Do they have a choice about having an EULA? Without one they’d presumably get sued.
The right thing to do would be to write an EULA that is limited in scope to precisely what is needed for the TV to work, protects customer privacy and clearly outlines the nature of this third-party relationship.
This one is another overly broad ass-covering land-grab courtesy of some corporate lawyers.
Why a TV has to have anything built in other than the ability to be a large, bright computer monitor is beyond me…
To differ from the billions of otherwise identical offers from other vendors, maybe?
Years ago, it was being said in the world of programming to be wary of any technology that has “active”, “dynamic”, or “smart” in its name…
Exactly. A curved TV is beneficial for one person, which is great if your are a bachelor(ette) with a movie/game derivation pod, but completely pointless for anyone else who watches television with friends/family/neighbors/door-to-door sales people/Mormon’s/Jehovah’s Witnesses/pizza delivery person/peeping toms/NSA/etc.
It depends… are cookies involved? 
Oh absolutely, but only the right kind (the ones you can eat). 
My TV is a monitor for my AppleTV (and hence my ipad), my bluray player, and my region freeDVD player. It has a tuner, but I haven’t bothered to hook it, up, largely because it’s too far from the walls, and windows of my apartment. In another room, I have a usb tuner, but I haven’t used it in months.
Sweets! The engineer bait! 
FTFY!!
Agreed. It would be better still if that info were not handed over to third parties though. Or collected by Samsung at all, unless I opt in. That would be even nicer.
No, we’re not. As I mentioned, BoingBoing is bringing up legitimate concerns, whereas people like Alex Jones are playing on people’s irrational fears.
And sorry, but until you refute that point, there’s no reason to give you any additional examples.
BoingBoing posted it because it was newsworthy to their technology oriented audience.
And as has been mentioned by lots of people, they weren’t fear mongering in the least. They were simply posting a bit of news, in the words of the subject of that news. If you have some point about it, you’re going to need to state it explicitly, preferably without the lame attempt at using the Socratic method.
I only had one, and I gave him a sock.
I know I loved that moment where you talked to him about Bill Gates.
No console gaming, eh? Much better on the 55" HD than on an ancient 27" CRT.
Why would you settle for watching your entertainment content (all the amazing movies and TV shows that are out there, and even the amazing content provided by the internets) on a tiny little computer screen, when you can enjoy it on a wonderful big screen instead?
The new RasbPi is even better - it’s got a nice little bit of power, and RAM too! It’s a pity that all the retailers charge out the butt for shipping to Canada, though ($19!! To ship a $35 board!). Really hoping there will be some local suppliers for it sooner rather than later.
This is the reason I have no intention of ever buying a smart TV (or, rather, the “Smart” features are going to be something that I completely ignore on whatever TV I buy next - focusing instead on picture quality). I certainly won’t be connecting it to the internet, because I have several different devices which can do those “smart” features 100x better than any smart TV can.
Also, 4K is pretty much useless at normal viewing distances, unless you’ve got a 100" projector. It replaced 3D as #1 on my list of “annoying TV features that are taking away from making better quality sets”. I’d much rather see OLED getting cheaper/more ubiquitous (instead of just showing up on gimmicky curved TVs).
Accidentally transferring personal data to third parties is precisely what is needed for the TV to work, unfortunately. Because in order for voice recognition to work, they have chosen to transfer the recorded command to a third party, and if somebody else happens to be saying “My PIN number is 1234” in the background, that might get picked up too. Don’t want to accidentally send your personal information to a third party? Don’t buy this TV. REALLY want voice recognition? Either find a company that has chosen to beef up their TV’s specs (CPU and storage-wise) enough to handle voice recognition locally, or settle for a cloud based option.
You are opting in, by buying a TV with voice recognition (and specifically enabling voice recognition and using voice commands). As far as I can tell, the only time it’s sending data to third parties is when you’re using that feature. There are lots of amazing TVs out there that don’t have this feature though.
I think a better word than “fear” here would be “caution”. If you’ve gotten to the point where you’re afraid of an inert object like a TV set, I’m sorry for the state you’re in.
He’ll probably just clone himself so you can have a local version.
The problem is that the “smart” TVs, when online, aren’t so inert anymore.
The cloud-based option is precisely what the TVs use.
Local recognition is a must; anything that sends data across the firewall is potentially hazardous.
Well, that’s what I meant by “settle for” - including all the possible negatives that that represents. I’m happy enough to never attach my TV to the internet, so this should never be an issue for me.
Nope. Not a gamer. I prefer to build game environments and characters than actually play.
