[TacticalCoder]

> A smart TV with no internet connection

And it's soon going to be impossible to dodge it going on the Internet anyway. Manufacturers are hard at work making sure that if any of any neighbor's Internet of Shitty Insecure Things [TM] device participate in the scam, the smart TV shall use your neighbor's device to escape and access the net. I forgot the name of the protocol / "feature", but it's a very real thing.

So unless you live in the middle of nowhere, like in a cabin in the woods, it's not going to work for much longer to "no enter the WiFi password" to "just don't connect it to the internet".

Just buy a projector made to project reports at corporate meetings or the like. These are still totally dumb and has added bonuses you can get a diagonal bigger than what any TV can offer and it's much closer to the movie theater feeling.

[crazygringo]

That is total unfounded speculation unless you have evidence for it. Do you?

There's been an urban legend going around for years that smart TV's automatically connect to unsecured wifi but nobody's ever been able to demonstrate it a single time. (Probably their kid had connected it intentionally or something.)

So you might be conflating that urban legend with Amazon's network of Ring devices. But that's extremely low bandwidth, and there is zero evidence TV manufacturers are trying to build in automatic connections to it.

Again, if you have actual evidence then please share, otherwise this is just scaremongering and FUD.

[machrider]

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23659191/amazon-sidewalk-...

I mean, bandwidth doesn't really matter if we're talking about whether the device is sending home private information about what content you watch. It doesn't need to stream video back to Samsung to be basically malware.

[vorpalhex]

https://m.gsmarena.com/huawei_reportedly_working_on_a_5gconn...

https://patents.google.com/patent/CN111885330B/en

Your car already does this. It's trivial for your television to do so as well.

Sidewalk doesn't yet have a TV manufacturer onboarded but an ad profile is well within the size limit for their spectrum. We're talking kb of json.

So it's not unfounded, there are patents. It's not speculation, it seems to be a pretty active area of thought for manufacturers of televisions, and it's used now in your car.

[snvzz]

>There's been an urban legend going around for years that smart TV's automatically connect to unsecured wifi but nobody's ever been able to demonstrate it a single time. (Probably their kid had connected it intentionally or something.)

Your neighbours' smartTV might take on an AP role for yours.

There's no escaping the ads and tracking with these devices.

[crazygringo]

But again, that's total speculation.

You say "there's no escaping" and yet there is. Just don't connect the wi-fi. And done. You've escaped.

[snvzz]

To actually be sure, just invest in a dumb TV or monitor.

SmartTV are not something you want to support with your money anyway.

[throwaway2190]

If Amazon can't do it 5G will, one of the advertised aims is to allow many more types of device to connect without overcrowding the networks.

> When fully operational, 5G networks will have the capacity to connect 500 times more devices than 4G. This is the foundation for the future of Massive IoT—a world with a million or more connected devices per square kilometre.

https://www.rogers.com/business/blog/en/understanding-massiv...

Now for the sentence that will ruin my credibility: they've done a pretty good job of immunising (ha) everyone against any criticism of 5G by associating it with antivaxxers etc.

> By injecting people with a severely weakened dose of fake news (the virus) and refuting it in advance, over time people can develop mental antibodies – psychological immunity – against misinformation.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/foolproof

[JKCalhoun]

"Perhaps I can interest you in my services. I specialize in foiling, in copper, the entire television set to block all RF signals from entering or leaving the device. Uh, except for the screen side, of course."

[auggierose]

How is it not illegal for your device to highjack a neighbour's internet connection?

[cyborgx7]

Because your neighbor "agreed" to to the possibility in the process of setting up their device as part of that device's TOS.

[auggierose]

Should still be illegal. Nobody expects such a thing in a TOS.

[cyborgx7]

Long TOS that nobody expects to ever be read should be illegal in general.

[anonymouskimmer]

> And it's soon going to be impossible to dodge it going on the Internet anyway.

To the tune of the Sesame Street song: Faraday cage, sweeping the signal away

I don't know if transparent Faraday cages are possible, but there's apparently at least one company that will EM shield entire rooms.

[justinclift]

> I don't know if transparent Faraday cages are possible

Depending on your budget, you could faraday enclose the whole room / building rather than trying to do an individual device.

As related reading from back in the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)

[anonymouskimmer]

> While much of TEMPEST is about leaking electromagnetic emanations, it also encompasses sounds and mechanical vibrations.

Damnit. They're going to embed signals in the harmonics of the sound system, and invert the sound systems of neighboring connected devices to act as microphones. So you'll need a Faraday cage and a fully soundproofed and seismically-proofed room.

[admax88qqq]

Of course then you can't use your phone inside your house/living room.

[justinclift]

I'm already sold on the idea, you don't need to keep on selling it to me. :)

[admax88qqq]

lol

[anonymouskimmer]

They still sell landlines.