hckrnws
Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges
(arstechnica.com)
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by nonfamous
by nonfamous
Obviously the review of a brand-new device or vehicle with 100 miles on it is going to have a disconnect from the realities of 60k miles of rocky ownership but I remain baffled when people buy a 7 year old used V6 Traverse, a vehicle extremely well known for catastrophic engine failure, and if I question their decision I get a "the reviews were good!". It seems like journalistic malpractice to not retroactively update reviews with a warning when critical widespread shortcomings are found later in a products life.
I'm guilty of it as well, if forced to choose blindly I'd pick Sony over WMFSENSY. But I'm beggining to wonder, with the recent casualness with which brands lower quality, whether they'll be a generational change and people will start ignoring brands entirely.
I'm starting to change my mind myself. My last Nike shoes weren't even the same size/shape (apparently they make left and right shoes in different countries now). At that point might as well go for the knockoffs.
This feels like a joke about just in time inventory and globalization, but I'm worried that it might be true.
The problem with this is it's a bit hard to put "well known" in a news article about a negative piece of news, because the manufacturers tend to threaten to sue you unless you have some kind of source or some kind of actual numbers. So this ends up just circulating as received wisdom within the car-knower community but not to the general public. Unless they get lucky with Reddit search results.
I noticed today that Autotrader.co.uk have recall warnings for certain cars, though.
Last I checked Samsung had the most engagement on Facebook just behind Netflix. This means that they are spending tons of money to put their products in front of their customers via social media marketing. Go out and ask any normies for the top 3 brands for electronics, especially that of home appliances, Samsung will definitely be up there somehow, because most people think that big brand = good. How do they know it's big? Well, you see them everywhere!
So I imagine that, "the reviews were good!" is just the surface. The truth is that they ignored all the writings on the wall. In the reality created by the constant exposure, the manufacturer is a big brand, thus they make good cars. Unless someone runs a counter advertisement to tell them about the critical problem the same amount of time or more than when they're shown the car whooshing through multiple scences sytlishly.
Now interference engines detonating when the timing belt breaks isn't new, but putting a belt in a bath of dirty and burnt oil that makes it a mess and expensive to replace and basically impossible to inspect is pretty silly. A chain would not have had such problems and become an efficiency and running issue from a stretched chain instead of sudden and catastrophic failure of a broken belt.
It also has the problem of rubber belt pieced clogging up the oil system.
Its fine for people that get all the regular maintence and oil changes strictly on time. But not everyone does it so diligently. And if you buy it as a random used car you have no way of really knowing how good that belt is without a list of every oil and belt change and how hard they drove it.
Goes to show how long brand name goes, especially on appliances.
Also I don't see how it's unfair to expect refrigerators that cost a grand to do their one job without firmware.
I’m puzzled as well, buying a car that depreciates 60-70% in 7 years seems like a horrible idea, you could spend roughly the same on a Toyota Highlander or Honda Pilot and only face 30-40% depreciation after 7 years. This information is freely available if you google “[vehicle model] depreciation curve”.
Nissan (and Stellantis, Mitsubishi) decided to stop making better cars and focus almost exclusively on subprime lending, the rest of the story tells itself once you have that information.
Maybe cruel, but I haven't found a better way to get someone to realize the error of their ways… because logic has obviously failed them.
[1] https://youtu.be/GceNsojnMf0 [2] https://youtu.be/-fC2oke5MFg
OK, that's a fair statement, but!
My 2017 Altima has been great. Comfortable to drive, bluetooth connection that doesn't drive me crazy, space for passengers and cargo, manageable maintenance, I even use it to tow a small trailer with lawn equipment, no issues! I'm up to 190,000 mi with only minor repairs that I could do myself. I got my money's worth out of this one.
That said... I do avoid smart appliances, especially LG and Samsung. The additional features do not seem to add enough value to overcome the potential problems.
Just total engineering incompetence of forced updates with new features for no reason that degrade core workflows and introduce needless instability.
I would love a fridge with a camera inside and a smart enough AI to tell me (1. what's in the fridge (2. how long it's been there and (3. what I've eaten from it. Some companies have tried making this kind of fridge, but AFAIK they don't work very well.
You can hard reset the latter one by holding down the home button for ten seconds, but while it turns back on the indicators don't function... even while driving
Recent household BS: music playing out of my thermostat.
Wife tried playing music out of Sonos, but the clunky app was laggy and had also signed her out of Spotify. No problem, you can also just play direct from Spotify app into Sonos speakers. She opens Spotify, selects "Living Room" and next thing you know our THERMOSTAT was playing music.
Neither of us know this was possible, neither of us enabled it, apparently it's existed for years but for some reason Saturday was the day that "Living Room" thermostat beat out "Living Room" Sonos in the Spotify sort order.
There were product managers on both sides of that decision to prioritize enabling such a stupid feature.
I'd pay for it to not be possible. I'd disable it on either/both ends if they had a toggle, which of course they don't. MVP baby.
It might not "run fine" when you take that into account.
Excessive needs bring you excessive pain.
I found it after learning that Samsung is planning to start charging $5 a month for API access but another benefit is reducing the risk of something like this.
It turns out that grocery stores with real time inventory on websites & pickup/delivery are a much better solution.
I have my weekly order I add my usuals to, and then add items to the cart all week as I noticed I am out/low while making dinner.
The future truly is incredible
TIL that they really shouldn’t.
I can understand some people would like their heating/cooling systems to be available online as a convenience, but a fridge?
This extends all the way up to software. Be wary when someone pushes a modern replacement of a reliable and effective tool you already have.
https://mnews.sbs.co.kr/english/article.do?newsId=N100876742...
It only happened when it was particularly cold outside. I eventually figured out that there is an external temperature sensor that causes the fridge to stop cooling below a certain external temperature. And that space in the kitchen was particularly cold in the back. But I could never read it below 55, so I think the sensor was faulty.
But the reading on the front is what really annoyed me. I had to keep a thermometer inside the fridge so that I didn't accidentally eat food that felt cool enough but was bad.
This happened every year. I eventually gave it away for free, with a warning to the person.
Granted, I think the very concept of a smart fridge is a bad idea no matter how you execute on it... but they still managed to take a bad idea and execute on it badly. Amazing.
https://www.techradar.com/home/smart-home/samsung-launches-a...
"Smart" that I can back is simple sensor acquisition over open protocols. I would appreciate being able to MONITOR my fridge/freezer/stove/oven/washer/dryer. Changing shit over those connections is not needed, nor wanted.
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I was at the store and one fridge had built in cameras so you could get pictures of your fridge all the time. :S
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The most natural way for shoe mismatches is from the showroom. Customer grabs 5 pairs, tries some on, they get mixed up when returning to stock. Same shoe and size (hopefully, lol), but different production number and different factory/origin.
There was a Seinfeld joke to this effect that men just take whatever clothing, even if it barely fits. Women are likely to be choosier and insist on a good match. Some might intentionally mix and match shoe sizes if one foot is bigger than the other (leaving the store with a mismatched pair)
Also let’s multiple “competitors” consolidate packaging into one big operation. Or localized to destination. Also a space thing: can ship more in bulk and make it all fluffier closer to point of sale.
Shoeboxes, among other packages, are a lot of air, why fill your truck/container/aircraft “unit load device” with it.
I've sworn off Bosch appliances after a 2 year fiasco of service calls with one of their dishwashers. The thing was still about $900 plus install. At what price point am I to believe it's not the worse-on-purpose line, as they cheapen the product every year. They seem to have models from $700 to $2000.
A bad $900 model sours me on gambling that the $1200, $1500 or $2000 model is the good one this year.
Seems like almost everything moderately priced has soles made of a extremely lightweight, squishy soft plastic that neither has much traction nor any toughness — worse than cheap flip-flop material.
Shoe companies should be embarrassed to put their name on such crap, yet they try to pass it off as premium.
One problem is that business forces keep turning brands into rugpulls.
After enough of this nonsense, brands are less of a reliable indicator.
Amazon pushed that to its inevitable endgame, where each product is a unique look-at-reviews situation. (and coincidentally the amazon advertising business is there while you run the product choosing guantlet)
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This is something that frustrates me to no end. How are clothing item sizes not standardized yet?
For example, I recently went to buy new Jeans, so I went to the same store where I got my current Jeans, asked for a size 28, and tried it on. How is it possible that my size 28W Basic Straight Jeans from Fox fit me, while a pair that fits the exact same description is too small?
I later went to a different branch, and there I found another pair which fits the exact same description, and it did fit me!
I have encountered this type of thing inany places, like when buying shoes one of the employees at the store told me "We don't have this in size 42 in stock, but we do have 41 and our sizes are larger".
Imagine if you went to McMaster Carr and asked for an M3 screw, and being told "We are out of M3, but our M2.5 is larger so it should work for you"
However, clothes are nearly impossible to simultaneously standardize and commoditize: people (and their feet) come in all shapes and sizes, so different brands in particular, but also different lines of those brands, will have different proportions.
As a tall guy, I hate that clothes keep growing in width with larger sizes, but rarely grow in length (pants/trousers included), but only because you can't get things without trying them on in multiple sizes.
If you do not understand why standardized sizes are not mandated or something similar, just look at any bespoke garment creation and all the variable measures being taken for a shirt, pants or jacket — just make realistic combination of all of them in different sizes, and you are looking at ~1000 "standard sizes" or more.
Humans have this same problem, which I suspect is the root cause.
On the contrary, *insertanynonenglishnamebrand* (*newbrand*) doesn't need to have any care in the world. If the product is trash, they would replace the name next year, bonus points if they declare bankrupcy and don't pay their obligations.
Only at the same price. If there's a big discount, I'm going to prefer the random letter jumble from China because it's probably a standard design that a lot of factories are producing because it works well enough.
The only reason I lean towards Sony all things being equal is because I know that Sony gets sued when things go wrong, and won't just drop the brand and close up shop like the random letter jumble.
Also I would prefer Sony if lead would be a problem somewhere in the thing I'm buying.
:)
Ford's recently designed engines were designed with a timing belt internally that operated in an oil bath.
They are currently walking that decision back and attempting to make it look as if it wasn't planned obsolescence (dry cambelt engines or proper timing chains means that the engine would last almost longer than the person who bought it if they did the regular maintenance. A cambelt that cannot be changed because its internal means that there is a limit to how long the engine would last.)
Is not designed by Ford. Those are (most probably) the same as the infamous Puretech motors developped by PSA. Is a Peugeot car disguised as Ford (or a Ford car with a Peugeot motor if you prefer). Several brands use it, under different names. Most probably they bought them under a big discount.
That motor was durable, tested and approved, But... Europe said: You must adjust this and that for the new legislation, and the change made a little bit of gasoline to mix in the oil and reach the belt. Problem: Gasoline eats rubber over time, and the timing belt is made of rubber.
The real problem was not so much that the timing belt could root entirely and break, leading to a catastrophic failure.
Much before that, the pump that sucks oil into the motor gets slowly clogged with rubber bits, triggering a "pressure oil failure" warning. Also the computer reacts to a slow lubrication reducing the power to protect the motor, so you have a car with random power failures and alarming warnings. If you ignore this, eventually the rubber dust accumulated could block entirely the oil from entering into the motor. And then your motor is destroyed in no time.
Nobody suspected that when Peugeot sold thousands of cars. A few years later, many cars that were still basically new, started to die or require expensive reparations. The makers warned on the manual that the belt must be changed often and this avoids entirely the problem. Second problem: Only car freaks follow the manual specifications. Every common owner expected the timing belt to last for the same as a traditional one (160,000 to 240,000Km or so), when it must be changed at 60,000 or so. Changing the time belt is not cheap and they ignored the warning as a grabbing cash trick.
For a while, common people were still buying cars with big discounts that mechanics didn't wanted to touch with a teen foot pole. Spanish influencers started to rebrand the pure-tech motors as pudre-tech (in Spanish: it-rots-tech), and the term slowly reached the public opinion.
Even following the specifications, you are stuck with a car that is more expensive to maintain.
Peugeot fixed the issue changing the belt material, but the reputational damage was done and was eventually absorbed into Stellantis, a superbrand created with Chinese, Italian and American investors.
If your car uses gasoil you don't have this problem. Only gasoline. Peugeot declared in jun 2026 that those family of gasoline motors are about to be finally discarded and replaced by a new motor (with a chain belt and designed for better integration with hybrid systems).
Needs changing at 100,000 to 150-000 miles or every 10 years.
The 10 year service is a spendy one.
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That's just one of those secrets that you need to know, though. It's like knowing to ignore the unemployment rate (in the vast majority of cases) and instead to look at the prime-age employment rate. People rarely think of something like that without being told.
someone did not like you linking that!
You don't have the CVT, do you?
I know atleast one dealership that never even mentioned a cvt fluid change despite the schedule for it being only 1000 miles away, but it was the last service before being paid off and if you don't come back and replace it on yoir own dime thats a potential new sale in 2 years.
The CVT is a steel belt though so that fluid should be replaced sooner rather than later because metal particles build up in oil. And at some point its not far from throwing a handful of sand inside of it and it will eat itself alive.
TBH, I have heard that a small number of those JATCO transmissions didn't shit themselves soon after the warranty expired; congratulations :-)
I've got the exact transmission in a Renault SUV (2.5 NA petrol engine), and at 160000km the belt started jittering. Not noticeable to the passengers or driver, and no codes thrown up on the dashboard, but the OBD2 tool I use shows that the belt was, in fact, starting to fail.
Even Tesla which plays fast & loose with some things.. the car does not come to a halt if the infotainment/GPS/etc tablet reboots. It's VERY disconcerting as you have no speedometer, the car is eerily silent, etc.. but the car still drives.
Just sloppy, cheap, lazy engineering.
But it is true that the rules don’t anticipate a fridge that cannot refrigerate food if the advertisements aren’t playing properly.
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Features that are smart listed on the product page[1]:
Family Hub™ 21.5”: Family Hub™ keeps your family connected from anywhere; search recipes, share pictures, stream music, access YouTube and control your smart devices all from your the fridge* (*A WiFi connection and Samsung account required)
SmartThings Energy: SmartThings lets you monitor and manage your smart refrigerator's power usage; get energy saving tips and alerts to help lower your electric bill all from your phone.
Now Brief: The Now Brief provides a daily overview of information including the weather, your schedule and latest health data on your Family Hub ™screen, when it's not in use; customize your Now Brief dashboard using your favorite apps and widgets to get a quick glance of what's relevant to you.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Samsung-30-cu-ft-Smart-French-Door-...
Extremely uncompelling stuff. Now add in that it is probably beaming your usage habits for your ad profile, always listening for voice commands, and apparently will break into freezing mode, and I cannot imagine why anyone would even consider this. If they were giving them out for free or paying people to put in their house, their existence would make sense tp me. Now I've learned that n>1 people paid multiple thousands of dollars for this and I assume it is not the only model out there.
I get mail from my utility that I use more electric than average. However that doesn't give me anything actionable to do about it. I don't need another nag about things I can't do anything about.
What they don't tell you: when the fridge door is closed the light turns off.
(yes HN this is a joke)
More seriously, in a previous job I did inventory/POS systems for pubs which would track the obvious things like "you got ten casks of beer delivered this morning and have sold 50 pints, at what point do you need to order more beer". It would genuinely be useful to have inventory tracking for fridges. At one point this would rely on barcodes, but machine vision should be good enough for now. The problem is, as with many smart things, it needs to be reliable and frictionless enough that it's better than just the Mark 1 Eyeball.
Also it's very difficult to trust if it might end up integrated into a purchase system. Does "you always have milk in the fridge" sound good? Yes. Is it going to be like "HP Instant Ink", a massive and slightly wasteful ripoff? Well, quite possibly.
I am always on the lookout to automatate as much boring, everyday tasks. A Smart Fridge like that would allow you to generate shopping lists and reduce food waste by alerting you to possible soon-to-be-spoiled food.
A bit like what roombas are doing for cleaning. You still need to do it yourself a bit, but they help.
Not necessary, not even a gamechanger but another neat home automation. Would be nice, sad to hear they don't work well.
My idea of a dumb fridge: a fridge that updates firmware, bricks itself, and lets all my food spoil.
Taking photos of the fridge is a solution, but then phones were too stupid until recently to be able to find those. Even know it's a mixed bag.
We live in a world of dumb devices that could be so much smarter.
Remember this classic? https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...
- Reminders to change the ice/water filter get sent to my phone. There's an indicator light, but the phone notification is nice, too. The app also records when the filter was changed—useful to confirm that I'm "tasting" that the filter needs changed early.
- When we had a teenager living with us, getting remote notifications that the refrigerator door was left open probably saved us a few fridge-fulls of food.
Other than that, it's just a fridge that works reasonably well. My one complaint has nothing to do with smart features: about once per year I have to spend 5 mins to defrost the ice maker with a hairdryer. Just infrequent enough for me not to investigate the source of the problem.
[0] I don't say "smart" here because nothing's really smart/automated and it doesn't have a screen, speaker, microphone or camera. RF28R7201SR/AA if you're curious.
> - Reminders to change the ice/water filter get sent to my phone.
How do you deal with all your other maintenance tasks around the house? with other appliances? with your car? Why not use a central system, like a task/reminder app?
> - When we had a teenager living with us, getting remote notifications that the refrigerator door was left open probably saved us a few fridge-fulls of food.
I would understand a child leaving the door open but a teenager doing it that often is kind of wild? Regardless, wouldn't a reminder beep that starts when the door has been open for 5 minutes be better? Must everything be on your phone? It's not even actionable if you're not in the house, where you'd hear a local beep.
I do. I have OCD. Redundant systems and being able to confirm things are key for me.
> I would understand a child leaving the door open but a teenager doing it that often is kind of wild?
Teens can be absent minded. You might be shocked by how common it is for families with teens to replace a set of forks that just disappeared one by one.
> wouldn't a reminder beep that starts when the door has been open for 5 minutes be better? Must everything be on your phone? It's not even actionable if you're not in the house, where you'd hear a local beep.
It does beep when opened too long.
Remote notifications are the point. They are actionable: when I get the remote notification, I shoot off a text "close the fridge".
The filters I buy come with little date stickers to put on it.
I feel like this is what people say a smart fridge _could_ be good for, but can they even do that? From what I understand the most sophisticated ones can tell you if some specific items are in your fridge, and otherwise they just do basic shit like display photos and tell the weather.
I will take a solidly engineered fridge with a good energy usage profile every single time over some overengineered wifi-connected piece of crap.
Never underestimate the value of convenience to people.
How? Are there cameras inside the fridge that check best before dates, and what food is in there? Having a fridge that is actively spying on what I eat seems even worse.
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https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/1pi2ax1/woman_...
My parents are of the generation where they put a TV in every room and just keep it on 24/7 news all day long. They don’t understand a world without ads and certainly don’t go out of their way to avoid them
I want my appliances to last far longer than devices like my phone or computer.
There is absolutely no way these manufacturers will continue updating them even close to as long as I want to own them. So then you're stuck with an insecure and functionally useless, bad looking (in my opinion) appliance. That you paid extra to own and see ads on.
... and hopefully be simple. My washer and dryer (made in late 90s) are dirt simple inside, with parts readily available. I recently had to replace the belt in the dryer, and a water valve in the washer. It was a diy job, with the help of a few youtube videos.
My neighbor guest's car got stuck in their driveway recently when an electronic parking brake malfunctioned. It really feels like all the gadgetry is a step backwards.
I like knowing if I (or someone visiting our house while we're gone) left one of the doors open or when it needs maintenance done on it.
My $150 "smart toothbrush" (some Oral B iO model) has accelerometers to track its head position and the app lets you know if you're not covering certain areas well enough. Since using it properly (i.e. checking the app and adjusting my brushing) I don't have to go to the hygienist as often.
If you have an option of regular stairs or stalled escalators, use the stairs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krXj69fJjgA
If the brakes aren't operating properly the stairs could start moving uncontrollably.
They take this type of bug very seriously but obviously any platform will have bugs. It’s the legacy automakers I worry about, since their software has always been outdated crap and this problem needs the best in test automation
My 2015 Jeep Cherokee had a freakout one day: the power steering stopped working mid-drive, on the highway. I was 50 minutes from my house, had to turn around and drive back home (an exhausting exercise given that modern cars are not built to function without power steering). I got to the dealer, parked in the lot, turned the car off, wait 30 seconds, turn it back on, everything worked fine.
That never happened again, but once is enough to put somebody in a dangerous-to-life situation.
It's not just the infotainment system we should be worrying about. Most modern cars are now distributed computer systems.
You must not fear it that much.
This is a direction all manufacturers are going into, so there is little actual choice. And buying used is not a real solution; where do tomorrow’s used vehicles come from?
Probably not. And that is why it happened - nobody thought about this at all until everything working as designed fails.
That is the thermostat probably is an off the shelf tablet with a speaker that they put other things on to make it a thermostat - this is the obvious thing to do and a lot cheaper than making your own completely custom hardware for this job. The software on the thermostat is likewise off the shelf (probably android) which has spotify in the base install and nobody took it out. Then you set the thermostat to be in the living room - again because that is the obvious thing to do. Finally your wife plays music and spotify sees two devices in the living room and picks one - which happens to be the wrong one but they have no way to know that.
The above is entirely likely and at no point (until know when I point it out) has anybody thought of it.
Apparently a firewall rule is about the only way to stop this.
I couldn't find a "disable Spotify" setting, only disable Alexa (already was) and to turn the speaker down to zero (did that).
How did you disable?
For example, nuclear weapons are certainly well-engineered, but I think it's reasonable to disagree on if they were a good idea or not.
GP didn't give enough context ("MY shoes are weird so I extrapolated" vs "I know this is true; here's proof."), but the casual one-off scenario is absolutely a showroom level of "random happens".
Babysitting all those individual shoes and styles and sizes seems ... expensive, logistically.
In fact, if this were a thing, I'd imagine they'd start offloading them as though it were a cool feature. "Want to mix-n-match shoes? buy just a left!"
It's called liquidation for a reason. You don't have the asset afterwards.
edit: I must add - except for this cheap Android phone from the carrier. But I head it off at the router.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
The surface-level problem, sure. The root cause is that the "engineers" (and I lose that term loosely) decided that running a rubber belt in an oil bath internal to the engine was a good idea.
It obviously isn't a good idea, even if you could guaranteed that petrol will never mix with the oil. In the best case scenario, when the belt starts degrading (because all belts degrade), you're throwing pieces of rubber into the oil pump.
Even in the best-case scenario, the effect of that design was to reduce the cap on engine life.
It’s be an interesting experiment to put a temperature probe in something like a block of cheese, let it cool to the ambient fridge temperature, then open the fridge door for a few minutes and see if the temperature of the cheese even measurably changes over the next few hours or whatever amount of time.
I would love to see someone at the level of technology connections do a breakdown of the physics here, and where the likely crossover point point is for different kinds of fridges. My current (probably illformed) belief from the suction and imagined resulting air exchange of all the fridges I’ve lived with is that leaving the fridge open on the order of seconds is better than opening-closing-opening-closing in terms of cold loss.
Door open --> Door close --> Suction --> No further heat loss afterwards
Door open --> Continuous heat leak
* https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1618mku/would...
I can see why customers might want something like this though. We have a Skylight calendar in our house. It's just a big ass calendar. The software and service that Skylight provides makes it a VERY GOOD big ass calendar, but I can see some people thinking "i use my fridge all the time; why not just have a self-updating calendar there?". (Magnetic calendars on fridges are very popular.)
But, no, Samsung and LG literally sell this concept as doomscrolling as a service. So dumb. They look super tacky also. EVERY ultra high end fridge is literally two solid doors or designed to disappear behind closet doors. Nobody's staring at their fridge while pulling out their eggs and bacon for breakfast lol
Here's a tip to save some electricity on the fridge: unplug all the smart stuff.
A fridge only uses a couple kWh a day and there's not much to optimize other than "keep the door closed" and "don't overfill it".
Just about the only thing I might want to see on a smart fridge door is maybe a shared family calendar that can sync with an external calendar provider, and that's not even listed as a feature.
Fundamentally due to product lifecycle expectations, I wouldn't even want that!
I hope a fridge will last 10+ years.
Unfortunately any SaaS/cloud-connected piece of hardware is going to have some combo of firmware/OS/security/app update deprecation well before 10 years is up. The last people I expect to maintain software that long is the maker of a fridge.
I even store produce (ex onions) on the counter tops, so I guess smart counters as well
It might actually be easier to start with the smart pantry! An in-cabinet kit that can be tested entirely dry and warm and open, and then expanded to the fridge.
The fridge/pantry camera is a useful addition, but most of the value would be a system that just tracks what I put in/take out.
A car is a half solution to going to work. A stove is a half solution to preparing food.
Half solutions are what people need. They’re the solutions we are using every day.
There is this huge problem with advertising that makes consumers think a half solution is a 100% solution. Most smart product makers do that trick. But, apart from that problem, ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’
Edit: but no way would I buy any smart or connected fridge from Samsung. I don’t anticipate that being a positive experience
2. At supermarket, listen to voice recordings.
I'm actually working on a pet project to transcribe my 20 years of voice recordings and organise them, then sync them between the phone and desktop. Maybe in the coming weeks I'll know that I needed milk in October 2008.
Perhaps it's because I'm the cook of the family, but to my mind, if you're in your kitchen on a daily basis, it's incredibly easy to have a strong idea of what you have at home when you're at the store. It's never perfect and once in a while you double up or miss things, but that's life!
It’s “wouldn’t this hypothetical feature be great” vs “my feeble mind cannot even imagine why anyone would ever want that”
Anything you've prepared at home will also not be tracked by such a system.
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At the very least, the system that maintains the temperature of the fridge (critical for food safety) should not be brought down by an exception in the system that displays advertisements on the front panel...
At least I wouldn’t know what’s stopping them from building actually-useful features, tech-wise. Or was it just always a bad idea because fridge placement is random and items are often hard to find/detect?
The technological issue is that computer vision is hard, even after the last five years of AI progress.
Cant manage to get an archive link for the second one.
Does anyone know of an xcancel like service but for Reddit? OP links just lead to a login page.
The ads were real though: https://ibb.co/5hbG7ymS
But the thing is, you don't know what it's state is, and it's clearly not in the "everything is OK" state. At least if it's running you can guess the operator is intending for you to use it.
Even my rear-view mirror is a camera, and currently it has failed (shows matrix style drippy blue lines instead of a picture.
To say nothing of the tradeoffs that come with an older vehicle (safety and pollution).
And let be real, the 60 years old car, while there are some aspects they do better than modern one, overall they are much worse than mordern car.
None of them have turned into pumpkins.
> A stove is a half solution to preparing food.
A working grocery tracking system is a half-solution to effortless shopping.
A half-working grocery tracking system is useless, much like a car without an engine.
>A half-working grocery tracking system is useless, much like a car without an engine.
Yes. Something designed to be a half solution can be useful. But a full solution which is broken is probably worse than useless.
Me too. I think I’m not communicating clearly. Sorry.
What I’m talking about is a system that does only one third of the steps in the total end-to-end process for ALL your groceries. You do the rest yourself, or use other help.
I’m not advocating a broken system that claims to do that complete process, but really ignores two thirds of your groceries. That would be damn stupid.
Do you understand what I mean?
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Or you didn't finish the milk, but didn't realize it had gone bad until after you got home with ingredients for a meal depending on milk.
Maybe we could do better. Maybe we can automate this as well.
Now we have generations of people who grew up with surveillance capitalism and broken promises I wonder what the next big wave will be
We do have a shared shopping list. If I remember I'll put things I use up on the list, but often I'm busy at the time I notice because the thing on the stove needs to be stirred constantly... Last night I used one can of beans leaving two more - I didn't put beans on the list, but maybe I should have. Overall this system is working, but it is annoying and sometimes not ideal.
My wife cooks sometimes too, but usually it's fairly easy for me to observe what she made and have a good sense of what went into the meal.
>We do have a shared shopping list. If I remember I'll put things I use up on the list, but often I'm busy at the time I notice because the thing on the stove needs to be stirred constantly... Last night I used one can of beans leaving two more - I didn't put beans on the list, but maybe I should have. Overall this system is working, but it is annoying and sometimes not ideal.
Same for us. I wanted to make pinto bean tacos last night but forgot the pinto beans at the store last weekend, because I'd assumed we'd had some. We used it as an opportunity to pivot and have a random meal that involved using up extras in our pantry and freezer. Life will always have annoying moments that aren't always ideal, there's no amount of automation that will eliminate them. It's good for us to experience those moments and use them as growth opportunities (not saying you don't, I'm just speaking generally here).
And costs you nothing. Is easy to roll out. Doesn't ever need replacement. Doesn't ever fall apart. Lasts forever.
The smart fridge will also screw up and not get it all right 100% of the time. And for that, it will cost you handsomely, will be difficult to implement in all your kitchen, will need constant replacement, will fall apart, will not last forever.
Framed like this, the smart solution is actually worse.
I have no problem remembering what's in the fridge. It doesn't do me any good because my wife and daughter also know what's in the fridge and they eat those things too.
Knowing I might need to pick something up while I'm out, particularly when nobody is home to check the remaining stock, would be handy.
Having said that, I don't want anything to do with the modern conception of a "smart fridge". If there was a self-hostable fridge camera I could install I might be into that. Otherwise, no thanks. I like my "dumb" fridge UI the way it is.
Actually a cheap microcontroller and a few cameras over the lifetime of the fridge that caused me to open it say 50% less would save more money than it would waste by my estimate.
> If you were talking about a smart fridge with an accompanying robot that automatically orders groceries, picked up the deliveries itself, and stocked your fridge that'd be something, at least
Yeah.
Step 1: fridge with smart inventory
Step 2: hook it up to grok bot
Step 3: grok bot orders your food from Walmart+ InHome
So every piece of this exists except the hypothetical sci-fi fridge.
Again, I’m stunned by the complete and utter lack of imagination and critical thinking here. You guys are the offshore contractors of HN commenting.
> Do people have the memory of a goldfish or what?
This is actually a pretty good point. Many people do have poor memory for a plethora of reasons. This would be a great accessibility feature.
I take it you've only ever lived alone then? Its pretty easy for someone in my household to consume food or add food without me knowing about it. And I definitely do not take a full and complete inventory every time I open the fridge.
I'd find it very handy to look at a glance and see the current stock of stuff I have in my house. I definitely don't know exactly how much butter I have at the moment, I don't know what the date is on the almond milk versus the whole milk, I don't know how many string cheese sticks are left after the kids grabbed their snacks for school. I don't know exactly how much salt or pepper or smoked paprika or herbes de provence or curry powder or semi-sweet morsels or baking soda I happen to have on hand.
I don't know the technology to seamlessly track all of this is realistically at hand, but it sure would be nice. I do agree, every smart fridge today either doesn't even try with this or just totally sucks at it.
But hey I guess you just have all that data totally memorized and you're entirely omnicient about everything your household consumes. Sure seems nice.
New cars are a want not a need. Well designed properly maintained cars can last a long long time. I ran into an old guy at my local coffee shop who has 550k on his 240 DL. Had to double take to make sure it wasn't klicks instead of miles. Chatted to him a bit, engine and transmission are all original and he gets notes on his car regularly with phone numbers of people who want to buy it.
In our house we have two Saturn SLs at 100 and 130k, a Saturn SW at 200k and a Sienna at 270k. Rounding it out a 2006 and 2016 DL650 V Strom w 66k and 16k.
I cringe at so much new car bullshit. Death of distraction free tactile interfaces with knobs and buttons, and where the fuck is the fucking parking brake?
And obviously you just walk anywhere and everywhere. Wouldn't want your legs to grow feeble and useless. Even riding a bicycle is reducing how much exercise you'd get otherwise, it's simply a tool for the weak.
Point is things advance. the first iteration might be as bad as you say, but they are likely to fix the bugs and make it better over time.
You can’t be a software developer with such a poor imagination and intuition. Debugging would be hell for you. Even worse because you’d fail to imagine the edge cases ahead of time.
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