Robert Miller

Optimist who is always learning.

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

A thread of all my MEV related threads in chronologic order 👇🏻

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

Underrated upside of the cyber-apocalypse is that it'll be much harder to hide this kind of thing for a good year or two

[Tristan @Tristan0x]

If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.

@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".

A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.

What your TV is doing

The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].

What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
https://t.co/vNdTnIQ6KF
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.

Step 1: Turn off ACR

Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV

Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.

Step 2: Give smart devices their own network

Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.

Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering

NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.

1. Sign up at https://t.co/IwhafVWVM8 (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you

Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.

Why they do this

TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.

In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.

This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].

TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router

Sources:
[1] ACR study: https://t.co/S1IS8lXNbA
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: https://t.co/nclXELXcbd
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: https://t.co/CrVbwc9ZXk
[4] Texas v. Samsung: https://t.co/wFOUdeh1if

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@gakonst sir... pls fix

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@ralexstokes what

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

ASI may deliver material abundance. But what remains then for those who strive to make a mark?

Space will be the last outlet for ambition. Even if all materials comforts are taken care of here, there will still be a need for great men to carry civilization into the unknown.

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@danrobinson crazy lucky stochastic parrot

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@grugcapital I think its both true that:
1. the $ cost per unit of intelligence is going to radically decrease and
2. "the world's most expensive intelligence" is probably going to get more expensive still yet

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@hrkrshnn I think the proposal is nuanced in that it is asking for pacing the frontier, not all models. Taking as it is it would probably slightly benefit open models by pacing frontier model, thereby allowing open models to further close the gap.

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@fabianstelzer How can I convince you to pursue this

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@barnabemonnot @ethereumfndn @TimBeiko @ralexstokes All the best on your next journey Barnabe, one can only hope it is as prolific as your last one!

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

Funny to think about the long term implications of cavemanmaxxing being more token efficient

Will future generations speak caveman English?

[Chetaslua @chetaslua]

🛂 GPT-5.5's CoT keeps leaking in the new Codex update

>Now we know how they got the token efficiency they cavemanmaxxed it.

> Every time, I think of that Kevin Malone quote: "why waste time say lot word when few word do trick."

At what point does compression stop being efficiency and start being lobotomy?

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@grugcapital I lived there for a year and a half, and I have British descent, so you're not wrong

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

I'm American and it's hilarious to me I'm making it on Euro crypto talent lists

[André @oracles]

European crypto founders and operators are elite.

The talent density is absurd.

@diogomonica (Portuguese) - Anchorage
@StaniKulechov (Finnish) - Aave
@gavofyork (British) - Polkadot, Ethereum
@RuneKek (Danish) - Sky
@ilblackdragon (Ukrainian) - NEAR
@PaulFrambot (French) - Morpho
@_pgauthier (French) - Ledger
@borgetsebastien (French) - The Sandbox
@ArthurB (French) - Tezos
@koeppelmann (German) - Gnosis, Safe
@eric_demuth (Austrian) - Bitpanda
@ASvanevik (Norwegian) - Nansen
@jbaylina (Spanish) - Polygon zkEVM
@euler_mab (British) - Euler
@Zac_Aztec (British) - Aztec
@gluk64 (Ukrainian) - zkSync
@gakonst (Greek) - Paradigm, Reth
@bertcmiller (British) - Flashbots
@peter_szilagyi (Hungarian) - Ethereum Geth

e/acc Europe.

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@poetengineer__ One of my favorite ways to prompt the LLM is to ask what questions I should be asking or thinking about. Sort of prompting the LLM to prompt yourself.

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

Great thread from @dataalways, who has picked up the mantle on posting creatures from the dark forest.

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

Great premise for a sci-fi story.

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

Pretty remarkable to think this problem went unsolved purely because of some strange, collective "block" that prevented humans from approaching it the right way

Naturally the next question is: where else might these blocks be?

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

23 years old with no advanced mathematics training solves Erdős problem with ChatGPT Pro. "What’s beginning to emerge is that the problem was maybe easier than expected, and it was like there was some kind of mental block.”-Terence Tao https://t.co/Cphu6dexyb

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@phildaian @DistributedMarz using your giant tv to terminal chat with a local model is *chefs kiss*

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@endophysics I always thought of an eclipse attack as something on the p2p layer specifically. The way I read the post this wasn't that? But yeah, you could be right, not sure the precise definition.

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

First of its kind attack that relied on compromised RPC nodes, I think?

Makes you wonder where else there are hidden trust assumptions for these systems. Eclipse attacks come to mind, especially if DPRK has demonstrated interest in RPC level attack vectors.

[LayerZero @LayerZero_Core]

https://t.co/3vIHs3Xgs4

[Robert Miller @bertcmiller]

@NathanWorsley_ what are you doing that puts you in a warroom every month lol