Oh yeah, you want dumb everything else beyond the little box that you control which has the “smarts” and something like Linux and Kodi on it.

Even having Windows on that box would pretty much guarantee you have no privacy.

As it so happens, in my experience of over a decade using Media Players to play videos on my TV (since well before Android TV and Smart TVs) it’s even the most economic option: the life-cycle of the hardware that plays videos is a lot tighter than the life-cycle of the actual display - unless you’re running after the bleeding edge, you more often have to replace the video playing hardware because it doesn’t support newer video codecs than then display - so it’s cheaper to have those things be separate so that you don’t have to replaced the whole thing every few years just because the cheaper part - the processor - can’t decode newer codecs and instead can just replace the “smarts” and not spend any money on the stuff that still works fine (and is actually more expensive).

Further, if one does like I do and actually use that box for more things (my Media Player Mini-PC is also a home server and home NAS), that’s yet another way that such a setup ends up being cheaper because it’s being used to do the work of 2 or 3 things.

I suspect even if one pays twice as much for a non-smart “Hospitality Display” to have alongside your own self-made Media Player box, it’ll still end up cheaper because in 5-10 years’ time that display will still be just fine even while that box might need upgrading due to new video codecs.

Also “Hospitality Displays” like these, though hat one twice the price of the equivalent consumer TV and not OLED.

From looking around a bit the only large OLED displays I found were transparent digital displays.

Put LibreELEC on that Pi or a Mini-PC => instant modern Media Player (using Kodi)

Algo get one of these and you get the same experience as a dedicated Media Player, minus the enshittification.

Here I was hoping they had rooted it and installed their own Linux in it, and instead they just installed a Terminal and some tools on the Android OS that the things runs.

This is as much Linux as installing Cygwin in Windows is Linux.

From looking around out of curiosity when this stuff about LG TVs came out, Samsung sells explicitly Non-Smart 65" Hospitality Displays, but they cost $1030 (US), which is over twice as much as their consumer TV with the same specs.

Also somebody pointed out Spectre TVs (which seem to only be sold in the US, and I couldn’t really find an European equivalent, the closest being a Spanish brand whose largest non-smart TV is only 40").

I couldn’t actually find any large dumb monitor except for the ultra-wide curved ones, but I only looked around for half a hour or so.

Personally, the way I already use my TV (wired to a Mini-PC running Linux and Kodi, which has Series and Movies as video files as well as using free IPTV for live TV, and I even have a wireless remote for it so it’s used just like you would a traditional media player or Smart TV) is already perfect for a dumb monitor.

(A more straightforward way to get a privacy respecting setup like this would be to install LibreELEC on something like a Pi or a Mini-PC and get the same kind of wireless remote as I have - my setup is only as it is because I didn’t know about LibreELEC back when I put it together plus it also works as a home server as well as my home NAS, since an N100 Mini-PC is very overpowered to just work as a Media Player).

It really seems that the only way to keep at least some privacy is to ditch corporate devices altogether and just put together your own media player box (which, as I wrote above, is pretty straightforward with something like LibreELEC).

“Close up” (look ahead, don’t make eye contact, serious expression or non-expressive) and just walk away towards the nearest way out, going around people or just “excuse me” and pass them until you’re outside that area.

I can see the problem if it’s a closed space, you don’t have independent means of going home (i.e. need a car and you didn’t came with your own or have to wait for public transport) or you’re with somebody and can’t just dissapear without telling them you’re leaving, but judging by the picture and given what the OP said, one might just be there by oneself and it just looks like a street fair in a park so the fastest way out is just to the side and into the park so this one seems to be a pretty straightforward situation to exit.

Alternativelly, just find a quiet corner (for example, behind the sales stands or at least to side away from the main crowded area) and go into observer mode - just watch people going by (if your humour goes that way, you can start mentally comenting how people act in a David Attenborough voice as if in a Documentary) and/or how the businesses are operating in terms of how they’re organised and do things. Just keep it logical and analytical (maybe with a touch of humour) - basically treat it as if you were one of the people working in one of the businesses, somebody working security or just an observer: you don’t need to be physically outside to be “outside”, you just need to playact as if you’re an outsider that’s not there as part of the crowd (like the people in working in the businesses or doing security). That should let you partially recharge the batteries.

It’s one of those things I learned with age - if you’re not comfortable there, just leave. Might have to tell somebody I’m leaving if with a group (otherwise people might worry) and might have to navigate the fucking crowd until I get to the nearest exit if it’s a closed area, but in my experience even with all that “just leave” is almost always the best possible option at least if you’re by yourself of just out with friends (and even if with a date or family, just be open and honest about how big crowds make you tired - if you don’t know it already you’ll discover that plenty of people feel the same - and they’ll probably be fine with leaving with you or with you leaving and them staying).

The other day when he flew in France’s airspace they could’ve just forced Bibi’s plane to land, detain him and send him to the Hague as he is a wanted man by the ICC and France as a member of the treaty that created the ICC has the obligation to capture such a fugitive and remand him to ICC custody if he enters their territory.

They did NOT do so.

That says everything you need to know about the French elites’ position towards Israel and their Genocide.

This shit now is just the smallest possible looks-like-an-action-whilst-having-negligible-impact that they could do to try and calm down a public opinion that doesn’t share their love for the White Jewish supremacist state doing their own version of Nazism.

Same here.

Unlike pretty much all other digital media out there, I have de facto possession and control of the games I buy there as long as I download the offline installers (because they enforce that the games they sell cannot have DRM, once I have the installer I can install and play the game whenever and wherever I want), so I’m fine with buying from them and do not feel that it’s morally right to pirate games sold there.

Meanwhile I’ve actually gone back into piracy for other kinds of media as over the last 2 decades pretty much everything digital turned into “subscriptions” or comes wrapped in some kind of phone-home DRM shell.

Ultimately, whatever will be will be.

Why should we care what people that are still using Reddit do or don’t do do?

Sorry, but anybody still there deserves whatever shit they get.

IMHO Liberalism was manufactured by Capitalism as a left-sounding form of politics to allow mainstream parties which were genuinelly leftwing to move Right in Economic, Quality Of Life and even broad Equality whislt still appearing to be left-wing due to their pro-liberty posture on Moral and Social subjects.

I say this because I have yet to see any form of Liberalism in mainstream politics, ever, anywhere, which sought to maximize people’s freedom to access limitied or constrained resources which are required merelly to live, such as Land (which Land Ownership goes against), so I don’t think that at least in Politics there was ever any genuine Liberalism for Capitalism to corrupt.

A TOS presented after an electronic device has been sold is not valid in most of the World since it’s considered an attempt to, after the sale, force a change of the terms of the implicit contract which is the sale.

A company can shove whatever they want in front of the customer as contract conditions they have to accept for a sale before the sale - by which point the potential customer can refuse and not buy or accept and buy - not after.

Of course, they don’t do that because they would lose most sales, so instead there’s a TOS or EULA which the owners of the devices are forced to agree to after the sale to fully enjoy that which they bought, but these are really just legal fictions in most countries.

Mind you, this does not apply to a subscription to an ongoing service, though even then at least in Europe, there are conditions they much obbey to have the customer accept a TOS or a TOS change after subscribing, such as it being possible for the customer to cancel the service at no cost rather than accept the new TOS.

I’ve been boycotting Sony since the Rootkit Scandal, what took you so long?

“Somebody else will pay the salaries of our customers”.

As far as I can tell the individual actors extracting more from a system that its capable to support if everybody does the same (the kind of situation Game Theory calls a Tragedy Of The Commons) always think in one of 3 ways:

• They simply don’t think about systemic consequences at all, be it simply that they don’t have the kind of intelligence for it or purposefully don’t dig down into it because they don’t want to think about consequences.
• They expect the “system” (i.e. somebody else, maybe everybody else) will make up for it so it’s fine if they take more from it than the put back in, as illustrated in my first paragraph.
• They’re aware of what the commulative impact of their actions can or even will have in the future, but they think they themselves and their families will be alright and screw everybody else - essentially that if they can get ahead enough they can ride the wave whilst it crashes.

The same kind of thinking also applies to Ponzi Schemes (like the current AI bubble) - Ignorance (willful or due to lack of knowledge/intelligence), The Many Will Make Up For The Over-Extraction Of The Few and/or I Myself Will Be Alright.

And you know what?

Those people have very good reasons to believe in the second one (that I illustrated at the start) - you look at Neoliberal Capitalism so far that’s what’s been happening as Money acummulates in fewer hands and sin ce with regulations neutralized and Corruption through the roof, those holding most of the wealth can do whatever the fuck they want so they are increasingly pillaging wealth from the rest, and the “system” - i.e. everybody else - just gets poorer and instead of Revolutions and Guillotines for the rich all we see is passive acceptance so the rest so have been making up for the depredations of the few for decades. Also just look at how Governments the world over sacrificed everybody else to make sure Finance and Asset owners in general came up better of after the 2008 Crash - these people have very good reason to believe that those in power, being very much in their pockets, will use said power to sacrificed the rest in order to deflect away from the Few the consequences of the actions of those very Few.

And if they’s CEOs they also have very good reasons to believe the third - just look at corporate governance in the last decades, with getting those jobs being far more abour Cronyism than Merit and incompetence being de facto rewarded with golden parachutes a even failing upwards. From all they’ve seen their whole lives there is no reason for them to expect to ever personally suffer the consequences of their own depredations and pillaging.

In summary, some don’t even realise the problem and as for those who do, given the experience of CEOs for at least the last 3 or 4 decades, it’s pretty rational for them to believe that their depredations wont destroy the Whole enough to come back to them and even if they do, they themselves personally will be alright even if the companies they manage are destroyed.

I really, really hope that the Chinese take most of the market away from these assholes.

If I had a cent for every time the Finnish allied themselves with the most Nazi-like regime in a given century, I would have 2 cents, but it’s still weird that it happened twice.

Whilst fear seems to be used to induce hate in many (just listen to the fables of “we need to protect ourselves” coming from the politicians there), I’m pretty sure others just directly hate without the need to be led there through fear.

I think you misspelled the word “hate”.

I think it’s pretty clear by now that per the wishes of America’s elites and even most of their electorate (who voted for somebody explicitly promising that) the only “winner” acceptable for America in an America-dominated World is America itself (which in practice means just a handful of people in America, since the common Americans aren’t actually “winning” anything).

So any article framing the replacement of an American-led World order by a Chinese-led World order as being a bad thing is either ignorant as fuck or purposeful propaganda by one of the few Americans “winning” from the current setup or one of those foreigners getting some crumbs from it - i.e. somebody who makes money from being a “friend” to America and spreading the idea that American dominance is a great thing for everybody.

A fair article would be pretty neutral about it - pretty much “these other guys who don’t give a shit about us are trading places” - with maybe even a “let’s get this over with ASAP” slant since as the saying goes, “when the elephants fight it’s the grass that suffers”, and at this point the “grass” is pretty much all of us in countries other than the US and China as even Canada is now not in the inner circle with America.

Fair point.

The other poster wording it like that does indeed stink of somebody coming at it from a “blame the Race” rather than “blame the Rich” point of view.