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This is just all sorts of awesome!
Now, keep in mind that a smart TV is just a computer. It's not a general-purpose computer, like the device that I'm typing this post on. It's a specialty, purpose-built computer. It communicates across the internet, receives updates and applies them, and displays information on a screen. And some smart TVs do accept keyboards and game controllers and let you play online games on them.
And not only do smart TVs frequently have a very high annoyance factor when it comes to just trying to watch TV, peppering you with ads, in some cases they've also become surveillance devices with cameras and microphones built into them.
There's also the data-mining aspect, where everything you watch, or skip past, is reported back to the manufacturer to sell on to other companies. That data is so profitable that LG has publicly admitted that they make more money from the data than from selling the TVs!
Back to the computer aspect.
These TVs usually run Linux as it's freely-available and understood by lots and lots of programmers. It has a Linux core operating system, then lots of custom modules for handling the things that the TV needs to do. Plus the adware crap, and the spyware crap, etc.
And some people decided they'd had enough.
You can find specifications online for how Linux and its bootloader work on smart TVs. (A bootloader is what runs on a power-up and starts the operating system and additional programs.) These unhappy people, through vibe coding, figured out a way to subvert the bootloader and then modify the Linux OS to regain a lot of control back! This allowed them to selectively disable modules that were loading, thusly disable the adware and spyware stuff, not to mention the all-important 'reporting back to the mothership' stuff!
Vibe coding is an interesting thing. You basically describe what you want out of the chatbot, and it creates code for you. It may take a few iterations to get it to do exactly what you want, but eventually it will probably get there. It allows people who haven't been programmers for a few decades to create things that are useful for them. Speaking as someone who has been a programmer for a few decades, I don't think vibe coding is a good thing in a professional/commercial environment because frequently the code is written in such a way that it's not easily maintainable, and it sometimes allows non-programmer C-suite types to "create" a program that they think is ready for deployment, when it can contain all sorts of security vulnerabilities. I've directed chatbots to create a couple of Python programs for me that I just didn't want to be bothered with writing myself, and they did an excellent job: but I have a fair understanding of Python, I understand the code that they wrote, and I can modify it if I need to. Non-programmers can't do that.
While I am not a fan of vibe coding, I think what they've done is quite awesome. We'll have to see how these hacks stand up to the test of time. I'm sure when word spreads, the TV makers will do all they can to lock down those boot loaders to try and keep this subversion out, we'll see how this war plays out.
Of course, the best solution is to not buy a smart TV, but more and more they are flooding the market in such a way that it's becoming nigh impossible to find one that's on the dumb side.
https://gizmodo.com/people-using-ai-to-make-smart-tvs-dumb-again-is-the-most-2026-thing-ever-2000828213
Now, keep in mind that a smart TV is just a computer. It's not a general-purpose computer, like the device that I'm typing this post on. It's a specialty, purpose-built computer. It communicates across the internet, receives updates and applies them, and displays information on a screen. And some smart TVs do accept keyboards and game controllers and let you play online games on them.
And not only do smart TVs frequently have a very high annoyance factor when it comes to just trying to watch TV, peppering you with ads, in some cases they've also become surveillance devices with cameras and microphones built into them.
There's also the data-mining aspect, where everything you watch, or skip past, is reported back to the manufacturer to sell on to other companies. That data is so profitable that LG has publicly admitted that they make more money from the data than from selling the TVs!
Back to the computer aspect.
These TVs usually run Linux as it's freely-available and understood by lots and lots of programmers. It has a Linux core operating system, then lots of custom modules for handling the things that the TV needs to do. Plus the adware crap, and the spyware crap, etc.
And some people decided they'd had enough.
You can find specifications online for how Linux and its bootloader work on smart TVs. (A bootloader is what runs on a power-up and starts the operating system and additional programs.) These unhappy people, through vibe coding, figured out a way to subvert the bootloader and then modify the Linux OS to regain a lot of control back! This allowed them to selectively disable modules that were loading, thusly disable the adware and spyware stuff, not to mention the all-important 'reporting back to the mothership' stuff!
Vibe coding is an interesting thing. You basically describe what you want out of the chatbot, and it creates code for you. It may take a few iterations to get it to do exactly what you want, but eventually it will probably get there. It allows people who haven't been programmers for a few decades to create things that are useful for them. Speaking as someone who has been a programmer for a few decades, I don't think vibe coding is a good thing in a professional/commercial environment because frequently the code is written in such a way that it's not easily maintainable, and it sometimes allows non-programmer C-suite types to "create" a program that they think is ready for deployment, when it can contain all sorts of security vulnerabilities. I've directed chatbots to create a couple of Python programs for me that I just didn't want to be bothered with writing myself, and they did an excellent job: but I have a fair understanding of Python, I understand the code that they wrote, and I can modify it if I need to. Non-programmers can't do that.
While I am not a fan of vibe coding, I think what they've done is quite awesome. We'll have to see how these hacks stand up to the test of time. I'm sure when word spreads, the TV makers will do all they can to lock down those boot loaders to try and keep this subversion out, we'll see how this war plays out.
Of course, the best solution is to not buy a smart TV, but more and more they are flooding the market in such a way that it's becoming nigh impossible to find one that's on the dumb side.
https://gizmodo.com/people-using-ai-to-make-smart-tvs-dumb-again-is-the-most-2026-thing-ever-2000828213
