randhead retweeted
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.
xitter.cf/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…
randhead retweeted
The NFL is absolutely ruined.
Just remember, Jordan Love has been the most hit QB in the league this year, and he has gotten zero roughing the passer calls.
randhead retweeted
🚨#BREAKING: Outrage is erupting in Virginia after police showed up at a mother’s home at 2 A.M. and TOWED HER CAR over a SH00TING she had NOTHING to do with...
...because a FLOCK CAM pointed them to the WRONG CAR!!!
Now her car is a TOTAL LOSS and she MIGHT LOSE HER JOB!!!!
Yes, you read that right, a Flock camera got it wrong, the cops took her car ANYWAY, and she’s the one paying for it.
Her name is Rosalyn Crump, she’s a mom raising 3 boys in Richmond VA
On July 29th, just before 2 in the morning, Richmond police officers showed up outside her home on Sussex Street.
She was ASLEEP, but someone woke her up and told her police were outside and her car was being towed.
Police say the Flock system had linked her 2012 Hyundai Elantra to a sh00ting near Gilpin Court and body camera footage shows the officers shining flashlights through her windows.
At one point, one of them seemed to doubt they even had the right car.
They noticed her KIDS’ CAR SEATS were buckled in the back, but they towed it anyway.
Rosalyn came outside and told them flat out: “Y’all got the wrong car.”
She told them she’d been at her mom’s house all day, came home at 4, and waited for her kids to get off the bus at 5.
Nobody had driven her car.
An officer decided her story didn’t match the Flock data and said on camera that she was, “definitely not telling the truth.”
Minutes later, Seibert’s Towing hauled her car away.
If you think that was insane... well, IT GETS WORSE.
About FOUR DAYS later, she finally got a phone call.
Her car had been released FOUR HOURS after they took it... because police had already found the person they were actually looking for.
NOBODY FROM THE POLICE TOLD HER!!!!!
When she went to get her car back, she found it DAMAGED from the tow.
The towing company’s VP admitted fault in writing.
Then the claim went to insurance, and the company said it could no longer settle with her directly.
Her mechanic’s verdict:
TOTAL LOSS.
Richmond police now admit Flock cameras led them to the wrong vehicle.
Meanwhile, Rosalyn has lost wages, can’t get to work on time, and is paying for a RENTAL CAR out of her own pocket just to get her boys where they need to go.
She literally did nothing wrong and was home with her kids.
THIS IS INSANE!!!!!!!!
randhead retweeted
Ballots have dropped
My second most important Vote
YES, YES, YES
And Yes i know the AG’s office made an awful mess of the ballot titles… the Parents rights in particular — this initiative restores the rights parents have to be informed about what happens to their kids at school that the legislature stripped out in 2025.
Don’t get me started on the income tax lies….
randhead retweeted
Just tried again to comment on a judge's sentencing
I am prevented from registering my comment
So I am being censored
I can hardly believe this is happening in Britain
randhead retweeted
This tax doesn't collect until 2029, that means all the programs the majority party is crying about losing funding WON'T HAVE REVENUE FROM THE TAX FOR ANOTHER THREE YEARS. Vote yes on I-645, repeal their income tax.
The ballot says I-645 would "decrease funding" for schools and healthcare.
Compared with what? Projected revenue from a tax that hasn't collected a dollar. If it survives, the first payments aren't due until April 2029.
Voters deserve the timeline, not just the warning.
thestartuplawblog.com/i-645-…
randhead retweeted
🚨Washington Voters Repeal the Income Tax
VOTE YES ON IP26-645 to REPEAL THE INCOME TAX
❌WA Democrats are already trying to REDUCE the threshold to $250,000 for families.
❌Repealing the tax does NOT decrease funding for anything. It doesn’t go into effect until 2028.
randhead retweeted
Washington voters have rejected an income tax 10 times. The state Supreme Court has struck down taxes on income 7 times.
So we passed I-2111. 448,158 of you signed it, and in 2024 the Legislature adopted it: House 76-21, Senate 38-11.
In 2026, Olympia rewrote it. Sec. 1201 says the ban holds only "so long as the standard deduction is at least $1,000,000 for a household."
Olympia is acting like a terminator robot coming after your income and your pension.
YES on 645 To Repeal the Unconstitutional Income Tax
randhead retweeted
Got my ballot. Went straight to I-645.
It repeals the 9.9% tax on income over $1 million. And it bans an income tax on the rest of us.
Then read the last line the AG put on it. Repealing it "would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education, and human services."
Not a fact. A warning label. Written by the side that wants the tax.
It works, too. One poll asked it two ways. With that sentence, keep the tax 57%, repeal 35%. Without it, 44% to 40%.
One sentence. 22 points.
They start with millionaires. They never stop at millionaires.
Read the whole thing. Then fill in your bubble like you mean it.
What line on your ballot made you mad, Warriors?
randhead retweeted
The despair of a Parisian - pleading with the feral smooth brains not to destroy her store
The death rattle of Paris as western civ breathes its last gasps.
Notre Dame was no accident. It was the beginning of the end.
randhead retweeted
Here we go again
Last time I checked, the only "king" Washington state ever had was former Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee, who held emergency powers for 975 days
randhead retweeted
But for the Second Amendment, the father who stopped this killer would have been defenseless, and more children would almost certainly have died.
Existing laws didn’t stop the shooter.
An armed citizen did.
randhead retweeted
40,000 people have utilized my voter guide in the past 24 hours. Take a look, watch the interviews, get those ballots in!
My 2026 Washington State Voter Guide is live! It includes interviews with Congressional and State Supreme Court candidates, as well as recommendations in key legislative races. Check it out and share with friends: Patreon.com/undivided/posts/…
randhead retweeted
My 2026 Washington State Voter Guide is live! It includes interviews with Congressional and State Supreme Court candidates, as well as recommendations in key legislative races. Check it out and share with friends: Patreon.com/undivided/posts/…
randhead retweeted
I remember me and my friends going out Trick or Treating and saying “i just hope the experience is consistent throughout the neighborhood!”
My HOA sent me a letter requesting that I stop handing out full-size candy bars for Halloween this year.
-Fun-size bars are usually 15–25¢ each.
-Full-size are around 75¢–$1.
Most people give out 2–3 fun-size anyway, so the real difference is often only a few cents per kid.
Am I crazy, or is it weird for an HOA to police this?
randhead retweeted
this will hurt the economy
The dying Sun may tear the outer solar system apart far sooner than anyone expected.
New research in The Astrophysical Journal Letters suggests that once the Sun sheds its outer layers and collapses into a white dwarf, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune could be thrown into chaos in roughly a billion years—not the nearly eternal stretch of a quintillion years previously imagined. Earth will almost certainly be long gone by then, but the gas giants may not survive either.
Traditional models assumed the outer planets would quietly endure for eons until a random passing star finally disturbed them. Researchers Konstantin Batygin and Jim Fuller of Caltech, along with Fred Adams of the University of Michigan, found a more violent possibility: if the Sun loses mass in discrete bursts rather than a smooth wind, the planetary orbits can be destabilized relatively quickly.
“Everything changes when the envelope departs in pieces,” the authors wrote. In simulations of 672 burst-driven scenarios, up to 96% of the systems became unstable within 3 billion years after the Sun became a white dwarf. About 40% suffered disruption or violent scattering even earlier, before mass loss was finished. Some planets were ejected entirely; in others, Uranus and Neptune swapped places.
Gentler bursts sometimes locked planets into stable resonances that held for billions of years, but the overall picture is clear: the Sun’s death may not be a slow fade. It could be a comparatively rapid, chaotic upheaval that ends the orderly architecture of the outer solar system far sooner than once thought.
randhead retweeted
Nearly half the Camas girls' cross-country team just forfeited their race rather than run against a boy.
Think about that. These girls trained all season, and they gave up their race to make a point the adults in Olympia won't.
They shouldn't have to choose between their sport and their voice.
Washington, you can fix this. Yes on I-638.
randhead retweeted
Imagine chanting "Green Bay Sucks" at every possible sporting event you can for nine months only to come back up to Lambeau to get your ass kicked
