According to complaints filed this Monday in Texas state courts, the TV makers can allegedly use ACR technology to capture screenshots of television displays every 500 milliseconds, monitor the users’ viewing activity in real time, and send this information back to the companies’ servers without the users’ knowledge or consent.
A broken clock and all.
I’m so tired of “smart” tech. “Smart” is becoming synonymous with abuse. Seems like that’s all these companies do with it.
Every time I buy any piece of technology, seeing “smart” in the title makes me immediately look for something else.
I want a label printer. Not something that only works with a mobile app, not something that requires proprietary drivers and doesn’t work on my OS, not something that can only be used with your specific software, not one that requires your labels with a special NFC tag to use, just a label printer that is just as compatible as any regular printer.
I ended up paying about a 5X premium compared to alternatives on the market for that, and I would do it again.
A little late to the party, but I found your comment while also on the hunt for a label printer. Could you tell me what printer you choose?
It’s a Rollo! (refurbished)
I have the white wireless-capable one, but the USB-only model should theoretically operate the same in all other respects.
To manage the wireless one you use the app, or just go to the web URL for the management portal… because all the app does is just redirect you to that exact URL in-app 💀
I know a lot of cheaper models do still work well, but Rollo is just a much larger, more well known brand that also just has a lot more troubleshooting info behind it. (not to mention better printer driver compatibility)
Definitely don’t buy the overpriced official Rollo labels, though. They’re no better than any other thermal labels on the market!
Thanks for reaching back! Definitely a hefty price tag to it, but no bs with the labels and just a webpage for config sounds pretty good. Does it require internet access?
For the USB one I don’t think it even has the ability to use WiFi in any way, but it seems you might need to install their drivers to then locally be able to set the label size within a system dialog. In my experience, at least for the wireless one, it doesn’t necessarily require its own drivers to work, as it works with Windows’ built-in printer drivers, and worked well enough for me on Fedora Linux. (But you might have issues with stuff printing in the wrong orientation and have to account for that by rotating your files before printing)
For the wireless one, I think you’ll need at least some form of network no matter what, at least for setup. (I do want to clarify though that you can still use the wireless one with a wired cable to send files to print to it, and as far as I can tell that works even if WiFi is off) They really want you to use the app, but since it really is just another way to access the web UI, they do also just have a guide on how to do it without the app.
I set mine up on my WiFi network that does have internet access, but theoretically since the UI is on a local IP it should be able to work on an isolated VLAN or something similar where no actual link to the Internet exists and it’s just a LAN, but I have no clue if it tries to connect to a server anywhere on startup before allowing anything else to happen, so your mileage may vary. It’s unfortunately not something I’ve tested for.
It also has an option to check for updates, I presume to fix any bugs or future potential exploits, but I’ve never seen my printer update once in nearly a year of owning it. (As far as I can tell this setting can’t be disabled, all you can change is if it prints a label to tell you when it updates)
Regardless, as mentioned previously, it should be able to function in terms of just the printing itself with just a cable and no access to the internet afterwards, so you could always set it up on WiFi, add all the page sizes you want, then disconnect it from your network and only use it over USB and it should work fine :)
You can change its IPv4 and IPv6 address/netmask/gateway/prefix length, DNS servers, and hostname in settings, install a custom TLS certificate, etc if any of that helps.
Also, you can change the default print settings, which I personally very much recommend. Depending on what you’re printing, you might want to increase the print quality or darkness, particularly if you print a lot of labels in succession that might otherwise start printing a little more faded on the lighter settings.
That’s all the info I can think of that would probably be relevant, but if you’ve got any more questions that I somehow missed I’m happy to answer them too lmao
Oh that helps plenty! I think everything and more was answered :) Thanks for taking your time!
Of course!
Meanwhile, also in Texas, the police will trawl cameras nationwide to track you if you get an abortion. I guess it’s OK as long as it’s their surveillance network.
Lol, it’s like this with everything.
USA is tracking every single movement in your house, and throws a fit when China collects some meta data.
They just act like the survelliance is bad by blaming a foregin state, then doing something way worse.
Is an Administration that has been fighting against the right to privacy now trying to make an argument based upon privacy?
Snitch on women traveling alone Texas?
If you connect you TV directly to the internet, that’s on you at this point.
I get what you’re saying, and I accept that reality for most of us here who already understand these things. But blaming consumers for corporate surveillance is not a good way to get corporations to stop surveilling consumers.
Right it only makes people feed shame and then be quiet for “falling for a scam” that invaded their privacy and double down. We can argue about how when you get scammed you should talk about it etc, but that’s how people operate. The others are just apathetic about privacy being dead.
I mean I hate to say it, but at this point what are our options? Because our elected representatives refuse to do their jobs and these corps keep doing shady shit without consequences. I don’t mean to victim blame or anything, but with the current state of affairs, the onus is on the user to protect themselves.
our elected representatives refuse to do their jobs
This is under a post about elected representatives quite literally doing their jobs and suing corporations for doing this.
They might be couching it in language about it all being because of the “Chinese Communist Party surveilling Americans”, but they’re still trying to stop the practice.
the onus is on the user to protect themselves.
It’s good when users can protect themselves. It’s easy to forget that these companies design their products specifically to make people set them up how the manufacturer wants, and not all of them will even work without being connected to the internet.
The average person is not technically literate whatsoever. You’re telling people to take personal responsibility for their privacy when they barely know how any technology works, and are surrounded by corporations who’s budgets go towards finding new ways to convince people to give up their privacy in the most effective ways.
