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Comment by bsenftner | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, my last car purchase was an exercise in locating a vehicle without any "smart" technologies. Car manufacturers are the last corporate group I'd trust with anything they are not heavily regulated to provide, such as basic safety measures such as the seat belts they fought for years not to provide. I plan on this being a car I nurse forever, as it is going to be a generation of extremely intrusive data collection, and extremely poor security on these vehicles. I'm staying away for a complete generation, if possible.

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What car did you end up buying?

I was in a similar situation and ended up with a 2011 Mazda3 hatchback. The plan is to limp this sucker along until hopefully our public transit infrastructure improves enough that I don't have to drive ever again.

HAH! Was shopping for something similar, albeit a 2012 and/or 2013 that a local dealer has in stock.

Same idea though: drive it until it dies and then pray that uber/lyft/whatever is mature enough that I never have to think about it again.

If your goal is to maintain your privacy as you travel around town, uber/lyft/whatever aren't a suitable solution.

Subaru Forester 2016 model.

TVs, too.

Tv's are simple though, just don't connect them to a network and they work fine.

I've heard allegations that some of the newer TVs will automatically scan for open networks in the background.

I saw some comments like this last time there a smart TV thread. However, none of the commenters were able to substantiate these allegations.

They very well might scan even with no networks configured (some Wi-Fi stacks scan in the background by default; it can reduce the the time the user has to wait when selecting an SSID or initiating a connection), but has anyone claimed that they actually connect? I think that would make headlines.

Agreed. Presumably the only thing they'd be able to reliably connect to is things like xfinity hotspots.

The idea that they'd have some kind of generic login for this would be hilariously insane and definitely make headlines.

But the idea of eg samsung brokering a deal with comcast to get conditional access to comcast modems to upload telemetry data in exchange for a modest access fee?

You could even market this feature directly to consumers: If you're in a house that rents a modem from comcast, your samsung smart TV "just works", and nobody has to fiddle with the wifi password.

There's no evidence that this happens today, but I'd be surprised if it hadn't been pitched repeatedly, and was currently under construction in some form.

They don't need to connect to any network if they come with capability to connect to a mobile network like a Kindle.

Until manufacturers start adding mobile data connections to TVs.

Get your dumb 4K monitors here: http://www.atyme.net/product-category/tv-line-up/uhd4k/ Before they stop selling them without "smart" tech.

Sceptre has dumb 4k TVs.

You can also find other brands on Amazon.

https://www.walmart.com/browse/electronics/sceptre-tvs/3944_...

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