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Thousands of Android TV devices come with unkillable backdoor preinstalled (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 7 points 2 years ago (13 children)

It doesn’t really matter, just don’t connect them to the internet. Our TV just has a 14 year old computer that plays media perfectly, and is completely cut off from the internet.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    If they allow you to do that without any loss in functionality.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    It takes some research if youve never done anything like it before, but you can drip feed it the internet via a pihole, and starve it specifically of ads and data collection. Keep the functionality, kill the leech.

    Google smart tv pihole, theres a few guides, for anyone interested.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (6 children)

    But why? It doesn’t need that for anything. Just plug an old computer in via HDMI and bookmark movie-web.app or download/stream stuff from anywhere. Much better quality, interface, and no jank.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Just depends on what you need it for, and what youre trying to plug into it.

    For example, some people dont have spare computers to turn into a mini server, but do have $60 and the time to fiddle with a raspberry pi.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (4 children)

    Mines a 14 year old gateway you could prolly get for free or under 100, much more powerful than a RPi. Using Windows 10 on it with zero issue.

    I do have a couple Pis next to it but those don’t hook up to any screens, I just tunnel into em. One is a PiHole and one is a server. :3

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Not that theres anything wrong with your setup, but if Ive not got a spare pc or laptop, Id rather get the new pi than risk cheap older hardware that might fail sooner than later if all its gonna do is basically play as a pi.

    Plus, like. Pi's are cool. All compact and efficient. Adorable little motherboards.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    Oh totally! But this ancient machine plays better video than my pi 4b 4GB (which now is my headless server.) Surprisingly, it DESTROYS the performance of a Pi 4b even though my Pi runs off a solid state drive too.

    This ancient PC was my Grampa’s originally. I recommended a much cheaper machine for what he did. He told me “this is the last computer I’ll ever buy.” I told him to not be silly. He bought the Phenom x4 machine w/ video card anyway.

    He was correct. I was given his machine because we did computer stuff together.

    It lives on, though. It’s got a SSD now and more RAM, but it plays 1440p perfectly and runs 24/7… and has been running 24/7 for years. It used to also torrent, but the HDD died and my server RPi is gonna torrent too eventually.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

    Curious, what functionality would I lose? All it needs to do is turn on and display video through an HDMI port.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Samsung historically has had a habit of poaching features from their Smart TVs as they age, eventually leaving you with a not so smart TV after a decade or so. Not sure if other manufacturers do the same

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