3 ms·

> But almost 225 million TVs sell annually. People buy smart TVs. There's literally nothing else on the consumer market. Edit: There may be a dumb Sceptre TV h

> But almost 225 million TVs sell annually. People buy smart TVs. There's literally nothing else on the consumer market. Edit: There may be a dumb Sceptre TV hidden in a Walmart warehouse somewhere, but I checked and there are none available in my entire EU country. Meanwhile the smart TVs sure don't advertise their spyware as prominently as their price, so we can add fraud in addition to robbery. > As I understand governments just set a bit to disable IME on already existing processors. But if you want a feature and are willing to give them billions of dollars, Intel or anyone else absolutely will add a feature for you. [..] Custom silicon is absolutely a thing If all it takes is setting a bit, I don't see why you'd invoke custom silicon except to muddy the waters.

kube-system 3y ago
That's not even true, as I mentioned. Examples: https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.html https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm... https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-55-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-HDR-U550CV-U/46784939 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-55-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-HD... Also, it's besides my point. The fact that people buy smart TVs in large numbers is proof of the fact that the privacy concerns are not a factor in the mass market's buying decisions. Do you own a TV? Did you buy a Sceptre? Why not? Did you not care enough about the privacy consideration to do a quick search to see that they exist? Most people don't. > If all it takes is setting a bit, I don't see why you'd invoke custom silicon except to muddy the waters. Because I was responding precisely to your gripe about "impossibility of buying a CPU without Intel Management Engine (or AMD equivalent)". If you are happy setting that bit, then the problem you are complaining about doesn't exist: https://hackaday.com/2020/01/28/factory-laptop-with-ime-disabled/ https://hackaday.com/2020/01/28/factory-laptop-with-ime-disa... https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/disabling-intels-backdoors-on-modern-laptops/ https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/disabling-intels-backdoors-o...
- Bran_son 3y ago
  > Do you own a TV? Did you buy a Sceptre? Why not? I do, I did not, because my TV is old enough to not yet be "smart", and because Sceptres are literally not available anywhere in my country. Am I now virtuous enough by your standards to point out how hostile manufacturers are to users? > The fact that people buy smart TVs in large numbers is proof Hey I wonder if you asked ten random people if they knew their smart TV was reporting the contents of their USB sticks and their viewing habits to 3rd parties, how many would answer yes? This is the same revealed preference tortured logic that concludes people don't care about child labor because they still buy chocolate. Out of sight out of mind. > If you are happy setting that bit, then the problem you are complaining about doesn't exist Then this is a recent development, because in 2017 even Google was unable to get rid of IME: As of 2017, Google was attempting to eliminate proprietary firmware from its servers and found that the ME was a hurdle to that. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#By_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#By_Goo...
  - kube-system 3y ago
    I don't disagree that the state of things are the way they are. People say they care about the moral hazards, noneconomic costs, and other bad downstream consequences of their consumption if confronted about them. Yet, most go right back out to the store and continue consuming the same products and services anyway. But saying that someone does or doesn't support something has no functional relevance when they open their wallet and literally reward it for happening. My point is only that that there is one reason why these things happen -- because the economics of these situations encourage companies to take these actions. I don't like that these things are happening any more than you do, but lip service it will never change it. It has to be made financially unviable. For it to stop, either the mass market must be convinced to make purchasing decisions based on it, or the activities must be made financially unviable by force of law.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      >But saying that someone does or doesn't support something has no functional relevance when they open their wallet and literally reward it for happening. A very relatable example for people here are gamers and professionals who shout they want AMD Radeon to become competitive to Nvidia GeForce, and then go right out and buy Nvidia GeForces once the products come out. We don't even need to talk about Intel ARC. Capitalism is a system of voting with wallets, so voting with speech has no bearing on what results come out of capitalism as you say.
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        Another take: people are consistent - they want something to happen, but they don't want to make a big personal sacrifice that may, possibly, with a very little probability, actually make it happen, and that's only if almost everyone does it at the same time. I.e. gamers are not dumb. > Capitalism is a system of voting with wallets, so voting with speech has no bearing on what results come out of capitalism as you say. Modern economy is a system set up in a way to force people to wallet-vote for specific classes of options, as it exploits the fact that most people are extremely price-sensitive by default, since the pool of votes they have is almost entirely spent on voting "yes I want to keep living in this apartment" and "yes I want me and my family to eat today". People will accept a lot of shit from the market, in order to not lose the vote for "my kids get to have a meal every day". Looking at purchasing patterns of regular people and making inferences about their general preferences? It's even more idiotic than making a psychological study of students in your class, and generalizing the result to the whole population.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > The fact that people buy smart TVs in large numbers is proof of the fact that the privacy concerns are not a factor in the mass market's buying decisions. It's not a proof of it at all. People don't choose options from the abstract space of possible TVs. They choose from what's available. The vendors can and do set the range of choices people have, and there's shit all mass market can do about it. Literally everyone may hate it, but if the vendors don't offer an option that doesn't suck, and/or spend a lot of effort and money advertising the options that do suck, then people will buy it, and will hate it, because they don't have an actual choice here.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    Non-smart TVs do exist, but also if the privacy concerns were something people were really concerned, they could choose not to buy them. The reality is that people do not care enough to even read the privacy policies.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > Non-smart TVs do exist Not at comparable quality or price point. The insidious parts about abusive business models like surveillance/ad-sponsored or "free with ads" is that they set a price point that more honest business models can hardly reach. Take two practically identical TVs by two competing vendors. One decides to go evil and have their product show ads in the UI, while siphoning data. They other does not. The first can use the money they make on ads and surveillance to lower the price of the product, even below manufacturing costs. You can't compete with that while staying honest. > The reality is that people do not care enough to even read the privacy policies. Of course. Why would you expect to? Every product and service now comes with insanely long terms of service and privacy policies, written in a way as to prevent regular people from even trying to understand it. There is only so much hours in a day, so much days in a lifetime, so much money in the wallet - people "don't care" about privacy, but not in the sense that it doesn't matter, but rather there's too many more important/pressing things to do than read ToS-es all day.
      - kube-system 3y ago

kube-system 3y ago

That's not even true, as I mentioned. Examples: https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.html https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm... https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-55-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-HDR-U550CV-U/46784939 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-55-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-HD... Also, it's besides my point. The fact that people buy smart TVs in large numbers is proof of the fact that the privacy concerns are not a factor in the mass market's buying decisions. Do you own a TV? Did you buy a Sceptre? Why not? Did you not care enough about the privacy consideration to do a quick search to see that they exist? Most people don't. > If all it takes is setting a bit, I don't see why you'd invoke custom silicon except to muddy the waters. Because I was responding precisely to your gripe about "impossibility of buying a CPU without Intel Management Engine (or AMD equivalent)". If you are happy setting that bit, then the problem you are complaining about doesn't exist: https://hackaday.com/2020/01/28/factory-laptop-with-ime-disabled/ https://hackaday.com/2020/01/28/factory-laptop-with-ime-disa... https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/disabling-intels-backdoors-on-modern-laptops/ https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/disabling-intels-backdoors-o...

Bran_son 3y ago
> Do you own a TV? Did you buy a Sceptre? Why not? I do, I did not, because my TV is old enough to not yet be "smart", and because Sceptres are literally not available anywhere in my country. Am I now virtuous enough by your standards to point out how hostile manufacturers are to users? > The fact that people buy smart TVs in large numbers is proof Hey I wonder if you asked ten random people if they knew their smart TV was reporting the contents of their USB sticks and their viewing habits to 3rd parties, how many would answer yes? This is the same revealed preference tortured logic that concludes people don't care about child labor because they still buy chocolate. Out of sight out of mind. > If you are happy setting that bit, then the problem you are complaining about doesn't exist Then this is a recent development, because in 2017 even Google was unable to get rid of IME: As of 2017, Google was attempting to eliminate proprietary firmware from its servers and found that the ME was a hurdle to that. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#By_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#By_Goo...
- kube-system 3y ago
  I don't disagree that the state of things are the way they are. People say they care about the moral hazards, noneconomic costs, and other bad downstream consequences of their consumption if confronted about them. Yet, most go right back out to the store and continue consuming the same products and services anyway. But saying that someone does or doesn't support something has no functional relevance when they open their wallet and literally reward it for happening. My point is only that that there is one reason why these things happen -- because the economics of these situations encourage companies to take these actions. I don't like that these things are happening any more than you do, but lip service it will never change it. It has to be made financially unviable. For it to stop, either the mass market must be convinced to make purchasing decisions based on it, or the activities must be made financially unviable by force of law.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    >But saying that someone does or doesn't support something has no functional relevance when they open their wallet and literally reward it for happening. A very relatable example for people here are gamers and professionals who shout they want AMD Radeon to become competitive to Nvidia GeForce, and then go right out and buy Nvidia GeForces once the products come out. We don't even need to talk about Intel ARC. Capitalism is a system of voting with wallets, so voting with speech has no bearing on what results come out of capitalism as you say.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Another take: people are consistent - they want something to happen, but they don't want to make a big personal sacrifice that may, possibly, with a very little probability, actually make it happen, and that's only if almost everyone does it at the same time. I.e. gamers are not dumb. > Capitalism is a system of voting with wallets, so voting with speech has no bearing on what results come out of capitalism as you say. Modern economy is a system set up in a way to force people to wallet-vote for specific classes of options, as it exploits the fact that most people are extremely price-sensitive by default, since the pool of votes they have is almost entirely spent on voting "yes I want to keep living in this apartment" and "yes I want me and my family to eat today". People will accept a lot of shit from the market, in order to not lose the vote for "my kids get to have a meal every day". Looking at purchasing patterns of regular people and making inferences about their general preferences? It's even more idiotic than making a psychological study of students in your class, and generalizing the result to the whole population.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
> The fact that people buy smart TVs in large numbers is proof of the fact that the privacy concerns are not a factor in the mass market's buying decisions. It's not a proof of it at all. People don't choose options from the abstract space of possible TVs. They choose from what's available. The vendors can and do set the range of choices people have, and there's shit all mass market can do about it. Literally everyone may hate it, but if the vendors don't offer an option that doesn't suck, and/or spend a lot of effort and money advertising the options that do suck, then people will buy it, and will hate it, because they don't have an actual choice here.
- kube-system 3y ago
  Non-smart TVs do exist, but also if the privacy concerns were something people were really concerned, they could choose not to buy them. The reality is that people do not care enough to even read the privacy policies.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > Non-smart TVs do exist Not at comparable quality or price point. The insidious parts about abusive business models like surveillance/ad-sponsored or "free with ads" is that they set a price point that more honest business models can hardly reach. Take two practically identical TVs by two competing vendors. One decides to go evil and have their product show ads in the UI, while siphoning data. They other does not. The first can use the money they make on ads and surveillance to lower the price of the product, even below manufacturing costs. You can't compete with that while staying honest. > The reality is that people do not care enough to even read the privacy policies. Of course. Why would you expect to? Every product and service now comes with insanely long terms of service and privacy policies, written in a way as to prevent regular people from even trying to understand it. There is only so much hours in a day, so much days in a lifetime, so much money in the wallet - people "don't care" about privacy, but not in the sense that it doesn't matter, but rather there's too many more important/pressing things to do than read ToS-es all day.
    - kube-system 3y ago