cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/69831108

Hacker reverse engineers his Samsung TV and finds on-device AI listening for your dog and baby, watching what you watch, and borrowing your soundbar's mic if the TV doesn't have one. Then OpenAI banned him for reverse-engineering it.

Source:

• https://x.com/log4j/status/2113014142600953868
• https://x.com/log4j/status/2113647464154857840
• https://x.com/log4j/status/2109449808406598051

Not sure why you'd advertise this.

Right. Removing the wiretaps from your home is cyber abuse now.

Why would OpenAI ban him for reverse-engineering Samsung's product? Only explanation I can think of is that he vibe-hacked his TV and didn't use a self-hosted model to do it. Which means that his findings, or rather ChatGPT's findings, should probably be scrutinized.

Why wouldn't you?

Lets just say I've got a TV which sat like a brick for so long I forgot I had it. I didnt use it for years becuase it was so disgustingly filled with ads and corpo slop.

I now have total and complete control of that TV.

One can speculate that OpenAI wants to be corpo-friendly for future advertisement/product placement?

OpenAI ban didn't do anything to his TV. He still has full control of it.

To let people with Samsung TVs know that they are being listened to constantly without their knowledge?

Why wouldn't they?

They're in control, they have no business letting the little guy feel like they have anything to say when a corpo is fucking them.

Even if you're pro AI it should be pretty obvious that letting a corp control your usage of it is a bad idea.

You know what's crazy to me - this used to be the crazy guy under the bridge type of shit. Secondly, it's not the first company that's done this now. LG. Why aren't these people being raked on the coals. Don't answer that I already know. My real question is why aren't we bringing out guillotines and removing the scum from our planet. There are obviously no fucking rules or law of man on this Earth any longer.

I mean sure. But this isn't breaking news. The hacker is doing this as a response to gamers nexus.

Makes me glad I got a Samsung Hospitality Non-Smart TV.

This model specifically.

OpenAI and Samsung appear to be working together according to this comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/26518108

Because a revolution isn't as easy as killing rich people randomly, you need to organize millions of people to attack the economic basis of society to find ways to make the system collapse, and at the very same time organize a parallel society out of workers learning how to operate society from the bottom in a different (and hopefully more democratic) way. It's a lot of work, that requires spending a lot of time reading revolutionary theory and thinking deeply about how to apply it in the modern day.

You're correct; Which leads me to another point I'd like to make.

People that blame Americans for not doing 'enough' my response to them is to look around you. These panopticon devices are being sold in your country as well, we're all getting fucked over by the same so-called elites that lord over us and have been doing that since the dawn of humanity when they realized they can pit us against one another. I'm so sick of that narrative I am not happy with this world and what's going on in it even slightly.

It makes me violently ill to think THIS is the best humans are capable of and now the exploitation of everything - say I create a miracle cure-all nowadays. My days are numbered at best because now it's not in the interests of the elites to have that.

I didn't want to be believe that, that the world was so sickly like this, to be that pessimistic about it all, but looking around for even a moment you can see how far we've fallen as a species for total domination of the people these men and women view as beneath them. It's driving me up the wall. I'll actually protest instead of typing because nothing is going to get done otherwise - but protesting without violence is not going to solve this shit even slightly.

I can only do what I can where I am - which to be honest isn't a lot. Economically I am not even 1/1000000 a grain of sand in comparison to the enemy but we are the sand of the Earth and we fucking outnumber them.

What are we doing. How do we get the ball rolling something needs to be done GLOBALLY not just limited to one location or country, we have a genuine stain a glut of inhumane monsters that rule over us literally in the Epstein files doing the most heinous shit we consider to be the most egregious things one can do on this Earth and we're just going to fucking take it? I am losing my fucking mind. Like, what is this. Man.

EDIT: Formatting. I know this is a long text. TL:DR. I'm not happy.

I dunno. Seems like all the (temporary) good Luigi did for the healthcare system, killing a bunch of random elites would fix things... just gotta stagger 'em to keep momentum.

It's funny because I did exactly this in 2020 when they started putting ads on my tv. Then sold it and wrote them off ever since. Samsuck!

I tell this to them all the time, but falls on deaf ears or they throw logic out the window. Something else I mention is the difference in logistics to pull off something of that scale in the US vs their home country. For example in France they only have one major city being Paris. Scheduling a meaningful protest of sorts would be trivial vs how it would be here in the US. They often forget this. Even communication across these distances without leaking anything to a government who has shown its colors is damn near impossible. This takes time. If they want to accelerate this then come over and show us how it's done, but I'm not gonna lose sleep when they get blasted just touching the fence out front and nothing happens.

Considering their shit is supposedly "randomly" hacking things why would they care?

That's what rich people would like you to believe.

Yeah, just needs to be more often. The system can't cope with hundreds or thousands of Luigis.

Yeah, exactly. It's why places like New York or LA can have these amazing and powerful protests vs where I live, cannot (deep red). It's like a different country between state lines and I mean vastly different from one place to another.

Realistically what I see happening is our nation fracturing. I don't think it'll happen in the next ten years but thirty or even fifty, I believe we'll see states secede from the states. If things continue this way then the American experiment has failed. We had a good run but we're on the way out the door which might be a good thing.

I don't know. I just know I wish I could change it. Wish I had more power to stop this. It's like I'm watching the world as I knew it literally decay but only for us down in the 80% of the K-shaped economy - which I am. When you elect a man like Trump, expect a man like Trump. He only cares for himself and the rich - and it's not cause he likes them of course. It's business. Why people thought a business man would be good politics is beyond me.

Who knows might just be in an echo chamber but it certainly seems like we're going backwards globally not just in America either and people keep trying to admonish the fact their politicians are also in the cabal of this evil.

Luigi and ICE taught me two very important things. One, a single man CAN make a difference for good. Whether or not it was seen, it was felt. They shivered. And two. When you have masked men killing people in your own country, no one actually wants to kill someone and face the punishment of doing so. The fact that no ICE agent was killed following Alex Pretti's murder astounded me. It taught me something - this doesn't apply to all of them and it is conspiratorial - but a lot of the death in the political avenues are not done by 'normal' people. That there is a high likely-hood of something else going on behind the scenes. (It sounds obvious reading it but you're made to feel like you're doing something wrong by even considering the possibility of it.)

What I mean is - After Pretti, I thought the country would move in solidarity together. And while parts of it did and had the biggest cause and effect at the time. It didn't spark more than that, it wounded me to be honest.

A person, an ICU nurse shot dead with a mag-dump by multiple men masked in broad daylight given the authority to do so by their own government. It fucking shocked me to my core... I expected retaliation and yet, there was none. What it meant to me was people are not interested in a revolution until it is directly brought to their doorstep. We are interested in total self preservation.

Not only did an ICU nurse helping a woman I might add, was shot dead in the street, his killers were protected and hidden away. A go-fund-me surpassed 1.7 million dollars for the murder of an innocent man... it taught me something valuable. Human beings are a failed species or minimum extremely flawed and adaptive to many types of pain.

How can someone witness that and pay them for the murder and execution of their fellow man so callously, and you can say it wasn't the many but the few that did that. Yet violence never befallen any ICE agent therein after.

It doesn't make sense to me. Yet, at the same time I understood it. I also don't want to risk life and limb for an ideal especially when you already believe the ideal is dead... I don't even why I'm typing anymore. Searching for a solution to a problem long overdue. If anyone has the answers please let me know. I wish I did. I think the best I can do now is actually protest and put these words on more than a forum but out there for like-minded people and stand united. But that feels so idealistic it makes me sickly sweet. But it's better than the alternative.

I can't figure out formatting on here so this doesn't turn into a blob of words.

Go ahead.

That page says "TV Type: Smart TV ". Is it using that phrase to mean something different to what we all mean?

You're right. No quip. You're correct. But I, too am a coward. I'm not a soldier and my hands shake in intense situations - I have many excuses to give but no action to add.

You are not alone thus you have your answer.

Most people value their own life so it first must become so bad that dying while trying to change stuff is preferable to keep living in those conditions.

So relax, have fun while you can, this will sort itself out.

I about had a stroke at that price before I realized it wasn't in dollars

It's called propaganda of the deed and it's time we brought it back. Luigi was a great start but it's nothing compared to early 20th century anarchists.

The smarter our things get, the dumber things get.

They were way too expensive before that, anyway

Because it's only good to say things once....

Democracy is ok, but I have a slight tweak in mind. Before taking office, every elected person has to pass independent evaluation. You can’t be a psychopath or a narcissist. If your job involves the financial sector, you need to pass an exam etc. If you’re not qualified, you’ll be assigned a different position. Politics shouldn’t be a simple popularity contest. Politicians should also know what they are doing.

I agree about the psych evaluation. But regarding the exam: a politician is basically a combination of manager and sales person. Of neither role do I expect (deeper) understanding of the things they manage or sell. They need different skills.

But they need to listen to the experts in their ministries and be able to convey their results and concerns to other politicians who are even farther away from their topics and to the public. What they absolutely should not do is push some own agenda; especially not an agenda they somehow profit from.

That implies a certain level on integrity, honesty and humility, which are a bit tricky to test. Would love to see more of that though.

Probably safe to assume that they're all doing it.

We are most often cowards as individuals unless we have a mental break and snap like Luigi where self preservation takes a back seat, we'd handle it better as an organised group but clearly none of us know how to begin and/or there's not enough appetite for it to happen yet. I've heard it said nobody is willing until things get bad enough like if food becomes scarce. Idk. I've only known peace times with my needs met as they're slowly eroded in a declining society, so I'm completely out of my element. How do I theoretically convince my union to drag the boss out of their house and cave their head in without being ineffectual and jailed/killed as another single day news cycle headline labeled a crazed solo mad man who is promptly forgotten.

One thing for sure is it ain't gonna happen on censored social media owned by our enemies enforcing status quo or Fediverse instances that ban talk like this out of legal trouble fears like LW who also enforce status quo. Everyone likes to fantasize and maybe that cathartic release is part of the problem because the internet allows us to vent that frustration instead of harnessing it, but you actually get serious? You build a guillotine instead of posting guillotine.webp? Banned for inciting violence.

As long as its an election, becoming a statesman isn't decided by how good you are at your job, but how good you are at winning popularity contests. And all measures put in place would would get dismantled eventually.

I believe a true democracy would be better - a lottery. Go up to the box, put your name in, lots are drawn randomly and you have your council/senate/whatever. Terms limited to 2-6 years.

A randomly chosen group without overall malicious intentions will always be more effective than a group of educated, elected, "representatives".

That sounds like a reasonable solution. However, I’m still worried about competence and mental capability. There’s a pretty good chance that a drunken conspiracy nut would eventually hold an important office. Some sort of basic filtering should be in place. Maybe we could give everyone a chance, but incompatible people would need to be kicked out and replaced by more capable people. This system would obviously get abused, just like you pointed out.

What then? Should we just tolerate the fact that a certain fraction of the population, and the governing body, is more or less dysfunctional? Everyone else who has been trusted with power would need to carry them. If the town mayor is too drunk to wake up in the morning, too deranged to have a sensible conversation, or too hostile to be around other people, some secretary would need to participate in all the meetings and take care of the important decisions.

Well said and fully agreed. When the means to have discussion are taken away that too is a tool used against the people. That's why they're turning to surveillance as much as they have. It has been a wonderful weapon to cull this exact type of talk.

I think it'll just have to get a whole lot worse before we'll be worrying about this stage of things. It's just odd, watching it and seeing news like this become just background noise for so many people.

Almost like it doesn't even matter that rights are being stripped away, right in front of people and seemingly so few care... but maybe that's not fully right either. So few people don't have the time to care whether by design or not. And like you say, it feels like you're stuck, watching. A prison, oddly enough. I mean I'm not starving to death or something like that, but it feels awful with seemingly no light at the end of the long narrow tunnel. Waiting for a cave-in to breathe gasps of different air into the stale damp hole we call home.

I don't know, maybe I'm just complaining too much.

The solution is to normalize the outliers by having multiple people. Having 1 person in charge will make a nutcase inevitable one day. Having a 10-person council would require at least 6 nutcases in a single cycle to gain majority, which is very unlikely. And for congresses you up that to ~100 or more.

I also believe you're overestimating competence in current governments. Take any council, any senate, you will see most of them attended the same universities, hung around in the same circles, and so on. Even though you technically have a number of different people, their experience in life overlaps so much you effectively have very few distinct opinions in the room. By randomly selecting applicants you guarantee the greatest diversity of opinions, and thus potential solutions to problems.

Here's what happens when you get 150 randomly selected people in a room and tell them to lower emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_for_Climate#Proposals

It is true and I agree that somehow getting the right people in the right positions would be ideal, but the less random a selection process is, the greater the influence that can be exerted over it. I believe the human species would have to fundamentally be different in order to have a more effective selection process than random.

"Hey our T&C explicitly says you are not supposed to use AI to damage capitalism!"

This is good. I'll be in charge of the independent evaluation panel.

I think we should just in general start beating people's asses when they step out of line. Some tech bro/politician/billionaire says some unhinged shit? Immediately punched in the mouth. I think it'd do a lot of good if people were afraid to be assholes again.

Yeah, there’s the problem. It needs to be properly audited and independent. Sounds good on paper, but how do we actually implement it IRL.

That was a pretty amazing experiment. Random selection isn’t that bad after all, as long as the dysfunctional individuals can blend into the crowd.

And it’s also true that human nature is the root cause of most of our problems. If we don’t have a system for keeping humans in line, they will do what human nature demands. So far, that has led to greed and oppression. Fixing such a fundamental issue would require some pretty radical changes in the human mind. That’s not happening any time soon, so having some scaffolding seems like the best way to approach this problem.

Sounds pretty medieval, because it literally is, but have thought of addressing this issue with a pillory? Sounds like it should keep people in line.

That would require the court system to be involved. Which is already the problem now. Anyone with money for lawyers can just DO things and the rest of can't resist without a huge hassle. Any old Joe on the street can hand out an ass beating. Immediate consequences for being an asshole.

The same but for voters too. If you don't even understand the cycle of water, you can't be trusted with weighing on decisions on environmentalism, let alone affordable urban design or how to feed people.

Totally true. People vote based on the weirdest criteria.

“Oh, I’m not going to vote for her because she’s a woman…” Like, do these people even check what the candidate is aiming to accomplish?