- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Some Samsung smart fridges stopped working on Tuesday due to a firmware update.
Korean outlets were the first to report the problems, which affect Samsung’s Bespoke AI line of fridges. Star News Korea, per a Google-provided translation, said that most of the affected devices were four-door fridges from 2024 or later.
The problem would be solved by not buying a fridge that needs a goddamn firmware update to operate. Just buy a regular, standard fridge. the kind we’ve used for 70+ years. All that smart shit doesnt make your food colder, or last longer, all it is, is cheap slop garbage shoved into a device to turn a 200 dollar device into a 2200 dollar device at little extra cost to the maker.
IMHO, people who buy smart fridges from Samsung deserve this shit.
It’s extremelly hard to get a TV which isn’t smart nowadays, but that’s not the case (yet) for fridges.
yep.
Samsung has got to be the worst, most piece of shit manufacturer of appliances.
Literally ever. single. person. I know that has foolishly bought a samsung appliance, has gone on to very loudly regret it. The worst story I know, is someone who bought a samsung dishwasher and had to have a repair guy out at least once a month to fix whatever fresh hell was wrong with it, on samsungs dime thanks to warranty, before samsung said fuck it and just refunded them because it was cheaper than having what was almost a 24 hour on call service man for their house.
Samsung made their name on phones, and people assumed everything else would be just as good (when in fact even their phones are kinda shit now)
I have a Samsung tablet which I bought years ago. It’s was full of unremovable useless software and after a maybe 4 year of updates it was unusable because each version just took more and more space to the point that eventually it would fit maybe 2 or 3 applications on top of what came with it and nothing more.
To give it new life I had to install a non-official version of LineageOS compile by some random guy which has problems and will even crash once in a while, and even then it’s better than using the original Samsung version of Android in it.
More recent Samsung tablets and phones can’t even be bootloader unlocked to install an alternative to the Android they ship.
I’m not interest in from companies whose products are are activelly managed to force customers to buy replacements for perfectly good hardware.
I think there’s gonna be a renaissance of manufacturers who can charge a slight premium for slightly updated 1950s designs. modern materials, like modern cfc alternatives, but built rock solid, -it just works- tech. knobs. switches.
I’ve been hoping for the same for 20 years and smart bullshit just gets dumber and more plentiful every year.
its not exactly easy to spin up a factory making deshitified good… and things like fridges and stoves are not exactly something someone can make artisanally in their garage.
I’d like to believe that, but I can’t see it happening.
Of course, there is a tractor company in Alberta, Canada that is making old school tractors without all the bells and whistles, and selling them for a fraction of what John Deere charges.
So maybe…
that appeals to farmers who wont have to send their tracter 400 miles away to the nearest service center to get it fixed because they arent allowed to work on their own equipment anymore thanks to john deeres invasive DRM.
I can dream lol.
slate truck too.
That is no excuse for the manufacturer not being on the hook for selling garbage, it pushes the work of QA to the consumer.
Only very large fines will end this endless streak of shit appliances. The only silver lining is that these products are targeted at people with more money to sue them.
Mind you, even relatively simple fridges can technically have firmware because these days the cheapest way to implement something like a defrost timer is with a microcontroller. Of course that firmware is so simple that it doesn’t need updates and definitely doesn’t need to be connected to the internet.
Other than that I don’t really see what a smart fridge can do that you can’t cover by sticking a cheap tablet on the fridge door. Sure, maybe a smart fridge can order butter from Amazon when it thinks that yours runs out but you can do the same with your phone and “buy it again” in seconds. Assuming that you even want to buy your groceries from an e-retailer.
It’s definitely a pointless price inflation device that makes the fridge less reliable to boot.
I’m honestly surprised that a smart fridge wasn’t basically that. That seems like the kind of lazy shortcut you’d expect to see, rather than everything being run off the one computer.