Linux is never going to have an age verification system. Any distro that implements it will be forked or abandoned. Or both.

I dropped Portainer in favor of Dockge a few years ago. Absolutely worth it.

I’d also recommend Dockge. Made by the same dude who does Uptime Kuma. Super simple, works along existing stacks.

Seriously… 🫤

The Samsung I’m not too worried about, it hasn’t seen a firmware update in at least 3 years. Plus the screen is cracked anyway. We’re gonna get rid of it and put the Vizio in its place, then move the 65" LG to where the Vizio was (living room). After I go through the LG’s firmware and kill everything I can.

Sensor Watch is fun. Mine has an accelerometer which lets you do neat things like tap the watch to increment/decrement the stopwatch and timer. It’s got a basic pedometer, too, plus a few games like Endless Runner, Coin Flip, and a Moon Lander kinda thing.

My router (unifi dream machine) offers regional blocking, so I block Russia, China, and a few others that I’ve gotten hits from. So far so good.

Nabu Casa offers a reverse proxy through their own services. I run mine this way. Haven’t really had any problems with it in the year I’ve been subscribed.

They’ll try to settle before getting to that point, just watch.

I run a Casio F91W w/ a Sensor Watch Pro board. It’s pretty neat. Battery life is 1-2 years depending on usage (I’m 5 months in, down from 3.1V to 2.58V with a LOT of tinkering; still chugging along).

10/10 would recommend. This is what a “smart” watch should be.

We have three “smart” TVs: Samsung, Vizio, and LG. None of them are connected to any network at this point.

At least /r/webOS over on reddit is aware. Seems like some are actively seeking solutions.

You are intentionally dodging the point.

Yeah, I’m like hyper aware of these shenanigans at this point.

Hell, we just bought a HiSense portable AC that I didn’t realize had wifi until it was delivered. I straight up ripped out the wifi module as soon as I took it out of the box. I actually just got some parts for a fully local ESP32 replacement that I found on a whim after a bit of googling 😂

I’m sure that community is already well aware of it. Is there a group on Lemmy?

LG’s US division still falls under US law.

The remote is still needed so you can pick the AppleTV from input sources, adjust volume, or select picture mode. AppleTV, AFAIK doesn’t have HEC. You need it on both ends for one device to tunnel via Ethernet. AppleTV also doesn’t do ACR and has third-party Jellyfin support. Not so sure about other streaming stick/boxes.

The interface is navigable with the single button they give you on the bottom (Remember buttons? I 'member…), so that’s workable. I know the Apple TV reports itself as such on the TV’s input selector. Not sure if that’s related to this HEC thing though.

It’s pure madness we all have to speculate about ANY of this. Anyone in LG’s corporate line who approved this crap should be demoted for sheer stupidity.

I don’t disagree there. But that’s the thing - it’s not just LG doing this. Nearly every “smart” TV manufacturer does it.

I’ve been working hard to rid my house of this spy shit, but the TV went under the radar for a long time. This has given me a good motivation bump to keep at it, knowing that what I’m doing isn’t for nothing. And my wife is 100% onboard, which really helps.

If I select a top row app, that application can “advertise” what’s new on the top half of the screen.

Yes. They are advertising to you. That’s what “ad” is short for: “advertisement”.

Apple TV units have ads.

I wouldn’t remove the network card. That also kills the Bluetooth remote.

It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Unplugging it from ethernet/wifi may also not be enough. If it’s connected via HDMI-HEC, it could get Ethernet over HDMI.

This is why it’s unplugged from power until I can properly control it without compromise. If that means I rip out the hardware in favor of some generic “is just an HDMI receiver with an LG display attached”, then so be it. Or it goes in the trash. IDK yet.

LG doesn’t specifically list HEC support, but at this point, I’m not sure they can be trusted.

Model # 65UT8000AUA, which is rootable. I already rooted it though 😂

Safest path is to block its IP addresses at router level, unplug it from ethernet, factory reset it

Yep. I blocked it on my UDM. I don’t think it even has an ethernet port, now that I think about it… I should check.

only go through a trusted streaming device without HEC support, block all the LG servers at router level

The only thing plugged into it is an Apple TV. And we rarely use it these days. I do run Pihole on my network, but admittedly I haven’t kept track of the shit coming out of the TV.

and power the TV down when not in use

They do this even when “turned off”. That’s why it’s unplugged.

Because they decided to go with Fedora.

We have a 65" LG TV in our master bedroom (model 65UT8000AUA). After finding out about this, I blocked it from my network and then unplugged it from power. It is rooted, hilariously, but until I can figure out a way to gain complete control over it (removing telemetry and other shit), it’s gonna stay unplugged.