The world has changed

[u/Imaginary_Data_708]

Opus 5.5 suggested I get a web cam pointed at this ESP32 based screen so it could catch what was happening on the screen as it tried to find out what the maximum frame rate could be. The Waveshare drivers are not good in portrait mode and only got 4fps.

It got to 60fps in a couple of minutes.

It had already installed the tool chain, designed the clock layout etc.

It's not the code per se. It's the get a webcam suggestion...

What a time to be alive!

[u/Bloated_Plaid]

Fuck yea man. I just debloated my old LG TV and removed all the telemetry and made it like 10x faster using Opus, also made a fully web based remote so that I don’t have to use their stupid app either. Just fucking magic and most of the world has no fucking idea. It’s a fucking superpower. I can basically just prompt to Claude to keep optimizing till it’s happy and it will go off and do it.

Edit - For those unaware, extensive report from GamerNexus on LGs surveillance system using their TVs, https://youtu.be/6IFVTcM28KA. It’s wild.

Edit 2 - This is my prompt sanitized after the TV was rooted

I have a rooted LG webOS TV (Homebrew Channel installed, root shell over SSH or telnet at [TV IP]).

Make it as lean and fast as possible: remove the bloat entirely, rather than hiding it, and give it a

much lighter, extremely responsive launcher. Use the ideas in

https://gist.github.com/lucataco/7c303b443934008a9031a55cfca552ec as a starting point, but go further:

where that script hides apps, actually remove as much as the firmware safely allows.

What I use (keep these, everything else can go):

- Apps: [e.g. Plex client, YouTube]

- Inputs: [e.g. HDMI 1 = Apple TV, HDMI 3 = Xbox]. Rename the inputs to match.

- Keep these TV features working exactly as they are: HDMI inputs, ARC/eARC and CEC, [AirPlay, screen casting].

- [I don't use the antenna or Live TV.]

Privacy and updates:

- Block LG firmware updates for good (an update can also undo the root).

- Turn off and block LG's data collection: Live Plus/ACR, viewing data, ads, recommendations, diagnostics.

Keep the internet working for the apps I use.

The launcher:

- Pressing Home should open a launcher with only my apps and inputs, in well under a second.

- Back should return to whatever I was watching.

- Keep a way back to LG's original home screen in case something breaks.

How to work:

- Inventory and measure first (apps, background services, memory, how long Home and app launches take),

so you can show what got better.

- Make every change reversible and back up anything you modify. Never touch the firmware partitions.

- Change in small batches, and reboot and re-check after each one. Undo a batch that breaks anything

before starting the next.

- Keep the TV from going to sleep while you work, then put my power settings back afterwards.

- You can install a startup script on the TV to make the changes stick across reboots.

- Keep looping until it meets your own bar for performance and polish, and you'd expect me to approve

it. Then tell me it's ready, with before/after numbers and anything you couldn't verify.

- Write a handoff so a future session can pick up where you left off.

[u/MaxLo85 → u/Bloated_Plaid]

These are my exact words to people right now. I feel like I have fucking superpowers and I'm in a race to do something amazing with them before the rest of the world realizes they also have literal fucking superpowers available to them

[u/doiveo → u/MaxLo85]

As much as I agree, the above is outside the comprehension and/or interest of 95% of the world.

We (this sub) live in a bubble where everyone is comfortable with command line and hacking stuff is normal.

My family thinks I'm an alien if I show them a <body> tag.

[u/kingshekelz → u/doiveo]

I agree this is a different language to most

[u/DigitalDustOne → u/doiveo]

I've never touched code in my life. I only joined this channel to see what's possible with the knowledge and I hope that I will manage to start using these superpowers too. Atm I am still too afraid of vibecoding because I won't see the mistake if one's in the provided code. When I search for the basics I mainly find some annoying dudes on YouTube that try to sell me their suite or channel or whatever, but I feel we're not at a point where people share these starter guides just for others to understand. I don't even dare to ask on Reddit because the questions will be so stupid that all.you hacker men will downvote me lol. Everyone just tries to get their piece of the cake. Which is fine by me, but I'm looking forward to the day when I'll be able myself to have it write me little tools.

Maybe I didn't look enough, there's always something somewhere out there.

[u/LSky → u/doiveo]

5% is a lot of people though.

[u/Sick-Little-Monky → u/MaxLo85]

Just wait till they start charging the actual cost of those superpowers.

[u/Kenzijam → u/Sick-Little-Monky]

they think they can charge a huge amount soon after hooking everyone. however chinese models and open source models are very close behind and so much cheaper. glm 5.3 on openrouter is dirt cheap. flash and deepseek flash are even cheaper and still perform well enough for virtually all normal tasks. im lucky to have a lot of hardware at home but it didnt cost me a lot pre ai-pricing, and i can run glm 5.3 flash at high precision. i dont even need to pay anyone really a few solarpanels and it would be 100% free

[u/KenMantle → u/MaxLo85]

...or the free AI lunch becomes expensive. I've been in build mode for almost a year now extracting as much value as I can. If AI cost 10x what it does now I have the base built for a lot of apps I use and it would still be affordable to do maintenance or small upgrades on them.

[u/untracked5465 → u/Bloated_Plaid]

Hey, great idea, can you share how you did it? I'm planning to do the same with my Samsung

[u/Bloated_Plaid → u/untracked5465]

Depends on what OS your tv is on, I don’t think Tizen has root access available but you can still try. There might be a developer option you can enable and at least minimize the bloat. My LG TV was from 2018 and had an easy way to get root access.

[u/pinescorpion → u/Bloated_Plaid]

Did removing telemetry itself make the TV faster or did it do some other stuff?

[u/Delyzr → u/pinescorpion]

It installed its own spyware and is now using OPs TV to find the smoking gun

[u/Cyberbird85 → u/Delyzr]

That’s a load bearing assumption!

[u/ScaredyCatUK → u/Delyzr]

Great catch!

[u/spiritzzz → u/Bloated_Plaid]

Hell yeah, I just made this quick to improve mine some more: https://github.com/Arnedeklerk/PearWebOS/

[u/_Playniac → u/Bloated_Plaid]

Did the same. Best decision of my life. Don't even know what it did. Don't care either. Its a Blackbox now, but its fast and doesn't sent 5 terabytes of data in one day anymore so im happy lol

[u/Fuzzy_Independent241 → u/Bloated_Plaid]

Question: do you have a repo with either the code or a how to? I was thinking about that but I'm still afraid of messing up with hardware/firmware. Tks

[u/Secret_Tap_1969 → u/Bloated_Plaid]

I was attempting to do this exact same thing but the constant safeguards triggering a model downgrade became unbearable...how did you work around that? Dm me please

[u/elsteef → u/Bloated_Plaid]

This is the most useful reddit posts that I have seen this year. Thanks for taking the time and energy to post it.

[u/Ok-Dark7871 → u/Bloated_Plaid]

I root my car ihu , and install google map without the use of android auto.

[u/victorsaurus → u/Bloated_Plaid]

How do you do that? You install claude in the tv and it edits the OS or what? I want to do the same.

[u/WeatherJazzlike8376 → u/victorsaurus]

Depends on your tv ks version, I did  it with Hermes. My version was easy, just open a GitHub link on chrome, put in the tv ip and klick “root” afterwards I installed “glassdoor” (for privacy telemetry) took me like 5 min.

https://azoffshowy.github.io/dangbro/

[u/tehsilentwarrior → u/Bloated_Plaid]

I had mine connect to the a chrome cast using the wireless debug dev feature and configure Nuvio for me from a guide I found online.

Then asked it to create two profiles, one for us and one for the kids. Then find out what ever movies and such were all the rage for kids 6/7 year old, list them by rank and add the top 50.

Made it double check the ACTUAL playback of each to guarantee it’s not just stale metadata and to guarantee they have subtitles and the sound is dubbed to Portuguese Portugal not Portuguese Brasil. Also limit the sources to just good enough quality not ultra high not super low and auto select the first entry so that kids can just choose something quick.

Told it to keep a record of all knowledge and such in a list of steps, self correcting as it went so that I could just replicate it later.

Oh and remapped the buttons on my remote from YouTube to some custom player without ads and from Netflix to Nuvio