NY/FL/LON/DXB Adventures in Cybersecurity https://xitter.cf/t.co/Sz3rDB91wT Mac App Battery Lens: https://xitter.cf/t.co/18SuDzbTCG Hayley the Horsepillar: https://xitter.cf/t.co/OZvLKl0kx1
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Joined May 2008
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Thomas J. Quinlan retweeted
Brutal chart.
France and UK vs. Communist countries at their peak.
UK public spending as % of GDP is currently above Romania, Venezuela and China.
And France is a lost cause.
(HM Treasury/Rand Research)
Thomas J. Quinlan retweeted
This is the judge who extended voting in the Brazil elections by 2hrs at the last minute.
And yes, that's Lula with him.
His name, Cristiano Zanin.
Thomas J. Quinlan retweeted
And why exactly would Putin want to invade Europe anyway?
To destroy our societies? We have rioting, looting and filth on our crumbling streets.
To destroy our armed forces? We can hardly float an aircraft carrier.
To take our resources? You mean our gigantic national debts.
To make us speak Russian? We’re already speaking Arabic.
Seriously - what could he possibly get out of it?
Thomas J. Quinlan retweeted
Heads up, @OpenAI and @AnthropicAI. Rumor reaches my ears that you're doing a stupid thing, and should stop before you damage yourselves.
I hear you've now nerfed your models so that when people try to use them to clean the spamware and spyware out of their televisions, you block that.
If you really want Chinese open-weight models and open-source projects like OpenWaldo to eat your lunch, crippling your models so that people paying expensive subscriptions can't use them for completely legitimate purposes is a great way to accomplish this.
If, on the other hand, you'd rather have a volume business, maybe stupid arbitrary restrictions that look like they have the sole purpose of protecting corporate sleazeballs aren't such a good idea.
A word to the wise should be sufficient.
Flying cars and now anti-gravity, all in the same month!? Damn.
Physicists in Okinawa have floated a diamond about a centimetre wide and pushed it up and down using nothing but the spins of electrons inside it, pumped by pulses of green laser light.
That object is roughly a hundred million times heavier than anything moved by spin force before. So, a quantum force now shows up directly on something heavy enough for gravity to matter.
Thomas J. Quinlan retweeted
I would actually pay money to see womens faces when they get told they have to pay 😂
Probably the most important post you'll read today.
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
xitter.cf/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
Upset about missing out on Bitcoin back in the day? Don't be that upset in the future again; look into Monero ($XMR). It's been trading sideways for a while .... a long while .... but it's making higher highs AND higher lows AND it's breakout out against Bitcoin!
Went to confession here in Muscat this evening for the first time in a long time.... immediately followed by Mass, where I was able to receive. A good day!
Blessed Lord’s Day!
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
The reason we can heed these otherwise overwhelming words is that God does not want anything from us that he has not first given us.
In the great commandment, Jesus cuts through all the devil’s lies and reveals to us that it is actually possible for us to love him with our whole being.
The generosity of our charity towards others flows from our mindfulness that we “were once aliens,” but then God’s love came and claimed us. That is why we truly can become “imitators of the Lord.”
@MagnificatMag
Thomas J. Quinlan retweeted
Jpk68 recently put forward a proposal to continue to work full-time on Monero development!
Hello everyone, I recently put forward a proposal for continued full-time Monero development, involving performance and docs improvements, better compatibility with anonymity networks, and much more. Your support would be hugely appreciated!
ccs.getmonero.org/proposals/…
Thomas J. Quinlan retweeted
Women Shocked To Learn Pill Designed To Murder Babies Might Not Be Safe buff.ly/qb6vUUw
Thomas J. Quinlan retweeted
Customer: "No veal, thanks. I know what happens to the calves."
Butcher: "So do I. Which bit do you know?"
Customer: "Crates. Taken off the mother, kept in the dark, can't turn round."
Butcher: "Banned here in 1990. This one had straw, a shed, and other calves to annoy for eight months. Rose veal, we call it. Pink, not white."
Customer: "It's still a baby cow."
Butcher: "It's a dairy bull calf. Where do you think they went before people bought veal?"
Customer: "Reared for beef?"
Butcher: "A Holstein bull doesn't make beef worth the feed. For years the answer was a bolt in the head at a day old. Tens of thousands a year, in this country, shot in the pen because nobody would eat them. The industry only promised to stop that a couple of years ago."
Customer: "That's horrific."
Butcher: "That's the price of a latte. Every pint of milk needs a cow in calf every year, and half the calves are boys."
Customer: "So eating the veal..."
Butcher: "Gives him eight months in a shed instead of eight minutes. The customer who won't touch veal and buys a flat white has made a choice. She just didn't get told what it was."
Customer: "I'll take a kilo."
Butcher: "Good. And the next person who tells you veal is cruel, ask them what they take in their coffee."
Also he hired actors in that other thing that he did that looked like (at least) the popular perception of the original folks (yes, just described Jesus, Mary, and the apostles as "folks" 😆) and had them speak Aramaic.
Thomas J. Quinlan retweeted
Unreal…
Elon: Don’t use Starlink to kill people.
Zelensky: I used Starlink to kill people.
Legacy Media: Elon is a monster for stopping Zelensky from using Starlink to kill people.
Democrats: We must investigate Elon for stopping Zelensky from using Starlink to kill people.
