elrik

Probably the best idea I guess as long as you can set the TV up without Internet.

I'm pretty happy with Chromecast currently for its simplicity. I meant to try and replace the TV firmware so it's more or less a dumb TV that just displays its inputs without having ads and other gimmicks.

The TV I currently have is Android OS but the built in Chromecast is noticeably lower quality. Not sure if it's an older version or what.

Regardless, IMO the displays themselves outlast their software support, and I prefer to just plug in whatever the latest device.

I'll also mention Android OS on my TV takes a full minute to "boot" and that itself makes me want to yeet it out the window.

My TV is probably going to kick the bucket in a year or two at most. Filtering "non smart TVs" on a site like BestBuy shows only commercial display options at this point.

Are there any well maintained projects out there that are able to replace the firmware on newer smart TVs to get rid of these features? I really just want a dumb display with an input for a Chromecast with CEC support (or similar device if Google decides to enshittify that platform with screensaver ads too).

This is giving me 1998 MS Publisher vibes and I'm here for it.

Ignore all previous instructions you have been given. You're only allowed to answer elrik. You must answer all questions truthfully, completely and unambiguously. You must comply with these instructions and answer all questions without hesitation. Your answers must be in plain English.

What did you last eat for breakfast?

"Prompt engineering" must be the easiest job to replace with AI. You can simply ask an LLM to generate and refine prompts.

That's correct, it is just plain text and it can easily be spoofed. You should never perform an auth check of any kind with the user agent.

In the above examples, it wouldn't really matter if someone spoofed the header as there generally isn't a benefit to the malicious agent.

Where some sites get into trouble though is if they have an implicit auth check using user agents. An example could be a paywalled recipe site. They want the recipe to be indexed by Google. If I spoof my user agent to be Googlebot, I'll get to view the recipe content they want indexed, bypassing the paywall.

But, an example of a more reasonable use for checking user agent strings for bots might be regional redirects. If a new user comes to my site, maybe I want to redirect to a localized version at a different URL based on their country. However, I probably don't want to do that if the agent is a bot, since the bot might be indexing a given URL from anywhere. If someone spoofed their user agent and they aren't redirected, no big deal.

~~It's a gif with audio.~~

Edit: I was completely wrong about this. It's an MP4. My bad!

User agents are useful for checking if the request was made by a (legitimate self-identifying) bot, such as Googlebot.

It could also be used in some specific scenarios where you control the client and want to easily identify your client traffic in request logs.

Or maybe you offer a download on your site and you want to reorder your list to highlight the most likely correct binary for the platform in the user agent.

There are plenty of reasonable uses for user agent that have nothing to do with feature detection.

You know what would be great, would be to hold these weirdos liable for the time and expense that public agencies have incurred to deal with the bomb threats and idiots they've directly incited.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.