What in ck3 is this now.

RT @ratlimit: A few bowhead whales born around 1815 might still be alive. They were in their 30s when they first saw a commercial whaling s…

I'm very very sad tonight. I just learned that Stephen Biesty passed away in 2024 at 63... He is one of my favorite artist. Rest in peace.

For code to be considered law, it has to be open. But codification of law with software is resulting in black box governance, where one won't know what is the code? We are ending up with Kafka's trial where you are punished because they won't tell you what the law is.

fellas, if your girl:
- listens to everything you say
- tracks your app usage
- wants to know about your youtube interests

that's not your girl. that's a samsung smart tv

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 te 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.
x.com/log4j/status/2…
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/char…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/…

Let me get this straight.

A guy keeps getting weirdly targeted ads on his new Samsung TV.

So he breaks into his own TV to find out why. 1.2M people watch.

42 hours later, OpenAI deactivates his account. Reason: "Cyber Abuse."

His words: "i have never used openai to exploit or nly local reverse engineering"

Same week, people on r/claude say Claude now cuts off reverse-engineering write-ups MID-SENTENCE:

"A safety check stopped my response partway through creating the playbook"

The TV is fine.

The guy who opened it is the problem.

THIS ONE FMUJQFAGYWV

Indian Insta fmu 😭😭

i own a relatively new (2025) samsung tv.

i kept getting weirdly targeted ads.

i tried reversing the firmware but it was aes encrypted and no keys unless tear it apart and do uart/jtag magic.

zero days it is. root shell on new samsung TVs!

discovered PRIVACY HORROR. write up?

Claude can no longer “Reverse Engineer Anything.”
Anthropic just quietly killed REA.

But Interesting timing.

After a few viral cases of people using Claude to reverse-engineer Samsung TV firmware and identify data-collection services, Anthropic appears to have restricted those lities.

Goals ngl

You can tell a partnership is “discrete” when it’s announced on social media

My Claude found a critical zero day vulnerability in the Code of Hammurabi, unnoticed by developers for 3,779 years.

we cookin up antibiotic resistant adhd

Nobody wants a city on Mars. Nobody wants AI in every app. Nobody wants data centers in space. Nobody wants humanoid robots or flying cars.

We want clean water. We want a stable climate. We want a habitable planet. We want wildlife to survive. We want to live.

it's worse than that. google cut down the forest WITHOUT A PERMIT because they know they're too big for small countries like ours to fight. they got off with a "oops haha sorry lol"

Illiterate Gramsci

Filmmaking can never be ethical. You are stealing light and sound and putting it inside a little box. That is not nice