Posted by decimalenough 3/30/2025
My favourite development in this regard is the lying timers on those ads. More than one streaming app I've caught resetting the overall timer on every ad. So it will say that there's 90s of ads, play through a 15s ad counting down to 75s, and as soon as the next ad plays, the timer resets to 90s again. Eventually after a few minutes of ads something must realize that it's actually been more than 90s, and just cuts off the current ad in the middle. Or even more fun is when it says you can skip in X seconds, but every ad it plays is Y seconds, where Y < X, and the skip timer resets with every ad. Looking at you Youtube.
I one time click an add because I was curious how the scam worked. First they wanted my name and phone number... when I typed the last digit of the phone number into the form my phone rang immediately. They even managed to confuse me for a moment.
Next level would be to use 10, 100 or 1000 phone lines (depending on budget) and call people when they haven't typed their entire number.
Quickly train the sales "person" llm on whatever public personal information can be found using their name ip/location, phone number, anything about their friends, relatives coworkers etc. Mimic the correct accent for the region.
Or howabout a question about the ad to check if they watched it properly. If they get it wrong it seems only fair to give them a new ad. Some question should not have a correct answer.
Or, how would you rate this advertisement? With each rating triggering an unique-seeming follow up question.
It also warns me it will auto-updates the software 1-2 times a month. My TV was perfect out of the box--it doesn't need an update. When I disable Wi-Fi, I get notifications that my TV is disconnected. Can't win.
Have a dedicated AP just for the tv and it has only LAN access to stream content through dlna or mirror phone screen using miracast.
It is currently the portable air conditioner season in Arizona. Home Depots now have them stocked in the front of the store.
All Wi-Fi enabled Toshiba models (which are white-label rebranded Midea units,) their overwhelming predominate stock, are susceptible to a bug where your unit can be remotely turned on or off randomly, without your input. Presumably mismatched accounts on their back-end.
Separately, but related, they also have universally paired remote controls, so your next door neighbor who also has a very popular Toshiba portable AC unit model can accidentally turn yours on and off without your input, and adjust your temperature any time, too. And you can accidentally do the same to them.
Oh, and their remote controls work across all unit models, so it doesn't matter if you have a window unit instead, either.
Whoops!
Never buy them.
https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/12/03/walmart-comple...
Meanwhile half the posters here work for Google or other ad-surveillance purveyors. I watched a short YouTube video today with half a dozen unskippable ads. If you had a hand in normalizing this then you can't claim to be upset by it.
Consent. The user didn’t consent to the feature, and now is expected to opt-OUT
Feed it via HDMI from whatever device you choose, but DO NOT let the TV connect to the mothership...
Or, just accept the consequences...
Why are you complaining about this punch in the face? It's a FREE new punch in the face you ingrateful parasite!
https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1jkwcbx/if...
They even went so far as to patch the Android System UI to send you notifications nagging you to enable their Taboola Lockscreen video ad things. So even if you uninstall the actual adware app, you still get nagged to use it.
Seems like this might perhaps just be the new-ish idea that got cooked up somewhere and now all suits are copying each other?