Fuck off.
This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny.
Why does the TV have to be smart? Having the smarts integrated into the TV requires that 2 components be replaced if either no longer meets the user's needs.
Lets make a really nice large format display with no smarts or connectivity and then let the user choose an Apple TV, Roku, Fire, Android, or whatever.
I mainly use Apple TV and PS4 to access all of the streaming services. They are slick, fast, and responsive.
Obviously, they cost quite a bit more (almost double), because modern TVs are ~40-60% subsidized by ads and tracking.
I haven't been able to figure how to "sticky" YT TV for example to either the main screen or early in the "Video" section.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBJxPkUUh4 <-- If anyone is curious, this is what PS4 does to your streaming apps and there's no way out of it. You are forced to go into this section to find the streaming app you want to use
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-is-reportedly-disabl...
All this is bloat on a tv.
Also the iPhone bricking requires a police report and has a pretty defined process and I’m not aware of any overreach by Apple to brick phones like this story.
My TV phoning home doesn't really seem like it accomplishes much, and will likely be misused in the future, not to mention is an entire layer to vectorize in terms of fleet device attacks.
why does this matter? In either case the entity responsible for handling the lock request is the company itself.
Who initiates it matters because if a TV vendor can arbitrarily brick your TV for something after you've paid cash for it, then that smells of theft. The same thing if a TelCo could or would arbitrarily brick a device I paid for. The distinction is that I'm telling them to do this to my phone.
What happened in south africa:
* TVs are sitting inside a factory
* TVs are owned by samsung
* factory gets robbed
* the owner (samsung) tells the manufacturer (samsung) to brick the devices
I fail to see how it's different than:
* iPhone is sitting in your pocket
* iPhone is owned by you
* you get robbed
* the owner (you) tells the manufacturer (apple) to brick the device
This statement is from the source: https://news.samsung.com/za/samsung-supports-retailers-affec...
That means the Samsung TV's call home. How do they know when to stop calling home? The answer is they don't. That's one layer of the problem.
The second layer being that they can "incorrectly" brick someone's TV. Remote device administration when done by a TelCo requires a whole ton of validation, your eSIM goes through a fairly extensive validation check when it logs onto a network, which is why it has this capability in the first place. They are not the same thing in this way either. If TelCo's started accidentally bricking peoples phones I think you'd see similar criticism of the practice.
The third layer, as mentioned in other threads, is that most people don't keep receipts. A TelCo knows you went through an activation process with a certain phone number. It's a little easier to target at that point. You don't need to dig up a receipt from months or years ago.
What gave you that impression? The statement put out by samsung? It's reasonable to think that they keep very good records of where a given TV should be and whether it was at a looted factory. If the TV was blacklisted, it's almost certain to have been looted. The statement is just a CYA to prevent a PR nightmare on the off chance that some TVs make it back into the retail supply chain and into the hands of an unsuspecting buyer. Legally speaking, it's still stolen property and the customer can't keep it, but Samsung doesn't think exercising that right is worth the hassle/negative press.
>The third layer, as mentioned in other threads, is that most people don't keep receipts.
People don't keep receipts for a $1000+ purchase? On the off chance they don't, they can get the retailer to make a copy, with supporting documentation.
>You don't need to dig up a receipt from months or years ago.
This is for devices that were looted weeks before. I see no indications that they're going to use this to do random ownership checks.
Or to just stop buying "Smart" televisions.
People on HN like to say that buying a regular display panel without any of the "smart" features is cost-prohibitive, but it isn't.
A few months ago I did some comparison shopping on B&H, and the price difference was very small. Sometimes within sales tax range.
My next TV will be a regular display panel, and it will be the "smartest" decision I can make.
My argument is the opposite. It can be very difficult to find a dumb TV that actually has a high-end panel in it.
One avenue is the digital signage models, but they can be super expensive, and are not always available via normal retail channels.
Why spend effort to crack their platform when you can buy from competitors, which you do a disservice for fixing Samsungs TVs.
Then again I don't know if there are any 'dumb' or open software competitor TVs left on the market ...
Heh, firey take.
Personally my want is for systems like Netflix's Discovery and Launch[1] to take off. TV's can present themselves on the network, and phones or other devices can tell them to start running certain activities, & control them from afar.
There's been some good work to try to modernize these early protocols, & to build a more robust, fully featured, competent standard. That work has been happening at Open Screen Protocol[2] spec, which recently went Draft.
Alas, of course, Apple seems like they're going to do everything they can to prevent open standards from succeeding. They have a couple dozen patents vaguely in the field, most of which seem farcially ridiculously generic & obvious, and the bulk of these patents don't start expiring till 2024. They've disclaimed these to the working group[3] and while it doesn't prevent the standard from being worked on, as far as I know, it means there's almost no chance of it being supported or shipped until ~2028 or latter.
This is a spec that seems enormously pure & good, based on simple, obvious, straightforward ideas. I'd expect a random pick of Senior Engineer I's to come up with a design real similar to what is presented here- little of it feels novel or interesting. It's so damning, so sad that this world feels so obstructed, so road blocked, from doing the right thing, from the good & easy paths. And Apple being the sinister juggernaut preventing the good just feels so typical to me, locking us in to specific narrow means, controlling how we connect, how we think. It's been very hard days for me hearing Apple set us back like this. And I have no hope any kind of Fair Reasonable and Non-discriminatory licensing will ever be set up, no confidence we could try to find a legal route, even if we wanted to. Humanity is occluded by the largest, vastest, highest tech entity on the planet, held back.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch
[2] https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/8973 https://www.w3.org/TR/2021/WD-openscreenprotocol-20210318/
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-Pa...
But if you bought it off the back of some guys truck would you honestly expect it to work?
> "Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com or click here for more information"
I don't know why they would block me, but apparently it is something they've created a process for, a process I wouldn't be able to participate in.
Intentionally disabling purchased devices to force them to buy new ones is called trespass to chattels and is illegal.
You've never seen any IoT devices shut down remotely? It happens all the time.
A batch of stolen TV's could end up in the ends of a legit distributors; someone could end up with that by walking into some established brick-and-mortar discount TV warehouse type place.
Gee, I hope that everything you own that you got off Craigslist in good faith and paid for is remotely disabled if it had been stolen, while the thieves enjoy the money. Because you're the bad guy!
You're not the bad guy, but you're also not entitled to keep the stolen goods. It has to go back to its original owner. I'd be pretty pissed if someone stole my bike, sold it, and I'm not able to recover my bike because somebody "bought" it at 80% off.
However, Samsung is not the law, first of all. (If they have a court order to disable the equipment, that's fine, I suppose.)
Second of all, these TV's won't be recovered; they will probably just end up in the landfill.
You're not catching the thieves this way.
Should apple require a court order to enable icloud lock on your stolen iphone?
>Second of all, these TV's won't be recovered; they will probably just end up in the landfill.
>You're not catching the thieves this way.
Same for stolen iphones, are you against icloud locks as well?
I could say I spent $1500 at BestBuy on some date, but not have concrete proof of exactly what I bought from that alone.
How does that help when the product is out of warranty?
> Or you sue them.
How exactly would you go about suing Samsung. Figure that out and let us know if it would be worth it for a TV.
>How does that help when the product is out of warranty?
This is for TVs that were recently stolen. They'd definitely be in warranty (short of you not buying from an authorized reseller because you bought it out of the back of a truck), and you're reasonably likely to have the receipt.
So in light of the relevant debate here, how exactly does a proof-of-purchase help if the product is out of warranty?
This is akin to Crypto Wars from the 1990s but this time the enemy is far more dangerous. In the 1990s we had a centralized enemy the government which decided to turn against us this time the enemy is decentralized in the form of private corporations which are turning against us one by one.
Government can be tamed but private corporations can not; they only see profit and now they think they can get more of it by lying to us they do it in the name of social justice.