this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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We mostly watch news and sports in my house. So unfortunately, live TV. Occasionally we watch other things. I mute the commercials and browse my phone when they're on.

But I would love a TV that is smart enough to auto hide & mute every kind of ad. Even little logos on the athletes' uniforms. Hide the ads on the pitcher's mound. Hide the billboards and signs in the stadium. Show some cool little generic animation, music video, or slide show during commercial breaks. Hide the damned popup window ads and scrolling ads that some channels do. Remove product placements from movies and shows. Basically make all ads completely vanish.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You aren’t allowed the use AI that’s anti-capitalist in America

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

Either support FOSS or the ai won't be yours when it does it. And you are back where you are started.

Denying profit to shady data merchants is the key to reclaiming digital sovereignty. It is done by cutting their access to your data.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

I don't get why anyone wants a smart peripheral. You can attach peripherals to smart devices if that is needed but I want them to do the thing they do. speaker, display, input, etc.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 91 points 5 months ago (6 children)

It wouldn't be a TV itself, it would be an extra box you feed the TV signal into for filtering, then out to the TV itself.

This has been done previously for language filtering with hilarious results. It was called "TVGuardian", oh, almost 30 years ago now.

It translated "the Dick Van Dyke Show" to "Jerk Van Gay".

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago

Here is a video (24:27) by Technology Connections talking about the TV Guardian. There's also this video (20:59) by Ben Eater, who looks at the memory chip on the device to figure out how it works. It's pretty neat, and I recommend both videos if you have some spare time.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Best chance it happening is by a open source app that you run on a shieldtv or HTPC and run your video through for filtering. Everything will probably be on a long delay so the video can be scrubbed. But this should be doable soonish.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The idea that AI would be used to prevent companies from making money seems a bit far fetched to me.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You’ll never be able to buy that at like a Walmart of Best Buy type retailer. TVs these days are already just spy machines to serve ads. It’s a lovely idea, but it’ll never happen.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

TVs are cheap right now like really cheap. I seriously doubt they're selling them much above cost and making the money back on the advertising and information gathering.

I don't think any of the TV manufacturers would bulk too much at selling you a TV but it's going to be at a price of around the lifetime value of your watching habits. You can get a 50-60" reference monitor for about 10 grand. If there was a market for it Best buy would probably sell it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Yep.

I've previously used PiHole and my smart TV got so much faster because it couldn't load the BS.

Just using NextDNS or any other ad blocking DNS makes it work better.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Or perhaps an AI that blocks ads and then gives you buying recommendations based on products from their competitors.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (7 children)

I recently read Contact(the book by Carl Sagan, still need to watch the movie), which features a tech billionaire who built his wealth doing exactly that. He developed a chip that could block TV commercials, and later one to filter televangelists as well.

For a book that was published in the 80s and set in the late 90s, it's prescient in a few very specific ways. We weren't exactly communicating by Portable Telefax in 1999, but adblockers were not far away either.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (1 children)

He also wrote (in the non-fiction 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World), "I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Would you consider EFax to be portable Telefax (I assume that's what Telefax was) or even email?

I haven't read it, so I may be misinterpreting the terms.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (3 children)

That would be glorious.

But you'd definitely have to jailbreak your device and sideload it somehow.

Or pay to import one from a country where the govt doesn't give a damn about piracy if it ever gets made.

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