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Comment by smaccona | Hacker News Reader

What I do is buy a smart TV, never connect it to the network (thus making it a dumb TV), and plug an Apple TV (or other devices) into it. So far, this has worked - I haven't seen any ads from the TV itself (the apps running on the Apple TV are another story), and it can't phone home about what I'm watching or otherwise doing with the TV.

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> and it can't phone home about what I'm watching or otherwise doing with the TV

Are you sure?

The old idea of giving TVs built-in cellular backup connection is probably still too risky/expensive - dealing with people extracting and repurposing the SIM card with a free (for them) data plan is a hassle. But what about eSIM?

Intriguing and possible I suppose; Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. However, I imagine the numbers would show it's unnecessary these days. My humble estimation is that most people, at least in the developed world, connect the TV to wifi for the convenience if available.

Why bother with an esim, when you can use something like Amazon Sidewalk, just use whatever nearby Echo or other device to send whatever small data packets

put a faraday cage around your house lol

Mark my words: one of these days, there will be a huge national security scandal involving data stolen from a SCIF, possibly with loss of life as a consequence, and it'll turn out there wasn't any intelligence op or treason involved - just adtech fuckery getting out of hand. Think disposable microphone and eSIM in a popcorn bag, sending telemetry to a publicly-readable S3 bucket, or something, because it's superbowl and they HAVE TO know if you're watching.

Honestly the privacy stuff isn’t even the value proposition, it’s that Apple TVs have great processors that run fast.

Using a typical smart TV or Chromecast is astoundingly slow in comparison. I have no idea how people tolerate it.

Let’s not forget that Apple and apps on the App Store gather plenty of information about you, especially if you aren’t vigilant about settings.

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