placement, ads (sometimes), and selling information about you.
A senior friend has bad vision, so I recommended an inexpensive but enormous TV that they can use as a display, and never let it connect to the network. Unfortunately, every few months the display tries to coax them into connecting to WiFi, and it confuses the heck out of them. But, that's the game.
This stuffs mad, should I be doing something to my Samsung TV to neuter it? Has anyone rolled all this up somewhere?
There needs to be a class action against these companies. People should straight up go to jail for how invasive these TVs are.
Selling it off might be a good solution
Unplug it.
Do a search on X on the topic, the news about Samsung was broken on there by a guy who had rooted his Samsung TV using AI tools and he and others created guides for neutering the stuff out of it
Not buy smart TVs and especially Samsung smart devices in general?
From what I heard these are especially awful, even by low IoT standards.
All smart TVs are evil and you’d be hard pressed to find a non smart tv these days.
It's as if an intern added it and then they just forgot about it.
They're running it and then throwing away the result if you don't consent? Way to waste electricity...
This is why TVs are always so laggy, they have 400 ad and tracking scripts running the whole time.
> ..its literally running.. ..It's literally called.. ..its literally AlexNet.. ..literally doesn't work..
I'm not sure it's literal enough.
Hey at least you know it's not Claude
...... or do you???
Wasn't that used to squeeze better power efficiency etc out of the device by optimizing the parameters based on the content?
I mean it is probably also used to collect data, but this sounds like it might be more than just that. Maybe?
I sure wish Tizen was rooted. I’d love to custom flash over the slow ass Samsung UI.
Time to invest a few tokens into an unneuthered model
Is there anyone serving such inference? I can't fit anything usable on my hardware.
https://abliteration.ai/
But also if you're working on a local device, any Chinese model will agree to it most of the time.
OpenRouter?
I believe Mistral models are fairly capable at cybersecurity tasks, but I don’t think you could get anything useful out of anything smaller than Mistral Large 4.
now is the best time in history to buy a tv
just hack it right after purchase and own the glass
Dont buy a tv? I havent had a TV for 20 years.
Maybe 30…