The only way to fight against this dragnet is flooding these devices with fake data.

We're talking about content where the primary motivation for creating it is displaying ads in between in order to make revenue. For instance: I'm watching some video about repairing an old car, and suddenly there is a sponsor segment where the mechanic talks about branded supplements for 5 minutes. Why would I take health advice from a car mechanic? I think this is dishonest advertising and I would actually prefer to skip these videos altogether, but yt doesn't offer that in a search filter. So i use Sponsorblock.

For comparison: say you're getting a haircut. And halfway they stop cutting to promote their new book, for 5 minutes straight. Telling you they would not be able to provide you with the haircut if they cannot promote the book.

At this point, best to just keep it disconnected. Just use an apple tv or similar. They sold us a spying device masqueraded as a smart TV.

If internet is really required, I'd personally flood such an LG tv with fake data - add a raspberry pi to provide it with looped audio streams for the microphone, fake bluetooth devices, and so on. But it's still probably a drop in a bucket.

Do companies in the US really have the right to do that? I would think that kind of investigation is reserved for law enforcement only. If the design was made over email, would the piano company be able to subpoena Google for someone's private gmail messages?

> Do companies in the US really have the right to do that?

Does it matter? What's important is if it can happen or not, and how if so. We already know that MPAA is willing to basically do whatever, even contribute themselves to piracy, if it means they can put people in jail for copying stuff eventually. They themselves also gotten in trouble for copyright violations themselves in the past, so doesn't seem like they're hiding away from breaking a little bit of laws to hunt pirates.

Attorneys can subpoena if the court approves, as part of ongoing litigation, AFAIU (IANAL).

Consider previous cases where companies like Reddit have unmasked their users at the behest of court order.

Try refreshing Firefox. On opening it shows two recommendations for Google; a large "VPN" button in the address bar; a toast asking me for my weather location; the address bar tries to cross sell me three Mozilla products: "Monitor, Relay and VPN".

I'm not sure how the new AI stuff works as I never enabled it, but apparently that's there, too.

I think babysitting the AI would be a better term than vibe coding. At work they call it "AI assisted engineering" and "synthetic coworkers"

I have a separate lan for untrusted devices, I only use whitelisting. No public DNS for these devices.

I'm always wondering how hard it would be to just remove the hardware for spying. Just keep enough hardware to make it a dumb panel, remove the webos logic boards, wifi antenna, etc.

This can be very useful for urban planning. you could have an agent investigate the optimal spot for a new datacenter, examine solar power installations, and so on.

I have the same sentiment. Who assures me this video isn't sent to the manufacturer for "quality control" reasons? Can it be used in court in case of an accident? Will my insurance ask access to monitor my driving? Can it be used for detecting phone use? Therefore, these cameras get a sticker, or a small printout of my head, looking alert, put in front of the camera. These systems only cause extra distraction, they do not reduce it - it feels like having a constant driving exam.