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Don't assume that because you don't connect something to the internet that is doesn't connect to the internet.

Things can use cellular modems to phone home. This is already done.

Walmart could also easily cut deals with cable providers for outbound access via WiFi and cover most of the country.


They could also make agreements with ISP's where their TV's can be whitelisted for access to a public or potentially unlisted WiFi, enabling them to connect that way, without the vast majority of customers ever being aware.

Similarly, these TV's could connect to any open wifi hotspot it can find and phone home/download updates that way. Cox for example proudly boasts how more than 4M of it's residential customers modem+router+ap's can be used for "WiFi Hotspots" by anyone - not just the customer/resident - if they have a cox account. I don't see why Samsung or any other manufacturer may approach said ISP's to use this network to update devices under some guise of "convenience" or "seamless updates" ostensibly for their less tech savvy users.

I don't know if these business deals exists, but "smart devices" will often try to phone home/update anyway they can, even if you don't manually configure it on a private network.

EDIT: Forgot the source on the cox hotspots claim: https://www.cox.com/residential/internet/learn/cox-hotspots....


Mine is a Vizio from Target that's never been online. I've gotten close to cutting its wifi antenna circuit to prevent this but I think I got it before they started programming anything like this in and I should be safe if it stays offline.

But then I still think about cutting it in case I ever have anyone over that would be stupid enough to sign in to the wifi on it. Better for it to have never happened.


Comcast/Xfinity does this as well.

Totally correct and a good call out. I did check this as best as I could for this particular model of TV. But I'd have to do the same in a few years if it was ever to be replaced. I suspect I'll have to desolder the cellular module of my next TV circa 2036...

"N is usually small" might need to be revisited.

Boy is that a terrible website. I tried to find a story and give up.

And that's why I always come to the comments before deciding if the article is worth checking out. Thank you for your service.

To be fair, there is a button right at the beginning saying “Jump to story”. It’s not the most obvious, I agree, but it is there.

That's hilarious.

It's like those recipe sites that have 5 pages of nice photos and background story and side tracks and whatnot as the author waxes verbose, so they need to put a 'Jump to recipe' button in so people don't just click 'Back' immediately.

Except this time for an article.

I can't tell if 'skip the junk' is good (junk can be skipped!) or bad (maybe this means there's too much junk on the page?)


His initial point is about critics. Critics are incentivized to review many books. So, more than ordinary readers, you would expect them to read summaries, or only parts of books.


How does this compare to https://www.wunderground.com ?

Is that the source of the data?


Purple Air is the primary source but it's open source and you could try other providers https://github.com/solo-founders/sf-microclimates


Terrible website. I gave up after a while, as everything was taking ten times as long to convey information as simple text would.

Too bad, as the topic is interesting, but not enough to make up for aggressively bad presentation.


Everyone benefits from the idea that killing off the copyright holder is not profitable. If copyrights expired on creator death, there would be unwholesome motivations.


Having grandchildren “coast through life” is based on copyright lasting 70 years past the death of the author. But seriously having the rights disappear in 10 years is hardly an incentive for murder.

Honestly, I find it difficult to understand why a fixed 40 year term isn’t long enough to benefit from copyright. Trademark is already indefinite, JK Rowling is hardly going to be meaningfully harmed if someone publishes a work based on the first Harry Potter book in 2037. Less wealthy authors generally need to keep working anyway. Publish a hit at 22 and perhaps it’s time to start saving for retirement just like everyone else.


Another point for the copyright term being a fixed 5~10 years. The current system already incentivizes such agressive tactics to anyone with sufficient patience. If a teenager's favorite book has just been written by a young adult, they only have one course of action if they want to live to see it in the public domain for a few years.


Are there any notable instances of murder for copyright reasons?

The current law is still extends the copyright of a work until a time after the author's death. So if one wished to hasten the expiration of those rights, the motivation still exists; although perhaps diminished by a 70 year wait.


> there would be unwholesome motivations.

Which are life imprisonment for murder. Not some magical "my children must be fed millions without ever working until 70 years after my death".


Well, after accomplishing the author's untimely demise, the murderer (or facilitator) would have to wait 70 years to profit (unless 70-years future contracts on copyright expirations are a thing, I wouldn't know)

Seems a lot of risk and effort for a small chance of profit.


There are tons of proven, tested libraries for this.

The dumb, successful approach would be to use one of them.


You didn't build a search engine in 160 lines of code. You build a client for a search engine in 160 lines of code. The vector database is providing the search.


Look, I made a thing in two lines of code!

    import thing from everything
    thing()


Impressive! My company is willing to buy this from you for 200 million dollars.


Developing in a container might mitigate a lot of issues. Harder to compromise your development machine.

I guess if you ship it you are still passing along contagion


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