cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/71343068
Some Samsung smart fridges stopped working on Tuesday due to a firmware update.
Korean outlets were the first to report the problems, which affect Samsung’s Bespoke AI line of fridges. Star News Korea, per a Google-provided translation, said that most of the affected devices were four-door fridges from 2024 or later.
I have a PhD in IoT technology uses (mostly medical/clinical monitoring applications). My appliances do not have firmware to update. Don’t buy that shit, it’s stupid.
We recently had to buy a new washer/dryer. Every single set we looked at had wifi connectivity as a feature, so we did end up buying a set with that, but they will never see the light of my WAN.
You’d be surprised what kinds of things have firmware (although maybe not, if you work in IoT). A normal dumb fridge, a normal dumb dishwasher, most ovens, and definitely microwaves will have firmware. Even if they have no interface to update it. In some cases, the firmware was written using a chip programmer before the chip was soldered in. But there’s still firmware. Any appliance with a clock will have it, because otherwise, you have to implement a clock in a CPLD or discrete logic gates or something. A microcontroller is just cheaper.
Years ago I had to bring 10 tons of gravel to a work site using a wheelbarrow and a shovel. By the end of it my ability to load the wheelbarrow accurately and unload it efficiently was massively improved.
I was the firmware. I got an update.
Right, but that’s not firmware to update, which I interpreted as the differentiating factor.
This very much was the point. OTA updates are a fucking robot idea for anything that can burn down a house, crash a car, or keep important things safe (like arthritis or immune therapy drugs that need to be kept cold).
“No WiFi” was a hard requirement for my induction range. Surprisingly hard to find.
We are lucky to have moved to Germany. When building out our kitchen almost no appliances had “smart” tech features. We just bought slightly upgraded defaults from the kitchen designer and they’re big standard devices. It’s wonderful and normal.
Yeah the one I got had Wi-Fi, I should have known better
What “smart” functions does a range have?
It lets you automatically join foreign botnets!
It let’s you control it with your phone, gives you alerts, it’s stupid, none of this is necessary.
Seriously? That’s bananas