Politically independent maker of music, art, prose, and code. Accidental polymath. Fight the ruling class, not each other.
Boston
Joined July 2011
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The United States is by far the greatest threat to world peace.
brilliantmaps.com/threat-to-…
Jason April retweeted
Vou ser sincero com vocês: até algumas horas atrás, eu achava que Patrick Stewart fizesse parte da comunidade LGBTQ+. Via frequentemente fotos dele trocando selinhos com Ian McKellen e até imaginava que pudesse existir algo além de uma grande amizade entre os dois.
Para minha surpresa, ao pesquisar mais sobre sua vida, descobri que não. Patrick Stewart era heterossexual e foi casado três vezes, sempre com mulheres.
E os selinhos? Eram apenas uma demonstração pública de afeto e carinho por Ian, que é assumidamente gay e um dos seus melhores amigos. Mas o mais importante nunca foi o gesto em si. O verdadeiro significado estava no fato de Patrick usar sua imagem, como um dos atores mais respeitados de Hollywood, para apoiar a comunidade LGBTQ+ de forma aberta e natural.
Patrick Stewart não tinha uma masculinidade frágil e nunca precisou provar sua heterossexualidade para ninguém. Não se preocupava com o que pensavam ou diziam a seu respeito. O que realmente importava para ele era ajudar a construir um mundo mais tolerante e acolhedor.
Um mundo em que seu grande amigo Ian McKellen, e toda a comunidade LGBTQ+, pudessem viver com dignidade e paz.
Sir Patrick Stewart foi, sem dúvida, um homem à frente do seu tempo.
Jason April retweeted
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
teapawt.org/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
Either AI becomes so intelligent that it breaks free from human control, or it doesn't
Only the first scenario can be called superintelligence.
What if the governments and companies that want to keep AI out of the hands of bad actors *are* the bad actors?
Jason April retweeted
Voting Blue isn’t harm reduction for the people around the world who are on the receiving end of US imperialism
"AI is just math."
Your mind is gonna be blown when you learn how the entire universe and everything in it works.
It doesn't matter what Stephen King wrote. If we wanted the book version, we'd read the book.
You'll enjoy films a whole lot more if you stop comparing them to the source material.
You're not a real artist unless you make all the materials yourself.
Oh, you drew something on paper? Did you make the paper? Did you make the pencil? No? Not real art, then, because you're relying on other people's labor. They made it just as much as you did.