The "smarter" all the devices get, the smarter I feel for not buying them.
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@alice When I was packing up all of my shit to move to France, I took half of our televisions (LCD, nothing special, but large and *dumb*).
My wife laughed and suggested that I was being silly by not just buying new televisions when I made it across the pond.
The last time I was in her house I heard so many advertisements, so many "AI Assistants" listening, and she (a supposed liberal) has a fucking Ring doorbell.
I'm happy with my dumb TVs, my dumb DVD players, my dumb media server, my dumb record player, and my dumb doorbell.
Before I buy anything "smart" I will first find out how the "smart" can be disabled (the fridge we bought was 'wifi capable', so I opened the back and yanked the wifi card - that trick probably won't work anymore).
@roknrol @alice My TV is a 2006 model, bought in 2018 from an old Kurdish man in the banlieues of Stockholm. It has one HDMI port, some analogue ports that look like dogshit with consoles, a VGA port(!) and an analogue tuner that no longer has a use. It (coupled with a HDMI switch) does the job.
I’m told that denying internet access to modern “smart TVs” is not an option, as they will nag you obstructively until you plug them in, as they’re sold at a loss recouped from ad/tracker revenue.
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@alice When I was packing up all of my shit to move to France, I took half of our televisions (LCD, nothing special, but large and *dumb*).
My wife laughed and suggested that I was being silly by not just buying new televisions when I made it across the pond.
The last time I was in her house I heard so many advertisements, so many "AI Assistants" listening, and she (a supposed liberal) has a fucking Ring doorbell.
I'm happy with my dumb TVs, my dumb DVD players, my dumb media server, my dumb record player, and my dumb doorbell.
Before I buy anything "smart" I will first find out how the "smart" can be disabled (the fridge we bought was 'wifi capable', so I opened the back and yanked the wifi card - that trick probably won't work anymore).
@roknrol @alice my uncle was a steward. One time, I got asked to do tech support on one of their laptop. That invovlved spending the afternoon at their place alone while some script tried to recover deleted files from hard-drive. They had a DVD player and a lot of DVD so I play one. Then I start a second. Then it hit me. There was no ads before the main menu. Every DVD I had knew before had 15 minutes of ads for stufd not sold anymore.
Pretty sure they had a "smart" player, as in "skip the ads" -
@roknrol @alice My TV is a 2006 model, bought in 2018 from an old Kurdish man in the banlieues of Stockholm. It has one HDMI port, some analogue ports that look like dogshit with consoles, a VGA port(!) and an analogue tuner that no longer has a use. It (coupled with a HDMI switch) does the job.
I’m told that denying internet access to modern “smart TVs” is not an option, as they will nag you obstructively until you plug them in, as they’re sold at a loss recouped from ad/tracker revenue.
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@roknrol @alice my uncle was a steward. One time, I got asked to do tech support on one of their laptop. That invovlved spending the afternoon at their place alone while some script tried to recover deleted files from hard-drive. They had a DVD player and a lot of DVD so I play one. Then I start a second. Then it hit me. There was no ads before the main menu. Every DVD I had knew before had 15 minutes of ads for stufd not sold anymore.
Pretty sure they had a "smart" player, as in "skip the ads" -
The "smarter" all the devices get, the smarter I feel for not buying them.
@alice my fridge and my television would like you to know there is nothing to worry about. My toaster started giggling, but I’m not sure why.
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The "smarter" all the devices get, the smarter I feel for not buying them.
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R relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topic
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The "smarter" all the devices get, the smarter I feel for not buying them.
There are so very many modern "conveniences" I feel deeply grateful to not have.
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@roknrol @alice my uncle was a steward. One time, I got asked to do tech support on one of their laptop. That invovlved spending the afternoon at their place alone while some script tried to recover deleted files from hard-drive. They had a DVD player and a lot of DVD so I play one. Then I start a second. Then it hit me. There was no ads before the main menu. Every DVD I had knew before had 15 minutes of ads for stufd not sold anymore.
Pretty sure they had a "smart" player, as in "skip the ads" -
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@alice When I was packing up all of my shit to move to France, I took half of our televisions (LCD, nothing special, but large and *dumb*).
My wife laughed and suggested that I was being silly by not just buying new televisions when I made it across the pond.
The last time I was in her house I heard so many advertisements, so many "AI Assistants" listening, and she (a supposed liberal) has a fucking Ring doorbell.
I'm happy with my dumb TVs, my dumb DVD players, my dumb media server, my dumb record player, and my dumb doorbell.
Before I buy anything "smart" I will first find out how the "smart" can be disabled (the fridge we bought was 'wifi capable', so I opened the back and yanked the wifi card - that trick probably won't work anymore).
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@alice When I was packing up all of my shit to move to France, I took half of our televisions (LCD, nothing special, but large and *dumb*).
My wife laughed and suggested that I was being silly by not just buying new televisions when I made it across the pond.
The last time I was in her house I heard so many advertisements, so many "AI Assistants" listening, and she (a supposed liberal) has a fucking Ring doorbell.
I'm happy with my dumb TVs, my dumb DVD players, my dumb media server, my dumb record player, and my dumb doorbell.
Before I buy anything "smart" I will first find out how the "smart" can be disabled (the fridge we bought was 'wifi capable', so I opened the back and yanked the wifi card - that trick probably won't work anymore).
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The "smarter" all the devices get, the smarter I feel for not buying them.
@alice The shopping challenge these days is finding dumb devices
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@alice When I was packing up all of my shit to move to France, I took half of our televisions (LCD, nothing special, but large and *dumb*).
My wife laughed and suggested that I was being silly by not just buying new televisions when I made it across the pond.
The last time I was in her house I heard so many advertisements, so many "AI Assistants" listening, and she (a supposed liberal) has a fucking Ring doorbell.
I'm happy with my dumb TVs, my dumb DVD players, my dumb media server, my dumb record player, and my dumb doorbell.
Before I buy anything "smart" I will first find out how the "smart" can be disabled (the fridge we bought was 'wifi capable', so I opened the back and yanked the wifi card - that trick probably won't work anymore).
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The "smarter" all the devices get, the smarter I feel for not buying them.
@alice The funny thing is that you still don't own the devices even though you paid money for it. You just have bought a license to use them because if the company decides to discontinue the backend service, the devices are becoming electronic waste and you can do nothing about it. And your money is gone.
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The "smarter" all the devices get, the smarter I feel for not buying them.
@alice Eventually someone who has an impact in your life will buy the devices. Like your insurance company
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The "smarter" all the devices get, the smarter I feel for not buying them.
@alice
Marketing lingo, who doesn't hate it?Who are these people that have no problem whatsoever lying to us?
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The "smarter" all the devices get, the smarter I feel for not buying them.
Smart people know they will be happy with simple devices.
Simple people think they will be happy with smart devices.

