3 ms·

Don't tell me that, tell the people who bought the thing.

• mindslight 6y ago
  That's kind of my point though, word needs to get around that most "smart" features are actually anti-features only there for marketing. I'm even getting some downvotes here, as if this outcome was inevitable. It's not inevitable with a bit of forethought. People as a group need to develop the wisdom to know best practices when buying A/V gear, especially expensive A/V gear, rather than getting suckered into nonsensical anti-features that manufacturers are pushing. I've got a decade+ old Blu-ray player with an ethernet jack. A network switch is a standard part of my entertainment center. Every time I've moved things around, I've resisted the call to add an extra cable and find out what network services are available. With my network setup I can easily block it from having Internet access, and it's still a hard no. There is just no upside, and a huge downside of it being more likely to break, and then having to buy a new player for the rare times I want to play a legacy disc. My receiver is hooked to the network, but with no Internet access. It has an embedded webserver that can control it. But now that it's out of the warranty period I would never let it update itself, as that's a good way for a manufacturer to break a device with no recourse. Firmware used to be shipped with no updates, and that worked well. Weighing the chance of it being bricked from a manufacturer's update versus an attacker with vulnerability also getting past my router, the latter seems much less likely. I know I'm bailing out a leaking boat here (cheap embedded cell modems are around the corner, which will necessitate doing surgery). But the market has to catch on some time...