They could also make agreements with ISP's where their TV's can be whitelisted for access to a public or potentially unlisted WiFi, enabling them to connect that way, without the vast majority of customers ever being aware.
Similarly, these TV's could connect to any open wifi hotspot it can find and phone home/download updates that way. Cox for example proudly boasts how more than 4M of it's residential customers modem+router+ap's can be used for "WiFi Hotspots" by anyone - not just the customer/resident - if they have a cox account. I don't see why Samsung or any other manufacturer may approach said ISP's to use this network to update devices under some guise of "convenience" or "seamless updates" ostensibly for their less tech savvy users.
I don't know if these business deals exists, but "smart devices" will often try to phone home/update anyway they can, even if you don't manually configure it on a private network.
Mine is a Vizio from Target that's never been online. I've gotten close to cutting its wifi antenna circuit to prevent this but I think I got it before they started programming anything like this in and I should be safe if it stays offline.
But then I still think about cutting it in case I ever have anyone over that would be stupid enough to sign in to the wifi on it. Better for it to have never happened.
> Not if you want to run any of your banking apps or all sorts of things.
I must be getting old, cause I see everyone saying this in response as if it's a downside. As someone that's getting real tired of every company/product/service on earth trying to have you install their own app (even before we get to the privacy/data concerns, just on a pure convenience/hassle POV), the idea of "WeLl ThEn YoUr BaNk ApP DoEsN'T WoRk" is frankly a bonus.
I can touch to pay with a card , which is faster and more convenient than having to unlock/approve/dick with my phone, which by doing so also allows me to keep NFC off by default (personal preference).
Also, I don't need an app for that, already have one, it's called a browser.
You are getting old (and so am I), but banks are already starting to build out needed features into these apps that don't have equivalents in their web applications, and I'm deeply worried that this will continue. It also honestly needs a legislative solution, but at least where I live there is no appetite to handling that problem.
It's not paying I care about (and I don't need their app to do that, thankfully!), that's a solved problem as you rightly pointed out. It's everything else that makes me nervous as to where it might be going.
Said another way: I'm saying this as a warning, not as I "wahhhh I don't have the app that I want :'("
Or they're charging people in at-best mysterious if not outright duplicitous/malicious ways because it makes them money without having to do anything (save for send a bill and have the right fine print in the right places. )
It's no accident, it's not just "bad UX", it's deliberate.
> AWS doesn’t charge you in mysterious ways. It charges you in specific, predictable ways that nobody taught you to look for. That’s a knowledge gap.
Observe the mental gymnastics to explain away "mysterious ways" by making it the users fault and calling them - *checks notes* - stupid, for not knowing something AWS is very intentionally keen on you not knowing.
I sure hope OP was getting payed for this AWS ad, imagine shilling for a multi-billion dollar company for free.
Mid to late 2025 was the peak of an 11 year solar cycle (25th one since we've started keeping track). We're on the trailing end of that peak activity now, which is why the past year/several months has seemed so active compared to recent years past, and should decrease significantly (in frequency and intensity) as 2026 progresses.
There was also a fairly significant geomagnetic storm back in November of 2025 as well.
I agree that interface would be a better name than protocol, but Model Context Integration/Integrator would be even better as that is it's core intent: To integrate context into the model. Alternatively, Universal Model Context Interface (or integrator) would be an even better name imo, as that actually explains what it intends to do/be used for, whereas MCP is rather ambiguous/nebulous/inaccurate on the face of it as previously established further up-thread.
That said, I think as the above user points out, part of the friction with the name is that MCP is two parts, a framework and a standard. So with that in mind, I'd assert that it should be redefined as Model Context Interface Standard, and Model Context Interface Framework (or Integration or whatever other word the community best feels suits it in place of Protocol).
Ultimately though, I think that ship has sailed thanks to momentum and mindshare, unless such a "rebranding" would coincide with a 2.0 update to MCP (or whatever we're calling it) or some such functional change in that vein to coincide with it. Rebranding it for "clarity's sake" when the industry is already quite familiar with what it is likely wouldn't gain much traction.
Wow, this is great. Calling it UMCI would have saved me a lot of confusion in the first place. But yeah I think the ship has sailed and it shows that a lot of things there were cobbled together in a hurry maybe.
It's pretty upfront about being a novelty project done by a self-described non-crypto expert, and I don't see any assertions of it guaranteeing any degree of sufficiency/security or claiming any such NextBigThing(TM) hype.
Just because a paper is published doesn't mean it wasn't done for fun/the hell of it.
Shadcn is an open modular UI framework (toolkit? Whatever you want to call it), and this seems to search repo's (not sites themselves, but could be wrong) for various components.
It's kind of like pinterest or dribbble but specifically for Shadcn UI elements.
Similarly, these TV's could connect to any open wifi hotspot it can find and phone home/download updates that way. Cox for example proudly boasts how more than 4M of it's residential customers modem+router+ap's can be used for "WiFi Hotspots" by anyone - not just the customer/resident - if they have a cox account. I don't see why Samsung or any other manufacturer may approach said ISP's to use this network to update devices under some guise of "convenience" or "seamless updates" ostensibly for their less tech savvy users.
I don't know if these business deals exists, but "smart devices" will often try to phone home/update anyway they can, even if you don't manually configure it on a private network.
EDIT: Forgot the source on the cox hotspots claim: https://www.cox.com/residential/internet/learn/cox-hotspots....