Underrated upside of the cyber-apocalypse is that it'll be much harder to hide this kind of thing for a good year or two
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.
nitter.siddz.com/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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ASI may deliver material abundance. But what remains then for those who strive to make a mark?
Space will be the last outlet for ambition. Even if all materials comforts are taken care of here, there will still be a need for great men to carry civilization into the unknown.
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Funny to think about the long term implications of cavemanmaxxing being more token efficient
Will future generations speak caveman English?
🛂 GPT-5.5's CoT keeps leaking in the new Codex update
>Now we know how they got the token efficiency they cavemanmaxxed it.
> Every time, I think of that Kevin Malone quote: "why waste time say lot word when few word do trick."
At what point does compression stop being efficiency and start being lobotomy?
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I'm American and it's hilarious to me I'm making it on Euro crypto talent lists
European crypto founders and operators are elite.
The talent density is absurd.
@diogomonica (Portuguese) - Anchorage
@StaniKulechov (Finnish) - Aave
@gavofyork (British) - Polkadot, Ethereum
@RuneKek (Danish) - Sky
@ilblackdragon (Ukrainian) - NEAR
@PaulFrambot (French) - Morpho
@_pgauthier (French) - Ledger
@borgetsebastien (French) - The Sandbox
@ArthurB (French) - Tezos
@koeppelmann (German) - Gnosis, Safe
@eric_demuth (Austrian) - Bitpanda
@ASvanevik (Norwegian) - Nansen
@jbaylina (Spanish) - Polygon zkEVM
@euler_mab (British) - Euler
@Zac_Aztec (British) - Aztec
@gluk64 (Ukrainian) - zkSync
@gakonst (Greek) - Paradigm, Reth
@bertcmiller (British) - Flashbots
@peter_szilagyi (Hungarian) - Ethereum Geth
e/acc Europe.
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Great thread from @dataalways, who has picked up the mantle on posting creatures from the dark forest.
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Pretty remarkable to think this problem went unsolved purely because of some strange, collective "block" that prevented humans from approaching it the right way
Naturally the next question is: where else might these blocks be?
23 years old with no advanced mathematics training solves Erdős problem with ChatGPT Pro. "What’s beginning to emerge is that the problem was maybe easier than expected, and it was like there was some kind of mental block.”-Terence Tao scientificamerican.com/artic…
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The Internet feels like a minefield right now. Constant vigilance on every email I get, every phone call, DM, package you install, etc.
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Very cool launch.
It feels to me like what you'd naturally come to if you took the latest and greatest in Ethereum research, but looked at it with an intensely pragmatic and product oriented lens. Probably indicative of what's to come from the @tempo team!
Blockchains still broadcast every transaction publicly. Every stablecoin payment leaks the amount, the sender, and the recipient.
We’re excited to share that Tempo is building Zones for businesses that need privacy: private blockchains that are interoperable with the rest of Tempo for stablecoin use cases like payroll, treasury, and settlement.
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Happy to back @PropheticAI and excited to try what the team has been cooking!
We are pleased to share that we have successfully demonstrated the ability to increase lucidity in dreams.
This critical milestone opens the door for our devices to ship soon.
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A summer research fellowship for truth seekers from the inimitable @fkpxls
Introducing Pace Summer Fellowship.
For compulsive truth seekers who care about doing great work in a contained period of time.
4 weeks. $10k. Two fellows. One publishable research artifact.
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Between widespread distillation + increasing capabilities + compute crunch it makes sense for the frontier labs to keep their top models more closed. Wouldn't be surprised if we get Claude Code or Codex specific models that aren't generally available over APIs next.
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Axios being compromised by North Korea is probably a sign of what's to come. Expect a lot more compromising of popular OSS packages in the future.
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Crypto has spent years fighting this stuff, and NK years honing their craft on already paranoid crypto people. Attacks breaking containment into the broader software world is both unfortunate and inevitable.
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