TCL roku TVs are cheap and you can just tell them you don't have an internet connection (or whatever) on first setup. I have no idea if TCL or Roku have pulled a samsung/sony/visio - i forget which - and connect to "open wifi" to phone home.
I got tired of my TCL Roku taking so long to turn on and switch inputs and turning itself on and off to update. So i factory reset it and told it "no network". works fine.
Sceptre makes dumb TVs, too. https://www.sceptre.com/ - i have been buying their panels for something like 24 years. they're "decent" nothing super remarkable, but they're just dumb displays. at least mine are.
And finally, find a projector that does what you want. they're usually so compact they don't have roku/other smart stuff. I use a wall, we used dark brown or black paint to frame out a 95" screen roughly in between 16:8 and 16:9 aspect. wash the wall or sand lightly and wash the wall, then apply Behr Silver Screen in the matte-est behr base. I personally did three coats, it took less than a quart, so you only need a quart for ~100" with 3 coats. It looks like a movie screen when it's off, and it looks like a TV screen when the projector is on.
observe a random clip of it in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG6VJ9WlLcs note i know there is trapezoid, i fixed that later by ceiling mounting the projector in the middle as opposed to slightly to the side. a more expensive / nicer projector can actually transform the image trapezoid to fix this, and the most expensive can do it on their own! mine has vertical trap but not horizontal.
Seems the only viable solution nowadays is computer monitor + converter box and/or computer + speakers. There's ~$150 32" monitors nowadays, even a few non-TV 42-43 inch monitors if you're willing to spend ~$700-1200.
> The INET6 data type is intended for storage of IPv6 addresses, as well as IPv4 addresses assuming conventional mapping of IPv4 addresses into IPv6 addresses.
And how do you actually identify who should pay that $0.000713? And who should receive it? How do you make the process effortless, so the user doesn't have to spend 5 minutes registering on a website, just to send $0.000713?
Now make it work 10,000 times per day, for every page you visit, posts, news, short form content you scroll, long form video you watch. And multiply this by billions of users.
And once you've done that, how do you deal with spam, bots? How do you prevent invalid traffic? Fraudulent chargebacks? And how do you take quality into consideration (NYT prob want to charge more than my crappy personal blog)?
Transferring money is one small element of large and complex equation.
Advertising is not perfect, but it's the best alternative for a free and open web I have seen in my 30+ years online. Subscription works for large ticket items (and for the affluent minority), but it doesn't solve the other 95% of cases.
I don't think the problem is these kind of suggestions.
Are people suddenly moving more between corp A and corp B? Must be something going on, let's buy the stock.
Suddenly multiple Ubers are dropping off people at a residential building during the night? They probably know each other. Let's flag that as a potential risk.
Just to give you another little titbit if you're interested. I work in go to market, and part of that is awareness, and part of that is advertising. Where people use the platform has a huge impact on the prices you pay to advertise on the platform, for example reddit is very expensive because they have a very high mobile traffic population, and the ads can't be blocked, advertising on X is hard because the people I want to reach all pay for premium, so the traffic you get from it now is basically useless, linkedin skews towards desktop, but their targeting is amazing, but because they skew towards desktop people run ad blocks, some platforms let you pick the devices you serve to, some don't, all of it impacts the price you pay to serve the ads.
Well, it doesn't really matter that it's expensive or hard: that's what we have VCs for. More money you can raise, better targeting you can pay up for. You'd be amazed at how much oxygen you can suck out of a market for a million bucks.
You're absolutely right to be concerned, this is something I think about constantly.
The reality is:
bad actors don't need to reverse-engineer anything. AI engines already prioritize structured, citable content. Anyone can spin up a website with schema.org markup and fake citations.
The barrier is low.
What makes this hard to abuse at scale:
1. Domain verification – For businesses, we require proof of domain ownership. You can't claim to be Apple unless you control apple.com or an official subdomain or work at apple respectively having @apple.com business mail.
2. Citation requirements – Claims need links to primary sources. AI engines cross-reference. If your "citations" point to non-existent papers or contradict other sources, you lose authority fast.
3. Reputation signals – We're building verification badges (ORCID for researchers, business registries, etc.). Over time, verified profiles will rank higher.
But you've identified the fundamental tension: any system that makes it easier for legitimate businesses to be cited also makes it easier for bad actors. This is the same problem Google faced in the '90s, Wikipedia deals with daily, and AI engines are grappling with now.
The goal isn't to be manipulation-proof, nothing is. It's to make CoThou profiles more trustworthy than the alternatives (random blogs, SEO spam, outdated info).
What would you add?
This is an evolving problem and I'd love HN's input.
—Marty
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