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.
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Don’t connect your fridge to the internet. Just don’t.
Right? Just because a networked version exists, doesn’t make it a good idea.
But how else will it get important updates that protect it from the latest online threats?
But how else am I going to get on that sweet sweet subscription service for keeping my food cold?
Temperatures below 35F require Chilly-Tier pro or higher
Don’t buy appliances with network capability at all.
Don’t buy a fridge that can, because eventually it will probably connect even if you don’t do it yourself via an open WiFi network or Amazon sidewalk or some shit.
I agree, we don’t need smart fridges, we need dumb fridges
And don’t buy fridges and other appliances from big techs. Period. Get them from industries specialized on that, who have been manufacturing appliances for a long time, like people did all this time
In some countries, the biggest appliance makers got into tech or bought by them, so there’s not a huge amount of choice there. I’m not sure about SK in particular. Thankfully, dumb fridges are still a thing here in Japan, but I don’t know how long that will last given how many of the major brands are also high-tech companies (Panasonic, Sharp, etc.)
Better yet, buy them used on the second-hand market.
I can’t imagine spending more than, say, $60 on a fridge. If you’ve got time to wait and look for good deals, you can often even find working ones (or easily repairable ones) for free.
Also, don’t get Samsung appliances. They’ve always been utter trash. Washers, dryers, fridges, and dishwashers all suck.
I have a Samsung refrigerator that wants to connect to the Internet. Of course I don’t allow that.
…a smart fridge should be smart enough to still act like a fridge when its confused
we need to start tearing out the garbage. smart appliances aren’t smart, they’re extractive enshittification.
I mean, don’t put it on the network. Now it is dumb again. Mostly. Probably not, ok fine, so just don’t buy one with that shit in it.
my friend lives in rural vermont without internet access (he can get cell phone access at the base of the hill he lives on, but not much else) - and his samsung tv keeps telling him to agree to the terms and services, and the only way to do so is for it to be online. 2-3 times a day an overlay appears and prompts him to sign in to his samsung account and agree lol. he’s so frustrated he wants to return the tv.
even without the network being present, enshittification is all around us
Yeah this is a matter of making it fail safe. A refrigerator that isn’t operating at food preservation temperatures (and freezing temperatures in the freezer) is dangerous.
Appliances related to safety such as refrigerators and temperature control need to have a safe position they can fail to when their logic is confused.
It is fun for me… I am a crazy fool developper and most real software professionals tell me I am dumb to think that a mistake should lead to something else than an error that kills the program (and wait for user’s restart).
So, yes, I agree with you, out it won’t happen as long as makers trust deprivating software makers (those who make softwares no one else may modify).
“Owners” lol
Subscription to run a refrigerator 💀💀💀💀
deleted by creator
“WE OWN THE FRIDGE” - some data gathering company probably
Too obvious, we need to workshop that. How about “We own the ICE”. Also someone needs to implement the “partnered groceries” program so people stop pirating cold air. I am sick of people side loading food. Third party and homebrew food is a huge security risk after all.
in case you’re not aware, LG employees literally said “we own the glass” about the TVs and spying on what people were playing on it
I kind of want to buy one know and start sending invoices for storage of their equipment.
rather than mourn, are they going after Samsung to replace said food? When I worked best buy our warranty covered food spoilage up to 2 years I believe (if it was the fridge/freezer’s fault, not just a random power outage or something). I’d expect Samsung to do the same.
The usefulness of a smart fridge always seemed dubious to me, but why the hell is the refrigeration part managed by the smart part? It’s literally just a pump.
If the fridge operation depends on a simple thermostat and compressor, then it’s more reliable and can be repaired with lamp wire and a soldering iron if it does break. Samsung would rather have a system depending on a control board they build for $3 and sell you for $600 when it breaks.
They change the firmware and connectors every year or two to make sure no one can build a universal replacement
Yup. We used to have a fridge built in the early 80s (possibly late 70s) that lasted until 2015. Ugly ass harvest gold color and everything. Ran it continuously. Had to have it repaired maybe twice in all that time. We moved out and left it behind; for all I know it’s still going (though probably not because it was truly an eyesore).
The point is that a well built refrigerator can last decades, same as other major appliances like washing machines and dryers. No computerization necessary at all. Our fridge was not the most energy efficient by the end, obviously, but apart from that . . . why not build them to last?
Greed. Just overwhelming, all-consuming corporate greed.
Because how else will they enshittify it?
Having a camera to check the inside when you are at the shop to remember something you forgot it’s nice but I wouldn’t trade that for enshitification when it can be achieved with a RPI.
A thermostat, a compressor and two heat exchangers.
We solved this problem decades ago.
Had a freezer fixed on warranty recently. What needed replacing? An electric heater. Yes the freezer has a heater in it!
(It’s for the anti frost feature.)
Yea, actually quite important: need to make sure the cooling element doesn’t get covered in ice, which tanks performance.
It’s a fridge. It doesn’t even need an 8 bit microcontroller from the 1970s.
My washing machine keeps asking to be connected to the WiFi. 2 years I’ve been ignoring it, which has been very convenient. I think it just wants to watch porn.
So that’s what it means when it asks for a full load…
Plus it keeps collecting socks. Pervert.
Your fault for putting socks and panties in the same load…
I caught my mother’s dehumidifier connecting to WiFi to watch porn. The damn thing was actually dripping wet.
Was it a dehumidifier by marriage? A step dehumidifier is quite the thing apparently.
GideonD
No, but it sits right next to a washing machine. I’m surprised it wasn’t stuck inside with its bottom sticking out.
Sock puppet porn.
That’s where they’re disappearing to!
Imagine if you could make it watch advertising for your earnings… But yes, it would need the softwares belong to you, rather than to the washing machine’s maker…
There are apps which basically do that.
it does, for massive user convenience. however, the more you add, the less convenience is gained from each addition, sort of like a law of diminishing returns-type thing.
What convenience? You open the door, a light goes on, it is cold or freezing cold inside depending on the door.
The end.
My parent’s McClary fridge from the 1960s still runs on the original refrigerant.
Don’t tell me about energy efficiency when
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We are awash in renewable electricity
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Building new fridges every five years filled with e-waste running garbage software requiring a networking infrastructure on top of it surely used a few joules as well.
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It’s not in a landfill.
I can’t wait for the global energy crash, maybe we’ll be calmer and wiser when gas is 100$/liter.
for one, beeping after you leave the door open for 30 seconds. considering the longevity of a fridge, adding a microcontroller that does that is more environmentally friendly.
I think you don’t need microcontroller for that?
Microcontrollers are cheaper then analog clocks
Yes they are, but that wasn’t the point.
i think you do, for the counting and beeping.
No I don’t. I can use common door switch and a time relay for that, which triggers buzzer. It cost a lot more than microcontroller, but you can do it.
and why’d you do that when you can save money and get a microcontroller instead?
beeping after you leave the door open for a few minutes, also electricity is over a quarter a kilowatt hour some places.
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Might I inquire as to what the convenience would be?
Digital display for thermostat/thermometer is nice.
Party Mode is convenient when adding large amounts of beverages (or leftovers) as it temporarily changes the compressor setpoint/cycle for a couple of hours in expectation of heavy usage.
Night mode / vacation mode can similarly change the compressor working profile to be either more quiet or energy efficient at times when it’s not expecting the door to open for extended periods of time.
None of these are essential features of a fridge, but they can be convenient.
all that is regulated by a simple thermostat, since the 1960s.
more quiet or energy efficient at times when it’s not expecting the door to open for extended periods of time
This happens at night anyway, and the thermostat controlling the compressor only works when required. You think analog fridges just run constantly?
Consumers have a screen and fake tech fetish.
Some things off the top of my head are:
- you could set the temperature to a number of degrees via a numerical display, which would be much harder to implement without a microcontroller.
- maybe you could have PID control over the compressor rather than bang-bang control, so the temperature would be more stable.
- these days, a bimetallic strip costs more than a microcontroller and a chip thermometer, despite the chip being much more accurate.
All of this only requires a really dumb microcontroller, though, not one with networking. I don’t see how that could be useful until your fridge could magically track what it contains so you could ask it if you needed to buy stuff while you were shopping. I don’t think we have the technology for that yet.
I think we probably do have the tech to track what’s in the fridge but we’d need a camera and some kind of ai watching it always…
Image recognition will be able to figure out the obvious items, and hopefully the expiration dates, too, but it’s not going to be able to figure out that opaque containers are nearly empty or identify leftovers in tupperware. It’s also probably going to be unable to identify when loose produce is past its best unless it’s extremely rotten.
beeping after the fridge hasn’t been closed for a while, or controlling the temperature, or turn on the lights when the door is open.
Yeah that can moatly be done without one. The beeping maybe not but the temp and lights can be done completely analog. Our old fridge literally had a push switch that turned off the light when closed (20yr old fridge)
My washer/dryer is “smart” and there’s no convenience there at all, honestly. It argues with me, it sits and flashes suggestions freezing the entire interface, it decides to just not do things at times. It’s hella annoying.
It can use a 32 bit microcontroller, like mine does, but it only has some pretty basic functionality like setting temperature and shutting down the fans if door opened. Anything beyond that is just overengineering.
A fridge doesn’t need AI. Or a firmware.
Or a firmware.
So are we moving back to bi-metallic thermostats?
Remember when there was just a little dial in the top of the fridge, that you turn, from “cold” to “colder”? Yeah. That’s really all that’s required. Fancier fridges had more than one dial, that controlled individual compartments, like your crisper drawers.
I’m pretty sure technology connections has spent an hour explaining why that’s sub-optimal while also explaining the refrigerant cycle for the 10th time.
There’s plenty of middle ground. We had integrated circuits embedded in circuit boards for a long time before re-programmable chips started appearing, and those ones certainly didn’t connect to the Internet and brick themselves.
PICs are cheaper than discrete ICs, even if they’re programmed only once and shipped. This is why you’ll see mainboards with un-populated sections - the processor has a software build that either excludes the un-populated parts or is designed to detect and ignore them. A discrete IC would need far more engineering to be able to selectively ignore, or each model would need it’s own discrete IC.
If by discrete ICs you mean custom logic baked into silicon, yes that’s always been expensive. I was referring to off-the-shelf ICs that cost pennies, which used to be orders of magnitude cheaper even than PICs (in the days before Internet connected fridges).
Before the term software engineer was commonplace, electronic engineers used design circuits around off-the-shelf components, like the venerable TI 555 timer or op-amps, and design a circuit around them. To do it they’d need the datasheets (https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm555.pdf). Hobbyists and aspiring young engineers would buy books like this: (https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/14021/IC-555-Projects/), which were like O’Reilly cookbooks for electronics circuits. The equipment to program a PIC used to be way beyond the reach of hobbyists, and wasn’t necessary for manufacturers producing simple control circuits. If you look at circuitboards from that time you’ll see some ICs with pins that aren’t connected to anything because those just weren’t needed for the circuit, much like you describe the empty sockets in modern boards.
It absolutely was possible in the pre-Internet days to design a fully functional fridge, and more, without writing code of any kind, and it was cheap too.
Imagin not understanding material science and thinking it’s a sort of slam dunk.
Why not? I’m sure we can easily make good ones at this point.
Don’t buy a smart fridge, simple as.
Sadly I can see a future where the non-smart option will no longer be available. Or very limited in choice for the consumer.
It’s already the case with TVs. The next logical step is to make it so it will refuse to work unless you connect it to the internet to “activate” it or even worse have it connect to the cellular network to be always on-line whether the owner of the device is aware of it or not. The vast majority of the consumers are still completely ignorant about this and buy this crap.
Fortunately appliances seem to still offer plenty of “non smart” options for now. But who knows what it will be in 10 years?
With tvs, The smart part has some use for most people. They want to connect to the internet and see their shows and movies. The data stealing, obsolescence, etc are things that most people fail to notice when buying, because they don’t have much knowledge on it. But smart fridges? They simply offer no benefit at all, and with a higher price. I find it very unlikely that they will become the norm on a global scale.
I feel like the difference is that basically everyone who is non-techy wants a smart TV, but practically nobody wants a smart fridge or toaster.
This.
An appliance should turn on when I turn it on, turn off when I turn it off, do the task I instruct it to when I instruct it to, and do nothing that I do not instruct it to. Its status should be clearly indicated to the user with a few LEDs, or a numerical display if needed. Its behavior should be entirely predictable at all times, until eventual mechanical failure due to wear.
If an appliance design fails any of these checks, it is a bad design.
If any function of the appliance is dependent on a network connection, it fails the checks because:
- it will do things that I did not instruct it to
- it might fail to do things that I instruct it to
- it might not fully turn off even though I’ve pushed the power button
- it might not fully turn on if it can’t find a network connection
- its status may be shown on a garbage-quality failure-prone LCD, in a UI designed by a CS intern with 3 months of classroom experience in Java (or worse, an LLM)
- it may behave unpredictably due to bad software design by said intern, and will typically be exposed by poorly designed network security, leading to behaviors controlled by malicious third parties
- it will fail early, if not because of the shoddy bottom-of-the-barrel electronics, then because the manufacturer decided they weren’t going to support the companion app anymore (6 months post-purchase) so fuck you, buy our new product that doesn’t actually have a complete companion app yet! (the intern is still working on it)
Don’t buy “smart” appliances. Ever.
At some point it will be impossible to buy one that isn’t.
This is why we shouldn’t buy them now. If they don’t sell well, they will follow a similar fate of 3D TVs.
I think a big difference is that many people (in the US, at least) don’t choose their own fridge. Renters often have the fridge included with the home. There’s far fewer people who could reasonably inflict such a boycott.
Landlords will be the last ones to buy premium appliances. Your average apartments are always gonna have the workhorse basic Frigidaire and Whirlpool type appliances.
Speaking of renters I’m looking at my whirlpool washer/dryer. Old ass dishwasher, stove, and fridge. Nothing smart and all knobs. The dryer is the newest because our old Kenmore finally died a couple of years ago, but all of the controls are mechanical.
Oh, man… That would be such a nightmare, moving into a new apartment and finding it full of smart appliances you’re not allowed to replace…
If there will be a sufficient request, someone will built them.
Surely there’ll be independent services for smart device lobotomy coming.
Time for me to get on my Samsung soapbox, and it is for an entirely different reason but very relevant for why you shouldn’t buy a Samsung appliance!
Never. I repeat NEVER, buy a Samsung home appliance. For this reason ONLY. Especially when it comes to food preservation… or simply keeping food cold.
Here is the thing. Samsung will not let approved service repair companies stock parts. I repeat, WILL NOT LET APPROVED SERVICE REPAIR COMPANIES STOCK PARTS. So if you buy a Samsung refrigerator through Home Depot… and it breaks under warranty… you will get an apologetic service technician that will confirm that your appliance is broken.
Great!… I already knew that. That’s why all of my perishables are starting to smell funny. The service person feels bad for you but they don’t have the part to fix your appliance. They can order the part within 24 hours and be back this time tomorrow. Did you already have to take the day off work for the 6 hour service window???
Well this is all super annoying especially if you bought the EXTRA large capacity refrigerator and freezer… that NO ONE has enough coolers and ice to preserve…
Okay, so the service person orders the part and, dang… that wasn’t the problem!
Weird, Okay so NOW the service person will order the more expensive part that is actually the problem. All of the ice in the cooler has melted. All of your cooler food has spoiled.
The refrigerator THREE DAYS LATER is now fixed. F#*k Samsung appliances. And this is the annoying part about all their 5 star reviews. Yeah they look nice when you give them their stars but their reliability is GARBAGE!!!
If an “appliance company” will not let service people stock parts… for the love of god DON’T BUY IT.
Lastly… Samsung ice makers ARE THE WORST!!! You will only have REGRETS. REALLY!!!
Ok but was it still able to serve ads??
Of course. Its main function never stopped working
show this to someone frm the 1950s
One day, transistors will cause this:
And here I am using the same fridge that’s been going since before the end of the Cold War.
Old fridges do last longer, but from what I understand they use significantly more energy to run.
That’s for defrost
Newer condensers and DC motors are more efficient.
Half of my homes appliances are from the 70s/80s, and a handful are modern. Can u guess which ones are breaking? Fuck I will NEVER get rid of my cooktop and oven they are older than me and will likely outlive me still !
I’ve got a Samsung fridge. Don’t be me.
To use the buttons inside the fridge (for temp control, etc), you have to push the “unlock keys” button for 3 seconds. This isn’t a nuclear missile launcher, it’s a fridge. Idiots.
To clean the bottom shelves, you have to uninstall them… this is an absurdly difficult task. I had to look up how to do so online. It’s infuriating. It’s a shelf.
The ice maker has one vulnerability; ice. If the fridge temperature is too cold (under 38f) the ice machine doesn’t work.
Fortunately, I didn’t connect it to network. I hate it.
To use the buttons inside the fridge (for temp control, etc), you have to push the “unlock keys” button for 3 seconds. This isn’t a nuclear missile launcher, it’s a fridge. Idiots.
You’d appreciate that if you had dumb kids who enjoy nothing more than pushing buttons just to hear them beep. (And then you come back and wonder why your freezer is set at 60F and your fridge is set at -20F…) In theory, any kid smart enough to figure out the ‘unlock keys’ button should also be smart enough that you can instruct them to not fuck with the fridge controls.
