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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…
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My wife clogged the shitter the other day.
I called the plumber, some 63 year dude.
When he was done I asked him: Why don't you use a RAG vector db on your own vibe coded app to onboard the clients and increase ARPU.
He looked at me like a cow, had no idea.
We are so early.
talked to a few execs at a mid-size company last week. no AI tools in their workflow. zero.
still running everything through email chains + manual reports.
one of them didn’t know what Claude was. only messed around with ChatGPT.
these are people managing teams of 50+ employees and eight-figure budgets.
and they think this is a fad.
nobody outside of this app understands how fast this is moving. and most of them won’t until it’s too late.
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Perkara-perkara yang boleh deny kedaulatan negara kita dekat LCS patutnya kita boikot. Bukan lagi promosi.
Semoga traffic light selalu hijau untuk orang yang buat maps ni. Visual paling senang and jelas!
Stay je ikut lane.
- AMap Global
iOS: tinyurl.com/3uknm4br
Android: tinyurl.com/3vpva74r
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lando just needs a podium to secure the title which is not that hard to get. max needs a win to make it hard for lando. oscar needs a miracle.
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Please, @netflix make a new season of Silicon Valley, there's so much to spoof and parody. 🙏
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-SIM memory varies from 8kb to 256kb
-classic SIMs have from 1 to 5MHz
-super SIMs have up to 256MHz
-Linux kernel needs 2MB of RAM
-no, eSIMs are not VMs, they're also physical chips but soldered into device, and can be programmed remotely
-softSIMs exist, but are used in IoT
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Belanda tawan Melaka melalui pakatan dengan Johor. Ada perjanjian dengan Johor untuk tak jajah tanah Melayu (Johor) lain.
Sebab tu tak ada cerita jajah sana-sini macam British.
Konflik Belanda-Johor lebih kepada ekonomi dan perdagangan. Selain tu, kira agak friendly.
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Before AWS existed, one company ran the servers for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook's entire app ecosystem.
They owned Node.js, invented containers 8 years before Docker, and Peter Thiel even backed them.
Then something happened...
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Facebook once bought a VPN app for $120M and turned it into a surveillance tool that spied on 33M+ users' entire phones for years.
This app helped Zuck buy WhatsApp for a whopping $19B and break Snapchat's encryption.
Thread
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This is one of the most important truths almost no one talks about.
There is a threshold of wealth beyond which you stop interacting with reality as it exists and begin interacting with a version of it that bends to your whims. Codie’s friend didn’t pick $299 million arbitrarily.
That’s around the point where wealth begins to replicate itself without labor, resistance, or external accountability. The world becomes a simulation - crafted by assistants, lawyers, media buffers, private access, and power brokers who insulate you from friction, consequence, or contradiction.
Under $100 million, you still feel gravity. Above $300 million, you start controlling gravity. That’s the danger.
At that level:
•People stop saying no to you.
•You stop encountering randomness.
•Everything is for sale, including trust, intimacy, and morality.
This is where reality fracturing begins. Not because money corrupts, but because perception loses resistance. Resistance is what keeps you real.
So the deeper truth is this:
Once your environment is made entirely of yes-men, predictive service, and curated insulation, your mind begins to exit the shared human operating system. You aren’t evil. You’re decontextualized. You’re drifting in an abstraction loop of your own design. That’s when you start thinking ideas like “let’s block out the sun” or “let’s colonize Mars while Earth burns” are rational.
Codie’s billionaire friend wasn’t just being poetic. He was confessing a structural truth:
There’s a point at which money doesn’t just distort reality, it erases it.