New personal website kevintngo.com/

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. xitter.cf/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…

Well it's official, BeautifulRust has been the fastest growing open source project I've ever created. Sometimes you just put something out into the world and find people seem to dig it. Glad to see so many people love Rust as much as I do, and care about writing clean Rust code. I think we are moving into a time where poorly written code matters even more because if an agent misunderstands something, you'll burn a lot of tokens doing the wrong thing. One of the biggest feature requests I've had over the last 24-hours is adding the ability to turn C, C++ and Python code into nice, clean, idiomatic Rust. So I'm building that out now. Rust on 🤘 🦀 github.com/morganlinton/Beau…

This is what I like about Grok @Bot's mental model vs the alternatives. It's really easy to wrap my head around each bot being an employee with a specific job that I can onboard and make better over time. Meanwhile: 1. Dots: Everything happens in a single thread and gets really confusing 2. Muse/Duet: Side channels and chats help here but don't feel as personalized as an AI bot employee

The biggest culture shock I've experienced so far is that the Apple store in Japan doesn't lock any devices to the table

POV: Finding out a hidden steak restaurant in Tokyo, Japan😲

Describe X/Twitter with 1 image in the comments I'll go first

The Arc-clones that are Chromium are: • aside.com/ • yetanotherbrowser.com/ • ardia.dev/ • crestbrowser.com/ I'm typing in this in "Yab" (the 2nd one, "Yet Another Browser").

My unfiltered thoughts on personal agents. Grokbot has the best UI and it’s arguably the best overall. In a lot of ways they’re ahead. Their desktop app feels the best, and their multi-bot coordination is great: you can set a team lead and it passes tasks to the other bots. Grokbot also has the best “webhook” feature, which means you can easily turn outside events into triggers that start your agents. That speeds up background workflows like watching your email, Slack and more. It also has Cursor integration, so for bigger tasks Grokbot can spin up a Cursor cloud session with any model (until OpenAI cuts SpaceX off from their models, which I think will happen soon). Unfortunately, running frontier models through Cursor costs more than Claude or Codex. Still, they’re the only ones embracing a team of agents. It’s a really cool idea, but the more bots you have, the more time you spend managing and maintaining them. I’m starting to think one bot with different threads/channels is the right answer, which I’ll get to with Claude Duet. dots by OpenAI is rough around the edges right now, but it’s probably the most powerful if you use Codex, which I do. dots can spin up Codex sessions in the cloud or locally on your computer. So if you have coding or video editing workflows that need your local files, this is very useful. Codex computer use is also the best in the world: your dot can spin up a local Codex session that fully controls your computer, as long as it’s on. Their real-time voice is incredible. If you have your email and work tools connected, try this: go on a walk with headphones in, ask the agent to summarize your emails, have it draft replies and read them back to you, then send them off. If I remember right, this is close to a workflow you (Tim) used to have with your VAs before AI. It’s my favorite use case for personal agents. The one downside is that you have to call your agent, and it’s an awful experience. It literally rings, and it’s annoying. Muse by Meta is a toy. I’ve talked to a bunch of finance people I play poker with who all tried it and set up automations, and they all said it doesn’t reliably do what they want. It’s fast, and its user numbers will probably keep growing. But it’s basically free: you get a TON of usage without paying a dime. That’s NOT a trade I’m willing to make. An agent doing high-leverage tasks should be running at the Opus 5.5 or GPT 6.1 Sol level. Claude Duet - is in early access, so unfortunately not everyone can use it yet. First things first, it runs on Opus 5.5, the best model in the world. I’ve only had access for 72 hours, but Duet feels different from the others. It’s not a personified agent like Grokbot, dot or Muse, which gives it a more professional vibe that I like. When you ask your Duet agent to do something, it spins up a task, which is a new chat thread. All your threads show up in a Tasks tab, so it’s easy to see everything Duet is working on or has finished. And instead of creating more agents (like Grokbot), you create channels, just like Slack (I can tell @anthropic is Slack-pilled). I have a content channel, a finances channel, etc., which keeps different kinds of tasks separate. The only other app I’ve seen do this is Buzz by @jack, and it’s a good experience. Their strong point is documents (artifacts). If you want decks, high-quality docs or design mockups, Opus just wins. Period. It’s not close right now. Their weak point is real-time voice. It’s the worst of the bunch and borderline unusable, though I think they only added it a few days ago. Instinct lives in iMessage, has no app, and doesn’t do anything notable besides show you product suggestions you didn’t ask for. (Not ads, according to their team.) My hot take: The VM is overrated. SpaceX, OpenAI and Meta all talk about the VM your agent can use and feature it in their marketing. It’s not as useful as you’d think, because more and more websites block bots that visit their site on the cloud VM. All of these companies promise their agents can make payments, but most payments either take forever or get blocked altogether. SpaceX has a cool workaround with Grokbot that routes traffic through your computer so it uses your IP address. But I’d much rather the agent just USE my computer for the task, like dot does by handing it off to Codex. Also, i don't think normal people care about the virtual computer. If anything they get offended they have to "stream a computer". The problem with personal agents: by the time you read this, pick one, and test it for 7 days, every one of them will have released 10 new features and the whole landscape will have changed. It’s nearly impossible to keep up.

Released SuperCmd 2.0 🚀 Now with Liquid Glass, a better Window Switcher, an improved Dictation experience, and so many more enhancements... Here are some key details: 1. Liquid Glass 🍸 A new option to choose your panel style alongside Frosty. On macOS 27, the transparency slider works on top of OS-level transparency. 2. Window Switcher ⚡️ Get a bird's-eye view of all open windows across all spaces and desktops, and switch instantly with zero animation. 3. Dictation 🎙️ Added chime sound effects at the start and end of dictation, with an option to copy text to the clipboard. 4. Check for Updates: Raycast Extensions 🧩 A new "Store: Check for Updates" command checks whether new versions are available for any of your installed extensions, and you can bulk update them. 5. Custom Fonts 🎠 Choose the font for your launcher that fits your vibe!! More key updates > When you press back, the text gets selected so you can quickly clear the launcher > Define Word now does fuzzy matching if the word doesn't match exactly > New "Toggle Hide Notes" command to hide notes if they obstruct your view > Open files with an app, and share files / clipboard contents from within the launcher > Option to use Spotlight for file search (for privacy-focused users) > Improved Notes with support for nested numbering and translucent scroll at the top and bottom > Improved translucency around the edges throughout the launcher > Ability to configure Esc key behaviour > Copying an item from the clipboard history moves it to the top And many more bug fixes 🐞 2.0 is the continuation of 1.0.9, since people were confusing the Swift version with SuperCmd v1. Here's the complete changelog: supercmd.sh/en/changelog#ver… Download: supercmd.sh

The Japanese government denied me entry and held me in solitary confinement for 24 hours over a standup comedy show with 40 attendees… (1/5)