If you asked someone what they wanted from TVs released in 2025 , I doubt they'd say "more software and AI." Yet, if you look at what TV companies have planned for this year, which is being primarily promoted at the CES technology trade show in Las Vegas this week, software and AI are where much of the focus is.

The trend reveals the implications of TV brands increasingly viewing themselves as software rather than hardware companies, with their products being customer data rather than TV sets. This points to an alarming future for smart TVs, where even premium models sought after for top-end image quality and hardware capabilities are stuffed with unwanted gimmicks.

LG’s remote regression

LG has long made some of the best—and most expensive—TVs available. Its OLED lineup, in particular, has appealed to people who use their TVs to watch Blu-rays, enjoy HDR, and the like. However, some features that LG is introducing to high-end TVs this year seem to better serve LG’s business interests than those users' needs.

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If you asked someone what they wanted from TVs released in 2025 , I doubt they'd say "more software and AI." Yet, if you look at what TV companies have planned for this year, which is being primarily promoted at the CES technology trade show in Las Vegas this week, software and AI are where much of the focus is.

The trend reveals the implications of TV brands increasingly viewing themselves as software rather than hardware companies, with their products being customer data rather than TV sets. This points to an alarming future for smart TVs, where even premium models sought after for top-end image quality and hardware capabilities are stuffed with unwanted gimmicks.

LG’s remote regression

LG has long made some of the best—and most expensive—TVs available. Its OLED lineup, in particular, has appealed to people who use their TVs to watch Blu-rays, enjoy HDR, and the like. However, some features that LG is introducing to high-end TVs this year seem to better serve LG’s business interests than those users' needs.

Read full article

Comments

If you asked someone what they wanted from TVs released in 2025 , I doubt they'd say "more software and AI." Yet, if you look at what TV companies have planned for this year, which is being primarily promoted at the CES technology trade show in Las Vegas this week, software and AI are where much of the focus is.

The trend reveals the implications of TV brands increasingly viewing themselves as software rather than hardware companies, with their products being customer data rather than TV sets. This points to an alarming future for smart TVs, where even premium models sought after for top-end image quality and hardware capabilities are stuffed with unwanted gimmicks.

LG’s remote regression

LG has long made some of the best—and most expensive—TVs available. Its OLED lineup, in particular, has appealed to people who use their TVs to watch Blu-rays, enjoy HDR, and the like. However, some features that LG is introducing to high-end TVs this year seem to better serve LG’s business interests than those users' needs.

Read full article

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A federal judge this week rejected Google's motion to throw out a class-action lawsuit alleging that it invaded the privacy of users who opted out of functionality that records a users' web and app activities. A jury trial is scheduled for August 2025 in US District Court in San Francisco.

The lawsuit concerns Google's Web & App Activity (WAA) settings, with the lead plaintiff representing two subclasses of people with Android and non-Android phones who opted out of tracking. "The WAA button is a Google account setting that purports to give users privacy control of Google's data logging of the user's web app and activity, such as a user's searches and activity from other Google services, information associated with the user's activity, and information about the user's location and device," wrote US District Judge Richard Seeborg, the chief judge in the Northern District Of California.

Google says that Web & App Activity "saves your activity on Google sites and apps, including associated info like location, to give you faster searches, better recommendations, and more personalized experiences in Maps, Search, and other Google services." Google also has a supplemental Web App and Activity setting that the judge's ruling refers to as "(s)WAA."

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A federal judge this week rejected Google's motion to throw out a class-action lawsuit alleging that it invaded the privacy of users who opted out of functionality that records a users' web and app activities. A jury trial is scheduled for August 2025 in US District Court in San Francisco.

The lawsuit concerns Google's Web & App Activity (WAA) settings, with the lead plaintiff representing two subclasses of people with Android and non-Android phones who opted out of tracking. "The WAA button is a Google account setting that purports to give users privacy control of Google's data logging of the user's web app and activity, such as a user's searches and activity from other Google services, information associated with the user's activity, and information about the user's location and device," wrote US District Judge Richard Seeborg, the chief judge in the Northern District Of California.

Google says that Web & App Activity "saves your activity on Google sites and apps, including associated info like location, to give you faster searches, better recommendations, and more personalized experiences in Maps, Search, and other Google services." Google also has a supplemental Web App and Activity setting that the judge's ruling refers to as "(s)WAA."

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A federal judge this week rejected Google's motion to throw out a class-action lawsuit alleging that it invaded the privacy of users who opted out of functionality that records a users' web and app activities. A jury trial is scheduled for August 2025 in US District Court in San Francisco.

The lawsuit concerns Google's Web & App Activity (WAA) settings, with the lead plaintiff representing two subclasses of people with Android and non-Android phones who opted out of tracking. "The WAA button is a Google account setting that purports to give users privacy control of Google's data logging of the user's web app and activity, such as a user's searches and activity from other Google services, information associated with the user's activity, and information about the user's location and device," wrote US District Judge Richard Seeborg, the chief judge in the Northern District Of California.

Google says that Web & App Activity "saves your activity on Google sites and apps, including associated info like location, to give you faster searches, better recommendations, and more personalized experiences in Maps, Search, and other Google services." Google also has a supplemental Web App and Activity setting that the judge's ruling refers to as "(s)WAA."

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Most crossword puzzle fans have experienced that moment where, after a period of struggle on a particularly difficult puzzle, everything suddenly starts to come together, and they are able to fill in a bunch of squares correctly. Alexander Hartmann, a statistical physicist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, had an intriguing insight when this happened while he was trying to solve a puzzle one day. According to his paper published in the journal Physical Review E, the crossword puzzle-solving process resembles a type of phase transition known as percolation —one that seems to be unique compared to standard percolation models.

Traditional mathematical models of percolation date back to the 1940s. Directed percolation is when the flow occurs in a specific direction, akin to how water moves through freshly ground coffee beans, flowing down in the direction of gravity. (In physical systems, percolation is one of the primary mechanisms behind the Brazil nut effect , along with convection.) Such models can also be applicable to a wide range of large networked systems: power grids, financial markets, and social networks, for example.

Individual nodes in a random network start linking together, one by one, via short-range connections, until the number of connections reaches a critical threshold (tipping point). At that point, there is a phase shift in which the largest cluster of nodes grows rapidly, giving rise to more long-range connections, resulting in uber-connectivity. The likelihood of two clusters merging is proportional to their size, and once a large cluster forms, it dominates the networked system, absorbing smaller clusters.

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Most crossword puzzle fans have experienced that moment where, after a period of struggle on a particularly difficult puzzle, everything suddenly starts to come together, and they are able to fill in a bunch of squares correctly. Alexander Hartmann, a statistical physicist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, had an intriguing insight when this happened while he was trying to solve a puzzle one day. According to his paper published in the journal Physical Review E, the crossword puzzle-solving process resembles a type of phase transition known as percolation —one that seems to be unique compared to standard percolation models.

Traditional mathematical models of percolation date back to the 1940s. Directed percolation is when the flow occurs in a specific direction, akin to how water moves through freshly ground coffee beans, flowing down in the direction of gravity. (In physical systems, percolation is one of the primary mechanisms behind the Brazil nut effect , along with convection.) Such models can also be applicable to a wide range of large networked systems: power grids, financial markets, and social networks, for example.

Individual nodes in a random network start linking together, one by one, via short-range connections, until the number of connections reaches a critical threshold (tipping point). At that point, there is a phase shift in which the largest cluster of nodes grows rapidly, giving rise to more long-range connections, resulting in uber-connectivity. The likelihood of two clusters merging is proportional to their size, and once a large cluster forms, it dominates the networked system, absorbing smaller clusters.

Read full article

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Most crossword puzzle fans have experienced that moment where, after a period of struggle on a particularly difficult puzzle, everything suddenly starts to come together, and they are able to fill in a bunch of squares correctly. Alexander Hartmann, a statistical physicist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, had an intriguing insight when this happened while he was trying to solve a puzzle one day. According to his paper published in the journal Physical Review E, the crossword puzzle-solving process resembles a type of phase transition known as percolation —one that seems to be unique compared to standard percolation models.

Traditional mathematical models of percolation date back to the 1940s. Directed percolation is when the flow occurs in a specific direction, akin to how water moves through freshly ground coffee beans, flowing down in the direction of gravity. (In physical systems, percolation is one of the primary mechanisms behind the Brazil nut effect , along with convection.) Such models can also be applicable to a wide range of large networked systems: power grids, financial markets, and social networks, for example.

Individual nodes in a random network start linking together, one by one, via short-range connections, until the number of connections reaches a critical threshold (tipping point). At that point, there is a phase shift in which the largest cluster of nodes grows rapidly, giving rise to more long-range connections, resulting in uber-connectivity. The likelihood of two clusters merging is proportional to their size, and once a large cluster forms, it dominates the networked system, absorbing smaller clusters.

Read full article

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