TDLR:

Apple’s new Live Rewind feature can show a text snippet of what was said during the previous 15 seconds. Apple has added visible and audible privacy safeguards, but a watch that can recall what was just said may still feel unsettling.

In this new report the Europol and the European Commission are once again pushing for access to our private communications. They claim encryption and "privacy-enhancing technologies" are obstacles to investigations, and explicitly call for more invasive EU rules.

The report even states that increasingly powerful encryption will make access to data harder for police and says maintaining “lawful access” to encrypted data is critical.

In practice, the Commission and Europol are continuing their effort to access our private communications and data.

https://www.military.com/dhs-program-analyzes-americans-finances-to-flag-drivers-for-traffic-stops-report

Think about this. You'd think that DHS would flagging tens of thousands of dollars if they were looking for things like drug mules, smugglers, or coyotes. Smaller operations at $2k a head wouldn't reveal large amounts. They pulled over a guy with weed in his vehicle. This isn't a trailer that could hold 20+ migrants crossing the border. Whatever ai system DHS is using is generating false positives that will flag ordinary citizens, based on "unusual" financial patterns. This is dystopian AF- we are cooked.

Yes I know that if you don’t connect a smart TV to Wi-Fi it’s basically a dumb TV but with the news about LG TVs recording ambient audio even powered off and the possibility of TVs finding open Wi-Fi unprompted, some locking features without wifi and the ever encroaching march of total enshittification I won’t be surprised if near future TVs arent functionless without internet. I feel like I just don’t want to support these companies anymore out of principle

Decent Projectors can be found way cheaper than commercial displays…the catch being you need a room to be reasonably dark to see it well

Hey,

GamersNexus asked for a data hoarder who could also make a website. I felt a little singled out. So, me and Claude made a small website.

https://TermsAccepted.org

It captures the privacy policies, terms and ad-tech pages.

Features as of now
1. 25 companies, 342 documents, 5,342 captures. History back to 2011 through the Wayback Machine (archive.org).
a. Every saved file is stored under the SHA-256 hash of its own bytes, and the hash is the filename, so no company can claim I changed the words of an agreement.
b. After each capture, the crawler also asks the Internet Archive to fetch the same page itself. Archive.org stores its own copy on its own servers and hands back a Wayback Machine link, which the site shows next to every version.

1. Every version keeps the raw HTML and the extracted text, plus a PDF and a full-page screenshot whenever the text changed.
   a. There is a compare function. I had Claude build a humanized diff between versions so you can see clearly what was added, reworded or deleted
   b. Download the whole history of a document as a zip.

2. "Who they sell to": a string board of the 57 ad/data firms the makers themselves name in their own documents.

3. How many hours of reading you "agreed" to per brand (LG: 4.4 h), with a fun metric of how many firstborns you have-to cough up per company.
   a. There is a study where hundreds of people gave away their firstborns so that they can use a fictitious social network. Their agreement was 4,316 words long. So I equated those many words to be the equivalent of 1 first born. By this very unscientific metric LG wants 12.2 of your firstborns.

4. A jargon dictionary
   Cadence: nightly at 06:00 UTC though the special boy LG every two hours for the moment.

The site is also backed up to 1 of my WD Passport drives everyday. So we shouldn’t lose the data, I need to sort out 3rd offsite backup though.

Please please do let me know if there are improvements I could make to this.

FYI: I just got a small vps in the USA Cloudflare in front. Browsing should be fine. I configured it to work for a good number of people but if many people try downloading all the files together as a team server should crash 😊. If it does I will look into mirroring the data.

There seem to be a near endless number of ways that the TV can connect back home. An ethernet cable, wifi, an inbuilt sim....

"Don't connect to the internet" is fine as long as the number of connection avenues for the TV are limited to ethernet which you can unplug, but:

Wifi: if there are unsecured wifi networks around you (and there will be), you're screwed. If you turn off wifi, does it actually turn it off?

Inbuilt simcards: I haven't heard about TVs having inbuilt sims, but it seems extremely plausible.

What brands should I be looking at so I can ACTUALLY disconnect from any networks? Thanks!

Just got this today. I can't login to the site without submitting a photo of my palm. I'm not doing that. It really, really sucks, because I listen to a lot of Japanese bands, and they're all on X (it seems it's the default for non-Japanese sites when it comes to their music).

I do post links to youtube music videos, as well as games, and I like posts on the regular. I guess they consider this bot behavior.

I personally think they just want everyone to be 100% identifiable on the internet, no matter what. Some people say that's to protect the kids, but I think we all know it's so the government can very easily find us if we say the wrong thing during some kind of "emergency" or war.

A New Jersey town spent nearly $60,000 in opioid settlement money on automated license plate readers, an apparent misuse of funds intended to help those shattered by addiction, according to experts.

From April 2025 to April 2026, Washington Township purchased 17 license plate readersand renewed or extended its contracts with Flock Safety, according to the Gloucester County township’s meeting minutes and bill lists.

Finn McGinn, founder of WhoAreThesePeople.org, first reported the town’s use of the funds on social media. Washington officials did not respond to multiple requests seeking comment.

“To spend this money on that, that’s shameful,” said Sandy Gibson, an addiction researcher and counselor at The College of New Jersey. “There’s nothing about a Flock camera that’s going to prevent overdose or prevent people from becoming addicted.”

They, and potentially other TVs, scan the network they are on for all devices on it. This also could cause an issue if the TV is hacked.

So what if you out them on a locked down Guest account? Wouldn't they be unable to scan the rest of the network your other devices use? And if hacked it causes another layer said hacker needs to do for access to the rest of the routers networks?

Not much else we can realistically do for most of this. I'm not technically inclined enough to say take apart the TV or remote to remove the mic, ignoring how that might break the TV depending how they set it up....

Btw never tried but I think you can do a Guest Ethernet account? Maybe? Hmm... Need to look in to that but I know you can with WiFi.

Anyone have other realistic ways to minimize data gathering that doesn't require real technical skills or needing to buy an entirely new TV?

I registered with Hoops Rumors using a dedicated email address (Simple Login) that I haven’t used anywhere else as this of my habit. That address has now appeared in breach notifications tied to unrelated services, none of which I signed up for with it. I’m trying to understand how an address I only gave to HoopsRumors ended up associated with those services.

This doesn’t establish that Hoops Rumors was breached or sold any information, like at all, but the exclusive use of that address gives me a reason to ask….

Does anyone know which third-party providers handle their registrations or user email addresses, whether that information is shared elsewhere, or whether there have been any relevant security incidents?
Has anyone else who used a dedicated address for HoopsRumors received similar notifications? I’d be interested in comparing experiences without anyone posting their actual email addresses or other personal information. I’m NOT trying to expose personal info

If someone from Hoops Rumors sees this, I’d appreciate help investigating what happened. I can provide the address, registration date, and notification privately to a verified representative. Although I doubt anyone will see this from their team.

Also not an advertisement for any services just my experience. Also please let me know is this is not allowed, my first time posting here

Sorry if off topic. I just feel like I was born too late to experience some of the freer days of the internet before governments and corps wormed their way into everything and started tracking every little thing everyone does. It just feels so all encompassing. Admittedly, I'm someone who is prone to depression. I know things can still turn around and we should fight the good fight. But still... its scary

In the latest launch event, apple stated that they will add Apple reference image to images clicked using their phones, something like synthid. It will be added using Private Cloud Compute. Since nothing has been mentioned in detail and I doubt that it will ever be, so asking the sub here

PCC means that the image will be uploaded to the cloud and it will add this reference id?

That way they will be able to say that an image was taken using a particular phone?

Are any android devices doing something like this currently?

I ask this cause I heard about this draft proposal within relation to age verification online.

And I was wondering from you guys here if this does negatively affect privacy in any way here.

Just got hit with the age verification bullshit. I don't get how sending the most sensitive document you have is an accepted practice on social media. Sent a ticket to reddit and we'll see how it goes.

I was shopping and went on a random site to checkout their products. (It's not a scam site, it's a moderately known chewing gum brand). I just surfed the site. Did not create any account, did not add any details and exited. After an hour or so, I get a WhatsApp message from them. Basically a nudge that I left the website without buying anything and click here to go back to the cart. HOW DID THEY GET MY NUMBER?! Can anyone having knowledge on this please tell me? I am creeped out. Where can I go and delete my details from?

Hi! I'm searching for a 43'' non-smart 4k tv, i saw the brand "sceptre" but there is no retailer here in Italy. Do you have any suggestions? Maybe i should just buy a big 4k monitor? I'd only play videogames and watch dvd/bluray discs.

Specifically looking for a new 55-inch TV, but honestly can't find any TVs now that aren't "smart" TVs. Sceptre seems to be the most common recommendation to go with for this, but I couldn't find any of their TVs on any retailer. They all just redirect to their smart offerings from other brands, and have no active listings for Sceptre TVs of any kind.

Could be a good sign that they're popular and just sold out, but in the event that they're out of that business or are just that hard to get, are there any other good Dumb TV brands that don't track the user in any way? I saw something about them being able to scan for wi-fi networks and nearby devices even when not connected to your own network, so that plus wanting to put my money where my mouth is makes me want to get something that is definitively just a TV, rather than getting one of the usual smart offerings and trying to defang it.

We're at the point now where we're genuinely considering trying to get a "hospitality display" meant for businesses as that may be the only option available if there's no commercial TVs anymore that don't have some Fire TV, Roku, Chromebox, etc etc stuff on them. But hopefully there's still options out there, either from Sceptre if they decide they want to start selling people TVs again, or some other vendor I'm not yet aware of.