May I ask why you updated the firmware? I keep seeing people say that they disconnect the tv from the internet except for firmware updates, but if it works fine on day one and it’s always off line, why upgrade the firmware at all?

Right, these seem like reasonable hypotheses. I see a LOT of “innovation” happening in this space, though. In the future, or maybe even the present, I think it would be trivial to use speech to text and store conversations as small text files. Let’s say anytime it hears a specific brand name, “Cheerios” or “Toyota”, it records the conversation in a text file and sends it to marketers for research. It’s really not unthinkable.

The recent Mozilla report confirms that cars are using your microphone to determine what song or podcast you’re listening to, and listening to your conversations, so it’s not as if this is paranoid conjecture. If there’s money in it, and no rules to stop them, I think it’s almost inevitable.

I think automatic content recognition works by capturing still frames at strategic moments, so it may not take as much data as we think. For example, studios apparently hide watermarks that identify shows and movies. Then you would just need to make the tv detect the watermarks, not store and send screenshots of the screen. Then it can send a tiny CVS file of when and for how long you watched the show. It wouldn’t even need to know the name of the show. The watermark could be an alphanumeric code, and so even new shows would be detectable.

Great detailed comment. My concern is that I’m not clear on whether the TV tries to collect data even without an internet connection, and sends the collected data if you ever connect it in the future (e.g. for a firmware update). It’s such a poorly regulated industry, I have no trust in the companies imposing any reasonable limits on their own behavior.

I thought PC monitors would be higher priced than commercial displays, but I haven’t really looked into it. It sounds like I should get a pihole either way.

I’m aware of and OK with the idea that Netflix (or whatever) knows what I’m watching on their service when I’m logged in. I’m not OK with the TV itself collecting extra data, especially automated content recognition or my private conversations with their microphone. It’s nuts that that’s allowed.

Wow that’s another level of deceptive. Do you know if the major brands like Samsung, LG, and Sony do things like that? Or are they all equally shitty at this point?

I don’t understand these “That’s just how the world is. Shame on you for discussing it” comments. I think it is very much worth discussing this, even if the conclusion of the discussion is that it’s not worth changing after all.

You point out similar dynamics on Reddit, but it’s obviously not exactly the same. The design of Reddit is such that there is a much stronger tendency for main communities to arise. By contrast, lots of smaller communities on Lemmy look like ghost towns, where they would be much healthier if they combined numbers. “You’re free to do whatever” doesn’t address the systemic issue.

That said, I don’t think this is obvious either way. There are tons of benefits to the current system too. That’s why it’s worth coming back to this topic every once in a while. If these sorts of nitty gritty design discussions bore you, why are you on this community?

Agreed! There was a great Not Just Bikes video on YouTube on this topic.

The article expresses multiple views. Half the article highlights a call by various groups to enforce the ban on scooters completely. The title obviously implies that the solution is an enforcement of Toronto’s ban, not better infrastructure.

This article doesn’t mention that the last straw was a tweet where he joked “You’re free to leave at anytime”, by which he meant “kill yourself if you’re so concerned about the planet”.

Should you have to walk your scooter on an otherwise empty strip mall sidewalk whenever there is even a single pedestrian in eye sight? I think it’s fine to walk the scooter before crossing paths and then get back on.

So long as they aren’t going full speed while on sidewalks and they’re adjusting their speed according to the number of pedestrians, I fully agree. Sometimes you have to go at a walking pace on a crowded sidewalk, and if it’s an empty suburban sidewalk with clear visibility, I see no problem at all.

I hate that cars can go around running over people every single day without making the news, but this e-scooter accident is supposedly worthy of national news.

Every accident is regrettable, but the number of accidents we tolerate from scooters and bikes can’t be zero. Micro mobility is still MUCH safer than cars. I bet if the e-scooter driver was killed by an unnecessarily big truck on the road, it would still be called an “e-scooter accident” if it even made the news at all.