My Samsung TV keeps blocking around 20% of the display at random times to tell me their terms and conditions have changed. Of course I have the option of checking it by reading the whole thing on my TV and then running a diff to see what’s changed but I don’t have an option to opt out of the terms.
It’s way too frequent and runs at random times in the middle of a movie so I always choose Accept.
Samsung is truly the worst of all big tech companies. All their first party apps contain ads. They kill hard fuses if you want to change things, and meanwhile bundle the devices of a large segment of the costumer base with first party Israeli spyware with full system and background install access.
I bought a Samsung watch once, had to reverse it to enable functionality that was advertised a year before but never delivered. It died because the watch decided to suck in water during a reboot while swimming, they quoted me almost the full price to repair it, even though it was clearly a software bug that caused another advertised feature (namely it's ipx rating) to fail.
And while I also wouldn't give Xiaomi iot devices on the network full internet access, at least I can use those things normally.
Besides the fact that Xiaomi devices are completely untrustworthy, they are usually great pieces of hardware. I bought a Xiaomi vacuum years ago. Everything was in Chinese and I had to watch a youtube video to figure out how to set it up. Besides that, the whole unboxing and setup experience felt like an Apple product. That vacuum was light years ahead of the iRobot it replaced. Incredible product and cheaper than just about everything else available at the time. That's when I realized American tech was toast.
I agree with you 100% about Samsung. They make nice hardware, but the software experience is among the worst in the industry. I don't know how they can be considered a premium product. I would never use one of their phones again. Straight up adware. I'm surprised they don't inject ads into the photos you take. They have ads everywhere else - even in the phone dialing app. Their TV's are still good as long as you don't connect them to the internet. Once they start putting LTE radios in them to download ads without wifi, I will be done with those too.
Out of the cheap phones I bought over the years, Xiaomi was the only manufacturer that didn't load up their phones with crapware backdoors. Samsung and Oppo was shiped with one of those crapware backdoors that installed apps beyond your back.
Eventually I got fed up, and started using hand-me-down iPhones for second phones.
We literally got an email at work telling us not to watch anything work related on any Samsung TVs because by default they will take screenshots of your content and send them back to Samsung for analysis unless you opt out. Absolutely bonkers.
At the risk of a smart-ass reply, I think you could say the same for almost any consumer electronics
Even if you don't suspect malfeasance / advertising / surveillance, a lot of these devices and their software are sloppily developed and highly insecure
I mean, only if the DNS server is one run by the company in question.
I own nonzero such devices that hit 8.8.8.8 as an internet access sanity check so I have to keep just that IP allowed for them and block all other traffic.
All I meant was that sometimes if you fully block a device it refuses to work, and you may need to selectively unblock just 8.8.8.8 for that device.
Obviously buying such a device is bad, but sometimes you get one for free or close to it and it's worth the hassle to not pay hundreds for a better one.
What I've done for the small handful of wifi connected devices I have is to have them connect to "internet sharing" from my laptop's wifi.
Naturally when my laptop is using its wifi to create a hotspot it isn't actually connected to the internet, so they never actually get access to the internet.
(Doesn't work if you actually want the internet, and not just wifi, related features of course)
Services like ControlD and NextDNS have built in blocklists for IoT telemetry and bullshit. I'm sure it's easy to do it with PiHole as well.
I use ControlD and it's blocking 38% of all DNS requests in my household. 8% of that is IoT telemetry. It's unbelievable how much of this bullshit is built into the products we use.
I think they may go the easier way first: with online only OOBE where you cannot access all tv features until you acknowledge and accept the "legal" stuff first.
You know, bit like Microsoft forces you to create online account after installation is done
This idea has been around since at least a decade ago. The truth is, only a fraction of customers care about ads or privacy, and only a fraction of technical people in that group are capable of doing network filtering (VLAN, MITM, DNS blocklist, whatever). The absolute numbers are so small, as long as manufacturers can extract enough value from the remaining 99% of customers, they just don't care.
I have had a lot of friends amazed by the fact that when they connect to my home Wi-Fi they stop seeing ads. Zero of them interested in implementing something similar in their home.
the other thing is that it would not be as effective as presumed because 5G cell service in residential areas in the US is spottier than people realize. A lot of us are relying on WiFi calling.
A couple years ago I thought my fridge was appropriately blocked from the intarwebs. But a router update flipped the bit on activating the default guest network (which I normally keep turned off.) So for about 6 months my fridge was getting out to the net via the guest network. I found out about it when I got a call from my ISP asking what the heck was going on. Apparently a bot net had found my fridge and was doing all manner of bad things.
Moral of the story is... always double check your router settings to make sure enshittified iot devices aren't making you look like a newb.
Sounds weird, why would you give your fridge your wifi password in the first place?
Well the real question is why would you buy a connected fridge in the first place. Not that I visit fridges alleys in stores on a regular basis but I have never actually seen one.
> Well the real question is why would you buy a connected fridge in the first place.
It’s getting so you don’t have a real choice. You can buy a fridge (or any appliance pretty much) that is basic and doesn’t do the connected thing. But often you want the upscaled models because of real hardware features that are desirable. And these are always bundled with the “connectivity” options. It used to be you just ignored these bits. But they’re getting more and more invasive.
I don't know about "live without", but automatic defroster, crisper drawer, ice maker, water dispenser, alarm when the door isn't closed. being divided such that my food choices fit easily into the fridge (some people want to put a large wide pizza box directly into their fridge), power consumption.I dunno if you'd call looks a hardware feature, but it has to match the rest of the kitchen decor. The TV in the door isn't something I want at all though.
I may an idiot and haven't been in the market for new appliances for a while, but between an ice maker and a door alarm, how could you possibly require Internet acccess? Does it offer an app on your phone to operate the ice maker when you're not home?
travisgriggs said refrigerator manufacturers limited desired hardware features to models which had undesired network features. This was the last comment which mentioned network features.
delaminator asked what hardware features could not be lived without.
probably the ice maker or something. I bought new appliances a few months ago, and I made sure none of them had WiFi. I even paid £50 more for the washing machine that didn't have an app.
Are there evidence it is really happening? Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood? My neighbors aren't tech savy yet they use the wifi configured provided with the router which has a passphrase. I believe even in McDonalds you get the wifi password only upon purchase in the receipt. Most open networks I still encounter are in big stores such as IKEA or airports and you still have to register to connect. I doubt the signal woukd reach even the closest houses anyway.
> Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood?
Some neighborhoods are mixed use. Some residences are in dense buildings. Some people configured guest networks with no password. Some ISPs made their home gateways captive portal access points.
I'm still using my Samsung dumb TV from circa 2008. paired with ancient Chromecast. No way I'm going to buy a smart TV as long as this combination keeps working. No ads, and things mostly just work, and it cost me next to nothing.
Even a smart TV is dumb enough if you use it as HDMI out for your actual streaming device (Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, whatever) and never connect it to the internet. There were rumors about smart TVs connecting to unsecured wifi networks a few years ago, but I don't remember any verified cases or TVs.
This is the way. Allowing appliances to connect to the internet, when it's not necessary, is insecure.
At least with a single-purpose device, you know you're not at the mercy of some minimally-funded, likely-outsourced software team inside a hardware manufacturer.
I bought the 2025 Samsung smart TV that RTINGS recommended as the best OLED and connected it once at first setup to download updates. Then I blocked it in the router and disconnected it in the TV menu and it’s been smooth sailing. Everything goes through my Apple TV and there’s no ads and it just works.
The best Smart TV is the one that is just 24/24 HDMI connected to your old Linux laptop with a GUI tweaked to act as a Smart TV with an air mouse as remote.
When I upgraded my desktop, I only needed to pickup a case and a few extra parts to have enough for a functional home theater PC. Running standard Fedora Workstation, controlled with Logitech K400+.
I stubbornly refuse to ever connect my TV to the internet.
Same!!!
I do every so often connect it to update it if a newer firmware is actually worth it…
The extra upside to not accepting the terms is that none of the samsung bloatware apps even start - the TV runs much faster than just with the wifi disconnected.
It doesnt matter if you do or dont, those things are worthless in court in any reasonable country. They frequently want their users to agree to illegal things.
This is ultimately what we did in my house for every Samsung TV.
Their smart TV stuff used to be marginally interesting. When Samsung TV Plus launched it was fantastic. They weren’t yet sure of how to handle ads so even the ad space was still nice, and marginally useful.
As they figured out the ad strategy, apps started disappearing and new ones appeared that couldn’t be uninstalled.
Then the OS updates started cratering performance. I have a Samsung smart TV from after 2020 that takes about 4 seconds to register a single remote control command in the smart TV GUI.
Unless you have root and can do anything the hardware is capable of, it's not your device. And you shouldn't let any sort of non-owned devices on your network.
Why? Cause devices controlled by other orgs are a foothold situation. And we've had countless attacks of footholds being used as internal points of attack, DDoS, and other attacks.
That also means that all your "cloud devices" should be able to work 100% offline. If not, return them as defective.
I have a Samsung smart TV it's never seen the internet, I just didn't let it connect - it's a display for a box running Fedora, that is its entire job to be dumb and display whatever is sent down the wire.
Devices that do need to be on the internet but I can foresee no reason they ever need to talk to anything else on the network go on their own VLAN (down to the level of my VR headset since it had a Meta logo on the box...).
My boys gaming PC can't even see my desktop (since there isn't a scenario where it needs to).
Other than the "smart" TV I own nothing "Smart" because I don't want anything smart.
Hunh. This reminds me... I have a copy of ghidra and a bunch of JTAG adaptors. I bet I could suck the firmware out of my old model Visio TV. I already unsoldered the microphone from the motherboard.
Apple TV is much better about this. I have never had it pop up or interrupt me. When it is idle it just goes to a pleasant screen saver and then powers off after a while. It doesn’t try and promote content or display ads for shows. Granted, that could change at any time, but right now I think it is better than all the alternatives.
It is better, but I hated how some time ago they started showing trailers at the start of a show, with no option to turn this off. It’s a small thing but it’s super annoying, if I want to check out what’s new I will do it myself, thank you very much.
Ultimately the choice of platform is about trust rather than capability. Apple has been a much better citizen historically than any of the smart TV companies.
Those other smart TV companies write shit software that performs terribly on bad hardware and may have ads - YMMV but that's not really "worse" than Apple's anti-steering clauses concealing massive fees on ATV apps like Plex or ESPN and causing half the western world to revise their competition laws to outlaw many of their practices. It's just bad for different reasons.
I'm not an Apple fan, but if someone wants a 'smart TV' (access to streaming services, etc) and doesn't want to go the Linux-box-connected-to-Jellyfin route, then Apple really is just the best option.
In my experience, they've been fine for a few years so far.
That's where I ended up; I was running a linux box with Kodi for a while, but that was a subpar experience for connecting to commercial streaming services (I never was able to figure out how to get Kodi to launch firefox on the site's URL, which would have been Just Fine for us).
I've got some bad news for you, Walmart acquired Vizio two years ago:
"This acquisition is not merely about expanding Walmart's product lineup but rather part of a sophisticated commercial strategy to integrate its retail operations, owned media channels and TV hardware into a cohesive ecosystem. This ecosystem is designed to generate and share data, influence shopping behavior and, ultimately, drive sales through an innovative approach to advertising..."
"...By owning a television manufacturer, Walmart can now directly serve and, crucially, measure the impact of ads on consumer behavior. This capability significantly enhances Walmart's potential to convert advertisements into retail purchases."
Only saving grace I have is that I bought my P659-G1 in 2019. While it doesn't prevent bad updates, it's a little less likely they pushed deep changes to old models.
And I can't believe it's been over 6 years since I had already eliminated Samsung for their ad behavior, and not only have they not changed, they've doubled-down.
I use my TV as a monitor and this still happens. When you don't accept it just gets more aggressive. I'm pretty sure there's a "bug"[0] that ends up slowing the TV down because it keeps that process going.
I'm pretty confident you can't agree to a contract if you can't opt out. I don't want new features and I'm fine if everything stays the same. And no, please do not adjust the image settings again... I didn't want the AI frame interpolation then and I don't want it now
[0] with Samsung engineers I don't believe they've tested anything and just assumed the user would accept it instead of deny it 20 times. It'll also get less buggy when I do a reboot, so I'm pretty sure it's a memory leak
We are talking about a company where if I press the exit button there's a 50% chance I get the menu or not. It's literally a random result. If I'm in, say, Netflix, press exit, I'll turn to my computer screen and half the time the Samsung menu will open and half the time it won't.
Also starting the TV will flash my desktop and then go "ops, no signal" and I have to just keep restarting the TV and switching inputs (not touching the hdmi cable btw) until it works. And no, my desktop doesn't sleep and yes this issue is the reason why.
So I am 100% sure it's not conspiratorial, I'm 100% sure they just suck at their job. I'm sure the fridge will be great...
"Samsung Family Hub™ for 2025 Update Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem
The software update includes a more unified user experience across connected devices, enhancements to AI Vision Inside™, expanded Knox Security and more"
In plain English now, Samgung will put advertising on your face but mostly important is that they will know and sell the data about what you buy.
They call it Smart Home. Yeah, "smart". They are the smart ones, not those who buy this **.
It is in the notes, in the article, there is no tracking:
"[11] Ads on Family Hub Cover screens will serve contextual or non-personal ads. Family Hub devices are not collectiong personal information or tracking consumers."
I don't believe them, but if even they aren't lying to your face today they'll be pushing an update to add tracking tomorrow. Samsung is absolute trash and not to be trusted. They've demonstrated this so many times and in so many ways that anyone investing in "Samsung Family Hub" deserves what they get.
As part of the Family Hub™
software update, we are
piloting a new widget
for select Cover screens
themes of Family Hub™
refrigerators. The
widget will display
useful day-to-day
information such as
news, calendar and
weather forecasts, along
with curated
advertisements.[11]
> As part of the Family Hub™ software update, we are piloting a new widget for select Cover screens themes of Family Hub™ refrigerators. The widget will display useful day-to-day information such as news, calendar and weather forecasts, along with curated advertisements
Sometimes it matters that the original business isn’t getting the sale. Probably not in this particular case though.
Someone my spouse knows recently bought one of the $3500 models that’s getting this, and said person was in the “test” group for the rollout. Their response to the situation has been that they won’t buy Samsung appliances ever again.
It’s really quite impressive how much this press release turns me off from every buying any white goods from Samsung at any point in the future. It’s a vortex of “no”.
Just putting this out there: 4 months ago a friend's Samsung fridge (6 months old at the time, 2500USD price) failed due to a refrigerant leak. They had to spend 20 hours total on online chat and phone calls to get their warranty claim, and it took several weeks.
So you absolutely don't want any Samsung appliances, even the non 'smart' ones.
Every single Samsung appliance we had failed in sad ways. Stove knobs cracked and fell off. Fridge condensation mitigation failed leading to flooding. Fridge icemaker doesnt defrost properly and gets stuck. The worst thing is, these are not primary functions of the appliance - but as a result the whole thing gets tossed when replaced. (We inherited them from previous owners, was not by choice).
As someone who has now owned multiple Samsung fridges, I commiserate.
In my market Samsung has driven away all the service techs. We managed to find one, and he said he only works on Samsung because it’s a captive market now. He complained that Samsung micromanages field services to a degree that they’re killing the service ecosystem for their appliances.
We had him try to fix an issue with a dryer. On his way out he looked at the fridge and said “has the ice maker stopped working yet?” It actually had stopped working a year earlier. We didn’t get it fixed then because Samsung didn’t have anyone to send, and there were no third parties we could find (even unauthorized).
We’ve been replacing all our appliances with other brands.
Edit: PS - depending on the model of fridge, the ice maker infrastructure (typically near the filter) eventually start pooling water and might freeze in inconvenient places. Watch out for that. YMMV.
This is what amazes me. I swore off Samsung because of their unreliability: smartphones, TVs, refrigerators are terrible despite demanding a premium price over other cheaper players that offer better quality. Instead of investing time and effort in making their products better they’re doing the exact opposite. No one has ever said “the fridge is going to show me ads now? Better throw away my old one and get this bad boy on launch day”. Just make your products better people.
As I said, the phone restarted itself to upgrade and disabled the notifications until I loged in again. I could have missed some important stuff, but I notice it before it caused a problem.
So I went to the configuration and disable automatic upgrades.
Now I get a notification that ask me to restart to upgrade, and say that if I accept it will be restarted automatically next time. (And it's very easy to press that button by mistake.)
And there is an annoying that each week tells me if I used the phone 5 minuthe more than the previous week, and is magical and impossible to turn off.
Apple's had a few bad streaks with their butterfly keyboards in terms of unreliability, and they're certainly not built for repairability, but that's a far cry from Samsung's appliances that are always looking for an excuse to detonate.
My m2 max flew too close to the sun with its design. It's a amazing laptop. Drives 4 monitors with ease. Rarely turns on the fan. But the USB ports keep frying if they take power because this thing is a beast. The right one goes first. Then the front left then the back left eventually. Problem is I just can't always power it from that back left one depending on which dock I plug into. I try and run off the maglock. Been in for depot replace of board 2x now. After second repair right USB died in 2 hours after it was pulling power off of that port and not the dock or mag.
Still a great computer but $7500 for something that kills itself 3 times in 3.5 years sucks. Luckily it's a company computer and they're giving me a m4 max
That is an expensive fridge too. We just bought a new Miele fridge. Very high quality materials, an awesome fridge in every way. It was an expensive one, 1400 euros.
So in US you pay a thousand more for a fridge that shows advertisement?
We had a Samsung dishwasher before. It was about 500 euros and started leaking water after five years. Now we have an expensive Miele which was about thousand euros. Seems that they don't share the same issue.
Samsung is forever dead to me. A couple years ago I was working with a customer, showing them something on my phone. In the middle of the interaction, actively using my phone, Samsung forced it to reboot for an update I never agreed to.
..and fucking bricked my phone. Right there on the spot in the middle of a sale.
Plus the whole Tizen situation on the Gear watches was incredibly disappointing. I paid all kinds of money for a nice watch that had zero utility outside of Samsung's tiny, tiny walled garden and their very few, very broken apps. I'll never not be mad about it.
You absolutely do not want these smart tvs connected to the internet. Do it once maybe to update firmware. Then use them as a dumb tv and put an apple TV in front of it.
All tvs from all manufacturers have microphones and they do listen an sell info.
Everyone things Facebook is listening but it really is your tv.
I've got an LG C2 and you can't disable the Bluetooth, so anyone can try to connect to it. No service menu options too. I've not yet found out if cutting the WiFi/Bluetooth antennas is the only option.
> You absolutely do not want these smart tvs connected to the internet.
You can refuse to give them a direct WiFi connection, but just wait until they start using IOT mesh networks like Amazon Sidewalk as a fallback channel (assuming some aren't quietly doing that already).
Bought one, and I have regrets... Every time I turn it on and start watching something, after about 10 minutes a nag screen modal pops up for me to activate AI voice features. At first I entered the wizard and hit cancel. But that's not good enough, It will just keep showing up until you hit accept and activate it. I have since then deleted the Bixby account. We'll see how long it takes until it starts nagging me again.
Also random features require you to be logged in to a Samsung account on the TV. Like picture-in-picture for instance.
I'm considering refunding it, but it has absolutely brilliant picture quality though.
This doesn't make the overall product better, though. People get so tunnel visioned on one narrow feature being the best and use that to justify purchasing a product that is overall hostile to them. This is why these practices never die.
In 2030, it will be "Well, the TV sends a 24/7 video of my living room to Samsung, plays a 5 minute ad every 10 minutes of content, displays in 480i unless I pay a $100/mo subscription, and it will kill my pets, but hey, it has the best display in the world, so I'm thinking about buying it."
I hope their OLED is better than their QLED because the latter has white splotches all over the screen from backlight bleeding through. I would throw it in the bin if I felt more strongly about it.
I get that, but at some point you're installing it in your house with non-color corrected lighting and viewing it during the daytime with your terrible human eyes. I get why 200-300 lumens of peak brightness can make a difference, but does 2-3% of color correctness really matter to people as they watch their low bitrate netflix stream?
Maybe we'd all be better off if we calmed down a bit on chasing the specs, and focused on something else for a while.
That's really disappointing; I have zero interest in allowing a device like that on my network, or in spending that much on hardware for a single proprietary service that could go away or change its terms, or in having a service that only works with one device rather than many services that all work on the same device (e.g. Android TV).
Sigh. Where's the video equivalent of music stores for "just let me buy a high-quality DRM-free download I actually own" already?
I imagine it won't be long before the TVs come with eSIMs to connect directly to Tmobile/Verizon/ATT, and maybe add some cameras in the borders to track eye movement.
Then the advertisers could buy more accurate information to improve product placement in movies/tv shows.
The sci-fi version could be a TV that can recognize what kind of things are in the room or clues for the viewer's socioeconomic status and emotional state to bring up content (or even change it in real time) to maximize resonance with the viewer.
The cost is probably still too do prohibitive to do so.
I worked with IoT devices, generally the cost per GB of data is around dollar per GB. I doubt you would make that back in advertisements.
Also, there is cost per SIM so you wouldn't want situation where SIM is active if you don't need it which is why alot of IoT devices have you setup with a phone because they turn SIM on when you sign up for their plan. If consumer never puts TV on Wi-Fi network or cooperates with the phone, then you would have keep each SIM active and turn it off when it checks in via Wi-Fi. My guess is cost is not worth it if you get 98% cooperation. Write off 2% and call it a day.
The cheaper play (which could be implemented today, likely with few HW changes) would be to just use BLE or another 2.4GHz proprietary protocol to broadcast your usage data (maybe encrypted with a vendor key - let's be generous) to another TV or refrigerator in your area that is already internet-connected.
> Family Hub™ refrigerators[4] with AI Vision Inside technology will receive upgrades to enable recognition of frequently used packaged foods and even more fresh fruits and vegetables to help families reduce food waste and save money.
This has to be one of the silliest solutions in search of a problem I've ever seen. The fridge costs $3000, by the way.
I'm working part time at an appliance showroom, it's exactly as silly as it sounds. We don't sell fruits and veggies, but we did have some pumpkins around. Put one in, it's confident I just fed it either an apple, an orange, or an onion. Some bottled drinks? Clearly a mango. Maybe an eggplant.
And it can't register anything placed in the flex drawer, freezer, or fridge doors. In order to actually take advantage of its fridge inventory system, you still have to manually enter in or correct every single item you place into your fridge.
It's inconvenient for looking up recipes, since fridges are not placed for visibility from your countertop. It can be used for music but the speakers aren't worth the extra money. Videos and movies? The screen's the wrong aspect ratio for anything but big screen TikTok. And again, fridges are not positioned to gather around.
And that last bit is the crux of the issue. I've talked to our Samsung reps and they keep talking about fridges like they're gathering points. Like people congregate around their fridges. That was the guiding principle behind this fridge, and it's so disconnected from reality that the appliance itself can't help but be irredeemably pointless.
How does it work in practice? Do you have to scan an item when you put it in or take it of the fridge?
Because in practice, fridges look nothing like in the commercials. Very few people would put a whole apple and a carton of milk on a shelf and nothing more. That would be highly uneconomical, because there's far too much air that will escape when you open and close the door.
It is normal to have lots and lots of small boxes and other stuff stacked on each other which would make it hard if not impossble to operate a camera inside.
I've never used one other than demoing the features, but not well. The camera can't actually see what's inside the fridge. The camera sits between the two doors on the top bevel, pointing down.
As you cross the threshold of the fridge with your item, you have to pause to show the camera what you're putting in or taking out. If you don't pause, or if it just nondeterministically decides you weren't holding anything, it won't work. It has no idea where items are in the fridge, as soon as the threshold is crossed it loses sight of them.
There is one exception, and that's the fridge doors. The camera can't see that far up and out, but it takes multiple snapshots of the doors as you're closing them and bringing them within its field of view. The results are heavily distorted, incredibly low fidelity, and most likely very motion blurry. Too low quality for the fridge to even attempt to discern what's inside the door, it'll just show you the snapshot it took and let you figure it out by navigating Home > AI Vision Inside > Left Door/Right Door to see the low quality reconstruction of your door... or you could take that time instead to just open the door.
That would be great. That's not what's being sold nowadays. There's no tracking of who did what, the camera points pretty much straight down and it only even works if you pause and explicitly show to it the object that you are putting in/taking out.
I put fliers for our store warranty inside, and just hid them under my wrist while taking them out so they show up in the AI Vision Inside app without actually taking up space in the fridge. The only time it ever saw me is when I leaned too far in and it took a picture of the back of my head. Got classified as a kiwi.
I think there's some potential here, with regards to keeping track of when things were added/might go bad. At least for me, who easily forgets things until it's too late.
A thing that can read the expiry dates on food packages that take me 20 minutes to find because they're printed in light gray on gray background would be useful.
It would be. That was the original promise of the Family Hub+ fridges with AI Vision Inside™ technology.
But you won't find that here, and it's not going to be coming in an update. This fridge can't properly identify fruits and veggies, let alone anything in any sort of packaging.
As I demo the thing, it keeps taking snapshots of the back of my head and insists that the fridge is just packed full of kiwis.
It's a lot of complexity and engineering just to avoid giving food the ol' sniff test. Tech bros need to stop inventing problems for which we already have time-tested solutions.
I was only commenting on the usefulness of such features, not on whether companies would also abuse that access for more data; that is an issue, but a separate one.
I bought the Samsung SmartTag 2 to track the children, keys, etc. and connect them to HomeAssistant. Turns out Samsung actively blocks me from me being able to connect HA to their solution and the guy who was able to keep circumventing it and created a HA component which worked, gave up on it and archived the git repo.
Now only I who has a Samsung phone is able to use it, my wife and the children can't make them ring when they're looking for them and can't see on the map where the things might be.
> I want to know who is buying ads on fridges and what the roas on a fridge ad is.
Who knows, really? But maybe the same people who put ads on the gas station pumps that I use?
Those things blare at max volume and I still have no idea what they're selling.
Amusing anecdote: About 60 years ago, my grandfather (immigrant who was not well versed in mass-production) wrote a letter to the local newspaper asking that they omit the advertisements when they built his copy of the paper. "I never read them" he said.
My mother had to explain to him how his copy was gonna be just like everyone else's.
Any chance he was just trolling them? Mass production of printed pages started a few centuries before he was born so I doubt he honestly thought his paper was custom-made.
It'll be like those disgusting bottom-of-the-barrel YouTube ads, but contextual: "Need to clean out your stuck poop (video brown liquid)? Eat more fiber, because what's in this fridge....."
Probably slimy politicians, desperate to tell you how horrible the other tribe is while selling you their tribe's promises that will never happen. I'm sure campaign ads have taken a huge hit over previous decades when people actually watched TV or listened to radio.
It will sell very well because it a) will be cheaper than non-advertising laden fridges, b) will make more money meaning they can spend more on marketing and c) it has an air of "living in the future" about it.
Most of us here see it for what it is, because we know what happens to the data.
I think the future is going to have more of this.
But, I can also imagine people paying more for almost everything that is ad-supported today to get non-ad supported versions in the future, not because of the data concerns, but because of the opportunity for status signalling - ad-supported devices like this will be seen as something "only poor people have" within two decades. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.
That might force them into providing better warranty support: if my fridge isn't working any more, I'm going to stop paying them money. Obviously subscription-free becomes another tier of status, but if by paying a monthly fee I get 24 hour maintenance support for fear of losing my sub revenue, well...
There's already parallels around this to an extent. I pay Apple money every month for storage, ad-free TV, music and games, confident my data is my data. As a result, they might have a customer for life, because the alternatives are awful in comparison even if I pay less per month or overall for them.
I have very good experience of Samsung’s warranty support for a washing machine, actually.
The thing that makes corporations give better warranty support is not more money. Giving them more money does not incentivize them to suddenly give better service or make higher quality goods. The thing is consumer protection laws. In the EU, consumer goods have a minimum two-year warranty period. This incentivizes higher quality manufacturing.
> It will sell very well because it a) will be cheaper than non-advertising laden fridges,
Will it? Investors would prefer full price fridges with full price ads.
Most consumers won't even know they've installed adware until the appliance is turned on, and what are they gonna do? go to all the effort of returning and buying another fridge?
Dark patterns like that will die out soon enough and they'll harm the share price: Samsung are going to tell customers what they're getting.
And while investors would prefer full price fridges with full price ads, the ad economy only makes sense once you have decent reach, so it makes sense to lower the cost of acquisition of the device, take the hit as a customer acquisition cost and then sell the larger reach to advertisers.
This is the model for every ad-supported device and service to date, I'm not sure they're going to reinvent those economics for a fridge.
My wife and I are in the market for a new refrigerator and we have never heard anything good about Samsung. I was at least expecting different "tiers" to have different reputations, but no, it's the entire _brand_ that is bad. Parts getting defective within the first few years, low quality materials, and now this? No thanks.
I swear somebody should come in with an appliance brand which literally just builds things like they did 40 years ago before planned obsolescence and smart technology.
They would clean up.
I think the only thing that's actually improved is energy efficiency. But honestly my favorite appliances are my super old washer and dryer. I don't care that they are less energy efficient. Easy to use, nothing breaks and they have lasted forever.
It seems that they're all focused extremely precisely on tiny efficiency gains in standardised tests and stuffing in unwanted hostile "smartness" at the expense of longevity and simplicity. At least the former is mostly due to regulations; and there have been some good changes recently in that area, although it's hard to tell whether they'll have any effect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43065757
[11] Ads on Family Hub Cover screens will serve contextual or non-personal ads. Family Hub devices are not collectiong[sic] personal information or tracking consumers.
How are they serving "contextual" ads without collecting/tracking anything?
Although I loathe ads, I think that for new products where the presence of ads is disclosed clearly upfront, this is acceptable. Especially if this comes with a discount. We have Kindles with and without ads and people are generally fine with it.
But the fact that this gets retrofitted to fridges that people already bought, without any way of opting out or other mitigation, is criminal. Is this a lawsuit in the making? Am I naive?
This is not. An appliance—which should never be connected to the Internet in the first place—that costs 4 digits in USD should never show you ads in any way. You obviously don't "loathe" ads if you're even capable of reasoning about that kind of behavior. Stop trying to shove ads 24/7 in every millimeter of available space.
On the upside, it will be very easy to find more reliable and cheaper fridges than that.
I dont like them either, but if the fridge were cheaper (this one isn't) or had other features I wanted, I'd consider buying it and just covering up the ad screen.
Another concern is energy consumption. In this age of energy star and touting how efficient appliances are, it doesn't make sense to have a screen that is always-on.
The real killer feature Samsung needs is an automatic warranty. I would never buy Samsung again, unless they started a new trend where all repairs are covered for 10 years (not sold as an add-on during checkout).
I just got an S25 and having a Samsung account at all is optional. I never had one on my previous Galaxy phones either. I couldn't even accidentally use their AI or other intrusive crap with a misclick because I'd be taken to a screen where I have to sign up and agree to their privacy policy etc. Which obviously I don't.
I wouldn't consider buying a smart/Samsung refrigerator at all but I'm curious, is having blockchain, AI, and a Samsung account mandatory here? Or do they allow for discerning users who don't want that stuff? Is that market segment important to them?
What is the “best” fridge to get now? Like, say a standard American fridge with a stainless steel door with a freezer compartment, just for food (no tech, screens, ice making or water dispensing nonsense).
There are plenty of fridges that don't incorporate "smart" features. There's nothing really complicated about a giant box that you put food in to keep cold and maybe an integrated water dispenser.
I've been shopping for a new fridge lately, and from what I gather most "smart" fridges are still extremely expensive and that makes "non-smart" fridges still very desirable. In other words, "smart" features may not be new, but they aren't standard on a typical fridge... yet.
Samsung still makes regular fridges too, although I'm confused by the fact that you put water-dispensing/ice-making and screens together.
I have a Samsung Bespoke, for example, and you can 100% turn the ice-making off and just use that part of the freezer for more freezer space. No screen, the from it blank because all the water dispensing stuff is on the inside and I think (?) you can get one without it
A used one. For every person who hates this "smart" stuff, there's probably a dozen other sheeple gladly "upgrading" and getting rid of a fridge that's been working just fine for a very long time and will likely continue doing so.
Would be nice if they could make a fridge that was simply reliable. I bought one of their fridge’s and couple years later had to do a ridiculous number of mods to the ice maker and fridge that were in the Samsung official service bulletin at the time of purchase. It’s reliable now, but will never buy anything from them again. Many similar models from 2010s had similar issues.
Can you hack into "smart" fridges like this one to see when they are going unused, implying when the residents are away and the home is a good target for burglary?
Unless you're someone that's specifically worth targeting (eg. crypto billionaire), no burglar is going through the effort for this. Moreover even without smart fridges, you'd have to contend with similar threats from other internet connected devices (eg. laptops or routers), which can also infer whether the home is occupied or not.
I'm thinking more about a systemic approach rather than a one-off — in other words, surveying all units to identify potential targets rather than evaluating the risk for a single target. Recently we have seen a rise in criminal organizations who target high-profile targets known to be away (e.g. sports figures and entertainers whose schedules are known), and it seems like such a tool could be of use to such orgs as an additional signal — and to broaden their target base to non-celebrities.
Also, while "smart" Samsung fridges are the topic of this article, the concept generalizes to any internet connected devices within "smart" homes which exhibit a combination of "hackable" and revealing-of-occupancy. Samsung refrigerators are unlikely to be the most attractive vector when there are e.g. "smart" light bulbs out there which are vulnerable and never going to be patched because the manufacturer went out of business.
FWIW, I'm not a pen tester or security specialist — just a security-conscious generalist software developer. I see evidence left behind of scanning attacks in web logs, but haven't actually crafted such mass attacks myself.
I think the concern is that hacking an IOT platform would give you names, physical addresses, and household occupancy for all of their customers. Once you cross-reference that with another database you have a list of wealthiest households in a given zip code whose owners are on vacation, with live access to cameras inside their home.
>I think the concern is that hacking an IOT platform would give you names, physical addresses, and household occupancy for all of their customers.
The problem is that even if you can amass such an IOT botnet, you still need people on the ground to conduct such burglaries, and that scales poorly. Even if you tried to operate on a SaaS model, you're going to find that your clients (ie. drug users who want their next fix) are fickle and are very eager to snitch on you to the police, making it very likely that your botnet gets dismantled. On the other hand running a DDoS or "residential proxy" botnet comes with none of these hassles.
Excellent idea! But beware, your sense of humor or protest-like product placement in your spy fridge could have consequences. This crazy world we live in is always looking to hurt/blame/expose/burn somebody.
I had to disconnect my Samsung smart TV from the internet because every time I turned it on it would immediately go to the live TV app and play a minimum of one minute of some random show from the 90s. Now I use Apple TV. This is the kind of thing that needs heavy regulation.
Yes but only if you disconnect the TV from the internet. I think I was able to do it in the settings of the TV but you could also change your WiFi password.
That is important because as a buyer, I need to be able to tell the difference between the legitimate unacceptable extant user experiences vs. the FUD about things that are trivially avoidable but still get forwarded and reposted with exaggeration and hysteria.
I can't always avoid the latter category on principle.
let’s start with cars. I’ve accepted that I’ll never buy a new car again which is a real shame as EVs have a ton of potential. I’d be so happy to be wrong but the trend seems to be inescapable right now.
I'm shopping for a new range, because mine just died a few weeks before good ole "T-day". This is one of the primary reasons a Samsung range isn't crossing my list at all.
The people who developed the software for this ought to become outcasts from the profession, refused invitations to conferences, excluded from unions and so on.
Yea, one thing I've learned--if you ever even suggest that software engineers should be held responsible for writing harmful software or working on unethical projects, you're going to get downvoted so fast your head will spin. HN commenters will happily build the Torment Nexus as long as the JIRA ticket is filled out correctly and they have clear requirements.
To technologists with societal awarenesses, this whole direction of Samsung is concerning.
But a personally funny thing about this particular episode, to me, is that when I left a very nice CS PhD program, to switch schools, to work on AI+HCI for software agents (before the enabling AI tech was ready)... the most common soundbite that the PI gave to prospective corporate sponsors who visited most days, was something like... "You could have a 'digital butler', who knows what you have in your fridge, and orders milk when you're running out."
(Aside: The students working on agents and wearable computing at the time were actually disproportionately ones also interested in privacy, at the university. Maybe because we were Internet-savvy from shortly before the dotcom gold rush (default Internet person sentiment was pro-privacy, pro-altruism, etc.), or maybe because we tended to be technical and thinking forward about emerging networked applications, and could guess where this was going.)
On HN, we always see a bunch of loud voices about various facets of IoT dystopia, but that doesn't reflect the broad population, yet. And as more people start to become aware, they tend to get sold diversionary snake oil solutions by influencers (e.g., "keep buying and deploying these devices, just set up a PiHole, and you'll totally be OK; like and subscribe"), while dystopian product movements march onward.
That's a good choice - buying things that behave is much more preferable, but often like tvs and other gear, ads can come in, or the "free" cloud they depend on disappears.
I would never buy a fridge with a monitor built in, but I did buy a house that came with one. I'll have to make sure I keep clicking don't agree to the new ToS
Honestly, there have been plenty of warning signs that Samsung appliances are trash for well over a decade if not more. If you own one, sell it some other idiot
Across the spectrum of all Samsung consumer hardware, phones, fridges, smart watches, earbuds, TVs, etc., they are probably the most consumer hostile company in existence.
I would NEVER buy one of their devices again. I've learned that they will punch you in the face every time, with deliberate choices made just out of spite (like pulse meter on smart watches, IIRC, only being available if you have a Samsung phone. Pixel phone is a no).
Connecting one of their TVs or fridges to the internet? Lol, not today, Satan. Not in this lifetime.
So, let me see: I can pay $1200 for a really nice fridge that keeps my food cold. Or I can pay $3000 for a fridge that keeps my food cold, and also shows me ads. Is being shown ads worth $1800 to me?
Gotta love these complete fucking morons in charge. I could put together an LLM that would make better long-term product decisions than these VC-brained monkeys, and I’d only need single-digit B of parameters to beat their single-digit IQ. Congratulations on transitioning your brand from toxic to radioactive.
They don't care because they don't understand the possibilities of the tech. I've tried to give my extended family members some quick info on what not to do online and how to safely use their gizmos. Most of the time I get a blank stare.
Caution, incoming naive comment(s): Companies should put their customer's well being before profits, because we all know most people don't understand what's going on with their digital devises. (Yes, customers should care more, but companies shouldn't be allowed to take advantage of those who can't grasp the techiness of the products.) Techiness, I just made that up. :)
> Caution, incoming naive statement: Companies should put their customer's well being before profits, because we all know most people don't understand what's going on with their digital devises.
This might be illegal for publicly traded companies. Shareholder maximization forces them to deceive their customers.
Public companies aren’t disallowed from making long term investments such as building brand loyalty. You are excusing the braindead executives for their choice to burn their brand in exchange for some imaginary ad paycheck. Like I’m going to buy a branded pack of eggs based on an ad on my fucking fridge (and somehow that’s going to make them a ton of dough). I can’t get over how simple-minded and gullible the people running these companies are.
If you wanna skip some chapters and see where all of this ends up, go check out how Unity is doing after John Riccitiello fucked them.
You sir are misjudging me and the effort I put into not only protecting myself but also other from this overreach and intrusion into the life and privacy of myself and others.
But the comment above me argued "Companies should put their customer's well being before profits" which as a general statement may VERY well fall under my argument.
The reality is that i believe shareholder value optimization and unregulated capitalism is the problem.
> Please connect the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R to the internet to start the refrigeration cycle.
> Please connect the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R to the internet to continue the refrigeration cycle. You refrigeration cycle will end in 28 hours unless reconnected to the Samsung^TM KNOX^R Server System for your security
> Please reposition the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R so that 6G Connectivity can be established to start the refrigeration cycle.
> Please unblock all visual obstructions the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R Camera and reauthorize usage to continue the refrigeration cycle.
> Please unblock all visual obstructions the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R Camera and Reauthorize using your government ID, fingerprint, iris scan and cryptographically singed anus print to continue usage. Failure to comply will cost you 25 Social Credits. You have 27 hours left.
Regular people still have a chance to demand a stake in the future. They're just not even trying because they're all psychologically demolished and partitioned.
Totally agree. The house we bought in 2019 has a Subzero and it's the best fridge I've had. No frills (other than an ice maker), it just works. I dread the day I have to repair or replace it ($$) but it's been rock solid in the 5-6 years we've lived here so far.
My Samsung TV keeps blocking around 20% of the display at random times to tell me their terms and conditions have changed. Of course I have the option of checking it by reading the whole thing on my TV and then running a diff to see what’s changed but I don’t have an option to opt out of the terms.
It’s way too frequent and runs at random times in the middle of a movie so I always choose Accept.
Give me a dumb TV any time of the day now
I'd never give a Samsung device unfiltered internet access.
Samsung is truly the worst of all big tech companies. All their first party apps contain ads. They kill hard fuses if you want to change things, and meanwhile bundle the devices of a large segment of the costumer base with first party Israeli spyware with full system and background install access.
I bought a Samsung watch once, had to reverse it to enable functionality that was advertised a year before but never delivered. It died because the watch decided to suck in water during a reboot while swimming, they quoted me almost the full price to repair it, even though it was clearly a software bug that caused another advertised feature (namely it's ipx rating) to fail.
And while I also wouldn't give Xiaomi iot devices on the network full internet access, at least I can use those things normally.
Besides the fact that Xiaomi devices are completely untrustworthy, they are usually great pieces of hardware. I bought a Xiaomi vacuum years ago. Everything was in Chinese and I had to watch a youtube video to figure out how to set it up. Besides that, the whole unboxing and setup experience felt like an Apple product. That vacuum was light years ahead of the iRobot it replaced. Incredible product and cheaper than just about everything else available at the time. That's when I realized American tech was toast.
I agree with you 100% about Samsung. They make nice hardware, but the software experience is among the worst in the industry. I don't know how they can be considered a premium product. I would never use one of their phones again. Straight up adware. I'm surprised they don't inject ads into the photos you take. They have ads everywhere else - even in the phone dialing app. Their TV's are still good as long as you don't connect them to the internet. Once they start putting LTE radios in them to download ads without wifi, I will be done with those too.
Out of the cheap phones I bought over the years, Xiaomi was the only manufacturer that didn't load up their phones with crapware backdoors. Samsung and Oppo was shiped with one of those crapware backdoors that installed apps beyond your back.
Eventually I got fed up, and started using hand-me-down iPhones for second phones.
How do you limit it’s Internet access besides not plugging it in?
We literally got an email at work telling us not to watch anything work related on any Samsung TVs because by default they will take screenshots of your content and send them back to Samsung for analysis unless you opt out. Absolutely bonkers.
At the risk of a smart-ass reply, I think you could say the same for almost any consumer electronics
Even if you don't suspect malfeasance / advertising / surveillance, a lot of these devices and their software are sloppily developed and highly insecure
"unfiltered internet access"? How would you even know what to filter?
Block it entirely, and hope it that doesn't connect to your Samsung phone via Bluetooth or WiFi and use it as a proxy.
Some devices refuse to to operate if they can't make DNS queries.
Such devices should be retuned for a full refund. Vote with your wallet.
Then they can exfiltrate data over DNS.
I mean, only if the DNS server is one run by the company in question.
I own nonzero such devices that hit 8.8.8.8 as an internet access sanity check so I have to keep just that IP allowed for them and block all other traffic.
DNS is a hierarchical protocol. You can exfiltrate data as long as the DNS server is resolving recursively.
Good to know. I didn't know that.
For my devices in question I can see the size and frequency of the requests in OpenWRT and doubt it's actually doing so.
Then give it a DNS server to look up.
Yes exactly.
I mean, at some point, victim-blaming does sound like the correct response here.
If the answer to your question involved giving money to Samsung, then you asked the wrong question, and you need to do better next time.
All I meant was that sometimes if you fully block a device it refuses to work, and you may need to selectively unblock just 8.8.8.8 for that device.
Obviously buying such a device is bad, but sometimes you get one for free or close to it and it's worth the hassle to not pay hundreds for a better one.
What I've done for the small handful of wifi connected devices I have is to have them connect to "internet sharing" from my laptop's wifi.
Naturally when my laptop is using its wifi to create a hotspot it isn't actually connected to the internet, so they never actually get access to the internet.
(Doesn't work if you actually want the internet, and not just wifi, related features of course)
Services like ControlD and NextDNS have built in blocklists for IoT telemetry and bullshit. I'm sure it's easy to do it with PiHole as well.
I use ControlD and it's blocking 38% of all DNS requests in my household. 8% of that is IoT telemetry. It's unbelievable how much of this bullshit is built into the products we use.
IIRC there were some Pihole blocking lists for Samsung, Apple and Microsoft etc.
Give them access to a segregated home network.
How long until they ship with embedded 5G modem? Would you wrap your Samsung devices with alu foil?
I think they may go the easier way first: with online only OOBE where you cannot access all tv features until you acknowledge and accept the "legal" stuff first.
You know, bit like Microsoft forces you to create online account after installation is done
There's always going to be enough of a "dumb TV" market among the elderly / linear-only / no internet crowd to make that an extremely bad idea.
Sure, some (high-end) TVs might do this, but definitely not all of them.
Dumb tvs exist today; they just sell for a premium to make up for the lost adtech sales revenue.
I suspect this will continue. Ads and no privacy for poor people. The wealthy & well educated will have tvs that don’t spy on them.
This idea has been around since at least a decade ago. The truth is, only a fraction of customers care about ads or privacy, and only a fraction of technical people in that group are capable of doing network filtering (VLAN, MITM, DNS blocklist, whatever). The absolute numbers are so small, as long as manufacturers can extract enough value from the remaining 99% of customers, they just don't care.
I have had a lot of friends amazed by the fact that when they connect to my home Wi-Fi they stop seeing ads. Zero of them interested in implementing something similar in their home.
How do you do it particularly? Pi-Hole or something else like NextDNS with adblock? (or Mullvad adblock DNS)
the other thing is that it would not be as effective as presumed because 5G cell service in residential areas in the US is spottier than people realize. A lot of us are relying on WiFi calling.
Or connects to the Samsung TV of your neighbor, who definitely granted all access to the internet.
Soldering your TV in 2026 sounds like real fun ...
A couple years ago I thought my fridge was appropriately blocked from the intarwebs. But a router update flipped the bit on activating the default guest network (which I normally keep turned off.) So for about 6 months my fridge was getting out to the net via the guest network. I found out about it when I got a call from my ISP asking what the heck was going on. Apparently a bot net had found my fridge and was doing all manner of bad things.
Moral of the story is... always double check your router settings to make sure enshittified iot devices aren't making you look like a newb.
Sounds weird, why would you give your fridge your wifi password in the first place?
Well the real question is why would you buy a connected fridge in the first place. Not that I visit fridges alleys in stores on a regular basis but I have never actually seen one.
> Well the real question is why would you buy a connected fridge in the first place.
It’s getting so you don’t have a real choice. You can buy a fridge (or any appliance pretty much) that is basic and doesn’t do the connected thing. But often you want the upscaled models because of real hardware features that are desirable. And these are always bundled with the “connectivity” options. It used to be you just ignored these bits. But they’re getting more and more invasive.
what hardware features in a fridge can you not live without apart from "keeps inside cold & light comes on when I open the door" ?
Louis Rossmann has one. He loves it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQTIuX84ids
It has a large Android tablet in the front door, so it can show you ads – coming soon.
I don't know about "live without", but automatic defroster, crisper drawer, ice maker, water dispenser, alarm when the door isn't closed. being divided such that my food choices fit easily into the fridge (some people want to put a large wide pizza box directly into their fridge), power consumption.I dunno if you'd call looks a hardware feature, but it has to match the rest of the kitchen decor. The TV in the door isn't something I want at all though.
I may an idiot and haven't been in the market for new appliances for a while, but between an ice maker and a door alarm, how could you possibly require Internet acccess? Does it offer an app on your phone to operate the ice maker when you're not home?
travisgriggs said refrigerator manufacturers limited desired hardware features to models which had undesired network features. This was the last comment which mentioned network features.
delaminator asked what hardware features could not be lived without.
fragmede listed desired hardware features.
Ref Silicon Valley: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HcXu4_K1tMQ&t=45s
probably the ice maker or something. I bought new appliances a few months ago, and I made sure none of them had WiFi. I even paid £50 more for the washing machine that didn't have an app.
Their TVs will connect to open networks without asking you. Perhaps the fridges do the same.
Are there evidence it is really happening? Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood? My neighbors aren't tech savy yet they use the wifi configured provided with the router which has a passphrase. I believe even in McDonalds you get the wifi password only upon purchase in the receipt. Most open networks I still encounter are in big stores such as IKEA or airports and you still have to register to connect. I doubt the signal woukd reach even the closest houses anyway.
> Are there evidence it is really happening?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45867034
> Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood?
Some neighborhoods are mixed use. Some residences are in dense buildings. Some people configured guest networks with no password. Some ISPs made their home gateways captive portal access points.
omg - why let your router update? :)
most updates are downgrades in my experience unless it addresses something very specific
Not updating the router just sounds like another security incident waiting to happen. The botnet will just be on your router instead of your fridge
Muy samsung odyssey g9 monitor connected for the first time through my phone, also Samsung.
I just avoid all Samsung CE.
I'd never give a Samsung device ~~unfiltered~~ internet access.
FTFY
I'd never buy another samsung device
I'm still using my Samsung dumb TV from circa 2008. paired with ancient Chromecast. No way I'm going to buy a smart TV as long as this combination keeps working. No ads, and things mostly just work, and it cost me next to nothing.
Even a smart TV is dumb enough if you use it as HDMI out for your actual streaming device (Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, whatever) and never connect it to the internet. There were rumors about smart TVs connecting to unsecured wifi networks a few years ago, but I don't remember any verified cases or TVs.
This is the way. Allowing appliances to connect to the internet, when it's not necessary, is insecure.
At least with a single-purpose device, you know you're not at the mercy of some minimally-funded, likely-outsourced software team inside a hardware manufacturer.
I bought the 2025 Samsung smart TV that RTINGS recommended as the best OLED and connected it once at first setup to download updates. Then I blocked it in the router and disconnected it in the TV menu and it’s been smooth sailing. Everything goes through my Apple TV and there’s no ads and it just works.
> It’s way too frequent and runs at random times in the middle of a movie so I always choose Accept.
This is deliberate
The best Smart TV is the one that is just 24/24 HDMI connected to your old Linux laptop with a GUI tweaked to act as a Smart TV with an air mouse as remote.
When I upgraded my desktop, I only needed to pickup a case and a few extra parts to have enough for a functional home theater PC. Running standard Fedora Workstation, controlled with Logitech K400+.
I stubbornly refuse to ever connect my TV to the internet.
K400 and a raspberry pi is keeping my Samsung tv offline. Little bit under powered but gets the job done. Movies are fine, YouTube 90%
I never agreed to the original terms and won’t let my Samsung TV on wifi for this reason.
I let my TV on wifi, but block internet access at the router. Things like Airplay and Chromecast still work great, but no ads/tracking/etc.
Is that tied to the port or the MAC because the device can just change addresses and you won't know.
OpenWrt, make a wifi network only for those nasty spying devices, printers, tvs etc
You would know if your device starts updating. And if it changes mac to get around the block then it goes in the trash.
Same!!! I do every so often connect it to update it if a newer firmware is actually worth it… The extra upside to not accepting the terms is that none of the samsung bloatware apps even start - the TV runs much faster than just with the wifi disconnected.
It doesnt matter if you do or dont, those things are worthless in court in any reasonable country. They frequently want their users to agree to illegal things.
Why did you connect it to the internet in the first place?
>Give me a dumb TV any time of the day now
Just disconnect your current one from the internet.
How about just not connecting your TV to the Internet? Then it's just a dumb display?
I just use my smart tv as tv and use PS5 as media box avoids all this hassle. There is nothing on cable/satellite tv other than ads anyway
Disconnect it from the internet and use an appletv. It can't update then.
This works until apple enshitifies
This is ultimately what we did in my house for every Samsung TV.
Their smart TV stuff used to be marginally interesting. When Samsung TV Plus launched it was fantastic. They weren’t yet sure of how to handle ads so even the ad space was still nice, and marginally useful.
As they figured out the ad strategy, apps started disappearing and new ones appeared that couldn’t be uninstalled.
Then the OS updates started cratering performance. I have a Samsung smart TV from after 2020 that takes about 4 seconds to register a single remote control command in the smart TV GUI.
Damn good point.
Unless you have root and can do anything the hardware is capable of, it's not your device. And you shouldn't let any sort of non-owned devices on your network.
Why? Cause devices controlled by other orgs are a foothold situation. And we've had countless attacks of footholds being used as internal points of attack, DDoS, and other attacks.
That also means that all your "cloud devices" should be able to work 100% offline. If not, return them as defective.
I have a Samsung smart TV it's never seen the internet, I just didn't let it connect - it's a display for a box running Fedora, that is its entire job to be dumb and display whatever is sent down the wire.
Devices that do need to be on the internet but I can foresee no reason they ever need to talk to anything else on the network go on their own VLAN (down to the level of my VR headset since it had a Meta logo on the box...).
My boys gaming PC can't even see my desktop (since there isn't a scenario where it needs to).
Other than the "smart" TV I own nothing "Smart" because I don't want anything smart.
I'm not adverse to smart hardware.
I am adverse to being trapped with rental hardware masquerading as as 'sale'. Almost all corporate cloudshit is that.
As a counter example, I have 2 of these opengarage for my garage doors. They work superbly and integrate seamlessly with HomeAssistant.
https://opengarage.io/
And yes, I control them completely. FLOSS and all. And they just work.
Hunh. This reminds me... I have a copy of ghidra and a bunch of JTAG adaptors. I bet I could suck the firmware out of my old model Visio TV. I already unsoldered the microphone from the motherboard.
"Give some other monopoly rulr over your attention"
Apple TV is much better about this. I have never had it pop up or interrupt me. When it is idle it just goes to a pleasant screen saver and then powers off after a while. It doesn’t try and promote content or display ads for shows. Granted, that could change at any time, but right now I think it is better than all the alternatives.
It is better, but I hated how some time ago they started showing trailers at the start of a show, with no option to turn this off. It’s a small thing but it’s super annoying, if I want to check out what’s new I will do it myself, thank you very much.
Ads are coming to Apple Maps so it’s probably only a matter of time before the rest of the ecosystem is infected.
Ultimately the choice of platform is about trust rather than capability. Apple has been a much better citizen historically than any of the smart TV companies.
Those other smart TV companies write shit software that performs terribly on bad hardware and may have ads - YMMV but that's not really "worse" than Apple's anti-steering clauses concealing massive fees on ATV apps like Plex or ESPN and causing half the western world to revise their competition laws to outlaw many of their practices. It's just bad for different reasons.
I'm not an Apple fan, but if someone wants a 'smart TV' (access to streaming services, etc) and doesn't want to go the Linux-box-connected-to-Jellyfin route, then Apple really is just the best option.
In my experience, they've been fine for a few years so far.
That's where I ended up; I was running a linux box with Kodi for a while, but that was a subpar experience for connecting to commercial streaming services (I never was able to figure out how to get Kodi to launch firefox on the site's URL, which would have been Just Fine for us).
When I was shopping for a TV years ago, Samsung had all the features I wanted (for gaming).
But Samsung's ad behavior led me to buy a Vizio TV instead.
I've got some bad news for you, Walmart acquired Vizio two years ago:
"This acquisition is not merely about expanding Walmart's product lineup but rather part of a sophisticated commercial strategy to integrate its retail operations, owned media channels and TV hardware into a cohesive ecosystem. This ecosystem is designed to generate and share data, influence shopping behavior and, ultimately, drive sales through an innovative approach to advertising..." "...By owning a television manufacturer, Walmart can now directly serve and, crucially, measure the impact of ads on consumer behavior. This capability significantly enhances Walmart's potential to convert advertisements into retail purchases."
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcou...
bleh.
Only saving grace I have is that I bought my P659-G1 in 2019. While it doesn't prevent bad updates, it's a little less likely they pushed deep changes to old models.
And I can't believe it's been over 6 years since I had already eliminated Samsung for their ad behavior, and not only have they not changed, they've doubled-down.
You may be looking for a “commercial LCD display”.
I use my TV as a monitor and this still happens. When you don't accept it just gets more aggressive. I'm pretty sure there's a "bug"[0] that ends up slowing the TV down because it keeps that process going.
I'm pretty confident you can't agree to a contract if you can't opt out. I don't want new features and I'm fine if everything stays the same. And no, please do not adjust the image settings again... I didn't want the AI frame interpolation then and I don't want it now
[0] with Samsung engineers I don't believe they've tested anything and just assumed the user would accept it instead of deny it 20 times. It'll also get less buggy when I do a reboot, so I'm pretty sure it's a memory leak
We are talking about a company where if I press the exit button there's a 50% chance I get the menu or not. It's literally a random result. If I'm in, say, Netflix, press exit, I'll turn to my computer screen and half the time the Samsung menu will open and half the time it won't.
Also starting the TV will flash my desktop and then go "ops, no signal" and I have to just keep restarting the TV and switching inputs (not touching the hdmi cable btw) until it works. And no, my desktop doesn't sleep and yes this issue is the reason why.
So I am 100% sure it's not conspiratorial, I'm 100% sure they just suck at their job. I'm sure the fridge will be great...
"Samsung Family Hub™ for 2025 Update Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem The software update includes a more unified user experience across connected devices, enhancements to AI Vision Inside™, expanded Knox Security and more"
In plain English now, Samgung will put advertising on your face but mostly important is that they will know and sell the data about what you buy.
They call it Smart Home. Yeah, "smart". They are the smart ones, not those who buy this **.
It is in the notes, in the article, there is no tracking:
"[11] Ads on Family Hub Cover screens will serve contextual or non-personal ads. Family Hub devices are not collectiong personal information or tracking consumers."
I don't believe them, but if even they aren't lying to your face today they'll be pushing an update to add tracking tomorrow. Samsung is absolute trash and not to be trusted. They've demonstrated this so many times and in so many ways that anyone investing in "Samsung Family Hub" deserves what they get.
I don’t see where it says they are adding advertising. Is something there corporate speak for ads?
Buried half way down,
Wow!! Elevating!!!At least the ads are curated?
Yes, selling to the highest bidders is a form of curation.
The curation process is an automated auction
Only the best ads for you!
If by that they mean owners will elevate their fridge to the highest window in their building and throw it out, then yeah, they're right.
If you look closely, there's an ad in the picture where the fridge's clock says 12:30.
"Shop Samsung Water Filters - Subscribe and Save 40%"
It’s buried in the “new widgets” section:
> As part of the Family Hub™ software update, we are piloting a new widget for select Cover screens themes of Family Hub™ refrigerators. The widget will display useful day-to-day information such as news, calendar and weather forecasts, along with curated advertisements
"Elevating" is being used as a euphemism for "constantly advertising"
> Update Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem
If you are not elevating the privacy of me and my family, CORPORATRON can suck it.
I will spend my money to elevate the sales of a company that respects privacy instead.
> I will spend my money to elevate the sales of a company that respects privacy instead.
Is there such a thing?
Sometimes it matters that the original business isn’t getting the sale. Probably not in this particular case though.
Someone my spouse knows recently bought one of the $3500 models that’s getting this, and said person was in the “test” group for the rollout. Their response to the situation has been that they won’t buy Samsung appliances ever again.
So if enough of us do that. Maybe.
But hey, your fridge is now more secure because blockchain (I'm not kidding, it's in the press release)
It appears to also use a peer-to-peer solution to preventing botnets. So a botnet to prevent botnets.
I wonder if the botnets attend conferences.
I'm not fact-checking that because that's horrifying. Beyond parody. But I guess that's a trend currently.
Edit: I checked because one shouldn't be outraged without fact checking. It's true.
It’s not a million miles from the Silicon Valley smart fridge plot, as long as someone hacks them all.
Thanks, I hate it.
It’s really quite impressive how much this press release turns me off from every buying any white goods from Samsung at any point in the future. It’s a vortex of “no”.
Just putting this out there: 4 months ago a friend's Samsung fridge (6 months old at the time, 2500USD price) failed due to a refrigerant leak. They had to spend 20 hours total on online chat and phone calls to get their warranty claim, and it took several weeks.
So you absolutely don't want any Samsung appliances, even the non 'smart' ones.
Every single Samsung appliance we had failed in sad ways. Stove knobs cracked and fell off. Fridge condensation mitigation failed leading to flooding. Fridge icemaker doesnt defrost properly and gets stuck. The worst thing is, these are not primary functions of the appliance - but as a result the whole thing gets tossed when replaced. (We inherited them from previous owners, was not by choice).
As someone who has now owned multiple Samsung fridges, I commiserate.
In my market Samsung has driven away all the service techs. We managed to find one, and he said he only works on Samsung because it’s a captive market now. He complained that Samsung micromanages field services to a degree that they’re killing the service ecosystem for their appliances.
We had him try to fix an issue with a dryer. On his way out he looked at the fridge and said “has the ice maker stopped working yet?” It actually had stopped working a year earlier. We didn’t get it fixed then because Samsung didn’t have anyone to send, and there were no third parties we could find (even unauthorized).
We’ve been replacing all our appliances with other brands.
Edit: PS - depending on the model of fridge, the ice maker infrastructure (typically near the filter) eventually start pooling water and might freeze in inconvenient places. Watch out for that. YMMV.
This is what amazes me. I swore off Samsung because of their unreliability: smartphones, TVs, refrigerators are terrible despite demanding a premium price over other cheaper players that offer better quality. Instead of investing time and effort in making their products better they’re doing the exact opposite. No one has ever said “the fridge is going to show me ads now? Better throw away my old one and get this bad boy on launch day”. Just make your products better people.
Samsungs smartphones are unreliable?
Last month, my old phone decided to die, and I bought a Samsung. Hardware is fine so far, but software ...
Recent rant in a similar thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45740274
New rant:
As I said, the phone restarted itself to upgrade and disabled the notifications until I loged in again. I could have missed some important stuff, but I notice it before it caused a problem.
So I went to the configuration and disable automatic upgrades.
Now I get a notification that ask me to restart to upgrade, and say that if I accept it will be restarted automatically next time. (And it's very easy to press that button by mistake.)
And there is an annoying that each week tells me if I used the phone 5 minuthe more than the previous week, and is magical and impossible to turn off.
They learned with apple
Apple's had a few bad streaks with their butterfly keyboards in terms of unreliability, and they're certainly not built for repairability, but that's a far cry from Samsung's appliances that are always looking for an excuse to detonate.
I’ve never had apple hardware have unreliability though
My m2 max flew too close to the sun with its design. It's a amazing laptop. Drives 4 monitors with ease. Rarely turns on the fan. But the USB ports keep frying if they take power because this thing is a beast. The right one goes first. Then the front left then the back left eventually. Problem is I just can't always power it from that back left one depending on which dock I plug into. I try and run off the maglock. Been in for depot replace of board 2x now. After second repair right USB died in 2 hours after it was pulling power off of that port and not the dock or mag.
Still a great computer but $7500 for something that kills itself 3 times in 3.5 years sucks. Luckily it's a company computer and they're giving me a m4 max
That is an expensive fridge too. We just bought a new Miele fridge. Very high quality materials, an awesome fridge in every way. It was an expensive one, 1400 euros.
So in US you pay a thousand more for a fridge that shows advertisement?
We had a Samsung dishwasher before. It was about 500 euros and started leaking water after five years. Now we have an expensive Miele which was about thousand euros. Seems that they don't share the same issue.
Samsung products in general I think. I was looking at computer monitors yesterday and found I have a vague feeling of distrust towards Samsung now.
Samsung is forever dead to me. A couple years ago I was working with a customer, showing them something on my phone. In the middle of the interaction, actively using my phone, Samsung forced it to reboot for an update I never agreed to.
..and fucking bricked my phone. Right there on the spot in the middle of a sale.
Plus the whole Tizen situation on the Gear watches was incredibly disappointing. I paid all kinds of money for a nice watch that had zero utility outside of Samsung's tiny, tiny walled garden and their very few, very broken apps. I'll never not be mad about it.
Are you me? Around 4-5 years ago I had a very important doctor appointment, my Samsung phone just decided to die on a way there.
It's really to the point that I don't trust any electronics store which takes in this fridge and tries to foist it on its customers.
Sadly they have the best OLED TV this year, at a time when I am looking to buy.
You absolutely do not want these smart tvs connected to the internet. Do it once maybe to update firmware. Then use them as a dumb tv and put an apple TV in front of it.
All tvs from all manufacturers have microphones and they do listen an sell info.
Everyone things Facebook is listening but it really is your tv.
Not in Europe if that's the case. I've monitored what my LG does and it's basically nothing.
I've got an LG C2 and you can't disable the Bluetooth, so anyone can try to connect to it. No service menu options too. I've not yet found out if cutting the WiFi/Bluetooth antennas is the only option.
> You absolutely do not want these smart tvs connected to the internet.
You can refuse to give them a direct WiFi connection, but just wait until they start using IOT mesh networks like Amazon Sidewalk as a fallback channel (assuming some aren't quietly doing that already).
What a living nightmare. It’s getting to the point where it might be time to pressure companies like Best Buy to stop carrying them.
Bought one, and I have regrets... Every time I turn it on and start watching something, after about 10 minutes a nag screen modal pops up for me to activate AI voice features. At first I entered the wizard and hit cancel. But that's not good enough, It will just keep showing up until you hit accept and activate it. I have since then deleted the Bixby account. We'll see how long it takes until it starts nagging me again.
Also random features require you to be logged in to a Samsung account on the TV. Like picture-in-picture for instance.
I'm considering refunding it, but it has absolutely brilliant picture quality though.
This doesn't make the overall product better, though. People get so tunnel visioned on one narrow feature being the best and use that to justify purchasing a product that is overall hostile to them. This is why these practices never die.
In 2030, it will be "Well, the TV sends a 24/7 video of my living room to Samsung, plays a 5 minute ad every 10 minutes of content, displays in 480i unless I pay a $100/mo subscription, and it will kill my pets, but hey, it has the best display in the world, so I'm thinking about buying it."
I thought LG G5 is the best OLED TV in 2025
I hope their OLED is better than their QLED because the latter has white splotches all over the screen from backlight bleeding through. I would throw it in the bin if I felt more strongly about it.
How much is "technically the best" worth compared to "convenient, secure, and good"?
To most, all they care about is picture quality and being able to watch the content they want.
Also, I assume you can still do what I did for my current LG TV, skip the wifi setup, plug in AppleTV and use it purely as dumb TV.
> all they care about is picture quality
I get that, but at some point you're installing it in your house with non-color corrected lighting and viewing it during the daytime with your terrible human eyes. I get why 200-300 lumens of peak brightness can make a difference, but does 2-3% of color correctness really matter to people as they watch their low bitrate netflix stream?
Maybe we'd all be better off if we calmed down a bit on chasing the specs, and focused on something else for a while.
Are there any streaming services that offer video quality on par with a high-end blu-ray?
Sony Pictures Core and Kaleidescape are as close as it gets, and both require expensive proprietary hardware.
That's really disappointing; I have zero interest in allowing a device like that on my network, or in spending that much on hardware for a single proprietary service that could go away or change its terms, or in having a service that only works with one device rather than many services that all work on the same device (e.g. Android TV).
Sigh. Where's the video equivalent of music stores for "just let me buy a high-quality DRM-free download I actually own" already?
I imagine it won't be long before the TVs come with eSIMs to connect directly to Tmobile/Verizon/ATT, and maybe add some cameras in the borders to track eye movement.
Then the advertisers could buy more accurate information to improve product placement in movies/tv shows.
The sci-fi version could be a TV that can recognize what kind of things are in the room or clues for the viewer's socioeconomic status and emotional state to bring up content (or even change it in real time) to maximize resonance with the viewer.
The cost is probably still too do prohibitive to do so.
I worked with IoT devices, generally the cost per GB of data is around dollar per GB. I doubt you would make that back in advertisements.
Also, there is cost per SIM so you wouldn't want situation where SIM is active if you don't need it which is why alot of IoT devices have you setup with a phone because they turn SIM on when you sign up for their plan. If consumer never puts TV on Wi-Fi network or cooperates with the phone, then you would have keep each SIM active and turn it off when it checks in via Wi-Fi. My guess is cost is not worth it if you get 98% cooperation. Write off 2% and call it a day.
The cheaper play (which could be implemented today, likely with few HW changes) would be to just use BLE or another 2.4GHz proprietary protocol to broadcast your usage data (maybe encrypted with a vendor key - let's be generous) to another TV or refrigerator in your area that is already internet-connected.
Is that not pretty similar to what Amazon already do with Ring devices?
People on HN have been saying this for years and TVs still aren’t shipping sims.
But not the best OS for sure.
Sony and LG have comparable video quality.
> Family Hub™ refrigerators[4] with AI Vision Inside technology will receive upgrades to enable recognition of frequently used packaged foods and even more fresh fruits and vegetables to help families reduce food waste and save money.
This has to be one of the silliest solutions in search of a problem I've ever seen. The fridge costs $3000, by the way.
I'm working part time at an appliance showroom, it's exactly as silly as it sounds. We don't sell fruits and veggies, but we did have some pumpkins around. Put one in, it's confident I just fed it either an apple, an orange, or an onion. Some bottled drinks? Clearly a mango. Maybe an eggplant.
And it can't register anything placed in the flex drawer, freezer, or fridge doors. In order to actually take advantage of its fridge inventory system, you still have to manually enter in or correct every single item you place into your fridge.
It's inconvenient for looking up recipes, since fridges are not placed for visibility from your countertop. It can be used for music but the speakers aren't worth the extra money. Videos and movies? The screen's the wrong aspect ratio for anything but big screen TikTok. And again, fridges are not positioned to gather around.
And that last bit is the crux of the issue. I've talked to our Samsung reps and they keep talking about fridges like they're gathering points. Like people congregate around their fridges. That was the guiding principle behind this fridge, and it's so disconnected from reality that the appliance itself can't help but be irredeemably pointless.
How does it work in practice? Do you have to scan an item when you put it in or take it of the fridge?
Because in practice, fridges look nothing like in the commercials. Very few people would put a whole apple and a carton of milk on a shelf and nothing more. That would be highly uneconomical, because there's far too much air that will escape when you open and close the door.
It is normal to have lots and lots of small boxes and other stuff stacked on each other which would make it hard if not impossble to operate a camera inside.
I've never used one other than demoing the features, but not well. The camera can't actually see what's inside the fridge. The camera sits between the two doors on the top bevel, pointing down.
As you cross the threshold of the fridge with your item, you have to pause to show the camera what you're putting in or taking out. If you don't pause, or if it just nondeterministically decides you weren't holding anything, it won't work. It has no idea where items are in the fridge, as soon as the threshold is crossed it loses sight of them.
There is one exception, and that's the fridge doors. The camera can't see that far up and out, but it takes multiple snapshots of the doors as you're closing them and bringing them within its field of view. The results are heavily distorted, incredibly low fidelity, and most likely very motion blurry. Too low quality for the fridge to even attempt to discern what's inside the door, it'll just show you the snapshot it took and let you figure it out by navigating Home > AI Vision Inside > Left Door/Right Door to see the low quality reconstruction of your door... or you could take that time instead to just open the door.
> Like people congregate around their fridges
In my experience they do. At least at parties, cause that's where the beer is kept.
A smart fridge tracking the contents and doing facial recognition on who's opening it sounds awesome.
Then it can alert everyone Tom just stole Bob's IPA sounds very useful, to avoid those awkward "who stole my beer" moments.
That would be great. That's not what's being sold nowadays. There's no tracking of who did what, the camera points pretty much straight down and it only even works if you pause and explicitly show to it the object that you are putting in/taking out.
I put fliers for our store warranty inside, and just hid them under my wrist while taking them out so they show up in the AI Vision Inside app without actually taking up space in the fridge. The only time it ever saw me is when I leaned too far in and it took a picture of the back of my head. Got classified as a kiwi.
Sure if I want to "save money", I will buy a fridge for $3000, totally makes sense.
Strawberries are as low as $1 a pound at Felipe's.
I think there's some potential here, with regards to keeping track of when things were added/might go bad. At least for me, who easily forgets things until it's too late.
A thing that can read the expiry dates on food packages that take me 20 minutes to find because they're printed in light gray on gray background would be useful.
It would be. That was the original promise of the Family Hub+ fridges with AI Vision Inside™ technology.
But you won't find that here, and it's not going to be coming in an update. This fridge can't properly identify fruits and veggies, let alone anything in any sort of packaging.
As I demo the thing, it keeps taking snapshots of the back of my head and insists that the fridge is just packed full of kiwis.
Aye, the original version of my comment had "If it's reliable enough" as a qualifier.
> full of kiwis
Also this is utterly hilarious to me.
It's a lot of complexity and engineering just to avoid giving food the ol' sniff test. Tech bros need to stop inventing problems for which we already have time-tested solutions.
By then it's already too late. Not a very useful test to reduce food waste!
Folks seem to use tools like grocy.
If a Fridge had a barcode scanner built into it, that might be a start.
Put a magnetic whiteboard on the fridge. Write what you got when shopping and when you got it. 2 dollar solution, no invasive AI bullshit.
That would require I remember to do that, too ;)
I was only commenting on the usefulness of such features, not on whether companies would also abuse that access for more data; that is an issue, but a separate one.
You don’t even need a whiteboard, just write directly on the fridge.
I bought the Samsung SmartTag 2 to track the children, keys, etc. and connect them to HomeAssistant. Turns out Samsung actively blocks me from me being able to connect HA to their solution and the guy who was able to keep circumventing it and created a HA component which worked, gave up on it and archived the git repo.
Now only I who has a Samsung phone is able to use it, my wife and the children can't make them ring when they're looking for them and can't see on the map where the things might be.
> "Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem"
The type of corpo-speak that gives an mba a rock hard erection.
Vulgar jokes aside, I want to know who is buying ads on fridges and what the roas on a fridge ad is.
> I want to know who is buying ads on fridges and what the roas on a fridge ad is.
Who knows, really? But maybe the same people who put ads on the gas station pumps that I use?
Those things blare at max volume and I still have no idea what they're selling.
Amusing anecdote: About 60 years ago, my grandfather (immigrant who was not well versed in mass-production) wrote a letter to the local newspaper asking that they omit the advertisements when they built his copy of the paper. "I never read them" he said.
My mother had to explain to him how his copy was gonna be just like everyone else's.
Any chance he was just trolling them? Mass production of printed pages started a few centuries before he was born so I doubt he honestly thought his paper was custom-made.
I guess I'll never know. It happened before I was born, but my mother thought it was funny.
It'll be like those disgusting bottom-of-the-barrel YouTube ads, but contextual: "Need to clean out your stuck poop (video brown liquid)? Eat more fiber, because what's in this fridge....."
Probably slimy politicians, desperate to tell you how horrible the other tribe is while selling you their tribe's promises that will never happen. I'm sure campaign ads have taken a huge hit over previous decades when people actually watched TV or listened to radio.
It will sell very well because it a) will be cheaper than non-advertising laden fridges, b) will make more money meaning they can spend more on marketing and c) it has an air of "living in the future" about it.
Most of us here see it for what it is, because we know what happens to the data.
I think the future is going to have more of this.
But, I can also imagine people paying more for almost everything that is ad-supported today to get non-ad supported versions in the future, not because of the data concerns, but because of the opportunity for status signalling - ad-supported devices like this will be seen as something "only poor people have" within two decades. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.
Within two years they will launch a monthly ad-free subscription tier.
That might force them into providing better warranty support: if my fridge isn't working any more, I'm going to stop paying them money. Obviously subscription-free becomes another tier of status, but if by paying a monthly fee I get 24 hour maintenance support for fear of losing my sub revenue, well...
There's already parallels around this to an extent. I pay Apple money every month for storage, ad-free TV, music and games, confident my data is my data. As a result, they might have a customer for life, because the alternatives are awful in comparison even if I pay less per month or overall for them.
I have very good experience of Samsung’s warranty support for a washing machine, actually.
The thing that makes corporations give better warranty support is not more money. Giving them more money does not incentivize them to suddenly give better service or make higher quality goods. The thing is consumer protection laws. In the EU, consumer goods have a minimum two-year warranty period. This incentivizes higher quality manufacturing.
> confident my data is my data
this attitude strikes me as remarkably naive in 2025. apple is well on its way down the slippery slope.
Paired with "priority support" and "cheaper" repairs for the much more frequent breakdowns
> It will sell very well because it a) will be cheaper than non-advertising laden fridges,
Will it? Investors would prefer full price fridges with full price ads.
Most consumers won't even know they've installed adware until the appliance is turned on, and what are they gonna do? go to all the effort of returning and buying another fridge?
Captive audience
Dark patterns like that will die out soon enough and they'll harm the share price: Samsung are going to tell customers what they're getting.
And while investors would prefer full price fridges with full price ads, the ad economy only makes sense once you have decent reach, so it makes sense to lower the cost of acquisition of the device, take the hit as a customer acquisition cost and then sell the larger reach to advertisers.
This is the model for every ad-supported device and service to date, I'm not sure they're going to reinvent those economics for a fridge.
All that smart tech can't be offset by the small amount of ad revenue they generate.
It's still much cheaper to buy a normal fridge without all of this.
This really is a Black-Mirror-esque hellscape, and the fact that this is marketed as something to be desired is absolutely astonishing.
Just watched the Black Mirror "Common People" episode which is on this subject.
It's one of the creepiest because of just how close to the present day it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People_(Black_Mirror)
My wife and I are in the market for a new refrigerator and we have never heard anything good about Samsung. I was at least expecting different "tiers" to have different reputations, but no, it's the entire _brand_ that is bad. Parts getting defective within the first few years, low quality materials, and now this? No thanks.
I swear somebody should come in with an appliance brand which literally just builds things like they did 40 years ago before planned obsolescence and smart technology.
They would clean up.
I think the only thing that's actually improved is energy efficiency. But honestly my favorite appliances are my super old washer and dryer. I don't care that they are less energy efficient. Easy to use, nothing breaks and they have lasted forever.
It seems that they're all focused extremely precisely on tiny efficiency gains in standardised tests and stuffing in unwanted hostile "smartness" at the expense of longevity and simplicity. At least the former is mostly due to regulations; and there have been some good changes recently in that area, although it's hard to tell whether they'll have any effect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43065757
[11] Ads on Family Hub Cover screens will serve contextual or non-personal ads. Family Hub devices are not collectiong[sic] personal information or tracking consumers.
How are they serving "contextual" ads without collecting/tracking anything?
Probably lifestyle and food/kitchenware ads. They know you can afford a smart fridge even if they know nothing else about you.
If I am the product, can I have the fridge for free then?
This is so annoying, Amazon did it with Kindle, now Samsung with fridges?!
https://app.opencve.io/cve/?vendor=samsung
"Smart" hardware means "smart" for the manufacturer --- very "dumb" for the user/purchaser.
Besides the ads I barely understood what any of those features do, let alone why I would want them.
None of the features even touch on ideas related to keeping food cold.
They’re so deep in advertising that the only feature they can think their customers are interested in are related to seeing ads.
Samsung consistently treats their customers with contempt.
Never buy a second thing from a company that treats you with contempt.
Although I loathe ads, I think that for new products where the presence of ads is disclosed clearly upfront, this is acceptable. Especially if this comes with a discount. We have Kindles with and without ads and people are generally fine with it.
But the fact that this gets retrofitted to fridges that people already bought, without any way of opting out or other mitigation, is criminal. Is this a lawsuit in the making? Am I naive?
> this is acceptable
This is not. An appliance—which should never be connected to the Internet in the first place—that costs 4 digits in USD should never show you ads in any way. You obviously don't "loathe" ads if you're even capable of reasoning about that kind of behavior. Stop trying to shove ads 24/7 in every millimeter of available space.
On the upside, it will be very easy to find more reliable and cheaper fridges than that.
Those Kindles, which I am also (mostly) okay with, are also $100 devices whose price is subsidized by those ads.
These fridges are $3500 typically, and theoretically an MSRP of $4700. They're at the high end of consumer appliances.
I don't believe it's a lawsuit in the making, this is (at least partially) America, land of freedom from consumer protections, but it is horrid.
Kindles didn't always have ads at the same price.
The fridges originally didn't have ads.
I dont like them either, but if the fridge were cheaper (this one isn't) or had other features I wanted, I'd consider buying it and just covering up the ad screen.
Another concern is energy consumption. In this age of energy star and touting how efficient appliances are, it doesn't make sense to have a screen that is always-on.
The real killer feature Samsung needs is an automatic warranty. I would never buy Samsung again, unless they started a new trend where all repairs are covered for 10 years (not sold as an add-on during checkout).
When buying a fridge with a smartphone in it what do you expect, more fridge or more phone?
I just got an S25 and having a Samsung account at all is optional. I never had one on my previous Galaxy phones either. I couldn't even accidentally use their AI or other intrusive crap with a misclick because I'd be taken to a screen where I have to sign up and agree to their privacy policy etc. Which obviously I don't.
I wouldn't consider buying a smart/Samsung refrigerator at all but I'm curious, is having blockchain, AI, and a Samsung account mandatory here? Or do they allow for discerning users who don't want that stuff? Is that market segment important to them?
>Is that market segment important to them?
No, it is not. Cheaper fridges with ads sell more and make more.
Make sure you install Good Lock, fixes many of the frustrations of OneUI.
What is the “best” fridge to get now? Like, say a standard American fridge with a stainless steel door with a freezer compartment, just for food (no tech, screens, ice making or water dispensing nonsense).
I have been happy enough with my GE fridge. However I got fancy and went for the one that puts the freezer on the bottom instead of the top.
I will say, when I went to my local appliance store (NOT bestbuy) they had literally zero options on the floor with a touch screen.
There are plenty of fridges that don't incorporate "smart" features. There's nothing really complicated about a giant box that you put food in to keep cold and maybe an integrated water dispenser.
I've been shopping for a new fridge lately, and from what I gather most "smart" fridges are still extremely expensive and that makes "non-smart" fridges still very desirable. In other words, "smart" features may not be new, but they aren't standard on a typical fridge... yet.
Samsung still makes regular fridges too, although I'm confused by the fact that you put water-dispensing/ice-making and screens together.
I have a Samsung Bespoke, for example, and you can 100% turn the ice-making off and just use that part of the freezer for more freezer space. No screen, the from it blank because all the water dispensing stuff is on the inside and I think (?) you can get one without it
The water dispensing/ice making stuff just seem like a needless complication to me, with extra parts that probably decrease the life of the machine.
I just want a high quality, decent-looking box that stops food from going off.
That's a fair point
A used one. For every person who hates this "smart" stuff, there's probably a dozen other sheeple gladly "upgrading" and getting rid of a fridge that's been working just fine for a very long time and will likely continue doing so.
Really any option that has true dual compressors is going to be fairly solid. We just got a Bosch 800 and have been quiet happy with it
Would be nice if they could make a fridge that was simply reliable. I bought one of their fridge’s and couple years later had to do a ridiculous number of mods to the ice maker and fridge that were in the Samsung official service bulletin at the time of purchase. It’s reliable now, but will never buy anything from them again. Many similar models from 2010s had similar issues.
Never buying a samsung device ever again.
Can you hack into "smart" fridges like this one to see when they are going unused, implying when the residents are away and the home is a good target for burglary?
Junkies looking to hit a house for some jewellery and a Playstation aren't spending months developing Ocean's Eleven style schemes
Unless you're someone that's specifically worth targeting (eg. crypto billionaire), no burglar is going through the effort for this. Moreover even without smart fridges, you'd have to contend with similar threats from other internet connected devices (eg. laptops or routers), which can also infer whether the home is occupied or not.
I'm thinking more about a systemic approach rather than a one-off — in other words, surveying all units to identify potential targets rather than evaluating the risk for a single target. Recently we have seen a rise in criminal organizations who target high-profile targets known to be away (e.g. sports figures and entertainers whose schedules are known), and it seems like such a tool could be of use to such orgs as an additional signal — and to broaden their target base to non-celebrities.
Also, while "smart" Samsung fridges are the topic of this article, the concept generalizes to any internet connected devices within "smart" homes which exhibit a combination of "hackable" and revealing-of-occupancy. Samsung refrigerators are unlikely to be the most attractive vector when there are e.g. "smart" light bulbs out there which are vulnerable and never going to be patched because the manufacturer went out of business.
FWIW, I'm not a pen tester or security specialist — just a security-conscious generalist software developer. I see evidence left behind of scanning attacks in web logs, but haven't actually crafted such mass attacks myself.
I think the concern is that hacking an IOT platform would give you names, physical addresses, and household occupancy for all of their customers. Once you cross-reference that with another database you have a list of wealthiest households in a given zip code whose owners are on vacation, with live access to cameras inside their home.
>I think the concern is that hacking an IOT platform would give you names, physical addresses, and household occupancy for all of their customers.
The problem is that even if you can amass such an IOT botnet, you still need people on the ground to conduct such burglaries, and that scales poorly. Even if you tried to operate on a SaaS model, you're going to find that your clients (ie. drug users who want their next fix) are fickle and are very eager to snitch on you to the police, making it very likely that your botnet gets dismantled. On the other hand running a DDoS or "residential proxy" botnet comes with none of these hassles.
I think the plot of Home Alone leaves a lot to answer for
"Knox...advanced security solution built on private blockchain technology"
Hmm. What would you need consensus and immutability for?
Nonsensical.
Just like smart TVs, I'm pretty sure smart fridges will end up analyzing your buying/consumption habits and selling that data.
There's many things you could put in a fridge to confuse the analysis. Maybe.
Excellent idea! But beware, your sense of humor or protest-like product placement in your spy fridge could have consequences. This crazy world we live in is always looking to hurt/blame/expose/burn somebody.
When I was furnishing my home a decade ago I went out of my way to not buy anything Samsung. Sad to see it only got worse.
The fact that I cannot tell with absolute certainty that the title of this thread has a typo makes my head hurt.
Edit: in fact after reading the article, I can. The title is meant to read "Ads".
I had to disconnect my Samsung smart TV from the internet because every time I turned it on it would immediately go to the live TV app and play a minimum of one minute of some random show from the 90s. Now I use Apple TV. This is the kind of thing that needs heavy regulation.
I’m struggling with this too, and I cannot disable or remove the live TV app. If I get an Apple TV, can I have the TV always default to it on startup?
Yes but only if you disconnect the TV from the internet. I think I was able to do it in the settings of the TV but you could also change your WiFi password.
The important question is what happens if I don't connect it to Wi-Fi? Does the compressor motor refuse to work??
That is important because as a buyer, I need to be able to tell the difference between the legitimate unacceptable extant user experiences vs. the FUD about things that are trivially avoidable but still get forwarded and reposted with exaggeration and hysteria.
I can't always avoid the latter category on principle.
I assume the "smart features" will refuse to work.
We need a law that requires IoT devices have a method of shutting off connectivity entirely, and requiring that core functionality remains intact.
let’s start with cars. I’ve accepted that I’ll never buy a new car again which is a real shame as EVs have a ton of potential. I’d be so happy to be wrong but the trend seems to be inescapable right now.
Yep, if I bought a car today I would want to check that it has no onboard GPS and no functional modem.
That’s some funny typo for “ads” in the post title.
I'm shopping for a new range, because mine just died a few weeks before good ole "T-day". This is one of the primary reasons a Samsung range isn't crossing my list at all.
I still struggle to imagine why would I ever need a smart fridge.
I'd be elevating this fridge right over the edge of a dumpster.
We need that guy that made smart vacuum cleaner work fully offline to purchase one of "elevated" fridges :).
I don't buy insta-botnets and I never will.
The people who developed the software for this ought to become outcasts from the profession, refused invitations to conferences, excluded from unions and so on.
Buddy, you're on the wrong web site!
I was guilty of it myself at times during my career, but luckily I was able to retire just before things started to get unavoidably shitty.
LOL. We're on hackernews. This sort of stuff is basically the bread and butter of this venture capital funded website.
Not far off
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/tovala
A SMART-OVEN-PAIRED SUBSCRIPTION MEAL SERVICE.
Sounds like the right place to voice this suggestion.
If I only did it where everyone agrees with me it'd be a waste of time, of which none of us have very much.
Yea, one thing I've learned--if you ever even suggest that software engineers should be held responsible for writing harmful software or working on unethical projects, you're going to get downvoted so fast your head will spin. HN commenters will happily build the Torment Nexus as long as the JIRA ticket is filled out correctly and they have clear requirements.
Just ten more tickets and I can retire safely, it’s supposed to be “the next guy’s problem.” So long, suckers!
To technologists with societal awarenesses, this whole direction of Samsung is concerning.
But a personally funny thing about this particular episode, to me, is that when I left a very nice CS PhD program, to switch schools, to work on AI+HCI for software agents (before the enabling AI tech was ready)... the most common soundbite that the PI gave to prospective corporate sponsors who visited most days, was something like... "You could have a 'digital butler', who knows what you have in your fridge, and orders milk when you're running out."
(Aside: The students working on agents and wearable computing at the time were actually disproportionately ones also interested in privacy, at the university. Maybe because we were Internet-savvy from shortly before the dotcom gold rush (default Internet person sentiment was pro-privacy, pro-altruism, etc.), or maybe because we tended to be technical and thinking forward about emerging networked applications, and could guess where this was going.)
On HN, we always see a bunch of loud voices about various facets of IoT dystopia, but that doesn't reflect the broad population, yet. And as more people start to become aware, they tend to get sold diversionary snake oil solutions by influencers (e.g., "keep buying and deploying these devices, just set up a PiHole, and you'll totally be OK; like and subscribe"), while dystopian product movements march onward.
Anyone figured out how to get lineageos on their Smart Fridge yet?
Up next: those 1 inch OLED displays that are all the rage
Placing all home automation gear on a dedicated guest or IOT SSID is critical.
Best to treat them all like hostile devices and limit what they can do to what you bought them to do.
Or don't buy them in the first place. Since nobody here likes regulation, why don't we start at least trying (hopelessly) to vote with our wallets?
That's a good choice - buying things that behave is much more preferable, but often like tvs and other gear, ads can come in, or the "free" cloud they depend on disappears.
I have already started my permanent and total Samsung boycott.
Hmm, do Samsung executives/developers actually use this stuff at home? Does the author who wrote this BS piece actually leave those ads enabled?
I would never buy a fridge with a monitor built in, but I did buy a house that came with one. I'll have to make sure I keep clicking don't agree to the new ToS
Honestly, there have been plenty of warning signs that Samsung appliances are trash for well over a decade if not more. If you own one, sell it some other idiot
"unified user experience" == the ads are synced across devices
They should add a monthly subscription to open the fridge door next.
[dupe]
Two weeks old news OP?
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45737338
and Previous outrages:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45291107
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45262808
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292666
Across the spectrum of all Samsung consumer hardware, phones, fridges, smart watches, earbuds, TVs, etc., they are probably the most consumer hostile company in existence.
I would NEVER buy one of their devices again. I've learned that they will punch you in the face every time, with deliberate choices made just out of spite (like pulse meter on smart watches, IIRC, only being available if you have a Samsung phone. Pixel phone is a no).
Connecting one of their TVs or fridges to the internet? Lol, not today, Satan. Not in this lifetime.
So, let me see: I can pay $1200 for a really nice fridge that keeps my food cold. Or I can pay $3000 for a fridge that keeps my food cold, and also shows me ads. Is being shown ads worth $1800 to me?
Hmm... decisions...
This stuff is so disgusting.
“adds”
No, “ads”.
I don't care if this is down voted, or flagged: fuck Samsung!
Gotta love these complete fucking morons in charge. I could put together an LLM that would make better long-term product decisions than these VC-brained monkeys, and I’d only need single-digit B of parameters to beat their single-digit IQ. Congratulations on transitioning your brand from toxic to radioactive.
Normies buy this stuff. You misjudge how much normies do not care.
They don't care because they don't understand the possibilities of the tech. I've tried to give my extended family members some quick info on what not to do online and how to safely use their gizmos. Most of the time I get a blank stare.
Caution, incoming naive comment(s): Companies should put their customer's well being before profits, because we all know most people don't understand what's going on with their digital devises. (Yes, customers should care more, but companies shouldn't be allowed to take advantage of those who can't grasp the techiness of the products.) Techiness, I just made that up. :)
Dodge v Ford
> Caution, incoming naive statement: Companies should put their customer's well being before profits, because we all know most people don't understand what's going on with their digital devises.
This might be illegal for publicly traded companies. Shareholder maximization forces them to deceive their customers.
Public companies aren’t disallowed from making long term investments such as building brand loyalty. You are excusing the braindead executives for their choice to burn their brand in exchange for some imaginary ad paycheck. Like I’m going to buy a branded pack of eggs based on an ad on my fucking fridge (and somehow that’s going to make them a ton of dough). I can’t get over how simple-minded and gullible the people running these companies are.
If you wanna skip some chapters and see where all of this ends up, go check out how Unity is doing after John Riccitiello fucked them.
You sir are misjudging me and the effort I put into not only protecting myself but also other from this overreach and intrusion into the life and privacy of myself and others.
But the comment above me argued "Companies should put their customer's well being before profits" which as a general statement may VERY well fall under my argument.
The reality is that i believe shareholder value optimization and unregulated capitalism is the problem.
I would happily buy this fridge and just disable the screen/cameras/smart stuff IF: all the essential functions actually worked properly.
> Please connect the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R to the internet to start the refrigeration cycle.
> Please connect the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R to the internet to continue the refrigeration cycle. You refrigeration cycle will end in 28 hours unless reconnected to the Samsung^TM KNOX^R Server System for your security
> Please reposition the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R so that 6G Connectivity can be established to start the refrigeration cycle.
> Please unblock all visual obstructions the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R Camera and reauthorize usage to continue the refrigeration cycle.
> Please unblock all visual obstructions the Samsung^R Family^tm H.U.B.^TM^R Camera and Reauthorize using your government ID, fingerprint, iris scan and cryptographically singed anus print to continue usage. Failure to comply will cost you 25 Social Credits. You have 27 hours left.
The reason this type of shit keeps happening is because theres no MAD in classwarfare. Think about that.
Lower class has no weapons at all. Choice is illusion when all alternatives are the same.
Weapons available to the lower class:
- corporate economic boycotting
- voting for independents
- disconnecting from social media platforms
- disconnecting from ai platforms
Regular people still have a chance to demand a stake in the future. They're just not even trying because they're all psychologically demolished and partitioned.
I mean, if you buy a "smart" appliance at this point, you want the ads and everything else that would come after.
I like my subzero
No screens except a little lcd at the top when you open it to see the temps
No WiFi, no Bluetooth, just a cold fucking box
Totally agree. The house we bought in 2019 has a Subzero and it's the best fridge I've had. No frills (other than an ice maker), it just works. I dread the day I have to repair or replace it ($$) but it's been rock solid in the 5-6 years we've lived here so far.
I don't buy any appliance that has "smart" in it. Yeah, no, thanks.
ads?
did Samsung not realise that HBO's "Silicon Valley" was supposed to be satire?
guess they tuned out before the fridges inevitably get rooted and ended up as part of a botnet
Infuriating.
Smart devices are a bad idea. And while I won’t mess with my Mercedes, I prefer dummy TV + media server/appleTV or chromecast.