As an owner of 2 LG OLEDs, I am not surprised at all. I neutered these things the first day I was past the return policy. Opened the back and unplugged the WiFi/BT chip, bought a cheap dumb universal remote with no mic in it, disagreed to all T&C in the TV, updated the firmware via USB and just use an AppleTV over HDMI for streaming. Kind of silly to have to go through all of this but hey thats where we are in 2026 in the US. And I am fully aware that I am typing this on an iPhone thats probably doing the same things that this article is talking about LG doing ;-(
Idk, I have a strong feeling Apple is not doing ACR or covert recording themselves, and the OS provides some strong guarantees that you know when the mic is active.
Read the complaint and it is pretty shaky, notably it seems to say that, because wake word detection is not 100% accurate (as in, 0 margin for error), Apple should advertise "we are recording your conversations covertly" just because the phone can sometimes trigger wake word detection on something that isn't the wake word (hey siri).
Also Reuters reports " and disclosed these conversations to third parties such as advertisers." but I don't actually see that in the initial complaint interestingly.
My Samsung asked for internet access and I just laughed and said nope.
It exists to displays pixels from a Linux box, utterly sick of living in a world where "is my TV manufacturer bugging our house?" Is a thing anyone has to ask.
Have you heard of Amazon Sidewalk (https://sidewalk.amazon/)? All those Rings and Alexas in your neighborhood are able to serve as network proxies for random IoT devices.
LG very likely has your neighbor's WiFi password, so even if you don't connect it to your own network, they could theoretically just try and connect to any known network nearby. No 5g modem needed.
Idk if they do that, but it doesn't seem complicated to implement, and it doesn't seem to fall outside of the company's ethical boundaries.
I think enough customers freely connect their devices to the internet that they don't need to invest in the engineering required to include those kinds of things. I agree they won't have ethical qualms about it. It would also be pretty easy to spot; I feel confident saying they'd be too greedy to be sufficiently sneaky to keep it hidden.
For now, it remains easy and sufficient to not give them your wifi credentials.
Why do you assume it would be "free" just because you aren't paying seperately for it? They also could throttle the speed to be unusable for average surfing but still work just fine for telemetry of a few MB a day.
Smarter people than me are usually pretty good at guessing what PCB components do just by looking at the shape of them. I guess that's not proof but it's enough for me.
If you're not using the defining feature of a TV (the OTA tuner), why not buy a monitor instead of a TV?
(Next time I have to replace our house's TV, I'm seriously considering buying a separate SBTVD tuner and a monitor instead of a TV, if ignoring the "smart" features of these TVs by not connecting them to a network starts getting too difficult.)
Modern TVs are designed to work with PCs and consoles, they just also happen to have tuners. "Smart" features are mostly a distraction from actual panel capabilities.
Monitor choices also tend charge a premium for equivalent size and quality while lacking some of the features, or introducing other issues. See LG gaming monitors silently installing adware on connection:
My LG OLED C2 also has a great utility to manage deep service-level configurations. Makes it easy to professionally customize without having to fuss with the menus.
You're a bit late on that, monitors without all the same features are going the way of the dodo. Smart features are even starting to crop up in the commercial display market. Your last vestige will be buying a panel without a controller board and turning it into a display yourself.
But we just don’t want creepy executives spying on us for bigger bonuses. Hope “secure facilities” keep buying displays that promise not to do gross things so we have something safe for our homes.
I was strongly considering something like that, but the actual screen technology in them is not that great. The new OLED panels look stunning in comparison, because generally those commercial sets are older LCD technology.
I could probably handle 1080p all day (maybe not at such a large size, not sure) so I’d probably be okay with it…
until I hung out on your couch and went back home and turned something on, going “oh no it’s a blur now!” :)
Maybe they’ll eventually have exquisite WiFi/BT-free displays! That even newer tech has trouble of obsoleting (except they could still release a super low power consumption display or something).
Now imagining something very silly: an honor-system subscription from a manufacturer who sells spyware-free displays at a fair price but still wants to satisfy investors (heh), not that I’d chomp at that bit.
If you don't care much for display quality (or are willing to pay significantly more than what you'd be paying for a TV) that's doable.
I've tried finding a monitor big enough and with a decent panel for anywhere near the price of a TV... it's nearly impossible.
Then I tried finding 'dumb TVs' with at least somewhat decent panels... also almost impossible.
In the end I just bought a decent Philips TV with a good panel and 'Android TV' and chose to never connect it to WiFi and activate that (run it in dumb mode.)
It had enough HDMI ports to hook up everything I want and was the best option available. Would I have preferred a 'dumb screen' with a bunch of HDMI ports and no TV tuner at all? Yes.
Probably worried about things like spectrum wifi. I don't know if others do it, but spectrum will sell access to a private WiFi network using their customers Internet as a backend.
Well even if they don't do it now, these are just a forced update away from using WiFi to connect to an open AP to do whatever they want. I also really hated the fact that there was really no way to turn BT off. Anytime the TV was on it showed up as a BT device ready to connect, and I would get random neighbors trying to and having to say no to random pop ups approving connections. Now these things are sans any type of wireless, and when it comes time to sell them, it will take me 5 mins to reconnect the internal ribbon cable.
I've been tinkering with electronics for the better part of 40 years so I am fairly comfortable cracking stuff open to at least take a look. The TV's I have (B5) were fairly easy to get into. I unplugged the TV and left it unplugged for a little bit to let all the capacitors drain, then I put it face down on a towel on the floor, took 6 or so screws off the bottom, 1 off the back, then the back panel just pops off because it's held on with some clips. The WiFi/BT module was easy to identify, it has some shielded chips with a shielded ribbon cord going to it. It's on the bottom right hand side if you're looking at the back. I unplugged both ends of the ribbon cord by pushing the clip holding it in back/up. Obviously try all of this at your own risk if you're going to. If you're used to opening up and messing with electronics, it was not that hard or time consuming.
edit: one thing I will add is that I was extremely careful moving the screen or pushing on it while working on it. I have heard the super-thin OLED panels are easy to crack from just a little bit too much force.
Why wait until after the return policy? Also what firmware did you update to? Also if you could point to a video where it shows how to do all these things that would be amazing
Exactly. I remember a website from the late 90s that let anonymous users control an LED sign in some shopping mall in Japan. More often than not there were things like swastikas and penises on the board. This type of behavior is nothing new, unfortunately.
It controlled lights. IIRC there was a grid of squares on the website that you could click on to turn specific lights on or off. There was a webcam pointed at the sign that refreshed every few seconds so you could see the changes. I remember the sign being right above an escalator.
This. I work in higher education and I would say that in my experience with hundreds of 18-22 year olds in the last few years, their sentiment towards genai images/video/music is overall very negative and skeptical.
If you want a trip down memory lane, go to InfiniteMac.org, spin up a System 7.5 emulator, go to the InfiniteHD/Games folder and launch SimTower!! Such a fun blast of nostalgia. I loved the game as a kid and can still very much enjoy it as a mid-40 year old.
I started getting nausea from FPS games around the time I got into my 30s. It was when Fallout 4 came out and I just had to play that game. So I did some research and found out about sea-bands. Theyre for morning sickness that pregnant women get. They worked wonders for my FPS nausea. I was able to play through many games after that without getting sick. Put them on about 10 mins before playing and wear them for the duration.
Interesting, I never heard of those bands. The standard method for decreasing motion sickness in FPS games is widening the FoV and turning off features like screen shake.
Fun and useful fact - if you ever buy a Sandisk SD card, there is a license key for RescuePRO Deluxe inside if you peel apart the two pieces of the cardboard that make the packaging! The software works for any type of drive and I have had great luck with it recovering some of my students projects.
A few years back I found a bug that would make deleted photos show up in the Photos app on iPhone simply by putting transparent PNGs into the photo library. I reported it to Apple via web, no response. I called their support and talked to a very nice guy who had an in-depth conversation with me about it and even watched a video I made showing the bug. He said he was taking the issue "up the chain." About 6 months and two .x.x releases later and the bug still existed. I reported it again, no response.
So I emailed AppleInsider who did a short article about it and within two weeks another .x.x release came out and the bug was fixed.
Sadly I think this is one of the only ways to get big tech companies to take action these days. Cant tell you how many times I have read about Comcast, Verizon, etc screwing someone over and being unreasonable about it until theres an article on ArsTechnica or some similar site about it.
These companies don't care about having reliable products, they care about the average consumer having the perception that their products are reliable.
Like you, I am just a hobbyist making beats in my room. No expectations of ever being a real musician. But when I'm jamming and I create a beat and synth line, start adding other instruments and really get a song going, there is a feeling that I get that an generated song will never ever ever be able to recreate for me. It's like a rush, an almost a euphoric tingling (and no I'm not on drugs) that happens that almost feels like a runners high. No output from a prompt-driven AI algorithm would ever do that to me. That's the value I see in making art for arts sake, for practicing a craft and for trying to just get better at something for the sake of getting better at it.
I was diagnosed with UC in my mid-30's, am in my early 40's now. I used to deal with flare-ups about twice a year that always coincided with allergy season (May and October/November). I was living in Colorado at the time and was drinking lots of heavy craft beer quite regularly. Three years ago, I cut out about 98% of alcohol from my life, and when I drank, I only drank clear things - hard seltzers and gin. But only once or twice a month at the most. I hadn't had a flare-up in that entire time, until this last holiday weekend when I drank whiskey and was hit with horrible UC symptoms immediately. As someone in the throes of a flare-up right now, I have to say that research like this is promising. But yeah, for me alcohol, primarily darker alcohol like whisky and red wine, are an absolute trigger for me.
I just want to say that this is incredibly impressive on so many levels. Your technical skills are obviously amazing but I really love how you were able to put this all together into an entertaining and well-produced video that anyone could understand. If you ever want to get paid 1/4 of what I'm sure you'll make as an engineer, you'd make a great teacher ;)
Thanks, was definitely hard to strike a balance between being understandable for non-nerds but also convey all the technical difficulties/achievements, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out .
