semi retired, village idiot, & lover of food - you’d best believe this thing is real
Milky Way
Joined August 2020
- Tweets11.3K
- Following6.3K
- Followers1.1K
- Likes154K
There is only one person dumber than this guy. They’re not in office yet & he’s trying to lose ‘28.
1
5
146
Booze Breath retweeted
Hard to believe the Darlene Graham era is coming to an end. The Lioness of the Senate!
Booze Breath retweeted
I’m a stay at home uncle and part time taxidermy apprentice in Piss Mountain, Alabama, and the issues that affect me and my family the most are reflecting pool maintenance, trans athletes in Muslim youth sports, and the renaming of various bodies of water.
Booze Breath retweeted
Can't wait for the Democratic Senate hearings:
Senator: Mr. Lutnick, why were you on the island?
Lutnick: Same reason you were, Senator.
Senator: My time is up.
Booze Breath retweeted
The only thing that would sway my vote this election is six text messages from an unidentified number during my work day.
I’ve had the worst experiences w/ @UPS the past couple of months. The last update for this package was Friday night.
2
1
355
I hope some new $ wants to offer me double what I paid in San Mateo Park. I’ll happily pack up & move back to the south.
A funny thing about the deluge of wealth about to hit SF is that SF tech has always been about arcane status and legibility games much more so than money, and as we're about to mint a whole generation of UHNWs: there's nothing to buy.
The nicest houses in SF top out at $30M. We do not have Malibu-style $100M+ mansion compounds, and we don't have NYC-style $20M+ ultra-luxury apartments. There are a few penthouses at the Avery and a few other buildings and that's it. A handful of $50M+ estates available in the South Bay, but there's nothing these people hate more than commuting to where the cool events are. Megayachts would be out of gauche and out-of-place in the Bay. To a large extent, the real estate that you would associate with the kind of wealth about to befall Anthropic employee #100 simply does not exist and will take years to build as a physical matter and much more than that as a regulatory matter.
The consequence of this is that the arcane status and legibility games will come to matter much more than ever before -- if there's so much wealth that you can't really differentiate yourself on wealth, then everything ends up coming down to social proof games. Ah you have money? But does so-and-so follow you on Substack? And when you speak at Manifest, do people nod and say "wow what's your Twitter" or do they silently turn to get another Spindrift?
130
Booze Breath retweeted
had to make this after what jon stewart said at the 41 minute mark
Joined Jon Stewart on @weeklyshowpod to talk about the AI bubble, the massive credit risk of AI data centers, Anthropic's S-1, and how American retail investors are massively exposed to the unwinding of the AI trade.
youtube.com/watch?v=3sDzlv-V…
Booze Breath retweeted
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
xitter.gq/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
Can we David on @InfiniteL88ps for a longer & broader discussion? I can’t imagine the twists & turns the conversation would take.
NEW ODD LOTS:
@tracyalloway and I speak with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne open.spotify.com/episode/593…
1
142