It’s Pi Hole. Everything’s computer.
At this time I’d like to shill for Sceptre. They make tvs and monitors that don’t have all that stupid fucking “smart” features. I do not know of another brand that still makes dumb screens.
(sort of) unrelated, but I found a Sceptre CRT Monitor in the woods and it’s one of the best tube displays I own.
I bought a Sceptre TV as my first big purchase after graduating college and it’s still kicking nearly ten years later. Sure the speakers died a few years ago and several buttons on the remote no longer work, but it sure isn’t spying on me. And the picture quality is honestly not bad for what I paid
Unplug your TV from the internet and plug the HDMI into a machine running Kodi or similar.
Lmao but the Nvidia shield also have bullshit ads
If you’ve got the hardware capabilities, I just Read yesterday that Kodi supports CEC and can be used to control your DVD player or Set Top boxes that also support it IF you have it plugged into your CEC port.
This means turning a raspberry pi into the best media access client there is for a TV takes like 20-40 minutes (install librelec, profit?)
What is pi hole? I would love to dumbify my smart tv if possible…
OK, so whenever any device (e.g. your computer) wants to connect to a website (say, “wikipedia.org”), it tells your router that it wants to go to that website. Your router then sends what is called a “DNS Query” to some server, such as Google or Cloudflare, which takes the string of characters “wikipedia.org” and looks it up in their own dictionary of websites. In that listing, “wikipedia.org” will be linked to a specific IP address, which Google or Cloudflare then pass back to the router. Your router then connects the original device to that IP address, allowing your computer to get data from wikipedia.
Now, modern devices make up to hundreds of these requests every second, so it’s not like it’s going to ask your permission for every single _one of them, right? Of course not. The problem, however, is that virtually every single proprietary app and piece of networked hardware nowadays is actively spying on you, by sending constant “telemetry”, marketing, and ad-servicing requests to hundreds, or even thousands of different services every day.
Pihole is a program that runs on a device (traditionally a raspberry pi, but could also be as simple as an old always-on tower computer or as complex as a self-hosted server). This device is connected to your internet, and what you do is you tell your router that the only place it’s allowed to ask for DNS queries is your pihole device, rather than google or Cloudflare. Then you add blocklists, en masse, to your pihole, which takes every single DNS Query and checks it against the blocklists. If a DNS request isn’t on the blocklists, it passes the request on to an actual DNS server, like Cloudflare, then gives the response back to the router, and the router is none-the-wiser. You get to see wikipedia. HOWEVER, if your device has the temerity, the absolute gall, to connect to any server on your blocklists? The pihole just… Doesn’t pass on the message, and you get to choose whether the pihole actually sends your device a refusal, like “no, we won’t be connecting to google ad services today, thank you” or if it just stays silent, not letting the blacklisted requests through, and just shredding the request every time it gets one for that unwanted site. Also, the pihole can keep a log of every single request made, both blocked and allowed, and keep tallies of the most-requested servers. It does this by default, but can easily be told to stop whenever you want.
TooComplex;Didn’tUnderstand: imagine your local network is a medieval walled city. Whenever someone inside wants to communicate out, they send their letter to the post office, which sends a runner out of the city and returns with the response. A pihole acts as a guard at the city gate, taking every letter, checking the addressee to see if the city’s magistrate is okay with sending information there. The guard has a long list of places letters aren’t allowed to go, and they are very fast at their job. If the addressee isn’t on their list, they send out their own soldier to take the letter themselves, rather than letting the post office runner go. If the addressee is on the blocklists, they either rip up the letter and send the runner back with their own, or they just rip up the letter and beat up the runner so they don’t go crying back to the sender and narc. Its the magistrate’s call how the guard handles it. Also, the guard keeps a list of every single letter that arrives at the gate, unless the magistrate tells them not to. The magistrate can peruse the list and tell the guard to allow or block any addressee on that list (or off of it) at any time.
Thanks for the comprehensive answer. I was hoping for something more like an alt-OS for the TV, so it doesn’t ask for updates all the time or really do anything besides cast from a computer or console
Fun fact: all these smart TVs run Linux, which is supposed to facilitate that, but they’re DRM’d to prevent it instead. There are active lawsuits going on about it.
Ah, yeah, for that, just factory reset it, don’t connect it to the internet on setup and use HDMI.
My wife likes to cast YouTube from her phone
Could that work if you connect it to LAN but don’t allow it to communicate outside of your network?
I’m 99% sure “casting” a website just opens that site on the device and gives you remote control. It gets the data through the WAN, not your phone.
With how laggy and horrible casting is, for me, I can confidently say that’s not how my TV works
An alternate less useful answer might be looking up TVs marked as “commercial displays”. They are a less consumer marketed display.
You should be able to go into your router and block internet access for your tv, no additional hardware necessary. And it’s more reliable than pi-hole since it’ll block all internet access, even static ips, and no chance of a dns leak.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=pi+hole
Basicly a Raspberrypi that you plug infront of your device that applies a filterlist similiar to the one used by uBlock to filter out ip that you don’t want (Tracking or adds for example)
I love my PI hole but it’s needing a complete upgrade and a list rebuild. Damned thing is so reliable and solid I literally forget I’m running it. Things been up for over a year and not one issue.
Wow the PNG is so transparent I am impressed. I think I have never seen anything so transparent before. You guys really know how to make stuff transparent. The most transparent in the world. Every expert knows this is the most transparent transparency transpering.
Thank you! I’m so touched by your recognition! I really appreciate your pretendering muchly for my meme! 🥰
when did trump join lemmy
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By the way, https://remove.bg/ removes backgrounds
Helped me get a job, after the incident…
The… the incident???
SUBSCRIBE
Nope, sponsorblocked.
Thank you! Noted for next time! Saves me the trouble of having to use lasso to clean up the edges and feather any aliasing problems
I got bamboozled when I was surfing the web at AltaVista and tried to download this transparent pi hole png logo. It was saved as PNG and had transparent in the name. Brought it into Krita and I chuckled, so figured I’d troll a few persons online and added the “pretend this is transparent” to the meme.
‘pretend this is transparent’ is sending me. Bra-fucking-vo!
LOL thanks bro. I was browsing the internet at AltaVista and downloaded a pi holo logo image that said
transparent PNGin the name. When I added the image in Krita I had a good laugh and decided I’d leave it as is here
I live in fear that someone in my house will connect the tv to the WiFi and an update will just absolutely fuck it up.
Block the MAC on the router.
Luckily I caught my brother in the act of doing this when he came to stay, it was with good intentions but I had to explain the reasons why.
literally happened to me
Welp, time to set up a MAC address whitelist.
Add a parental lock to the TV settings too.
I have a smart TV. It is connected to two things. The wall socket for power and HDMI #2 for my PC.
Edit: Also I have a PFSense router, I use PFBlockNG to also block the IPs behind the blocked DNS entries. My phone is GrapheneOS and all of my computers are GNU Linux. Any blocked incidents I get are usually from websites. If I surf the web a lot in a month, I maybe get 200 blocked incidents. If my normie friends stay over with, for example, a Windows PC and an iPhone, I get 2000 per day. It’s wild what’s going on with these devices.
This the way.
I’ve got my pc and steamdeck on my tv.
The settings menu still asks me if i want to connect for “corpo reason”.
At this point just use the TV as screen for a Raspberry and be done with it. Pi hole is good but it cant catch everything, and i would expect smart tv’s by now try to smuggle out data on things that can get around the pihole. Every Smart TV has to be assumed a compromised device, with advanced data exfiltration options.
They also take fingerprints of what your watching every few frames and get it out on corpo shadow mesh nets
Anybody got an in to those corpo mesh nets BTW?
Why does it feel like I fell into some Shadowrun Decker forum?!
Because it’s incredibly tacky cyberpunk that is simultaneously far too serious and incapable of taking itself remotely seriously, there’s latent transphobia everywhere, especially among people claiming to be magic, all the tech that does anything you actually want it to is pretty explicitly based on magic, and there is absolutely comprehensively verifiably zero hope.
(See meme downthread)
Thankfully not in Europe.
How do you know? Taken yours apart?
Several people have already tested and confirmed this and I believe them that even the big tech giants are somewhat afraid of the GDPR claws.
people have tested and confirned
That i believe. Fuck yeah; tech audits!
afraid of the gdpr
Im not as sure i believe that.
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Mine ignores it and does its own DNS.
Not even connecting these devices to the Internet.
Time to do the ol’ firewall redirect for port 53
I do that with my mikrotik router. It is amazing for Google devices. Too bad I got rid of my last Google home device a year ago
DoH, DoT, dnscrypt, whatever else
Firewall redirect and masquerade.
Bitch you thought
DoH, DoT, dnscrypt, whatever else
does its own DNS
The hdmi doesn’t work unless the internet is connected?
as HDMI may carry Ethernet signals, that isn’t too far fetched…
I’m waiting for these smart devices to come with their own mobile modems.
And/or some weird legislation that mandates connecting them to your home network. Because you wouldn’t want them to not be able to phone home with the thousands of screenshots so their AI can verify that you are not stealing copyrighted content, right???!
“oops each one somehow malfunctioned and the registry id’s were corrupted.”
In fascist America, believe it or not, straight to jail.
it’s fine. I don’t have any smart appliances in my home.
I really hope that continues to be an option.
I worry it’ll end up like trying to buy a car that doesn’t constantly report your location (physically disconnecting the cellular antenna is still legal for now) or living without a cellphone and only paying with cash. With enough time, any semblance of privacy becomes weird, then illegal.
Block it by MAC address at the router. That’s the only way to know for sure.
New TVs will connect to other smart TVs that have been connected to the Internet.
You straight up have to pull their chips now if you really want to be sure.
This is the first I’ve heard of such a thing. Like TVs connecting to one another through Wifi Direct or BTLE and tethering their internet connection? Can you link to anything discussing this?
Hmm, I recall reading a couple articles about it a year or so ago but nothing is coming up in searches.
I’m not sure if that means it was vaporware, misinformation, or coming soon to a Google TV near you. Anyone that’s more familiar with network capabilities is free to correct me, but as far as I’m aware if your TV has Bluetooth it’s already capable of doing this at some level.
Either way you’ll catch a smart appliance in my house when I’m dead.
? If you’re going to block 1 Smart TV from the Internet. Why wouldn’t you do it to all the TVs on your LAN?
In theory, as every smart TV might act as an access point, it’d be sufficient to be in the range of your neighbors smart TV.
Oh shit I didn’t think of that.
Because the range could include things like the apartment, condo, or even house next door.
Randomized MAC addresses: Bonjour
I thought government regulation would prevent that? I thought the whole point of a Mac address was a unique id for hardware
Unique IDs are a privacy concern. Best you can tell by randomized MAC addresses is who the manufacturer of the device is and the type of device if you’re lucky (like when the manufacturer’s departments are internally split into separate companies), but that’s not guaranteed.
Buying old TV (as long as LED) or 2K resolution TV is still worth it for me because i don’t like Android TV, Smart TV, or other crap and shits. For me a TV doesn’t need to have that kind of features, if you want android just buy android tv box like NVIDIA Shield or Minix
Couldn’t you just buy a new, awesome TV and then not hook it up to the internet?
Many newer smart TVs will literally not boot up past a certain point until you connect them to the internet to “activate” them. It’s actual madness.
Can confirm. Returned as defective.
It takes ages to boot, might have integrated offline ads, draws power when on standby for features you don’t want like remote controllability via network, and it’ll probably nag you forever to let it online. No thanks, a display will always just be that in this household. Separate concerns please, also easier to upgrade or replace.
I set up my Samsung give it its initial update, and then blocked it from internet at my firewall. If I need it to do something I unblock it for a few minutes and then block it again when I’m done. I use streaming sticks for all my other work and they’re just pie holed regularly.
That’s what I did with my brand new whatever-inch big fucking flatscreen. Like 80% of the buttons on the remote make a little notification come up saying the feature’s missing since the TV wasn’t set up “properly”, but it works fine.
