Technology

Good luck finding a brand NOT doing it by the time you're ready for a new one.

Yeah fist time I saw an ad on my smart monitor I reset it and never connected it to my wifi again

The only technical explanation that’s not malice would be that some certificate store on the device had expiring certificates and would need an update to continue to function (or rather connect to remote servers).

Or you could just change to an os that doesnt piss on its users constantly

I didn't watch the video, but maybe they said how this done.

If it installed silently, it must be getting pulled in via Windows update right? Where Microsoft just sees this a regular old driver for a device I would imagine?

I have an LG monitor, maybe about 5 years or older. But I don't have windows so I assume it knows nothing.

EDIT: Nevermind. I went and watched the section at the beginning, and yep that is exactly how it is done. Does windows not even vet what a vendor hands them as a driver? Perhaps they don't care, but this seems like an easily exploitable route.

That's what I thought was happening here. The headline is a bit incorrect... the monitor didn't install the bloatware, Windows did.

Now the drivers/software that Windows installed is likely from the MS store/update path and was made and signed by LG, but still. Plug this monitor into linux and it's not going to do it because linux doesn't have that mechanism.

My old LG monitor (32GK850) would occasionally 'crash' and require powering off at the mains.

Only monitor I've ever had do that.

The HDR was worse than useless too, obviously you can't do much with edge-lit VA, but the tonemapping was just plain awful.

These are computer monitors, not TVs. Plugging them into a Windows box triggers Windows to silently install their "driver," which silently installs a handful of other startup apps. It's an escalation of the smartTV-wifi path.

I grabbed a used Samsung dumb tv off fb market place but I haven't decided how im going to configure a streaming device to it. All the streaming sticks do the same thing. Building my own sounds like a pain.

I have a little server but I want a remote and a basically have to make my own box to be able to cut out these 3rd party spies.

it doesn’t have the Dropout app

Firstly, 👊 for being a Dropout appreciator. But it's definitely in there somewhere. I've got Dropout loaded and running on my LG from years back.

Which model? I bought an OLED48B4PUA a while back and I've been happy with it. Could be brighter, but I knew that going in.

But I also don't use it for anything but being a display. It's not connected to the Internet; I just use a Chromecast from my phone for most things (or connect directly to HDMI).

I had an old laptop that I hooked in and configured it to boot into a fullscreen browser to our Emby server. Could just as easily have it boot into a browser with shortcuts to your streaming services.

We use one of these mini keyboard/touchpads to control it:

Lately, though, I just picked up a set of wireless HDMI adapters and just plug one of those into the closest laptop and play from there.

I have a ShieldTV plugged into mine and it has been great. You can install a new Launcher to have full control of what you see and it works great. I pretty much just use it for Jellyfin and YouTube now, but in the past have had all of the streaming services at one time or another.

The best cheap solution is a Google TV with Projectivy launcher to bypass the adware.

The best fully non-adware solution as others said seems to be a mini-pc running Linux or other cleaner environment you set up.

raspi4 + libreelec

But I'd suggest OrangePi instead if you were buying new stuff.

I connected a raspberry pi to my TV and control it with a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo to pirate all of my shows on a greysite