This guarantees I'll never buy a Samsung appliance. If they're this willing to screw with their customers today, they'll do it again tomorrow.
Sadly, I'm including their TVs in this. I have one today, displaying the output of an Apple TV and not directly connected to the Internet because hah, no way, but I'll be shopping around when it comes time to replace it.
Pity. They make nice stuff. Not nice enough that I'm willing to tolerate their anti-customer shenanigans, but otherwise decent quality.
Samsung appliances have among the worst reputations for ease of repair and lifespan. Sadly most other brands are rebrands of Chinese conglomerates or not much better on the quality chain. But honestly it's also a lottery. We bought a fridge on sale for $500 as an emergency stopover when our expensive fridge was delayed by a month during a move, and it's still plugging along out in the garage, a hostile environment for fridges. All the parts are very accessible too which bodes well for repair, although the leveling feet did snap off.
However, when you see the viral videos of "dream fridges" from the 1950s, it's important to remember that adjusted for inflation they would be something like $10k today. Of course they also last 10x as long, but you can still find fridges in that price range today with a similar value proposition. The question is whether or not you're willing to pay that upfront. I think we've all been so conditioned to accept that appliances go obsolete that it doesn't seem possible for a fridge like that to ever pay for itself.
Boots theory yes, but there also seem to be a paradox of reliability of cheap things.
Manufacturers which are aiming at being dirt cheap and selling lots of products, have low margins and simply cannot afford too many replacements / warranty repairs. High margin products don't care, they could make you three in that price and still be ok.
Miele did the best advertising ever, and I believe it even got a news story. A woman had been using their washer for 25years and Miele reached out and asked if she wanted a new one for free, for no other reason than to upgrade. Iirc she declined as the one she had worked perfectly.
I have a vacuum from them, a cheap model, been working for 12 years so far.
It’s probably the only appliance brand I would trust, even if I’m sure they have bad stories too.
I got another way of looking at it: it's not worth it having appliances that last 20 years, because in that time the tech itself can and does improve a lot.
Ready example is my aunt: a very good and expensive Miele washing machine, that was made to last as things were before. But now 10 years have elapsed and modern washers come with bigger drums, much lower noises, optimized water and electricity usages, and more effective washing patterns.
But she's stuck with her old and trusty one, because she feels that it's working "like new". And she's not wrong, it works well, so it became a sort of a "golden cuff" so to speak (not knowing any better metaphor). So good and expensive, that now getting rid of it for a new one feels like a waste of money for not much gain.
I wonder if those expensive fridges are any more serviceable. I'm guessing someone with $10k to spend on a fridge doesn't care how easy it is to fix because they'll never do it.
Eh, I've got a very reasonably priced Haier fridge that I've had no issues with at all. Maybe I'm just lucky, and it definitely helps that there's no built in ice maker or water dispenser (those things seem to break first) but it's lived longer than the refrigerators that the rest of my family have.
I beg to differ that Samsung makes good stuff. We had a Samsung front-loading washer. The drum and the crank that holds the drum were made of two different materials, and in the presence of the water and detergent, a galvanic reaction occurred, dissolving the drum arm. Replacing the arm was $400 in parts and over 8 hours in repair time. (There's lots of YT videos of this exact repair.)
What kind of monkey designs something like that. It's obsolescence by design.
Ours died with a “cannot communicate with board A” error. The wiring harness (yes, an irreplaceable harness) between A and B looked fine. We replaced boards A and B, which were half the price of the machine and not returnable. Same error code. We threw it out and got a Speed Queen.
Our Samsung fridge’s manual says it’ll automatically and silently mesh network with any Samsung TVs in range, use AI and hidden cameras to recognize what’s in the fridge and when we use it, then have the TV inject targeted ads into programming based on its findings.
I’m glad to have avoided it - when I moved from sharing with room-mates into my own place and had to buy new appliances, there had just been a spate of Samsung appliances literally randomly catching fire in the news. Those models have all been recalled but it put me right off.
Otherwise I might have considered them but steered well clear, and am very happy with the decision a decade later. Went Bosch for the washer and Electrolux for the fridge, had zero issues.
Also, I'm wondering if any other manufacturer would make the crank and the drum from the same material. Wouldn't it be like $100 extra to make a stainless steel spider?
The problem is that we are running out of alternatives. How long until there are no refrigerators, TVs, cars, whatever that will not work without some amount of baked in advertising?
I dunno, my family started buying LG stuff for our appliances and otherwise, and none of the stuff has forceful ads on them, at least yet. Currently I think we have LG TVs, fridge, dish washer, drier, washing machine and something else I can't remember, all of them working well, has nice and fast at-home support when needed and no ads even on the TVs.
> The problem is that we are running out of alternatives.
But why is that? HN told me that ads were just reserved for people who refused to “pay for the product”. By inference we must conclude that for-pay products shall not have ads on sheer principle. Where’s that smug scolding at now?
Depends on what consumers stand for. If enough complain. If enough get bad reviews. If enough get returned. If enough buy something else is the big one. If there are other uses where they can't (some TVs are used a safety message boards in factories - if the ads ever show in this context and someone is hurt there will be a lawsuit - so there will be some demand at any price for something without ads)
My Samsung computer monitor is also the stuff of nightmares. Same story: useless "smart" UI features. I'm told I can use it as a dozen different things. But it sucks as a computer monitor.
My Samsung 4k 240hz OLED monitor has an absolutely gorgeous panel but if I knew I'd need to connect it to the internet and run a PYTHON script to disable some of its "features"[1] I probably would have gotten a similar LG display instead.
That makes me sad. Many, many years ago I had a 17" Samsung CRT. It broke within the warranty period. I called their support and explained the problem. They asked for my receipt. I didn't have one, but I told them that the sticker on the back said it had only been manufactured 9 months ago, so it had to still be under warranty. Their support person agreed. They checked their inventory and found that they were out of stock on that model, and asked if I'd be OK with them upgrading me to a 19" CRT. Sure!
I was fiercely loyal to them for a lot of years after that experience.
I got their monitors from the "before" they bunged smart into everything. 2 x 4K from 2016/2017. These things refuse to die and the picture is still good.
Unfortunately all of my relatives love their phones.
My house came with all Samsung appliances and I can't wait for all fo them to die. The dryer already went (8 years old).
I've been replacing with mid-range LG on advice of the local repair company and been happy so far. Quirky and very few features but seems well built.
Can't wait to replace the massive refrigerator and swap the gas range for inductive. Fridge is slowly going (cracked and leaking ice maker, condensation problem with deli drawer).
I now know how my mom could justify the ridiculous expense of a Subzero refrigerator (around $6k back in 2000). That thing has only needed a couple of tune ups and no parts replacements in 20 years.
When I bought my new fridge I told the sales guy I wanted the least features possible. "You don't want an in door ice maker" "How many of those have you seen that aren't broken" "not many. no through door window?" "I know there's milk in the fridge why do I need to see that there's milk in the fridge?" down and down the list. Eventually we settled on a very bare bones whilrpool french door. It's very simple. My previous fridge I could fix with a screwdriver and a piece of wire. These things push cold air from a compressor that lasts 50 years if it's not fucked with by electronics and some boxes that are all passive insulation. They were solved problems 30 years ago.
The speed queen washer that came with the house failed. The 30 year old lid switch literally fell apart. $10 on amazon next day. Took me 10 minutes and youtube to take the machine apart. It's meant to be serviced and I'm handy. I don't get engineers who won't try and fix their appliances. It's like a free weekend day entertainment for me.
My parents fridge started it's life in the mid 1990's, and their freezer is probably a decade older, at this stage nobody knows. I don't think they were expensive models.
I bought a Samsung phone back in like 2014, and shortly after bought smartwatch to pair with it. A year later, Samsung released an update that removed the pairing functionality so my smartwatch could no longer pair. They did this in conjunction with releasing their own smartwatch and some proprietary pairing protocol.
I'm not a fan of vendor lock in, but their decision to retroactively remove functionality that I was depending on led me to never buy another Samsung product since.
Same they are off my list as well though I generally have less than zero interest in smart devices, I also have a Samsung "smart" TV as well, it asked for Wifi first time I turned it on, said "nope" connected a HDMI to a Fedora box and just use that.
I control what devices in my house connect to the internet.
I never thought I would connect my Hisense to the internet, but it turns out that it runs an MQTT broker and responds to WoL packets, so control via Home Assistant was really easy to setup and is much better than the IR blaster I was using before as response is almost instant and I can get power state so I can sync it to the rest of my living room. Most smart TVs seem to do well behind a DNS black hole, and if you're knowledgeable enough for that then self-hosting a dnsmasq instance on an old box you have lying around and pointing the TV at it is a snap.
> I control what devices in my house connect to the internet.
That’s certainly admirable, but haven’t tv manufacturers beeen caught connecting to ANY WiFi they find, if it’s open? Amongst other various dark patterns?
Your statement here kind of characterizes it as user error, but the manufacturers are absolutely hostile actors here.
I'm going to sell this idea to Samsung and earn me some Wons:
> When showing that the user has switched to HDMI input, show the full screen information: "HDMI1, brought to you by _____ [insert advertiser here]. Best experienced with Monster HDMI cables. Gold plated for the digital clarity."
Until they start installing 5G modems in the things anyway. Or put a time bomb in the OS so the TV starts shutting down if it hasn't been connected to the internet after a week.
For a short while, I worked at one of Samsung subsidiaries on their TV firmware, mostly fixing Linux kernel bugs introduced by the product teams cannibalizing upstream features to serve their needs (including intentionally disabling reasonable kernel security measures that happened to be in their way). I've seen things, both technical and organizational, that led me to pledge never to give my money to that company, or have their devices connected to networks I care about. I don't trust any of it, if not due to evil intent, but just incompetence.
I was out when they decided to change their authentication, with only two weeks notice, and (from what I read) incorrect documentation, causing it all to not work with HomeAssistant for a month [1].
Hopefully you don't have a neighbor like me. I keep an open wifi channel. So far the only customer has been the neighbors samsung tv phoning home. I felt bad about that and blocked it. But wow are they aggressive trying to get that telemetry out.
If you're buying chips (other than Flash) made with cutting-edge semiconductor processes, your options are only Samsung and TSMC. How long will it take Samsung's foundries to start adding malicious hardware implants to their customers' designs?
Samsung makes great components and terrible appliances. Buy a monitor with a Samsung panel or a Samsung SSD and you'll be a happy camper. Buy a Samsung fridge or washing machine and your life will be hell.
Do they? I've never owned a Samsung phone, in large part because I was always turned off by reports that they liked to skin Android in annoying/lame ways. I have a Samsung fridge/freezer (old and not-smart), but the in-door ice maker has a design flaw that causes condensation to drip, freeze, and clog it, so we've given up on it and just make our own ice with regular old-school trays in the freezer.
I'm not going to say they make crap, but their stuff is... okay, I guess.
Samsung once sold a fantastic phone. It had a wonderful camera, a great 432 PPI OLED screen, a battery that could be swapped in seconds with no tools, a headphone jack, an SD card slot, NFC, optional wireless charging, USB 3.0, HDMI output over MHL, an IR emitter for shenanigans, heart rate and blood oxygen saturation sensors, and at 8.1mm thick it was also waterproof.
It was hackable, rootable, and it ran aftermarket ROMs like a dream.
It was the Galaxy S5, and it was released just over a decade ago.
I've had a few Samsung products over the years. The only one I haven't regretted is their SSDs, both internal and external. Those seem to be good. Everything else has been awful.
They make nice stuff? I’ve stopped buying samsung 10 years ago and even before then not a single device was decent (and I bought phones, screens, home appliances, a TV)
i have good memories of my Note 3. samsung was pretty cool back then. i bought some galaxy s 5 years ago for a lot of money, then it got splashed with water and died. stupid waste of money. i've had my current oppo for 3+ years and he's a trooper, and it was about half the price of a similar-spec samsung. samsung is overpriced shit.
Even when they aren't loaded with ads, Samsung products are built to fail almost immediately. My Samsung vacuum has been a total piece of shit that's falling apart. I will never buy another Samsung product again.
Other than probably flash storage, there's never been a Samsung product that's ever been better than just throwing at least the equivalent amount of money in a fire pit and incinerating it. They've never sold an appliance appropriate even as a boat anchor, and I'm amazed at this point that people even consider buying their junk.
I've bought GE recently with good luck (GSS25IYNFSS, specifically). No affiliation, just someone who buys a lot of appliances that need to last and be simple for longevity (housing provider). My kingdom for someone who could build the old, reliable tanks of yesteryear.
There is no such thing as consumer GE products. They haven't existed for several decades. The name has been licensed to various brands in China, but the only thing actual GE made in it's last several decades (It suffered existence failure in 2024 after a series of spinoffs) is aircraft engines.
Anything sold as "GE" is just re-badged somebody else's crap, mostly Haier.
The dishwasher that came with my condo was GE, and when it stopped draining completely, I found the instruction manual, and it was mostly ads for other GE products. Ironically, I replaced it with a Samsung dishwasher with a clearer instruction manual and easy repair investigations.
Of course I am no longer inclined to purchase Samsung products based on this new info. I honestly think that if a company pushes an update that makes its product worse, they should be obligated to refund you 100% of the original purchase price.
Crap crap and more crap. The quality control on GE fridges is absolutely the worst of all worst. It's possible because you are working with the economy of scale that you don't see the typical problems that individuals run into. But I went through 5 in a row and every single one had a problem. Switched to LG and never looked back
I would never buy a roku tv with its built in ads. Unfortunately my partner did that for me. Most people simply don't care about this kind of stuff. If it has the gleam of newness, hell the ads are kind of flashy I don't mind em at all!
I won't buy Sony TVs any more because of their software, because it started displaying ads on the home-screen.
It's Google TV, and I don't mind ads for content on the home screen. I use a bunch of streaming services, I might want to watch whatever's up there, that's not entirely incongruous. Then about a year after purchase we started getting ads for L'Oreal shampoo and other products. Nope.
Sony acted confused when I sent a support ticket, and eventually said "Oh, that's because it's Google TV, nothing we can do about it". I replied saying perhaps they had given too much control over their tv experience to a third party. I was able to activate "App Only Mode" to make them go away, but you lose a bunch of the features and have to disable it to get to the play store if you want to install anything else.
Pisses me off. I paid a couple of thousand dollars (AUD) for that tv, I shouldn't have advertising shoved in my face.
> I have one today, displaying the output of an Apple TV and not directly connected to the Internet
That's how I do it as well, and I hate that dumb TVs are getting increasingly more rare.
I know the day is coming where any new "Smart" TV will mandate you connect it to the internet to go through some initial setup process or require regular phone homes to function, and I'm not looking forward to it.
I don't want my TV to do anything except display whatever I have connected to it. It's job stops there.
Yeah - they support HDR10 (the most common HDR), HDR10+ (adds per-scene tone-mapping, but is rare to see media for), but not Dolby Vision (which requires paying a license fee to the Dolby folks).
I've heard that Netflix has added HDR10+ streams recently, but I haven't verified that myself.
That's correct. I can't use it at all with my Apple TV or Playstation 5, because the screen immediately goes dark. I don't know how to describe this exactly, but say that the TV's regular RGB display goes from 1 to 100. I'd expect that HDR would make it go from -50 to 150, or something like that. Instead, on my Samsung, it goes from -50 to 50. No amount of control fiddling can make it get as bright as it does in non-HDR mode.
Our cheaper LG works beautifully with the same inputs. The Samsung? Nope. Everything looks like the finale of Game of Thrones, even when you're looking at a soccer game played on a sunny day at noon on the equator.
You know, the ad they display on the home annoys me and I've never thought much about it. The prevalence of ads is so much that I think I already expected it there.
hah, I also keep the samsung tv cut off from internet. It was bad enough they come pre installed with clearly sponsored apps (because they were absolute trash).
I got a new Samsung TV recently, i don't get the huge hatred for their software. It has some free TV channels, it has apps for the streaming services, even a decent web browser and overall good features. It supports Airplay, Google Cast, bluetooth etc. The OS has some annoyances and rough edges, but its mostly fine. I let it connect to the internet but not any of my other LAN devices so it cant' snoop too much.
I just don't see the problem, and don't see how connecting a different box to watch the same things is much better than just using the OS to do that. If they did have ads on it that would definitely be a problem though.
I had a Samsung TV ten years ago. While watching Game of Thrones with friends, it overlayed an ad at the top of the screen recommending I play Fruit Ninja on my TV. I immediately disconnected it from my WiFi and have not bought a single other Samsung device since, except for one thumbdrive that I needed. Avoiding Samsung as a brand when buying electronics has been really easy as well.
I've used the built-in apps at a friend's house, and they were awful compared to the Apple TV versions. Everything was sluggish, like it was running on something without enough RAM and swapping out to an SD card. If I hadn't used anything else but that, or maybe the Dish Network DVR we had years ago, I'd probably think it's just fine. However, I have used something else, and it made the TV's own apps feel unbearable.
Imagine you're using a brand new maxed-out MacBook Pro, and someone hands you a 2013 HP laptop. The HP is... fine. It displays web pages, lets you load a word processor, and otherwise looks and acts like a laptop. If you hadn't ever used another computer, you probably wouldn't think anything of it.
BTW, I bet a Fire TV or various other options would be fine, too. I just don't have the personal experience to vouch for those. I'm not using this anecdote to shill Apple TV specifically, just to say that there are much better options than the built-in apps.
> and don't see how connecting a different box to watch the same things is much better than just using the OS to do that.
Because then you can replace a $50-100 box when it starts misbehaving (e.g. tracking and selling your information) or not getting upgrades anymore or getting slower, rather than replacing a $1000 TV.
Well, they could easily push a software update to add ads to your TV without a rollback option and disable features if you don't allow it.
If you upgrade your TV on the regular I guess you'd just buy a new one, but treating it as a dumb display guarantees you can keep using it as long as it physically works.
Well my Samsung tv I bought two years ago has gotten progressively slower and slower despite never installing any new stuff on it and only using the basic functionality, so that is pretty infuriating. Every couple of weeks I have to unplug it (because naturally a soft power off isn’t really doing anything) and it’ll be fast again for a while. When it’s slow it can easily take 10 seconds to bring up the menu.
> "Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky... But not in dreams."
There's a $30,000 bounty set up for anyone who can patch the firmware to eliminate the ads. Please consider contributing additional donations against the matching funds.
Keep the bounty, but target the cause and not the effect. Who made the decision? Send a drone army once a month to spray paint their house with PSAs about consumer rights.
I recall Louis saying that some (or all?) solutions to these bounties cannot be revealed to the public due to being liable under DMCA circumvention measures. IANAL.
They can be revealed volunarily by the author, but FULU can't require or condone it. Because of the DMCA section 1201, trafficking in circumvention tools to violate digital locks is a felony punishable by 3-5 years in federal prison.
> Include instructions for carrying out the functional method which are accessible and easily usable by a non-technical individual
Good luck for anyone to claim this bounty if that's one of the requirements. Does the fridge have any exposed ports at all that the average person could access without removing anything from the fridge?
It's also not clear in the bounty, if I add funds to the campaign and it gets fully funded, does that mean that software/hack will be released publicly? Or only to "backers"? It's not clear what the donation goes to, besides for the person who makes the hack to claim.
It helps to read into the personality and psychology of Louis Rossmann a bit, who is running this. He does component-level repairs of MacBooks, and entirely understands that custom firmware will likely require JTAG to flash the MCU.
FULU / Rossmann isn't handling the public release ... at all. They're worried that doing so would violate US law or at least cost a lot in court fees. They'd be super stoked if whoever made it released to to the public and absolutely not just to "backers".
I pay for Spotify and the app now shows paid suggestions (cough ads), to paying users. When you tap the ellipsis and choose "Not interested", it doesn't respond with "OK, we'll stop" but something like 'We'll show less of this'.
No, don't show less, I want you to not show it at all.
I did the same, and switched to Apple Music. Soon after that, Apple Music started injecting their F1 movie soundtrack into suggested music for me. There really is no escape from this. They haven't done it since, so at least it's not as bad as what Spotify does. If I come across a good offline music player for iOS I will probably cancel my Apple Music subscription.
Last time I checked the sky tv financials, subscription revenue outweighed advertising revenue about 10:1, is for every £30 subscription they took £3 in adverts.
I guess that's part of the sentiment for the current resurgence of physical media, specifically vinyl and CDs. It's refreshing to be able to just enjoy media without mega corporations tracking your listening habits or serving you ads.
Might seem funny for some more senior readers, but as somebody who almost exclusively only listened to music through MP3s and streaming, I found the included artwork and other goodies in vinyl / CDs to be incredible. Who would have known that my favorite albums often had not just album covers, but lyrics sheets and entire booklets filled with interesting trivia and additional artwork?
I imagine a modern hacker needs to basically shun all fo mainstream media to get away from such behavior. No Google, no Meta, no Microsoft, etc. apparently no Smart devices either.
my XM app with a paid subscription now has in-app popups advertising concerts. it sucks.
I will say that they’re typically concerts related to the channel I am on, but there is no world in which I want to attend live music, and of course there’s no way to tell them that. so I have to tolerate getting interrupted periodically despite already paying them.
I was also infuriated by this, so much so that I switched to TIDAL. Migrating was easy— I used their recommended webapp ti migrate all my playlists. Have been using TIDAL happily ever since. Never any popups or ads.
At this point, anything from Samsung is a vehicle for ads, and anything with the word “smart” from Samsung is most likely a spyware. The amount of garbage I had to remove from a recently encountered Galaxy phone is on par with Windows 11 levels and some.
Unfortunately, the entire industry is racing toward this behavior. Recent LGs have also started slapping “AI” stickers on their products. I’ve been visiting Rossman’s Consumer Wiki[1] more often than I’d like before making a purchase.
I've managed to mostly excise Samsung from my digital life (except for phones that family buys without my knowledge and that I have to troubleshoot), and I have been happier for it for many decades now.
(This was after direct exposure to their Tizen engineering team back in the early 2000s)
I stayed away from their phones, SmartTVs, everything.
They were caught uploading screenshots from content played on smart TVs. Ostensibly to sell ad tracking info like a Nielsen TV, but I'm pretty sure it meant they were capturing people's desktops with confidential corporate info etc. if you used the TV as a monitor.
Tizen was launched in 2012, not sure that would count as early 2000s! But I had colleagues who were also working with the Tizen team, and that's when I learned it'll never fly. Samsung just didn't have the software engineering mindset required for it.
The short version of the story is that I was working with one of the Samsung mobile engineering teams for Vodafone 360 (look it up). The other team was the Galaxy team.
What phones do you recommend? I have an S21 FE I got free from Metro PCS (I got laid off, had to return company S20 phone). Others in the family have Pixel / moto. I get the feeling the later galaxy phones are much worse than the S21?
Second hand Pixels which then get GrapheneOS installed on them (GrapheneOS doesn't support Google Wallet payments via NFC, which can be a deal-breaker for a lot of people).
I bought a Samsung notebook in ~2008. No crapware! Nice and small, it survived long beyond the guaranty date.
My cellphone decided to die last month. It was near retirement, but still working until it didn't. I bought a Samsung phone. First it asked twice if I wanted to share all my life with Google (using some dark patterns) and then it asked twice if I wanted to share all my life with Samsung (using more dark patterns). (After that, I installed WhatsApp, so I'm not sure I bothered.)
Next the phone offered to install the app from my carrier, TikTok and a ¿third? app-store. I didn't want them so in the screen with the offer I disabled the first and the other two were disabled by default. Anyway, I got TikTok and the other app for some reason! (I uninstalled them inmediately.)
I still get random notifications, like complaining that I'm using the phone too much. Or a notification that they upgraded something, restarted the phone and all apps notifications were disabled until I unlock it. (Lucky, I didn't miss any important urgent message.)
Even the unnecessary microcontrollers in modern devices irk me. A fridge does not need a microcontroller. (My issue is primarily repairability - discrete components can be sourced and replaced, microcontrollers with the correct programming usually cannot.)
Neither. In a world where everyone is trying to be more eco conscious, it seems like a joke that manufacturers are slapping screens on the most menial of things.
This is why I have so few 'smart' devices in my life. It is obvious that all of these devices are predatory. They start off 'helpful' and 'useful' and then turn malicious when you can't easily replace them. Lock-in bait and switch should be illegal.
After not having a Samsung device for many years, I reluctantly bought a fridge from them (price was the decisive factor). Anyway, almost immediate regret, it features an always-on wifi network begging to be connected to the web, the only way to turn it off is to disconnect a cable from a circuit board, unbelievable.
Of course they would do this. They did this with their top of the line 4k tvs when they first came out. Everything was great, their OS and such worked wonderfully then they started to inject ads for gamefly into notifications and it went downhill from there. Ads in a 200 dollar tv I understand. Ads on a 5 thousand dollar tv? Absolutely unacceptable.
I know it's not your intention, but it does illustrate another divide between rich and poor. I guess some would say they'd rather a cheap TV with ads over no TV, but I imagine TV companies could still make an affordable TV without ads if mandated to remove ads. They just choose the ad route for more profit.
Why is this the best business model we can collectively execute on? Whether it is AI, home cameras, or fridges it seems to just come back to, welp, lets slap an ad on it.
Unlike conventional businesses where a good or "binary" service (it works or not) is sold, advertising is a much more nebulous good whose efficiency can't be accurately measured. This means there are tons of inefficiencies where middlemen can skim something off the top:
* a product manager decides to include ads in some digital product. Their analytics show plenty of "engagement". The engagement is actually people accidentally clicking on the ad while hunting for the tiny "close" button, but even if the PM suspects it, they have no reason to volunteer that information. They keep getting their salary paid and even earn a promotion based on the engagement numbers.
* the developers are tasked with implementing the advertising infrastructure - they get paid while padding their resume about how they're building "scalable" systems.
* the "scalable" system runs on a cloud provider and earns them a ton of money. Cloud provider is happy.
* some marketing agency is given a budget to go and spend on ads. The person there maybe even knows that advertising in the aforementioned product is a bad idea because most of their clicks are fake... but if their client is tasking them with burning money, why would they refuse?
* a marketing person at a big company that doesn't actually need any more advertising to succeed is given a budget and spreads it across a few marketing agencies including the aforementioned one. They get paid, why should they refuse?
At every layer (and I haven't even listed them all), people get paid by skimming something off the top. It doesn't matter whether the advertising works, because nobody in the chain has any incentive to admit it while the status quo is so lucrative, so the rational thing to do for everyone is to not rock the boat.
Customers are generally low-information shoppers. They go to a hardware store and ask the salesperson for a fridge that fits their requirements. The rep will show them a few options, and then the customer gets to try them out. This is where the animal brain takes over: Samsung designs for the animal brain. It's sleek. It's futuristic. There's so many doors. It has a beverage drawer. A condiment drawer. You can customize the panels. The animal knows the Samsung fridge is better, and customers likely won't know any better if the salesperson doesn't tell them (and would they? They make a better commission on the more expensive fridge)
What the outcome actually happening is indicative of however is that consumers are very very very bad at their job (consuming the best products) and do not have enough rights.
If a customer was entitled to a working product without this kind of deficiency, and we had courts that actually applied punishments to large corporations (instead of unilaterally and without justification, significantly reducing fines to nothing) we wouldn't have this problem. It wouldn't be possible to profit off of this kind of advertising because you would be too busy signing court documents about how you suck at building stuff.
There's only so many human beings who can buy your fridge. There's only so cheap you can build your fridge. There's only so much you can charge for your fridge. But line must go up.
This is simply what it looks like when the people with money and resources decide that a stable and reliable profit is a Failed business.
I think it's mostly about squeezing consumers for more money, even after they already paid a premium, because they simply can and nobody will do anything about it.
Why do you address us as if we collectively went down to the town center and three dozen times in a row and decided on the same thing by consensus? For most of us this was shoved down our throats by sheer force of violence. And why always this oh shucks apologia about the “business model” that they are supposedly forced to adapt? No, this fridge already costs a lot of money. The ads don’t have to be recouping losses. They could just be for more profit.
Because it's a dual revenue stream. The retail customer pays you, and then the advertising customer pays you. Why make only $1 when you can make $2, $3, $4 over time?
If your next question is "why do they need to keep making more money?", the answer is capitalism.
When you get downvoted for making the obvious statement that you have to maximize profits as a capitalist entity, well, you know you’re in a venture capital forum.
It's an inexpensive revenue stream; the secondary effects and risk to customers are considered relevant insofar as they can negatively impact the company's future profitability (if then).
There's no way that this was ever /not/ going to happen under current laws (US).
Internal incentives not overall profitability drive such behavior.
An executive can point to a profit stream and suggest that’s beneficial to the company while ignoring externalities that cost the company 5x as much. Nobody inside has complete knowledge if someone was a good idea or not so the appearance of benefit often replaces the search for actual benefit.
integrated 21.5- or 32-inch (depending on the model) screen
I don't want a fridge with a screen or any connections except power. All it needs to do is keep my food cold. I've had others very surprised to see my house containing mostly mid-century dumb appliances. I deal with enough problems caused by software at work, to know better than to bring that hassle home.
Off-topic-ish: I've got a TCL Smart TV that, by default, runs Google TV (which, to my understanding, is a rebranded newer version of Android TV). The default launcher / interface, which contains ads and has only minimal customisation options, can only be changed by installing an alternative launcher disabling some permissions via adb.
Having followed the instructions to do it, it's much nicer having beautiful background images (rather than ads for crappy TV shows and movies) and a cleaner interface with at least one less click required to get to the apps I want (ie. a better UX).
TCL TVs are not a particularly premium product, so I'm not too annoyed about having to go this little bit of effort to make it nicer. However, a $3,500 fridge seems like a premium-ish price, and so to also have ads on that feels incredibly tacky to the point it cheapens the product and the brand overall.
I'll have to get back to you. I had to go through the process three or four times to get it to stick across reboots and not leave me with a useless TV just showing a black screen (I had a panic moment when that happened).
I should also mention: This may render some of the TV remote shortcut buttons useless. There's an app that's meant to help with this, but I've found it unreliable.
Not the GP, but I have a TCL 65C845. I've removed all the crap from it and installed a third-party launcher. I LOVE the result, both in terms of picture quality and usability. The UI is clean, snappy, functional and there's zero crap on the screen that I didn't deliberately put there.
Here are my notes:
Enable Android developer options.
Work through various settings (developer and normal).
Connect wired Ethernet (I use a USB dongle), enable RDNIS in USB port dev options. Disable WiFi.
Turn on Google TV. Log in.
Disable auto-updates, work through permissions etc.
Install ADB TV (PRO licence)
Disable the following apps in ADB TV:
AirPlayLaunchService
AirplayAPK (two different APKs)
BrowseHere
Electronic card 5.0
Gallery
GameBar
Google (com.google.android.katniss)
Logkit
MagiConnect
Media Player
Message Box
Overseaeva
Prime Video
Rakuten TV
Reminder
T-Solo
TCL Channel (two different APKs)
TCL Home
TCL Home Passive
TCSCore
T_IME
User Center
Works with Alexa
com.tcl.iptv.App
DO NOT DISABLE or you might have to start from scratch:
TV (com.tcl.tv)
TvInputService
Install FLauncher. Configure apps/panels/wallpaper.
Using ADB TV (under “install”):
Install a screen saver (Aerial Views), TV streaming apps, Plex, SmartTubeNext, f-droid, Mullvad etc.
That's pretty much it. A bit fiddly but a one-time thing (I did this two years ago and have been using the TV daily). I keep auto-updates turned off and basically nothing ever breaks and there are no random regressions.
I previously did the same on an older TCL TV. The panel was not as nice and the CPU was slower but the result was also quite good (it was what convinced me to get the 65C845 with its larger screen, better panel and faster CPU).
I used to run a similar FLauncher-based setup on a NVidia Shield Pro, but the new setup is so nice that I don't use the Shield for TV anymore.
Another experiment I did was replicating this exact setup on a Chromecast (I think GA01919). That also worked well, though having a second device was a bit inconvenient in terms of remote controls and such.
P.S. Where I live I have FTTH; TV is delivered as MPEG transport streams over multicast. I don't have OTA broadcast TV or a cable box and so couldn't vouch for the ergonomics there.
I have the Samsung Frame TV (great TV btw) and decided I didn't want to pay the $5 / month to have curated art in the room and when Superman the movie came out a few months ago it was only displaying Superman comics on the screen. Was super annoying bc was subtle but not subtle enough. I uploaded family pics instead so I don't have that anymore but it was still pretty annoying. I have samsung washers / dryers / dishwasher etc all connected to the internet and I love the notifications when a load is done but I don't know how useful the data is... I assume data brokers are like, "Oh Aj uses his washing machine 7 times a month let's hit him with Tide ads", but I assume everyone uses the machine that much. I'm fine having my machines tell Samsung use bc it's normal usage (i think?)
If you are thinking of data - you have to think of meta data. Instead of how often you do laundry think more:
* number of adults in the house hold (people who have access to the account)
* when you are home
* opening fridge/doing laundry/etc. I have no idea if their app has an excuse to ask for location- but app location tracking would be the most valuable data
* even if you don’t share location- these things are on your network and any regular and simple network scanning would show when certain devices are home and we they are not home and what schedules they follow
This isn’t even very imaginative, just the basics really. I would not be surprised if you could guess the household size solely based on the number of times a fridge is opened in a day. You could at least determine between a person without a family vs. family- that’s useful for ads. Are these the fridges that have cameras in them ‘so you can see what you have while at the grocery store’? Throw some image detection in there and you now know brand targeting and if they cook regularly or eat out. A goldmine of data really.
I use home assistant and a smart plug to get notifications when the socket has less than 1w load for 5 mins -> washing machine finished. Maybe one of the best automations I have. And all local.
I've bought Frame as well because our 10 years old Philips tv got a nasty dead pixels bar mid screen that made watching tv really annoying - prob moisture got inside. I was curious how Samsung's ecosystem looks like in comparison to Apple's and tbh, I didn't expect the main hub app asking for location access way before even looking up for the devices.
But that was a hard no for me. I just left all of that alone - we have a ISP set-top box that comes with FTTH tv and few services so I don't need to log in anywhere else.
Mother has a hearing aid and she wanted to try Bluetooth connection - devices paired without mobile app but she couldn't lower volume down on tv nor on her device, even with aid's own app.
It still wasn't as bad as expected. I read some of the experiences people had where they couldn't even get into the home screen of tv before agreeing for network connection or login to some cloud services.
Fiends got some 4k Samsung for their new house - it comes with some AI features because of course it does. They said that they couldn't easily find picture controls and every show was automatically adjusted on brightness, saturation etc., making anything pain to watch.
They also got washing machine/dryer combo from Samsung as well - weeks after someone posted on our discord server video from Polish store where bunch of guys "hacked" similar smart-enabled machine and launched... youtube with that dancing "6 grams" cow clip. What a time to be alive.
So I recently (last two years or so) bought a (non-Samsung, non-smart) fridge. It's a very nice fridge. It cost, IIRC, about $1000-1500. No internet connection, no ads, no screen to play them on.
Why would I pay $2000 more for a more annoying fridge?
Just replaced a Samsung fridge. It was the worst I have ever had, and it wasn't even kludged up with smart-ai-internet-advertisement bullshit yet. The compressor went out after about 12 years (which is apparently good for current refrigerator manufacturing - yikes). But the ice maker and operation panel had been on the fritz for at least 4 years before that. I went with a Frigidaire + 5 year extended warranty. Much better use of internal space, nothing smart, dual ice makers. Only negative is it's kinda noisy and runs often due to the compressor being sized for "efficiency". Fingers crossed.
"The ads experience, though, seems to have improved somewhat from the earlier pilot testing in that users can use their fridge’s settings menu to opt out of seeing ads. If users set their Cover Screen to show integrated Art or Album themes, then the display won’t show ads."
So at least for now tech savvy, aware users can opt out. But I don't like where this is going.
Galaxy S2 was the best phone I ever had. I think it was pure Android, if not, you had some minor apps from Samsung that you could've delete. I think I left the Samsung train right about S5 (which was supposed water proof, but it wasn't). It was just down fall from there. Samsung account, locked phone full with shitty apps that you couldn't remove (without rooting)... I don't think I'll ever have anything from Samsung in the near future
I had the original Galaxy S, and that was very much not pure Android, and no other Galaxy I've had has been (so presume the S2 wasn't either). Prior to Android, they had their own OS, and wanted to continue the UI/UX rather than changing to Android.
Not yet it seems, but if history is any good indication of the future, someone at one point will have their "You won't give me API access to my own goddamn fridge?!" moment and GNU.V2 will be born.
Yesterday I was seriously thinking about aftermarket control boards startup for some of my appliances (mostly the AC that has disgustingly low performance because of eco modes). Seems that there will be one for fridges too.
Contextual means based on related taxonomy of interest.
How that interest is measured and what "related" means is proprietary.
This is distinct from demographic (trends based on physical attributes, like age) or geographic or behavioral (your buying patterns) and they already know the device targeting because it's their fridge.
Don't some of these have "smart" features to detect what is actually in your fridge and tell you if you run out? I would think removing the last piece of butter could trigger an ad for whatever cow-milk-fat substitute won the highest bid on the brainfuck raffle that day would be shown to you.
Such a smart feature would most likely include reading labels, which means that the system would also know some of the medicines you consume. The fridge would most likely also record the user's interactions with the fridge, so the system will also know what your prescription amounts are. The possibilities of abuse are endless.
Another one: "you have consumed 20 units of alcohol this week, and run out. Should I order this 25 pack that is cheaper?"
Personalized ads are based on your user profile (ads for motorbikes because you're tagged as someone who loves motorbikes). Contextualized ads are based on where and when they're being displayed (ads for food delivery on the fridge late at night) but not on your user profile. This is the advertising industry, so they're probably lying, or they're not lying yet but they plan to add personalized ads later.
Yay to living in the EU! Since I would be allowed to get a full purchase-price refund if they'd try to pull this shit in the Europe, they limited the new "Cover-Screen-Widget" to only activate within the US.
I know, I know, I suffer daily from government overreach ;) But have you tried lobbying for your fellow humans?
Funny that they do that after the purchases have been made. Goes to show how much bundled services upset the user-manufacturer relationship, to the detriment of the user.
Using a service is an ongoing relationship, and relationships change over time, sometimes for the worse. This needs to be factored in as risk, every time someone makes a purchase that includes a service.
Once they have paved the way and built the infrastructure, most fridges will come with some sort of display. Probably just a small status display. But these fridges will be much cheaper, subsidized by the Ad opportunities. It happened with most mainstream TVs making people expect cheap TVs to the point where they will dismiss a TV with "normal" price.
Disagree. Smart can be good, if you're actually in full control (whenever you contract the implementation to a company or own it).
The real problem is, there's not much on the market that respects the consumers in this regard. Ask for an SLA on a smart fridge functionality and you'll be met with a confusion and possibly a revelation there's nothing of a kind.
It's all ignored because most consumers don't ask questions about reliability, functionality, security and control - they don't think of those. And it's not a matter of technical or specialized knowledge, I'm sure even a caveman can understand "will this work tomorrow the exact same way it works today?" or "what happens to my fridge if you go out of business?" - it's a matter of awareness. People simply don't know yet how those new things can fail them.
Eventually people will learn about the issues, and start asking maker companies those questions. But it's all too new today.
How can smart be good? Can you give me a practical and real example of a benefit of a smart appliance? How can it be better than a regular appliance that does not get on your way?
Let me guess: now to operate a dishwasher I need to download and install a mobile app. And also regularly update the app and the firmware of the appliance, or maybe need a permanent internet connection to correctly operate. It' BS all the way down.
The only thing that companies are expecting from providing you a smart feature is to somehow monetize that on a regular basis and the easiest thing to do that is to either sell your data or locking you down to a fucking subscription.
on a whim, I walked into a Lucid dealership and asked for a copy of their privacy policy as it relates to a purchased vehicle. the salesman told me “no” very firmly, so I left.
I bought a vented Samsung washer/dryer combo recently. I have to say I like it a lot, probably because its a combo and I no longer have to transfer clothes from washer to dryer. The fact that is Samsung definitely makes me feel nervous however (how long will it last?). Unfortunately, they were the only one to make a vented combo so far (I should have waited for more options, but I'm still OK with it).
We have a frame TV also and it worked nice for the very narrow use case we had.
I don't buy smart devices, unless they work fine without the smart stuff and it's a good buy. I have a "smart" TV because it's a great TV, but it only has HDMI cables plugged into it and no internet connection.
>>The box will change what it displays “every 10 seconds,” the publication said.
OT - This reminds me of the digital billboards on the highway that change before one has the chance to understand what it's advertising. I don't even have the chance to count the seconds before the ad changes much less see what it's advertising.
> Samsung fridge owners can also opt to avoid the latest software update altogether. However, they would miss out on other features included in the software update, such as a UI refresh and the ability for the internal camera inside some fridges to identify more fruits and vegetables inside the fridge.
The level of absurdity here with respect to "miss[ing] out on other features" strains credulity.
I don't know why I would connect a fridge to the Internet at all. Maybe there is a use case where you can get a picture of the contents of your fridge on your phone when you are out and about? Like you're at the grocery store and can't remember if you need to pick up milk or not?
I could come around to a fridge that keeps track of the contents, including use by dates, prompts me to throw away things that are going bad and adds replacements to a periodic supermarket order.
I have a samsung fridge, and that's enough for them to already be on my shit list. if you put a screen in my kitchen and force me to watch ads I'm going to physically shatter the screen, I don't care what other functionality it may have.
Samsung makes bad fridges. I bought a Sub-Zero. It has 2 compressors (1 for fridge and 1 for freezer), is made of high quality parts so will last 20+ years, has excellent service guarantees, and is made in America. Highly recommended.
Different humidities and it makes a big difference. Also less stress on each component and they have very long warranty’s so if they break it’s on them.
Not sure if that still even a thing but I remember reading here about plans of companies to include SIM module so "smart" devices could connect to the Internet without need for home network access. That would of course bypass solutions like Pi-hole
Stopped buying Samsung phone because I couldn't disable some stupid assistant button with ai subscription on the last one. I'm really sad because Samsung was always a good brand to me
Samsung SSDs I remember, do they still make good ones? I won’t buy the washer and dryer from them again, and probably not the dishwasher even though for the price it has been good.
Recently saw this clip about a public bathroom where the toilet paper dispenser had a screen on it/qr code you had to scan, watch an ad to get the TP... interesting if true.
The headline is so insane. I’m not very interested in Samsung in general, because I use apple products and they don’t offer Dolby Vision on their TV’s, but the headline lol.
Obviously, this is not a change aimed at enticing customers but instead expanding revenue streams. And its obvious that all western governments hand-wringing over green and efficient energy usage falls apart as long manufacturers like Samsung, AWS, Sony are allowed to waste network bandwidth and chew up consumer and industry energy supply on superfluous pointless fluff like adverts where they are not needed or welcome.
It is proof again that Advertising is really about pushing messaging at people rather than selling anything.
Samsung already lost me with removing expandable storage in premium phones. Now they have reached levels of avoid that will push me to any alternative that respects the customer's usage needs.
Okay - so fridge is something that you buy, you put it on 3 degrees Celsius and you forget about it for the next 12 years. What exactly smartness gives?
Why would I ever connect my fridge to the internet? I cannot fathom any feature on a fridge that would incline me towards giving it the wifi credentials.
What if your fridge could do an AI thing and the groceries to refill itself would just arrive? Could be a fantastic way to control your diet by only buying foods that satiated/goal oriented you approved (as opposed to hungry you walking down aisles of product placements in the grocery store)
Why do you need a fridge to do that? An AI agent with access to your Instacart account could do it. If you only buy groceries with that it knows roughly how many calories it purchased and you should've consumed since the last order.
I don't think it's worth it myself, but here are some of the features of the Samsung Bespoke fridge that use wifi:
Notifications and Alerts:
If the door is left open, or the fridge temperature is leaving safe temps, or the water filter needs changing, it can send a push notification to your phone. (Useful if something fails; or if a kid/guest leaves the fridge open by mistake).
Remote control and monitoring:
You can use the camera to see the contents of the fridge. You can also adjust the temperature remotely. (Useful if you're at the grocery store and can't remember if you have milk?) It looks like they also have "AI" try to categorize these for you.
Built-in tablet:
The touchscreen is basically a builtin tablet. You can use it to display photos (pulled from your online albums), show the weather, or control "smart home" stuff like playing some music on your speakers. I imagine you could also try to put recipes or cooking videos on there. You can also easily order groceries from it or add to your shopping list (with your voice).
I'd rather have a separate device for most of this, but I can understand the appeal, especially if you're not privacy-conscious.
That's probably because you're a developer, and as developers it's really easy for us to develop tunnel-vision for some reason, and really hard to see the perspective from a "regular person", the sort of person who a salesperson can say "You can now get alerted when you're low on eggs, no matter where you are!" and the person will think that's a cool feature with no drawbacks.
It got nothing to do with someone being a developer and having tunnel vision. In fact I would argue that many people that work in tech would be the most likely to sold on such a feature.
It has everything to do with being frugal and whether you see the utility. There is very little benefit in being alerted when I am low on eggs because I can simply open the fridge and look. I can also normally buy eggs anywhere, at any time of day.
At this point they start to demand it, whether that's setting up the product or registration needed for warranty protection. But you obviously can still cut them off on router.
Soon though they won't ask, LTE-M / NB-IoT, both chips and plans are becoming very cheap and unless you are living in a faraday cage it will take control away from the user completely.
I upgraded my Samsung phone to the latest One Ui version and i've been having a frustrating time with it. Turns out months later I discovered they have changed the behaviour to work best for Right Handed users. I found a setting that allowed me to flip that and now i'm able to use my phone again.
Every frog will be boiled. Remember this when you argue “oh but it will still be possible to sideload via adb” “oh but you can turn it off” “oh but you only need it on the first run” “at least they don’t…”
You won’t be able to. It will be mandatory. They will do it. If you give these companies an inch, they’ll take a mile.
The moment they don’t actively work entirely aligned with your interests, they work against you.
The idea of paying for a $2k fridge that has a $30* android board running a large screen is just absurd to me. Not only was this kind of enshittification almost a given, but we all know how well manufacturers update devices like this. Security issues aside, you just know that the software is going to slowly rot (Think: Widget to show tweets before Twitter closed the API down).
If you feel so inclined to have a touch screen on your fridge then you'd be better off getting some random tablet and sticking it to the fridge.
I _love_ my home automation/smart house devices but I wouldn't touch one of these with a 10ft pole.
Zero chance I'll purchasing any household device from Samsung. Not with all the crapware and spyware they pile onto their systems. Zero chance I'd purchase a household appliance with a large screen. WTF would I want that for. More garbage annoying crap and more to go wrong. The never ending chimes about everything on our Mellie clothes dryer was annoying enough... (and oh it wants to connect to the WiFi? Good luck with that. Terrible menu UI. I'll never buy one of those again either).
I like to think in future there migh be Harry Tuttle like appliance repair vigilantes that come out and remove all this crap from home appliances. :-)
I want to agree with you. But we said this about TVs and a bit later you couldn't buy a TV that wasn't giving you a "recommendations" feed or whatever.
Yes, it's just evil. I sure would not buy a Samsung TV laden with crap, I just will not do it. I run an old high-end commercial plasma display and otherwise watch video on dumb computer monitors or iPads. And yes I know, an iPad is far from a dumb device.
Honestly, stuff like this makes me want to leave my smart phone in the garage when I get home and have a single desktop linux box that is in a “computer room” hardwired and the house has no wifi or smart anything and every other screen goes into the trash.
This ad nonsense aside, don't buy Samsung refrigerators. They are so awfully made and difficult to service that almost no appliance repair companies will touch them. I got suckered into buying one a few years back and it was awful. The ice maker didn't work, every few weeks I would sop up a gallon of condensation at the bottom of the cheese drawer, and eventually it just died. I went to a local appliance store and they chuckled when I told them. They would never carry that brand. Just fridges, don't want to talk about other appliances.
I've never purchased a refrigerator in my life - every place I've lived in my adult life has been a rental where I wasn't the one picking the appliances. What happens when I'm looking for a place to live, and I find somewhere that meets my requirements, except that the landlord has this Samsung smart fridge in the kitchen - maybe they thought this was a selling point, like the landlord I had who put the fact that they had a Google Nest thermostat proudly in the apartment ad (I deliberately never gave it my WiFi password)?
This is stupid. Companies are really trying to get people to hate everything tech related. From "smart" beds, to "smart" fridges, and with the "looming" job displacement due to "AI" and robotics, I could see how a "human-centric" economy or new wave of businesses and startups with a "human-centric" approach could develop in few years.
This annoyed so much I actually wrote them a physical letter denouncing the practice and mailed it to their US corporate HQ. I haven't mailed a letter in years. Feels odd.
A lot of outrage in HN comments, but it's kinda ironic, because if you had to point at the single biggest concentration of people who built out surveillance capitalism and other facets of our digital dystopian future...
Maybe the people complaining are the ones whose employers don't even sell out people with third-party trackers on their Web site. But I see more than 3 people complaining.
Everyone here seems to hate on the idea of seeing ads on an appliance you purchased. I hate ads too!
But, let's consider the counterfactual. What if Samsung offered you a new fridge for free, as long as you were ok with passive ads?
I hate ads, but I'm not sure I would pass up a free fridge...those things are expensive!
(this is not even that unrealistic. Let's say you have a household of 3 and a fridge lasts 10 years. Meta makes about $200 per year per user solely from showing ads; that's $6000 over 10 years. If Samsung got as good as Meta is (which they likely won't), 6k is more than enough to cover the cost of giving a fridge away for free)
> What if Samsung offered you a new fridge for free, as long as you were ok with passive ads?
I'd still buy a normal fridge from a different vendor. There's absolutely no reason why fridge needs a display screen nor any "smart" features. And no ad deal would convince me because next thing that would come after this would be the obvious "watch ads to unlock the fridge".
Household appliances are meant to work for years - sure, now lifespan is way shorter than used to be but these aren't phones we're replacing every 3 years or so. The fridge we once had lasted 25 up until cooling unit failed and there was no way to replace it or fix.
I hope you rolled some really low bait here because if you really think like that then... I sincerely feel sorry for you.
So a digital calendar with ads seems reasonable. What they don't mention is how much work they plan on putting into the maintenance. A $3k fridge should last decades, including the screen, software, and WiFi connection.
Last decades? wipes the tear You surely forgot /s at end, I hope. The evil incarnation what is called "Samsung fridge" that I have in my kitchen required repairman's attention just 3 months after the purchase. And then every 3 months after. And children sacrifices, sorry - steam baths, for the ice maker every month or so.
Samsung appliances - never again.
PS. Repairman told me that Samsung have fixed already one of the problems my fridge has by the time he looked at it, kind of hidden recall and fix. Fridge's version (yes, they have versions) have advanced like 7 iterations already from the time I bought it. That means there were at least 7 serious design/manufacturing problems that they had to fix.
I mean.. that's based on the assumption that they actually care about delivering a working appliance.. As long as the spyware works, they don't really care about the "cooling food" part..
* How to turn off ads on your Family Hub
The widget will appear by default on the fridges as part of the software update. However, Samsung is giving users the option to turn off ads. To do this, go to the Settings page on the fridge, scroll to Advertisements, select it, and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can toggle off ads.
This will remove the widget entirely. If you think you might actually like the widget’s other features (calendar, weather, and news), you can “X” out a particular ad, and it won’t pop up again. But then you’ll get another ad.
I would call that flow "complex." So, I disagree with you.
Simple would be for the "X" button to offer to turn off Ads completely, do you disagree?
(Disclaimer: I'm a pro / lifelong tech and both are "simple" to me. And to clarify my opinion, my Mom, who is a pro musician, would NOT discover / know how to find that option.)
This guarantees I'll never buy a Samsung appliance. If they're this willing to screw with their customers today, they'll do it again tomorrow.
Sadly, I'm including their TVs in this. I have one today, displaying the output of an Apple TV and not directly connected to the Internet because hah, no way, but I'll be shopping around when it comes time to replace it.
Pity. They make nice stuff. Not nice enough that I'm willing to tolerate their anti-customer shenanigans, but otherwise decent quality.
Samsung appliances have among the worst reputations for ease of repair and lifespan. Sadly most other brands are rebrands of Chinese conglomerates or not much better on the quality chain. But honestly it's also a lottery. We bought a fridge on sale for $500 as an emergency stopover when our expensive fridge was delayed by a month during a move, and it's still plugging along out in the garage, a hostile environment for fridges. All the parts are very accessible too which bodes well for repair, although the leveling feet did snap off.
However, when you see the viral videos of "dream fridges" from the 1950s, it's important to remember that adjusted for inflation they would be something like $10k today. Of course they also last 10x as long, but you can still find fridges in that price range today with a similar value proposition. The question is whether or not you're willing to pay that upfront. I think we've all been so conditioned to accept that appliances go obsolete that it doesn't seem possible for a fridge like that to ever pay for itself.
It's the boots theory at work.
Maybe we need a new boots theory:
The rich person buys a $3500 pair of boots that comes with surveillance, useless AI, and bricks itself on the next firmware update.
The poor person buys a pair of boots, that are... boots.
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Boots theory yes, but there also seem to be a paradox of reliability of cheap things.
Manufacturers which are aiming at being dirt cheap and selling lots of products, have low margins and simply cannot afford too many replacements / warranty repairs. High margin products don't care, they could make you three in that price and still be ok.
The issue is that the 10k fridge is not actually any better.
The "luxury" appliances can be double that and are still shit.
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Miele did the best advertising ever, and I believe it even got a news story. A woman had been using their washer for 25years and Miele reached out and asked if she wanted a new one for free, for no other reason than to upgrade. Iirc she declined as the one she had worked perfectly. I have a vacuum from them, a cheap model, been working for 12 years so far. It’s probably the only appliance brand I would trust, even if I’m sure they have bad stories too.
I got another way of looking at it: it's not worth it having appliances that last 20 years, because in that time the tech itself can and does improve a lot.
Ready example is my aunt: a very good and expensive Miele washing machine, that was made to last as things were before. But now 10 years have elapsed and modern washers come with bigger drums, much lower noises, optimized water and electricity usages, and more effective washing patterns.
But she's stuck with her old and trusty one, because she feels that it's working "like new". And she's not wrong, it works well, so it became a sort of a "golden cuff" so to speak (not knowing any better metaphor). So good and expensive, that now getting rid of it for a new one feels like a waste of money for not much gain.
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I wonder if those expensive fridges are any more serviceable. I'm guessing someone with $10k to spend on a fridge doesn't care how easy it is to fix because they'll never do it.
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> you can still find fridges in that price range today with a similar value proposition
Does anyone have examples of consumer fridges like this?
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> rebrands of Chinese conglomerates
Eh, I've got a very reasonably priced Haier fridge that I've had no issues with at all. Maybe I'm just lucky, and it definitely helps that there's no built in ice maker or water dispenser (those things seem to break first) but it's lived longer than the refrigerators that the rest of my family have.
I beg to differ that Samsung makes good stuff. We had a Samsung front-loading washer. The drum and the crank that holds the drum were made of two different materials, and in the presence of the water and detergent, a galvanic reaction occurred, dissolving the drum arm. Replacing the arm was $400 in parts and over 8 hours in repair time. (There's lots of YT videos of this exact repair.)
What kind of monkey designs something like that. It's obsolescence by design.
I will never buy another Samsung product.
Ours died with a “cannot communicate with board A” error. The wiring harness (yes, an irreplaceable harness) between A and B looked fine. We replaced boards A and B, which were half the price of the machine and not returnable. Same error code. We threw it out and got a Speed Queen.
Our Samsung fridge’s manual says it’ll automatically and silently mesh network with any Samsung TVs in range, use AI and hidden cameras to recognize what’s in the fridge and when we use it, then have the TV inject targeted ads into programming based on its findings.
We’ll never purchase another Samsung product.
I’m glad to have avoided it - when I moved from sharing with room-mates into my own place and had to buy new appliances, there had just been a spate of Samsung appliances literally randomly catching fire in the news. Those models have all been recalled but it put me right off.
Otherwise I might have considered them but steered well clear, and am very happy with the decision a decade later. Went Bosch for the washer and Electrolux for the fridge, had zero issues.
How long did it take to break?
Also, I'm wondering if any other manufacturer would make the crank and the drum from the same material. Wouldn't it be like $100 extra to make a stainless steel spider?
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The problem is that we are running out of alternatives. How long until there are no refrigerators, TVs, cars, whatever that will not work without some amount of baked in advertising?
I dunno, my family started buying LG stuff for our appliances and otherwise, and none of the stuff has forceful ads on them, at least yet. Currently I think we have LG TVs, fridge, dish washer, drier, washing machine and something else I can't remember, all of them working well, has nice and fast at-home support when needed and no ads even on the TVs.
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> The problem is that we are running out of alternatives.
But why is that? HN told me that ads were just reserved for people who refused to “pay for the product”. By inference we must conclude that for-pay products shall not have ads on sheer principle. Where’s that smug scolding at now?
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Depends on what consumers stand for. If enough complain. If enough get bad reviews. If enough get returned. If enough buy something else is the big one. If there are other uses where they can't (some TVs are used a safety message boards in factories - if the ads ever show in this context and someone is hurt there will be a lawsuit - so there will be some demand at any price for something without ads)
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Buy commercial units rather than consumer ones.
My Samsung computer monitor is also the stuff of nightmares. Same story: useless "smart" UI features. I'm told I can use it as a dozen different things. But it sucks as a computer monitor.
Not cheap either!
My Samsung 4k 240hz OLED monitor has an absolutely gorgeous panel but if I knew I'd need to connect it to the internet and run a PYTHON script to disable some of its "features"[1] I probably would have gotten a similar LG display instead.
[^1]: https://pfy.ch/programming/disable-samsung-game-bar.html
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That makes me sad. Many, many years ago I had a 17" Samsung CRT. It broke within the warranty period. I called their support and explained the problem. They asked for my receipt. I didn't have one, but I told them that the sticker on the back said it had only been manufactured 9 months ago, so it had to still be under warranty. Their support person agreed. They checked their inventory and found that they were out of stock on that model, and asked if I'd be OK with them upgrading me to a 19" CRT. Sure!
I was fiercely loyal to them for a lot of years after that experience.
I got their monitors from the "before" they bunged smart into everything. 2 x 4K from 2016/2017. These things refuse to die and the picture is still good.
Unfortunately all of my relatives love their phones.
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My house came with all Samsung appliances and I can't wait for all fo them to die. The dryer already went (8 years old).
I've been replacing with mid-range LG on advice of the local repair company and been happy so far. Quirky and very few features but seems well built.
Can't wait to replace the massive refrigerator and swap the gas range for inductive. Fridge is slowly going (cracked and leaking ice maker, condensation problem with deli drawer).
I now know how my mom could justify the ridiculous expense of a Subzero refrigerator (around $6k back in 2000). That thing has only needed a couple of tune ups and no parts replacements in 20 years.
When I bought my new fridge I told the sales guy I wanted the least features possible. "You don't want an in door ice maker" "How many of those have you seen that aren't broken" "not many. no through door window?" "I know there's milk in the fridge why do I need to see that there's milk in the fridge?" down and down the list. Eventually we settled on a very bare bones whilrpool french door. It's very simple. My previous fridge I could fix with a screwdriver and a piece of wire. These things push cold air from a compressor that lasts 50 years if it's not fucked with by electronics and some boxes that are all passive insulation. They were solved problems 30 years ago.
The speed queen washer that came with the house failed. The 30 year old lid switch literally fell apart. $10 on amazon next day. Took me 10 minutes and youtube to take the machine apart. It's meant to be serviced and I'm handy. I don't get engineers who won't try and fix their appliances. It's like a free weekend day entertainment for me.
8 years is pretty good. I personally like Bosch. Is a fridge with an icemaker not always problematic? How about biofilm?
What is the advantage of an inductive stove? Will they even work in the US? I think in Europe they work with 360 V if I remember right.
I realized two things:
1. You can cook nearly everything with a ricecooker. Just throw everything inside. Yes, even the minced meat on top.
2. An airfrier is better and faster than a shitty oven.
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Speed Queen for washing machines. Bosch for dishwashers.
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My parents fridge started it's life in the mid 1990's, and their freezer is probably a decade older, at this stage nobody knows. I don't think they were expensive models.
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I bought a Samsung phone back in like 2014, and shortly after bought smartwatch to pair with it. A year later, Samsung released an update that removed the pairing functionality so my smartwatch could no longer pair. They did this in conjunction with releasing their own smartwatch and some proprietary pairing protocol.
I'm not a fan of vendor lock in, but their decision to retroactively remove functionality that I was depending on led me to never buy another Samsung product since.
Same they are off my list as well though I generally have less than zero interest in smart devices, I also have a Samsung "smart" TV as well, it asked for Wifi first time I turned it on, said "nope" connected a HDMI to a Fedora box and just use that.
I control what devices in my house connect to the internet.
I never thought I would connect my Hisense to the internet, but it turns out that it runs an MQTT broker and responds to WoL packets, so control via Home Assistant was really easy to setup and is much better than the IR blaster I was using before as response is almost instant and I can get power state so I can sync it to the rest of my living room. Most smart TVs seem to do well behind a DNS black hole, and if you're knowledgeable enough for that then self-hosting a dnsmasq instance on an old box you have lying around and pointing the TV at it is a snap.
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> I control what devices in my house connect to the internet.
That’s certainly admirable, but haven’t tv manufacturers beeen caught connecting to ANY WiFi they find, if it’s open? Amongst other various dark patterns?
Your statement here kind of characterizes it as user error, but the manufacturers are absolutely hostile actors here.
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Linux box to Samsung TV here as well. It's awesome, best of both worlds. Stable Debian with Plasma DE in my case.
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I'm going to sell this idea to Samsung and earn me some Wons:
> When showing that the user has switched to HDMI input, show the full screen information: "HDMI1, brought to you by _____ [insert advertiser here]. Best experienced with Monster HDMI cables. Gold plated for the digital clarity."
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Until they start installing 5G modems in the things anyway. Or put a time bomb in the OS so the TV starts shutting down if it hasn't been connected to the internet after a week.
For a short while, I worked at one of Samsung subsidiaries on their TV firmware, mostly fixing Linux kernel bugs introduced by the product teams cannibalizing upstream features to serve their needs (including intentionally disabling reasonable kernel security measures that happened to be in their way). I've seen things, both technical and organizational, that led me to pledge never to give my money to that company, or have their devices connected to networks I care about. I don't trust any of it, if not due to evil intent, but just incompetence.
i would have thought "better the devil you know" here. The other manufacturers are probably doing similar shenanigans
At least with Vizio I kinda expected it. I can't imagine paying $3500 only to have it have the "benefit" of ads added after the fact.
Agreed. Showing ads on TVs is beyond the pale.
(Sorry, I just had to. In fact, thoug, I would be furious if my tv injected ads onto my source material)
I was out when they decided to change their authentication, with only two weeks notice, and (from what I read) incorrect documentation, causing it all to not work with HomeAssistant for a month [1].
[1] https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/133623#issueco...
> not directly connected to the Internet.
Hopefully you don't have a neighbor like me. I keep an open wifi channel. So far the only customer has been the neighbors samsung tv phoning home. I felt bad about that and blocked it. But wow are they aggressive trying to get that telemetry out.
If you're buying chips (other than Flash) made with cutting-edge semiconductor processes, your options are only Samsung and TSMC. How long will it take Samsung's foundries to start adding malicious hardware implants to their customers' designs?
Samsung makes great components and terrible appliances. Buy a monitor with a Samsung panel or a Samsung SSD and you'll be a happy camper. Buy a Samsung fridge or washing machine and your life will be hell.
> They make nice stuff.
Do they? I've never owned a Samsung phone, in large part because I was always turned off by reports that they liked to skin Android in annoying/lame ways. I have a Samsung fridge/freezer (old and not-smart), but the in-door ice maker has a design flaw that causes condensation to drip, freeze, and clog it, so we've given up on it and just make our own ice with regular old-school trays in the freezer.
I'm not going to say they make crap, but their stuff is... okay, I guess.
Samsung once sold a fantastic phone. It had a wonderful camera, a great 432 PPI OLED screen, a battery that could be swapped in seconds with no tools, a headphone jack, an SD card slot, NFC, optional wireless charging, USB 3.0, HDMI output over MHL, an IR emitter for shenanigans, heart rate and blood oxygen saturation sensors, and at 8.1mm thick it was also waterproof.
It was hackable, rootable, and it ran aftermarket ROMs like a dream.
It was the Galaxy S5, and it was released just over a decade ago.
Things have been headed downhill ever since.
I've had a few Samsung products over the years. The only one I haven't regretted is their SSDs, both internal and external. Those seem to be good. Everything else has been awful.
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They make nice stuff? I’ve stopped buying samsung 10 years ago and even before then not a single device was decent (and I bought phones, screens, home appliances, a TV)
i have good memories of my Note 3. samsung was pretty cool back then. i bought some galaxy s 5 years ago for a lot of money, then it got splashed with water and died. stupid waste of money. i've had my current oppo for 3+ years and he's a trooper, and it was about half the price of a similar-spec samsung. samsung is overpriced shit.
>This guarantees I'll never buy a Samsung appliance.
I saw someone else’s Samsung TV with ads on the input select menu…
That was enough to pre-ban myself from any future Samsung appliance.
Even when they aren't loaded with ads, Samsung products are built to fail almost immediately. My Samsung vacuum has been a total piece of shit that's falling apart. I will never buy another Samsung product again.
Other than probably flash storage, there's never been a Samsung product that's ever been better than just throwing at least the equivalent amount of money in a fire pit and incinerating it. They've never sold an appliance appropriate even as a boat anchor, and I'm amazed at this point that people even consider buying their junk.
I've bought GE recently with good luck (GSS25IYNFSS, specifically). No affiliation, just someone who buys a lot of appliances that need to last and be simple for longevity (housing provider). My kingdom for someone who could build the old, reliable tanks of yesteryear.
https://ncph.org/history-at-work/rethinking-the-refrigerator...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator
There is no such thing as consumer GE products. They haven't existed for several decades. The name has been licensed to various brands in China, but the only thing actual GE made in it's last several decades (It suffered existence failure in 2024 after a series of spinoffs) is aircraft engines.
Anything sold as "GE" is just re-badged somebody else's crap, mostly Haier.
The dishwasher that came with my condo was GE, and when it stopped draining completely, I found the instruction manual, and it was mostly ads for other GE products. Ironically, I replaced it with a Samsung dishwasher with a clearer instruction manual and easy repair investigations.
Of course I am no longer inclined to purchase Samsung products based on this new info. I honestly think that if a company pushes an update that makes its product worse, they should be obligated to refund you 100% of the original purchase price.
Crap crap and more crap. The quality control on GE fridges is absolutely the worst of all worst. It's possible because you are working with the economy of scale that you don't see the typical problems that individuals run into. But I went through 5 in a row and every single one had a problem. Switched to LG and never looked back
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I would never buy a roku tv with its built in ads. Unfortunately my partner did that for me. Most people simply don't care about this kind of stuff. If it has the gleam of newness, hell the ads are kind of flashy I don't mind em at all!
I won't buy Sony TVs any more because of their software, because it started displaying ads on the home-screen.
It's Google TV, and I don't mind ads for content on the home screen. I use a bunch of streaming services, I might want to watch whatever's up there, that's not entirely incongruous. Then about a year after purchase we started getting ads for L'Oreal shampoo and other products. Nope.
Sony acted confused when I sent a support ticket, and eventually said "Oh, that's because it's Google TV, nothing we can do about it". I replied saying perhaps they had given too much control over their tv experience to a third party. I was able to activate "App Only Mode" to make them go away, but you lose a bunch of the features and have to disable it to get to the play store if you want to install anything else.
Pisses me off. I paid a couple of thousand dollars (AUD) for that tv, I shouldn't have advertising shoved in my face.
Their TVs and phones have terrible PWM and are bad for your eyes anyway.
I’m boycotting all Samsung products permanently.
> I have one today, displaying the output of an Apple TV and not directly connected to the Internet
That's how I do it as well, and I hate that dumb TVs are getting increasingly more rare.
I know the day is coming where any new "Smart" TV will mandate you connect it to the internet to go through some initial setup process or require regular phone homes to function, and I'm not looking forward to it.
I don't want my TV to do anything except display whatever I have connected to it. It's job stops there.
Their TVs still don’t support all the HDR formats right?
Yeah - they support HDR10 (the most common HDR), HDR10+ (adds per-scene tone-mapping, but is rare to see media for), but not Dolby Vision (which requires paying a license fee to the Dolby folks).
I've heard that Netflix has added HDR10+ streams recently, but I haven't verified that myself.
That's correct. I can't use it at all with my Apple TV or Playstation 5, because the screen immediately goes dark. I don't know how to describe this exactly, but say that the TV's regular RGB display goes from 1 to 100. I'd expect that HDR would make it go from -50 to 150, or something like that. Instead, on my Samsung, it goes from -50 to 50. No amount of control fiddling can make it get as bright as it does in non-HDR mode.
Our cheaper LG works beautifully with the same inputs. The Samsung? Nope. Everything looks like the finale of Game of Thrones, even when you're looking at a soccer game played on a sunny day at noon on the equator.
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You know, the ad they display on the home annoys me and I've never thought much about it. The prevalence of ads is so much that I think I already expected it there.
hah, I also keep the samsung tv cut off from internet. It was bad enough they come pre installed with clearly sponsored apps (because they were absolute trash).
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I got a new Samsung TV recently, i don't get the huge hatred for their software. It has some free TV channels, it has apps for the streaming services, even a decent web browser and overall good features. It supports Airplay, Google Cast, bluetooth etc. The OS has some annoyances and rough edges, but its mostly fine. I let it connect to the internet but not any of my other LAN devices so it cant' snoop too much.
I just don't see the problem, and don't see how connecting a different box to watch the same things is much better than just using the OS to do that. If they did have ads on it that would definitely be a problem though.
I had a Samsung TV ten years ago. While watching Game of Thrones with friends, it overlayed an ad at the top of the screen recommending I play Fruit Ninja on my TV. I immediately disconnected it from my WiFi and have not bought a single other Samsung device since, except for one thumbdrive that I needed. Avoiding Samsung as a brand when buying electronics has been really easy as well.
I've used the built-in apps at a friend's house, and they were awful compared to the Apple TV versions. Everything was sluggish, like it was running on something without enough RAM and swapping out to an SD card. If I hadn't used anything else but that, or maybe the Dish Network DVR we had years ago, I'd probably think it's just fine. However, I have used something else, and it made the TV's own apps feel unbearable.
Imagine you're using a brand new maxed-out MacBook Pro, and someone hands you a 2013 HP laptop. The HP is... fine. It displays web pages, lets you load a word processor, and otherwise looks and acts like a laptop. If you hadn't ever used another computer, you probably wouldn't think anything of it.
BTW, I bet a Fire TV or various other options would be fine, too. I just don't have the personal experience to vouch for those. I'm not using this anecdote to shill Apple TV specifically, just to say that there are much better options than the built-in apps.
> and don't see how connecting a different box to watch the same things is much better than just using the OS to do that.
Because then you can replace a $50-100 box when it starts misbehaving (e.g. tracking and selling your information) or not getting upgrades anymore or getting slower, rather than replacing a $1000 TV.
Well, they could easily push a software update to add ads to your TV without a rollback option and disable features if you don't allow it.
If you upgrade your TV on the regular I guess you'd just buy a new one, but treating it as a dumb display guarantees you can keep using it as long as it physically works.
>I let it connect to the internet but not any of my other LAN devices so it cant' snoop too much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition
Well my Samsung tv I bought two years ago has gotten progressively slower and slower despite never installing any new stuff on it and only using the basic functionality, so that is pretty infuriating. Every couple of weeks I have to unplug it (because naturally a soft power off isn’t really doing anything) and it’ll be fast again for a while. When it’s slow it can easily take 10 seconds to bring up the menu.
> "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
> "Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky... But not in dreams."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Mansion_(film)
Ah, lightspeed briefs fit everywhere, on the beach and on your the fridge.
Futurama right? When fry buys that underwear?
More than technically correct—the best kind of correct—you are plain correct.
(I've used em-dashes since before LLMs and I'm not fucking stopping now)
EDIT: s,',,
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Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g
There's a $30,000 bounty set up for anyone who can patch the firmware to eliminate the ads. Please consider contributing additional donations against the matching funds.
https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/samsung-familyhub-refrige...
I lieu of a donation I'll continue to not pay for ad-laden garbage.
Keep the bounty, but target the cause and not the effect. Who made the decision? Send a drone army once a month to spray paint their house with PSAs about consumer rights.
I recall Louis saying that some (or all?) solutions to these bounties cannot be revealed to the public due to being liable under DMCA circumvention measures. IANAL.
They can be revealed volunarily by the author, but FULU can't require or condone it. Because of the DMCA section 1201, trafficking in circumvention tools to violate digital locks is a felony punishable by 3-5 years in federal prison.
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Seems like they should release the fix on a Hong Kong server.
Doesn't it just affect US citizens?
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I would assume AdGuard or Pi-hole can do the job? No need for potentially unsafe firmware patches
> Include instructions for carrying out the functional method which are accessible and easily usable by a non-technical individual
Good luck for anyone to claim this bounty if that's one of the requirements. Does the fridge have any exposed ports at all that the average person could access without removing anything from the fridge?
It's also not clear in the bounty, if I add funds to the campaign and it gets fully funded, does that mean that software/hack will be released publicly? Or only to "backers"? It's not clear what the donation goes to, besides for the person who makes the hack to claim.
It helps to read into the personality and psychology of Louis Rossmann a bit, who is running this. He does component-level repairs of MacBooks, and entirely understands that custom firmware will likely require JTAG to flash the MCU.
FULU / Rossmann isn't handling the public release ... at all. They're worried that doing so would violate US law or at least cost a lot in court fees. They'd be super stoked if whoever made it released to to the public and absolutely not just to "backers".
What's the use if a non-technical individual can't apply the fix?
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That website has never once paid out a bounty? hmm...
It looks to be a very new program.
While the fulu.org domain has been around for a long time, archive.org's oldest snapshot of bounties.fulu.org is from late last week.
This press release from Oct. 23rd agrees with archive.org's snapshot history: <https://fulu-foundation.ghost.io/repair-bounty-program/>.
Given the complexity of the tasks on offer, I'm unsurprised that zero of them have been completed in three days. Give those boffins some time, yeah?
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accurate HN username
Can't stand behaviour like this.
I pay for Spotify and the app now shows paid suggestions (cough ads), to paying users. When you tap the ellipsis and choose "Not interested", it doesn't respond with "OK, we'll stop" but something like 'We'll show less of this'.
No, don't show less, I want you to not show it at all.
I switched away from Spotify a couple of years ago because of this, after having been a paying customer for around 10 years.
But I fear all such services will eventually succumb to this, given just how much more lucrative ads can be compared to subscriptions.
I did the same, and switched to Apple Music. Soon after that, Apple Music started injecting their F1 movie soundtrack into suggested music for me. There really is no escape from this. They haven't done it since, so at least it's not as bad as what Spotify does. If I come across a good offline music player for iOS I will probably cancel my Apple Music subscription.
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Last time I checked the sky tv financials, subscription revenue outweighed advertising revenue about 10:1, is for every £30 subscription they took £3 in adverts.
I guess that's part of the sentiment for the current resurgence of physical media, specifically vinyl and CDs. It's refreshing to be able to just enjoy media without mega corporations tracking your listening habits or serving you ads.
Might seem funny for some more senior readers, but as somebody who almost exclusively only listened to music through MP3s and streaming, I found the included artwork and other goodies in vinyl / CDs to be incredible. Who would have known that my favorite albums often had not just album covers, but lyrics sheets and entire booklets filled with interesting trivia and additional artwork?
NFL RedZone, the ad-free premium tv channel now shows ads for sports betting
I imagine a modern hacker needs to basically shun all fo mainstream media to get away from such behavior. No Google, no Meta, no Microsoft, etc. apparently no Smart devices either.
my XM app with a paid subscription now has in-app popups advertising concerts. it sucks.
I will say that they’re typically concerts related to the channel I am on, but there is no world in which I want to attend live music, and of course there’s no way to tell them that. so I have to tolerate getting interrupted periodically despite already paying them.
I was also infuriated by this, so much so that I switched to TIDAL. Migrating was easy— I used their recommended webapp ti migrate all my playlists. Have been using TIDAL happily ever since. Never any popups or ads.
I unsubscribed from Spotify for this very reason.
At this point, anything from Samsung is a vehicle for ads, and anything with the word “smart” from Samsung is most likely a spyware. The amount of garbage I had to remove from a recently encountered Galaxy phone is on par with Windows 11 levels and some.
Unfortunately, the entire industry is racing toward this behavior. Recent LGs have also started slapping “AI” stickers on their products. I’ve been visiting Rossman’s Consumer Wiki[1] more often than I’d like before making a purchase.
[1]: https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
I've managed to mostly excise Samsung from my digital life (except for phones that family buys without my knowledge and that I have to troubleshoot), and I have been happier for it for many decades now.
(This was after direct exposure to their Tizen engineering team back in the early 2000s)
I stayed away from their phones, SmartTVs, everything.
They were caught uploading screenshots from content played on smart TVs. Ostensibly to sell ad tracking info like a Nielsen TV, but I'm pretty sure it meant they were capturing people's desktops with confidential corporate info etc. if you used the TV as a monitor.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/samsung-smart-tvs...
This isn't just Samsung! Nearly all of them use ACR [1].
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-t...
Tizen was launched in 2012, not sure that would count as early 2000s! But I had colleagues who were also working with the Tizen team, and that's when I learned it'll never fly. Samsung just didn't have the software engineering mindset required for it.
The short version of the story is that I was working with one of the Samsung mobile engineering teams for Vodafone 360 (look it up). The other team was the Galaxy team.
What phones do you recommend? I have an S21 FE I got free from Metro PCS (I got laid off, had to return company S20 phone). Others in the family have Pixel / moto. I get the feeling the later galaxy phones are much worse than the S21?
Second hand Pixels which then get GrapheneOS installed on them (GrapheneOS doesn't support Google Wallet payments via NFC, which can be a deal-breaker for a lot of people).
iPhone. Android is so crap laden.
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Interesting, what about the Tizen team or ecosystem turned you away?
I used to have the watch, and was interested enough in the OS to work toward making personal apps for it.
What alternative phone manufacturer would you recommend as well, if you don't mind.
> except for phones that family buys without my knowledge and that I have to troubleshoot
It's okay to say no. After decades of being the computer tech in my family, I started saying no and have been a lot happier for it.
I bought a Samsung notebook in ~2008. No crapware! Nice and small, it survived long beyond the guaranty date.
My cellphone decided to die last month. It was near retirement, but still working until it didn't. I bought a Samsung phone. First it asked twice if I wanted to share all my life with Google (using some dark patterns) and then it asked twice if I wanted to share all my life with Samsung (using more dark patterns). (After that, I installed WhatsApp, so I'm not sure I bothered.)
Next the phone offered to install the app from my carrier, TikTok and a ¿third? app-store. I didn't want them so in the screen with the offer I disabled the first and the other two were disabled by default. Anyway, I got TikTok and the other app for some reason! (I uninstalled them inmediately.)
I still get random notifications, like complaining that I'm using the phone too much. Or a notification that they upgraded something, restarted the phone and all apps notifications were disabled until I unlock it. (Lucky, I didn't miss any important urgent message.)
I quit buying Samsung when my phone rebooted into a forced update while I was using it with a customer and then fucking bricked itself.
Not to mention a new notification to accept the new Samsung terms and conditions every two weeks.
Hopefully DNS level ad blocking will help here, and even more hopefully consumers will reject smart appliances. I'd never buy one
They won't. Smart devices tend to be cheap because the manufacturer is double-dipping by selling telemetry and advertising.
> Smart devices tend to be cheap because the manufacturer is double-dipping by selling telemetry and advertising.
I wouldn't call a "$1,899 to $3,499" fridge cheap.
Just wait till you have to watch N adds before the door will unlock. And good luck getting it open in a power/internet outage :lol:
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I'll never ever buy a 'smart' appliance. I'll go caveman first. Keeping food cold and/or cooking it does not require the Internet.
Even the unnecessary microcontrollers in modern devices irk me. A fridge does not need a microcontroller. (My issue is primarily repairability - discrete components can be sourced and replaced, microcontrollers with the correct programming usually cannot.)
Or import one yourself
Neither. In a world where everyone is trying to be more eco conscious, it seems like a joke that manufacturers are slapping screens on the most menial of things.
It's probably work like IMDb does on your phone. All ads are piped through the same domain as useful data.
“Looks like you have an ad-blocker. Disable it to reactivate cooling.”
I would rather go without household refrigeration than have the refrigerator that I own play ads in my house.
I'd rather put foil tape over the display than go without refrigeration.
Does the door unlock if if the in-display camera can’t recognize your face though?
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Until it streams audio
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This is why I have so few 'smart' devices in my life. It is obvious that all of these devices are predatory. They start off 'helpful' and 'useful' and then turn malicious when you can't easily replace them. Lock-in bait and switch should be illegal.
Or they are neutered by a software update, or stop working when the company shuts down the servers that make them work.
After not having a Samsung device for many years, I reluctantly bought a fridge from them (price was the decisive factor). Anyway, almost immediate regret, it features an always-on wifi network begging to be connected to the web, the only way to turn it off is to disconnect a cable from a circuit board, unbelievable.
It sounds defective. Return it.
Of course they would do this. They did this with their top of the line 4k tvs when they first came out. Everything was great, their OS and such worked wonderfully then they started to inject ads for gamefly into notifications and it went downhill from there. Ads in a 200 dollar tv I understand. Ads on a 5 thousand dollar tv? Absolutely unacceptable.
I know it's not your intention, but it does illustrate another divide between rich and poor. I guess some would say they'd rather a cheap TV with ads over no TV, but I imagine TV companies could still make an affordable TV without ads if mandated to remove ads. They just choose the ad route for more profit.
Paying more doesn’t guarentee cutting out the adverts.
Why is this the best business model we can collectively execute on? Whether it is AI, home cameras, or fridges it seems to just come back to, welp, lets slap an ad on it.
Unlike conventional businesses where a good or "binary" service (it works or not) is sold, advertising is a much more nebulous good whose efficiency can't be accurately measured. This means there are tons of inefficiencies where middlemen can skim something off the top:
* a product manager decides to include ads in some digital product. Their analytics show plenty of "engagement". The engagement is actually people accidentally clicking on the ad while hunting for the tiny "close" button, but even if the PM suspects it, they have no reason to volunteer that information. They keep getting their salary paid and even earn a promotion based on the engagement numbers.
* the developers are tasked with implementing the advertising infrastructure - they get paid while padding their resume about how they're building "scalable" systems.
* the "scalable" system runs on a cloud provider and earns them a ton of money. Cloud provider is happy.
* some marketing agency is given a budget to go and spend on ads. The person there maybe even knows that advertising in the aforementioned product is a bad idea because most of their clicks are fake... but if their client is tasking them with burning money, why would they refuse?
* a marketing person at a big company that doesn't actually need any more advertising to succeed is given a budget and spreads it across a few marketing agencies including the aforementioned one. They get paid, why should they refuse?
At every layer (and I haven't even listed them all), people get paid by skimming something off the top. It doesn't matter whether the advertising works, because nobody in the chain has any incentive to admit it while the status quo is so lucrative, so the rational thing to do for everyone is to not rock the boat.
Customers are generally low-information shoppers. They go to a hardware store and ask the salesperson for a fridge that fits their requirements. The rep will show them a few options, and then the customer gets to try them out. This is where the animal brain takes over: Samsung designs for the animal brain. It's sleek. It's futuristic. There's so many doors. It has a beverage drawer. A condiment drawer. You can customize the panels. The animal knows the Samsung fridge is better, and customers likely won't know any better if the salesperson doesn't tell them (and would they? They make a better commission on the more expensive fridge)
The line must go up.
By a percentage every year.
Compounding.
This was always an obvious outcome.
What the outcome actually happening is indicative of however is that consumers are very very very bad at their job (consuming the best products) and do not have enough rights.
If a customer was entitled to a working product without this kind of deficiency, and we had courts that actually applied punishments to large corporations (instead of unilaterally and without justification, significantly reducing fines to nothing) we wouldn't have this problem. It wouldn't be possible to profit off of this kind of advertising because you would be too busy signing court documents about how you suck at building stuff.
There's only so many human beings who can buy your fridge. There's only so cheap you can build your fridge. There's only so much you can charge for your fridge. But line must go up.
This is simply what it looks like when the people with money and resources decide that a stable and reliable profit is a Failed business.
I think it's mostly about squeezing consumers for more money, even after they already paid a premium, because they simply can and nobody will do anything about it.
Because simply selling a refrigerator isn’t good enough anymore. How else do you fuel infinite economic growth?
If it was legal to kill for money they would do that too. In some ways that already occurs.
it is legal to kill for money as long as it is indirect enough
Why do you think there is infinite economic growth in ads???
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Why do you address us as if we collectively went down to the town center and three dozen times in a row and decided on the same thing by consensus? For most of us this was shoved down our throats by sheer force of violence. And why always this oh shucks apologia about the “business model” that they are supposedly forced to adapt? No, this fridge already costs a lot of money. The ads don’t have to be recouping losses. They could just be for more profit.
Because it's a dual revenue stream. The retail customer pays you, and then the advertising customer pays you. Why make only $1 when you can make $2, $3, $4 over time?
If your next question is "why do they need to keep making more money?", the answer is capitalism.
And a general lack of competition. You only buy fridges from a few brands after all.
When you get downvoted for making the obvious statement that you have to maximize profits as a capitalist entity, well, you know you’re in a venture capital forum.
It's an inexpensive revenue stream; the secondary effects and risk to customers are considered relevant insofar as they can negatively impact the company's future profitability (if then).
There's no way that this was ever /not/ going to happen under current laws (US).
> Why is this the best business model we can collectively execute on?
Attention is the ultimate resource.
The System rewards the business model that also covertly enables the most surveillance.
because it's essentially free money with no consequences.
Internal incentives not overall profitability drive such behavior.
An executive can point to a profit stream and suggest that’s beneficial to the company while ignoring externalities that cost the company 5x as much. Nobody inside has complete knowledge if someone was a good idea or not so the appearance of benefit often replaces the search for actual benefit.
Who said anything about the best? It’s the strategy that makes most revenue in the shortest amount of time.
The execs will receive their bonuses in two years and then move to the next company to grift again, and again, until they retire.
It’s so sad. Smart devices were meant to make life easier. Now all they do is to be another platform for ads.
AI is going the same way.
In the end it’s always going to be ads. Is just sad.
Adverts are a cancer. They infect and destroy everything.
HN loves them as the majority work or want to work for advertising firms.
integrated 21.5- or 32-inch (depending on the model) screen
I don't want a fridge with a screen or any connections except power. All it needs to do is keep my food cold. I've had others very surprised to see my house containing mostly mid-century dumb appliances. I deal with enough problems caused by software at work, to know better than to bring that hassle home.
Off-topic-ish: I've got a TCL Smart TV that, by default, runs Google TV (which, to my understanding, is a rebranded newer version of Android TV). The default launcher / interface, which contains ads and has only minimal customisation options, can only be changed by installing an alternative launcher disabling some permissions via adb.
Having followed the instructions to do it, it's much nicer having beautiful background images (rather than ads for crappy TV shows and movies) and a cleaner interface with at least one less click required to get to the apps I want (ie. a better UX).
TCL TVs are not a particularly premium product, so I'm not too annoyed about having to go this little bit of effort to make it nicer. However, a $3,500 fridge seems like a premium-ish price, and so to also have ads on that feels incredibly tacky to the point it cheapens the product and the brand overall.
Don't enable smart TV mode. Dumb TV mode is still android, so you can install apps, but there are no ads.
Could you share a guide for how you did this? I've got a TCL TV, and it's constantly frustrating how it shows laggy ads.
I'll have to get back to you. I had to go through the process three or four times to get it to stick across reboots and not leave me with a useless TV just showing a black screen (I had a panic moment when that happened).
You can ask Perplexity, but this doesn't give the adb commands to disable the default launcher (which you need to do so that it doesn't override what the user has chosen upon reboot): https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-do-i-install-project-iv...
I should also mention: This may render some of the TV remote shortcut buttons useless. There's an app that's meant to help with this, but I've found it unreliable.
I'll find my notes tonight...
Disable Internet access. An Internet-connected smart TV is one update away from a bricked device.
Not the GP, but I have a TCL 65C845. I've removed all the crap from it and installed a third-party launcher. I LOVE the result, both in terms of picture quality and usability. The UI is clean, snappy, functional and there's zero crap on the screen that I didn't deliberately put there.
Here are my notes:
Install FLauncher. Configure apps/panels/wallpaper. Using ADB TV (under “install”):
Install a screen saver (Aerial Views), TV streaming apps, Plex, SmartTubeNext, f-droid, Mullvad etc.
That's pretty much it. A bit fiddly but a one-time thing (I did this two years ago and have been using the TV daily). I keep auto-updates turned off and basically nothing ever breaks and there are no random regressions.
I previously did the same on an older TCL TV. The panel was not as nice and the CPU was slower but the result was also quite good (it was what convinced me to get the 65C845 with its larger screen, better panel and faster CPU).
I used to run a similar FLauncher-based setup on a NVidia Shield Pro, but the new setup is so nice that I don't use the Shield for TV anymore.
Another experiment I did was replicating this exact setup on a Chromecast (I think GA01919). That also worked well, though having a second device was a bit inconvenient in terms of remote controls and such.
P.S. Where I live I have FTTH; TV is delivered as MPEG transport streams over multicast. I don't have OTA broadcast TV or a cable box and so couldn't vouch for the ergonomics there.
Sometimes I wonder if developers are exempt from responsibility much like a soldier for following orders
To be fair if you're gonna advertise to someone, people who buy $3500 fridges are ideal
Its only a matter of time until your toilet starts telling you where to get high fibre cereal at 20% off.
Truly, life imitates art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
LOL. But I'm sure I've seen worse things on 'Dragon's Den' (UK equivalent to 'Shark Tank').
Wasn't there a post last week about this company wanting to install cameras in your toilet?
I have the Samsung Frame TV (great TV btw) and decided I didn't want to pay the $5 / month to have curated art in the room and when Superman the movie came out a few months ago it was only displaying Superman comics on the screen. Was super annoying bc was subtle but not subtle enough. I uploaded family pics instead so I don't have that anymore but it was still pretty annoying. I have samsung washers / dryers / dishwasher etc all connected to the internet and I love the notifications when a load is done but I don't know how useful the data is... I assume data brokers are like, "Oh Aj uses his washing machine 7 times a month let's hit him with Tide ads", but I assume everyone uses the machine that much. I'm fine having my machines tell Samsung use bc it's normal usage (i think?)
If you are thinking of data - you have to think of meta data. Instead of how often you do laundry think more:
* number of adults in the house hold (people who have access to the account)
* when you are home
* opening fridge/doing laundry/etc. I have no idea if their app has an excuse to ask for location- but app location tracking would be the most valuable data
* even if you don’t share location- these things are on your network and any regular and simple network scanning would show when certain devices are home and we they are not home and what schedules they follow
This isn’t even very imaginative, just the basics really. I would not be surprised if you could guess the household size solely based on the number of times a fridge is opened in a day. You could at least determine between a person without a family vs. family- that’s useful for ads. Are these the fridges that have cameras in them ‘so you can see what you have while at the grocery store’? Throw some image detection in there and you now know brand targeting and if they cook regularly or eat out. A goldmine of data really.
I use home assistant and a smart plug to get notifications when the socket has less than 1w load for 5 mins -> washing machine finished. Maybe one of the best automations I have. And all local.
I've bought Frame as well because our 10 years old Philips tv got a nasty dead pixels bar mid screen that made watching tv really annoying - prob moisture got inside. I was curious how Samsung's ecosystem looks like in comparison to Apple's and tbh, I didn't expect the main hub app asking for location access way before even looking up for the devices.
But that was a hard no for me. I just left all of that alone - we have a ISP set-top box that comes with FTTH tv and few services so I don't need to log in anywhere else.
Mother has a hearing aid and she wanted to try Bluetooth connection - devices paired without mobile app but she couldn't lower volume down on tv nor on her device, even with aid's own app.
It still wasn't as bad as expected. I read some of the experiences people had where they couldn't even get into the home screen of tv before agreeing for network connection or login to some cloud services.
Fiends got some 4k Samsung for their new house - it comes with some AI features because of course it does. They said that they couldn't easily find picture controls and every show was automatically adjusted on brightness, saturation etc., making anything pain to watch.
They also got washing machine/dryer combo from Samsung as well - weeks after someone posted on our discord server video from Polish store where bunch of guys "hacked" similar smart-enabled machine and launched... youtube with that dancing "6 grams" cow clip. What a time to be alive.
Finally, manufacturer's can be liberated from the opressive existence of a world without advertising revenue
So I recently (last two years or so) bought a (non-Samsung, non-smart) fridge. It's a very nice fridge. It cost, IIRC, about $1000-1500. No internet connection, no ads, no screen to play them on.
Why would I pay $2000 more for a more annoying fridge?
which one?
Don't recall, sorry. I'm at work, so I can't check right now.
Just replaced a Samsung fridge. It was the worst I have ever had, and it wasn't even kludged up with smart-ai-internet-advertisement bullshit yet. The compressor went out after about 12 years (which is apparently good for current refrigerator manufacturing - yikes). But the ice maker and operation panel had been on the fritz for at least 4 years before that. I went with a Frigidaire + 5 year extended warranty. Much better use of internal space, nothing smart, dual ice makers. Only negative is it's kinda noisy and runs often due to the compressor being sized for "efficiency". Fingers crossed.
Horribly bad, and also bad precedent, but:
"The ads experience, though, seems to have improved somewhat from the earlier pilot testing in that users can use their fridge’s settings menu to opt out of seeing ads. If users set their Cover Screen to show integrated Art or Album themes, then the display won’t show ads."
So at least for now tech savvy, aware users can opt out. But I don't like where this is going.
Maybe we can tape cardboard over the screens?
Galaxy S2 was the best phone I ever had. I think it was pure Android, if not, you had some minor apps from Samsung that you could've delete. I think I left the Samsung train right about S5 (which was supposed water proof, but it wasn't). It was just down fall from there. Samsung account, locked phone full with shitty apps that you couldn't remove (without rooting)... I don't think I'll ever have anything from Samsung in the near future
I had the original Galaxy S, and that was very much not pure Android, and no other Galaxy I've had has been (so presume the S2 wasn't either). Prior to Android, they had their own OS, and wanted to continue the UI/UX rather than changing to Android.
Is there an alternative OS scene for these types of appliances?
Not yet it seems, but if history is any good indication of the future, someone at one point will have their "You won't give me API access to my own goddamn fridge?!" moment and GNU.V2 will be born.
Yesterday I was seriously thinking about aftermarket control boards startup for some of my appliances (mostly the AC that has disgustingly low performance because of eco modes). Seems that there will be one for fridges too.
> Samsung also said that its fridges will only show contextualized ads, instead of personalized ads, which rely on collecting data on users.
What is a contextualized ad?
Probably ads for things that you would think of buying when you're standing near the fridge in the kitchen. So not Clash of Clans but La Croix.
Well, they probably won't be able to sell enough ad space to supermarkets, so people will get ads for "World of Tanks" and sports betting.
Contextual means based on related taxonomy of interest. How that interest is measured and what "related" means is proprietary.
This is distinct from demographic (trends based on physical attributes, like age) or geographic or behavioral (your buying patterns) and they already know the device targeting because it's their fridge.
Classic digital advertising vectors.
"I noticed you had Yoplait brand yogurt in your fridge. Here's a coupon for $0.75 off your first six-pack of Chobani!"
Don't some of these have "smart" features to detect what is actually in your fridge and tell you if you run out? I would think removing the last piece of butter could trigger an ad for whatever cow-milk-fat substitute won the highest bid on the brainfuck raffle that day would be shown to you.
Such a smart feature would most likely include reading labels, which means that the system would also know some of the medicines you consume. The fridge would most likely also record the user's interactions with the fridge, so the system will also know what your prescription amounts are. The possibilities of abuse are endless.
Another one: "you have consumed 20 units of alcohol this week, and run out. Should I order this 25 pack that is cheaper?"
Personalized ads are based on your user profile (ads for motorbikes because you're tagged as someone who loves motorbikes). Contextualized ads are based on where and when they're being displayed (ads for food delivery on the fridge late at night) but not on your user profile. This is the advertising industry, so they're probably lying, or they're not lying yet but they plan to add personalized ads later.
Ads for things it overheard you talking about recently.
I'd understand if the ads were subsidizing the purchase price significantly, but this still seems to be in line with their highest pricing.
Yay to living in the EU! Since I would be allowed to get a full purchase-price refund if they'd try to pull this shit in the Europe, they limited the new "Cover-Screen-Widget" to only activate within the US.
I know, I know, I suffer daily from government overreach ;) But have you tried lobbying for your fellow humans?
Europoors seething they can't afford ad-ridden fridges. /s
Funny that they do that after the purchases have been made. Goes to show how much bundled services upset the user-manufacturer relationship, to the detriment of the user.
Using a service is an ongoing relationship, and relationships change over time, sometimes for the worse. This needs to be factored in as risk, every time someone makes a purchase that includes a service.
Soon there will be a subscription model to use certain features in the fridge! Spherical ice and fast cooling will cost $9.99 per month!
With the $15.00 per month Pro Chef subscription you can enable the freezer compartment.
Once they have paved the way and built the infrastructure, most fridges will come with some sort of display. Probably just a small status display. But these fridges will be much cheaper, subsidized by the Ad opportunities. It happened with most mainstream TVs making people expect cheap TVs to the point where they will dismiss a TV with "normal" price.
You do not buy a smart appliance. Period. A fridge, oven, toaster, washing machine, bed do not need to be smart.
Smart is the consumer that is able to spot all this BS ideas that are putting in front of us and avoids it as much as it can.
Disagree. Smart can be good, if you're actually in full control (whenever you contract the implementation to a company or own it).
The real problem is, there's not much on the market that respects the consumers in this regard. Ask for an SLA on a smart fridge functionality and you'll be met with a confusion and possibly a revelation there's nothing of a kind.
It's all ignored because most consumers don't ask questions about reliability, functionality, security and control - they don't think of those. And it's not a matter of technical or specialized knowledge, I'm sure even a caveman can understand "will this work tomorrow the exact same way it works today?" or "what happens to my fridge if you go out of business?" - it's a matter of awareness. People simply don't know yet how those new things can fail them.
Eventually people will learn about the issues, and start asking maker companies those questions. But it's all too new today.
How can smart be good? Can you give me a practical and real example of a benefit of a smart appliance? How can it be better than a regular appliance that does not get on your way?
Let me guess: now to operate a dishwasher I need to download and install a mobile app. And also regularly update the app and the firmware of the appliance, or maybe need a permanent internet connection to correctly operate. It' BS all the way down.
The only thing that companies are expecting from providing you a smart feature is to somehow monetize that on a regular basis and the easiest thing to do that is to either sell your data or locking you down to a fucking subscription.
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on a whim, I walked into a Lucid dealership and asked for a copy of their privacy policy as it relates to a purchased vehicle. the salesman told me “no” very firmly, so I left.
I bought a vented Samsung washer/dryer combo recently. I have to say I like it a lot, probably because its a combo and I no longer have to transfer clothes from washer to dryer. The fact that is Samsung definitely makes me feel nervous however (how long will it last?). Unfortunately, they were the only one to make a vented combo so far (I should have waited for more options, but I'm still OK with it).
We have a frame TV also and it worked nice for the very narrow use case we had.
I don't buy smart devices, unless they work fine without the smart stuff and it's a good buy. I have a "smart" TV because it's a great TV, but it only has HDMI cables plugged into it and no internet connection.
>>The box will change what it displays “every 10 seconds,” the publication said.
OT - This reminds me of the digital billboards on the highway that change before one has the chance to understand what it's advertising. I don't even have the chance to count the seconds before the ad changes much less see what it's advertising.
> Samsung fridge owners can also opt to avoid the latest software update altogether. However, they would miss out on other features included in the software update, such as a UI refresh and the ability for the internal camera inside some fridges to identify more fruits and vegetables inside the fridge.
The level of absurdity here with respect to "miss[ing] out on other features" strains credulity.
Well, I wouldn't say I was missing them.
I don't know why I would connect a fridge to the Internet at all. Maybe there is a use case where you can get a picture of the contents of your fridge on your phone when you are out and about? Like you're at the grocery store and can't remember if you need to pick up milk or not?
I could come around to a fridge that keeps track of the contents, including use by dates, prompts me to throw away things that are going bad and adds replacements to a periodic supermarket order.
Buy the milk anyway, worst case so you’ve got 1L extra.
I’ve seen enough of these stories to know that I will never buy any Samsung product. They are a repeat offender.
I have a samsung fridge, and that's enough for them to already be on my shit list. if you put a screen in my kitchen and force me to watch ads I'm going to physically shatter the screen, I don't care what other functionality it may have.
Samsung makes bad fridges. I bought a Sub-Zero. It has 2 compressors (1 for fridge and 1 for freezer), is made of high quality parts so will last 20+ years, has excellent service guarantees, and is made in America. Highly recommended.
> It has 2 compressors (1 for fridge and 1 for freezer)
Is this a feature? It seems like making more parts to break.
Surely there's a better way to get independent cooling control. E.g. one compressor with valves to control which side(s) the coolant flows to?
It allows the refrigerator to run two different zones in terms of humidity. Evidently, it really does keep fruits and vegetables lasting longer.
Different humidities and it makes a big difference. Also less stress on each component and they have very long warranty’s so if they break it’s on them.
There is a better way... and stop calling me Shirley.
[dead]
Wonder if you could stop this with Pihole?
I had to go to contortions with a tv from Samsung, but did manage to force all port 53 traffic to go via Pihole.
I believe this method may have been broken by Samsung/Google et al somehow though?
Not sure if that still even a thing but I remember reading here about plans of companies to include SIM module so "smart" devices could connect to the Internet without need for home network access. That would of course bypass solutions like Pi-hole
The world’s largest advertising company pushed DoH to get around pi holes.
Stopped buying Samsung phone because I couldn't disable some stupid assistant button with ai subscription on the last one. I'm really sad because Samsung was always a good brand to me
There IS a market for non-internet-connected devices:
- fridges - toasters - TVs - home appliances - what-have-you
Whoever makes those, take my $€£¥
For everything else, there are crappier alternatives from all the consumer electronics OEMs
Samsung SSDs I remember, do they still make good ones? I won’t buy the washer and dryer from them again, and probably not the dishwasher even though for the price it has been good.
Recently saw this clip about a public bathroom where the toilet paper dispenser had a screen on it/qr code you had to scan, watch an ad to get the TP... interesting if true.
You know, ads printed on toilet paper would be entertaining.
SO glad that I avoided buying that nice looking Samsung fridge.
The headline is so insane. I’m not very interested in Samsung in general, because I use apple products and they don’t offer Dolby Vision on their TV’s, but the headline lol.
Why on earth does a fridge have a screen in the first place?
To change settings, others also have a camera inside the fridge so you can see on screen the contents without opening it.
Why don't they make part of the door with that magical see-through material my windows are made of ?
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How did we manage to figure out a less convenient interface than a door and dial?
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Obviously, this is not a change aimed at enticing customers but instead expanding revenue streams. And its obvious that all western governments hand-wringing over green and efficient energy usage falls apart as long manufacturers like Samsung, AWS, Sony are allowed to waste network bandwidth and chew up consumer and industry energy supply on superfluous pointless fluff like adverts where they are not needed or welcome. It is proof again that Advertising is really about pushing messaging at people rather than selling anything. Samsung already lost me with removing expandable storage in premium phones. Now they have reached levels of avoid that will push me to any alternative that respects the customer's usage needs.
Okay - so fridge is something that you buy, you put it on 3 degrees Celsius and you forget about it for the next 12 years. What exactly smartness gives?
Why would I ever connect my fridge to the internet? I cannot fathom any feature on a fridge that would incline me towards giving it the wifi credentials.
What if your fridge could do an AI thing and the groceries to refill itself would just arrive? Could be a fantastic way to control your diet by only buying foods that satiated/goal oriented you approved (as opposed to hungry you walking down aisles of product placements in the grocery store)
Sounds like a terrible idea - I don't want my fridge to decide when and how to spend money.
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Why do you need a fridge to do that? An AI agent with access to your Instacart account could do it. If you only buy groceries with that it knows roughly how many calories it purchased and you should've consumed since the last order.
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I don't think it's worth it myself, but here are some of the features of the Samsung Bespoke fridge that use wifi:
Notifications and Alerts: If the door is left open, or the fridge temperature is leaving safe temps, or the water filter needs changing, it can send a push notification to your phone. (Useful if something fails; or if a kid/guest leaves the fridge open by mistake).
Remote control and monitoring: You can use the camera to see the contents of the fridge. You can also adjust the temperature remotely. (Useful if you're at the grocery store and can't remember if you have milk?) It looks like they also have "AI" try to categorize these for you.
Built-in tablet: The touchscreen is basically a builtin tablet. You can use it to display photos (pulled from your online albums), show the weather, or control "smart home" stuff like playing some music on your speakers. I imagine you could also try to put recipes or cooking videos on there. You can also easily order groceries from it or add to your shopping list (with your voice).
I'd rather have a separate device for most of this, but I can understand the appeal, especially if you're not privacy-conscious.
> I cannot fathom
That's probably because you're a developer, and as developers it's really easy for us to develop tunnel-vision for some reason, and really hard to see the perspective from a "regular person", the sort of person who a salesperson can say "You can now get alerted when you're low on eggs, no matter where you are!" and the person will think that's a cool feature with no drawbacks.
It got nothing to do with someone being a developer and having tunnel vision. In fact I would argue that many people that work in tech would be the most likely to sold on such a feature.
It has everything to do with being frugal and whether you see the utility. There is very little benefit in being alerted when I am low on eggs because I can simply open the fridge and look. I can also normally buy eggs anywhere, at any time of day.
There isn't really a problem that needs solving.
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How would a fridge know you are low on eggs?
At this point they start to demand it, whether that's setting up the product or registration needed for warranty protection. But you obviously can still cut them off on router.
Soon though they won't ask, LTE-M / NB-IoT, both chips and plans are becoming very cheap and unless you are living in a faraday cage it will take control away from the user completely.
I worry about the thought process of the average consumer. Who exactly is buying these? How have smart fridges not been a colossal failure?
Never bought a Samsung phone, TV or Fridge. Smart is now translating into "Ad-injection" in various appliances and I hope this backfires!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3pYZwol6Dc
Silicon Valley parodied smart fridges nearly a decade ago.
One needs to be rally dumb to buy a smart fridge
Their unbelievably poorly-designed icemakers are already a reason I'll never buy another Samsung fridge. Now this? Yikes.
Samsung does make really great ad-free computer displays... that's as much as I'm willing to buy from them.
It is kinda ridiculous to see this written "add-free computer display".
They’ve been doing this for years. The Galaxy S III (yes three) shipped with an indelible Pizza Hut bookmark.
Are there any other fridge brands up to such nonsense? About to buy one.
Guessing anything without screen is reasonably safe
"You're going to have to PI-hole your refrigerator" wasn't on my 2025 bingo card.
I actually checked the date to see if we were April first. Turns out it's pretty far away!
Previous outrages:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292666
Who will buy this? This is insane.
Who needs a smart fridge anyway? It cools, and annoys as hell when you leave it open.
Does a website exist that lists products only by companies who respect their customers?
about:blank
I disconnected the wifi from my fridge. Opened the back and unplugged it from the board
Samsung products are shipping with what feels dangerously close to malware these days
I upgraded my Samsung phone to the latest One Ui version and i've been having a frustrating time with it. Turns out months later I discovered they have changed the behaviour to work best for Right Handed users. I found a setting that allowed me to flip that and now i'm able to use my phone again.
I got smart appliances not a single one is connected to the internet and never will.
Can’t wait until I get those Lightspeed briefs adverts transmitted into my sleep.
The backlash from this doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet so here we go!
Smart fridge. Get a life.
Every frog will be boiled. Remember this when you argue “oh but it will still be possible to sideload via adb” “oh but you can turn it off” “oh but you only need it on the first run” “at least they don’t…”
You won’t be able to. It will be mandatory. They will do it. If you give these companies an inch, they’ll take a mile.
The moment they don’t actively work entirely aligned with your interests, they work against you.
In my opinion it is plain fraud: intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly.
Way to punish your customers for paying you more.
I know it's a trope, but this is the absolute textbook definition of enshittification.
FYI: Out of curiosity, just googled it
"No, Samsung fridges do not run on webOS; they use Samsung's own Tizen operating system. LG is the brand that uses webOS in its smart refrigerators. "
Where is Gilfoyle when we need him so much?
Your smart appliances are my opportunity
The idea of paying for a $2k fridge that has a $30* android board running a large screen is just absurd to me. Not only was this kind of enshittification almost a given, but we all know how well manufacturers update devices like this. Security issues aside, you just know that the software is going to slowly rot (Think: Widget to show tweets before Twitter closed the API down).
If you feel so inclined to have a touch screen on your fridge then you'd be better off getting some random tablet and sticking it to the fridge.
I _love_ my home automation/smart house devices but I wouldn't touch one of these with a 10ft pole.
* That might be a bit high
Zero chance I'll purchasing any household device from Samsung. Not with all the crapware and spyware they pile onto their systems. Zero chance I'd purchase a household appliance with a large screen. WTF would I want that for. More garbage annoying crap and more to go wrong. The never ending chimes about everything on our Mellie clothes dryer was annoying enough... (and oh it wants to connect to the WiFi? Good luck with that. Terrible menu UI. I'll never buy one of those again either).
I like to think in future there migh be Harry Tuttle like appliance repair vigilantes that come out and remove all this crap from home appliances. :-)
> The never ending chimes
Have you ever heard Samsung washing machine doing Franz Schubert's The Trout at the end of cycle? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TpRsLdKVAg
I had an old Samsung washing machine and it was annoying with chimes, maybe it was not Schubert or I never realized it.
I want to agree with you. But we said this about TVs and a bit later you couldn't buy a TV that wasn't giving you a "recommendations" feed or whatever.
Yes, it's just evil. I sure would not buy a Samsung TV laden with crap, I just will not do it. I run an old high-end commercial plasma display and otherwise watch video on dumb computer monitors or iPads. And yes I know, an iPad is far from a dumb device.
Richard Stallman was onto something.
I’m in the market for buying two new fridges for our new house; this post reminded me to filter out Samsung immediately. I LOATHE ads.
Honestly, stuff like this makes me want to leave my smart phone in the garage when I get home and have a single desktop linux box that is in a “computer room” hardwired and the house has no wifi or smart anything and every other screen goes into the trash.
This ad nonsense aside, don't buy Samsung refrigerators. They are so awfully made and difficult to service that almost no appliance repair companies will touch them. I got suckered into buying one a few years back and it was awful. The ice maker didn't work, every few weeks I would sop up a gallon of condensation at the bottom of the cheese drawer, and eventually it just died. I went to a local appliance store and they chuckled when I told them. They would never carry that brand. Just fridges, don't want to talk about other appliances.
I've never purchased a refrigerator in my life - every place I've lived in my adult life has been a rental where I wasn't the one picking the appliances. What happens when I'm looking for a place to live, and I find somewhere that meets my requirements, except that the landlord has this Samsung smart fridge in the kitchen - maybe they thought this was a selling point, like the landlord I had who put the fact that they had a Google Nest thermostat proudly in the apartment ad (I deliberately never gave it my WiFi password)?
As a human, I'm FUCKING TIRED OF ADS.
boycotted for life. All products.
next step is they're gonna make ad-free version with an additional monthly fee
Bound to happen eventually...
They also offer Jian Yang's "AI" fridge from the Silicon Valley comedy show:
https://www.samsung.com/us/home-appliances/refrigerators/bes...
Samsung is one of these companies that are so consistently scummy that I outright refuse to buy any of their products. They are forever blacklisted.
This is stupid. Companies are really trying to get people to hate everything tech related. From "smart" beds, to "smart" fridges, and with the "looming" job displacement due to "AI" and robotics, I could see how a "human-centric" economy or new wave of businesses and startups with a "human-centric" approach could develop in few years.
Neat, another brand I don't have to consider when purchasing appliances in the future. Saves me time at a glance!
This annoyed so much I actually wrote them a physical letter denouncing the practice and mailed it to their US corporate HQ. I haven't mailed a letter in years. Feels odd.
Next up is the update that makes the refrigerator refuse to cool your food without an annual subscription. Oh, and the ads don't go away.
Iirc, Chris Whittle proposed this idea of refrigerator advertising in the 1980s. Seemed dystopian then. Ugh.
Enshitfication at its best.
Nope nope nope
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A lot of outrage in HN comments, but it's kinda ironic, because if you had to point at the single biggest concentration of people who built out surveillance capitalism and other facets of our digital dystopian future...
Maybe the people complaining are the ones whose employers don't even sell out people with third-party trackers on their Web site. But I see more than 3 people complaining.
Everyone here seems to hate on the idea of seeing ads on an appliance you purchased. I hate ads too!
But, let's consider the counterfactual. What if Samsung offered you a new fridge for free, as long as you were ok with passive ads?
I hate ads, but I'm not sure I would pass up a free fridge...those things are expensive!
(this is not even that unrealistic. Let's say you have a household of 3 and a fridge lasts 10 years. Meta makes about $200 per year per user solely from showing ads; that's $6000 over 10 years. If Samsung got as good as Meta is (which they likely won't), 6k is more than enough to cover the cost of giving a fridge away for free)
Are they going to lock the fridge for 30 seconds each time you want to open it so that they make sure you finish watching the ad?
Did they do it?
Did we get free TVs, free cars and free phones?
> What if Samsung offered you a new fridge for free, as long as you were ok with passive ads?
I'd still buy a normal fridge from a different vendor. There's absolutely no reason why fridge needs a display screen nor any "smart" features. And no ad deal would convince me because next thing that would come after this would be the obvious "watch ads to unlock the fridge".
Household appliances are meant to work for years - sure, now lifespan is way shorter than used to be but these aren't phones we're replacing every 3 years or so. The fridge we once had lasted 25 up until cooling unit failed and there was no way to replace it or fix.
I hope you rolled some really low bait here because if you really think like that then... I sincerely feel sorry for you.
So a digital calendar with ads seems reasonable. What they don't mention is how much work they plan on putting into the maintenance. A $3k fridge should last decades, including the screen, software, and WiFi connection.
Last decades? wipes the tear You surely forgot /s at end, I hope. The evil incarnation what is called "Samsung fridge" that I have in my kitchen required repairman's attention just 3 months after the purchase. And then every 3 months after. And children sacrifices, sorry - steam baths, for the ice maker every month or so.
Samsung appliances - never again.
PS. Repairman told me that Samsung have fixed already one of the problems my fridge has by the time he looked at it, kind of hidden recall and fix. Fridge's version (yes, they have versions) have advanced like 7 iterations already from the time I bought it. That means there were at least 7 serious design/manufacturing problems that they had to fix.
I mean.. that's based on the assumption that they actually care about delivering a working appliance.. As long as the spyware works, they don't really care about the "cooling food" part..
Apparently, you can turn off ads quite simply.
* How to turn off ads on your Family Hub The widget will appear by default on the fridges as part of the software update. However, Samsung is giving users the option to turn off ads. To do this, go to the Settings page on the fridge, scroll to Advertisements, select it, and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can toggle off ads.
This will remove the widget entirely. If you think you might actually like the widget’s other features (calendar, weather, and news), you can “X” out a particular ad, and it won’t pop up again. But then you’ll get another ad.
That button will soon become "Show fewer ads" if it doesn't just get removed at all.
Just like how Youtube won't let you switch off Shorts, but will let you click "Show fewer" which lasts for a few weeks.
Samsung marketplace on the phone used to have this- now it's just 'don't show this again today' button.
I wonder how many ads are coming down the pipeline; can I remove all of them if I sit in front of my fridge for 15 minutes?
Cmon. You know better than that.
The simplest way is to not connect a refrigerator to the internet.
For now.
I would call that flow "complex." So, I disagree with you.
Simple would be for the "X" button to offer to turn off Ads completely, do you disagree?
(Disclaimer: I'm a pro / lifelong tech and both are "simple" to me. And to clarify my opinion, my Mom, who is a pro musician, would NOT discover / know how to find that option.)