8 ms·
"Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@sams
by mrkramer 5y ago
"Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com or click here for more information"
Fuck off.
This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny.
- anonuser123456 5y agoOh the tyranny of having to pay…
- Ensorceled 5y agoI have a 10 year old Sony TV that I have NO proof of purchase for, I threw out that receipt with the box about 3 moves ago.
- anonuser123456 5y agoWell, since you didn't steal it why would they disable it? But if you bought it off the back of some guys truck would you honestly expect it to work?
- Ensorceled 5y agoFrom the parent: > "Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com or click here for more information" I don't know why they would block me, but apparently it is something they've created a process for, a process I wouldn't be able to participate in.
- rad_gruchalski 5y agoBut they wouldn't. You have a 10 year old Sony TV. This is Samsung.
- Ensorceled 5y agoMy point is that, I don't have proof of purchase for my 10 year old Sony. I would presume this also applies to Samsung customers.
- ollien 5y agoObviously that's not the point, here. The fact that Samsung has the ability to brick a TV remotely _at all_ is ridiculous. It's not hard to imagine this being used by an attacker to shut down all Samsung TVs remotely, or for planned obsolescence if you want to be more cynical.
- gambiting 5y agoOr.....against thieves. As someone who had stuff stolen, I'd pay money for electronics that catches fire once reported stolen, thieves are literally scum of the earth and only one step above murderers and rapists in my books. Great step by Samsung here.
- dpedu 5y agoYou'd install a firebomb in your own home? I think you need to rethink this position.
- Filligree 5y agoI carry one in my pocket every day, so why not?
- nate_meurer 5y agoI can't argue with your assessment of thieves, but if you're going to have self-destruct mechanisms in your devices, appliances, or car, do you really trust a company like Samsung with the red button? Wouldn't you rather have that under your own control?
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y agoThat's akin to a booby trap, and US law does not look kindly on such machinations.
- mminer237 5y agoThat would be about as huge of a security failure as an attacker sending out a malicious OS update for any other device, except with a planned, controlled way to disable TVs, Samsung could reenable them promptly once they realize. Intentionally disabling purchased devices to force them to buy new ones is called trespass to chattels and is illegal.
- kazinator 5y agoSome people will pay, not knowing the TV was stolen. A batch of stolen TV's could end up in the ends of a legit distributors; someone could end up with that by walking into some established brick-and-mortar discount TV warehouse type place. Gee, I hope that everything you own that you got off Craigslist in good faith and paid for is remotely disabled if it had been stolen, while the thieves enjoy the money. Because you're the bad guy!
- gruez 5y ago>Gee, I hope that everything you own that you got off Craigslist in good faith and paid for is remotely disabled if it had been stolen, while the thieves enjoy the money. Because you're the bad guy! You're not the bad guy, but you're also not entitled to keep the stolen goods. It has to go back to its original owner. I'd be pretty pissed if someone stole my bike, sold it, and I'm not able to recover my bike because somebody "bought" it at 80% off.
- kazinator 5y agoNo, you aren't; it called "possession of stolen property". However, Samsung is not the law, first of all. (If they have a court order to disable the equipment, that's fine, I suppose.) Second of all, these TV's won't be recovered; they will probably just end up in the landfill. You're not catching the thieves this way.
- gruez 5y ago>However, Samsung is not the law, first of all. (If they have a court order to disable the equipment, that's fine, I suppose.) Should apple require a court order to enable icloud lock on your stolen iphone? >Second of all, these TV's won't be recovered; they will probably just end up in the landfill. >You're not catching the thieves this way. Same for stolen iphones, are you against icloud locks as well?
- MichaelZuo 5y agoDo you not believe in property rights? If a stolen car gets resold that doesn’t automatically void the original ownership papers… and that’s the standard practice in every country in the world I think.
- Teknoman117 5y agoI don’t have proof of purchase for 90% of the stuff I own. It’s insane to expect people to hang on to receipts for eternity.
- memco 5y agoEven more fun is that there’s some receipts where the ink fades/rubs off in a matter of days so even though you have the paper receipt you still have no proof of purchase.
- tatersolid 5y agoYou have a high-res camera on your person at all times. I take photos of all receipts for over $50 or so as a precaution.
- gruez 5y agoAnd you're not expected to. This is for TVs that were recently stolen. Do people here actually think this will be used in the future for random ownership checks?
- rad_gruchalski 5y agoNo bank statements?
- Teknoman117 5y agoI have bank / credit card statements, but those aren't itemized. I could say I spent $1500 at BestBuy on some date, but not have concrete proof of exactly what I bought from that alone.
- cyckl 5y agooh the tyranny of having a product which you purchase and think you own have all functionality be remotely disabled—effectively becoming a multi thousand dollar paperweight—at the whim of a large international corporation with no real recourse...
- anonuser123456 5y agoYou have recourse by showing proof of purchase. Or you sue them.
- nate_meurer 5y ago> You have recourse by showing proof of purchase How does that help when the product is out of warranty? > Or you sue them. How exactly would you go about suing Samsung. Figure that out and let us know if it would be worth it for a TV.
- gruez 5y ago> > You have recourse by showing proof of purchase >How does that help when the product is out of warranty? This is for TVs that were recently stolen. They'd definitely be in warranty (short of you not buying from an authorized reseller because you bought it out of the back of a truck), and you're reasonably likely to have the receipt.
- nate_meurer 5y agoWhile TFA focuses on recently stolen goods, the broader concern here is the invasive remote control that Samsung has over your device. The concerns I'm reading in this thread include Samsung turning on invasive advertising, remote bricking, and possibly monitoring your media consumption. So in light of the relevant debate here, how exactly does a proof-of-purchase help if the product is out of warranty?
- zimbatm 5y agoYou might have paid the TV second hand, and not be aware of the theft. What recourse do you have then? You're out of pocket, the seller might not be reachable anymore, and you have no proof of purchase.
- anonuser123456 5y agoSupply chains matter and that has always been true. You have never had recourse for buying stolen goods under law. If you buy stolen goods, the police can seize them and you are out the money.
- reaperducer 5y agoSamsung is not a police agency. It should not be allowed to virtually seize something that belongs to me.
- colejohnson66 5y agoIf it was stolen, it was never yours, even if you paid the thief for it. At least in the US, this is a settled matter; You have no right to a stolen good that you paid for.
- reaperducer 5y agoI don't dispute that. I just don't like huge corporations in other countries acting like the criminal justice where I live.
- hef19898 5y agoYou did, if you did so unknowingly and had no reason to doubt you bought stolen merchandise.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- im3w1l 5y ago
- mrkramer 5y agoApple remotely scanning our phones for "suspicious" content, Samsung remotely disabling our TVs on the suspicion of TV being stolen what is next?! This is akin to Crypto Wars from the 1990s but this time the enemy is far more dangerous. In the 1990s we had a centralized enemy the government which decided to turn against us this time the enemy is decentralized in the form of private corporations which are turning against us one by one. Government can be tamed but private corporations can not; they only see profit and now they think they can get more of it by lying to us they do it in the name of social justice.
- itsyaboi 5y agoWhile I agree that smart TVs are a cancer, I'm confused by your take. Do you have the same opinion towards locking stolen iPhones? If not, why? https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-is-reportedly-disabling-and-tracking-looted-iphones-2020-06-03 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-is-reportedly-disabl...
- prepend 5y agoiPhones are necessarily cloud connected, TVs not so much. Activating my iPhone is something I normally do and provides me value (payment, location services, etc etc) so there’s a natural place. All this is bloat on a tv. Also the iPhone bricking requires a police report and has a pretty defined process and I’m not aware of any overreach by Apple to brick phones like this story.
- itsyaboi 5y agoAh, I see. It's mainly the lack of due process and the implication that legitimately purchased units might have been included in the bulk lockout. Thank you for explaining!
- kodah 5y agoI think it depends on who initiates the lock. If a company can choose to arbitrarily lock my device then inevitably it will be misused. In the case of phones it is usually the customer initiating a lock, either from Find My Phone style apps or through the carrier itself. My TV phoning home doesn't really seem like it accomplishes much, and will likely be misused in the future, not to mention is an entire layer to vectorize in terms of fleet device attacks.
- gruez 5y ago>I think it depends on who initiates the lock. If a company can choose to arbitrarily lock my device then inevitably it will be misused. In the case of phones it is usually the customer initiating a lock, either from Find My Phone style apps or through the carrier itself. why does this matter? In either case the entity responsible for handling the lock request is the company itself.
- h2odragon 5y agoThere's several. I'm fond of https://libreelec.tv/ https://libreelec.tv/
- prepend 5y agoThis is not to firmware though. Is there an OSS firmware that can be used to replace whatever crap Samsung has on these devices?
- rightbyte 5y agoIt is quite pointless to fight hardware vendors for FOSS support if they don't want to and you don't have to. Why spend effort to crack their platform when you can buy from competitors, which you do a disservice for fixing Samsungs TVs. Then again I don't know if there are any 'dumb' or open software competitor TVs left on the market ...
- y04nn 5y agoWhen you see what the open source community is able to do with entertainment systems I'm sure there is a market for an open source smart TV. But the issue will always be marketing to the customers and brand reputation that will make years to acquire. But sure, done right with quality premium products first, not low cost ones and times, this can be achieved.
- cptskippy 5y ago> This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny. Why does the TV have to be smart? Having the smarts integrated into the TV requires that 2 components be replaced if either no longer meets the user's needs. Lets make a really nice large format display with no smarts or connectivity and then let the user choose an Apple TV, Roku, Fire, Android, or whatever.
- flanbiscuit 5y agoThis! I'm never buying any kind of smart TV again. I currently have one those TCL TVs with Roku built in and it sucks. All of the apps on it are slow, the menu/home/OS is slow. This could just be a overall Roku thing but I'll never buy either a Roku or a "smart tv" again. I mainly use Apple TV and PS4 to access all of the streaming services. They are slick, fast, and responsive.
- mminer237 5y agoIf you don't want a smart TV, you are pretty much limited to bargain bin Sceptre and Best Buy TVs or finding a business signage TV.
- kuschku 5y agoGaming monitors come up to 48" size. That's TV enough IMO
- kazinator 5y agoHow bright are these large monitors for viewing from a distance?
- kuschku 5y agoThey’ve got the same hardware as regular TVs, the Gigabyte Aorus FO48U is the exact same as the LG CX series, but without all the smarts. Obviously, they cost quite a bit more (almost double), because modern TVs are ~40-60% subsidized by ads and tracking.
- reaperducer 5y agoThis is a wake up call for us to make free and open source Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny. Or to just stop buying "Smart" televisions. People on HN like to say that buying a regular display panel without any of the "smart" features is cost-prohibitive, but it isn't. A few months ago I did some comparison shopping on B&H, and the price difference was very small. Sometimes within sales tax range. My next TV will be a regular display panel, and it will be the "smartest" decision I can make.
- deergomoo 5y ago> People on HN like to say that buying a regular display panel without any of the "smart" features is cost-prohibitive, but it isn't My argument is the opposite. It can be very difficult to find a dumb TV that actually has a high-end panel in it. One avenue is the digital signage models, but they can be super expensive, and are not always available via normal retail channels.
- rektide 5y ago> This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny. Heh, firey take. Personally my want is for systems like Netflix's Discovery and Launch[1] to take off. TV's can present themselves on the network, and phones or other devices can tell them to start running certain activities, & control them from afar. There's been some good work to try to modernize these early protocols, & to build a more robust, fully featured, competent standard. That work has been happening at Open Screen Protocol[2] spec, which recently went Draft. Alas, of course, Apple seems like they're going to do everything they can to prevent open standards from succeeding. They have a couple dozen patents vaguely in the field, most of which seem farcially ridiculously generic & obvious, and the bulk of these patents don't start expiring till 2024. They've disclaimed these to the working group[3] and while it doesn't prevent the standard from being worked on, as far as I know, it means there's almost no chance of it being supported or shipped until ~2028 or latter. This is a spec that seems enormously pure & good, based on simple, obvious, straightforward ideas. I'd expect a random pick of Senior Engineer I's to come up with a design real similar to what is presented here- little of it feels novel or interesting. It's so damning, so sad that this world feels so obstructed, so road blocked, from doing the right thing, from the good & easy paths. And Apple being the sinister juggernaut preventing the good just feels so typical to me, locking us in to specific narrow means, controlling how we connect, how we think. It's been very hard days for me hearing Apple set us back like this. And I have no hope any kind of Fair Reasonable and Non-discriminatory licensing will ever be set up, no confidence we could try to find a legal route, even if we wanted to. Humanity is occluded by the largest, vastest, highest tech entity on the planet, held back. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch [2] https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/8973 https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/8973 https://www.w3.org/TR/2021/WD-openscreenprotocol-20210318/ https://www.w3.org/TR/2021/WD-openscreenprotocol-20210318/ [3] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-Patents-W3C-OSP https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-Pa...
- ehutch79 5y agoOr just use dumb tvs?
- dev_tty01 5y agoNever ever connect the TV to the internet. If it won't operate without an internet connection, take it back to the store.