Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Home-Theater/Samsung-Q990D-unresponsive-after-1020-firmware-update/td-p/3168571

by ftufek • 1 year ago

591 562 1 year ago

us.community.samsung.com

Doesn’t sound good. If at all.

This will be really interesting to follow. Especially with respect to Tesla’s love of pushing updates to clients. Could this be a harbinger of “you don’t really own your property” by way of so many companies going down this route that enough collapses result in litigation and a massive readjustment? Time will tell.

thebeardisred• 1 year ago

Just an ex-CoreOS person stopping by to smile and say "someone should really figure out how to do that safely."

hashishen• 1 year ago

thank God mine is before they decided to add smart features to a speaker

AdmiralAsshat• 1 year ago

If the damage is actually as bad as it sounds, Samsung is probably talking with their lawyers and is being instructed to maintain radio silence so as to better prepare for the class-action lawsuit.

tmpz22• 1 year ago

Wouldn’t radio silence increase damages to customers and result in increased liability?

barbazoo2• 1 year ago

Only if you connect the soundbar via Bluetooth /s

reverendsteveii7• 1 year ago

Depends, radio silence will cost you money compared to just fixing the problem if that's feasible but it will save you money compared to accidentally admitting to liability in a rushed press release.

zamalek2• 1 year ago

Law is not logical and rarely makes sense. I'm not suggesting at all that they are doing the morally correct thing, but there are a bunch of ways that you can legally admit liability without meaning to.

For example, little life pro-tip, never directly pay for a loan that you aren't liable for. Proxy it through the debtor, or not at all and get a lawyer if the debtor is deceased.

commandlinefan3• 1 year ago

Remember when Crowdstrike crashed half the computers on the planet for a full day? Well, if you do, you're one of the few, because people are still using Crowdstrike, and the stock is still doing well overall.

observationist• 1 year ago

That's logical reasoning, not corporation reasoning.

Nobody involved in the decision making cares about the customers. They only care about the potential hit to the bottom line, and if that's perceived as callous silence, they don't care. Unless, of course, they decide that appearing to care and being responsive results in less of a hit.

Silences like these are strategic and dependably predictable - engaging with customers on average costs more than remaining silent for whatever metric they've applied to the fix. If it takes longer than they thought, they might feel compelled to speak out, or they could just depend on the issue to fade into the 24 hour news cycle. Engaging with a customer runs the risk of them interacting with some threshold of people that will keep the negative story in the headlines for longer than it might otherwise be.

rdtsc• 1 year ago

As soon as there is any hint of a lawsuit, it immediately switches to CYA mode: "don't apologize, don't admit guilt, keep PR on a tight leash with a legal team watching every word and punctuation".

LoganDark6• 1 year ago

That is at least, if their ToS doesn't contain the all-too-common provision that you are simply not allowed to sue.

lurking_swe2• 1 year ago

a TOS is not an ironclad legal agreement. Far from it.

zaik• 1 year ago

Not sure about US legislation, but where I live clauses like this are void automatically, even if you agree to the contract.

mardifoufs• 1 year ago

ToS doesn't override laws

mmmlinux2• 1 year ago

Luckily for them no one can listen to their radios now.

jodrellblank• 1 year ago

Up until this comment I assumed "Samsung Q990D" was a Quad level SSD

SR2Z2• 1 year ago

so as to better prepare for the class-action lawsuit.

I 100% guarantee everyone who uses one of these was railroaded into mandatory arbitration.

blackeyeblitzar• 1 year ago

We need to ban mandatory arbitration

notimetorelax• 1 year ago

AFAIK class action cases are cheaper for corporations than thousands of arbitrations.

vitorgrs• 1 year ago

A few years ago, some Samsung TVs such as TU8000, had basically a factory defect. Randomly, after a few months, a "line" appears on the TV.

They knew they should have announced a recall, but they didn't. What they did was... They simply replace the TV panel, even outside the warranty, just to avoid lawsuits (After the person first try to contact them).

Yes, outside the warranty.

But one with one detail: They replace it with the same defective panel.

Unfortunately, I was the lucky one who ended up buying this TV, and I've already replaced the panel about three times in less than five years.

Even the Samsung repair technicians that came to my house to fix the TV already told "The model just have this issue, nothing we can do about it. If it happens again, report it again to fix"

_betty_• 1 year ago

i did something similar with a vodafone phone like 3 times, they just kept giving me the same model again and again.

knowitnone• 1 year ago

So glad everything's connected to the internet \s.

tylerflick• 1 year ago

I have one of these systems. Not sure why anyone would ever leave it connected to the internet though.

ziddoap3• 1 year ago

Not sure why anyone would ever leave it connected to the internet though.

Most people aren't techies. They buy the thing, and use it as instructed.

acdha• 1 year ago

Also the vendors increasingly push you to put them online to use devices. Samsung tries really hard to make you think that your TV setup needs a mobile app on your phone running in the background with high precision location tracking, and 99.9% of buyers are going to leave that setup so they’re not blamed for problems in the future.

lopis2• 1 year ago

Sometimes I wonder if HN folks are purposefully obtuse or so deep in their bubble that they don't understand how 99% of people think and operate. The average user will always favour convenience over some invisible concept like privacy.

jisnsm• 1 year ago

If you don’t know how to operate some piece of technology you shouldn’t be using it. Same as you wouldn’t operate a car without knowing how to drive.

ellisv• 1 year ago

I'm not familiar with this product but it would make a lot of sense if it supports direct streaming for Chromecast/Google Cast.

hi_hello• 1 year ago

Airplay (and presumably Cast) support require a WiFi connection. I explicitly blocked external connections to mine.

staticman22• 1 year ago

There's a feature to make every connected speaker in your house play the same Spotify song at once which is kind of fun.

nancyminusone• 1 year ago

See you on Louis Rossman later today!

carra• 1 year ago

One of the first things I thought of when reading the title.

crtasm• 1 year ago

List price $2,000. What was the update supposed to improve/fix?

pavel_lishin• 1 year ago

Someone's promotion packet?

mcs5280• 1 year ago

Probably some new AI/tracking/ad delivery features

jakeydus2• 1 year ago

Few things over the past few years have infuriated me as much as tracking and advertising being introduced at the OS level, especially on TVs. I'm looking at you, LG! I will gladly pay more for a TV that doesn't try to advertise Roku's streaming service to me or track my kids' watch history. Seems like they are few and far between, though.

The best thing we have been able to come up with is leaving the TV itself disconnected from the WiFi and using an Apple TV for smart features/streaming. I'm sure they're still gathering data but it's at least not as blatant. It's a real crapfest for the consumer at the moment.

grishka4• 1 year ago

It's a speaker system. It plays sound. Why could it possibly have AI, tracking, or ad delivery?

jcmfernandes• 1 year ago

Isn't the answer always "bugfixes and increased stability"? :)

ethbr14• 1 year ago

The laziness that's become now-standard for release notes is insane.

aequitas• 1 year ago

Bricking a device does make it really stable and bugfree. Sadly also featureless.

mytailorisrich2• 1 year ago

All the bugs they had no time to fix to bring it to market faster ;)

pixelpoet• 1 year ago

Isn't that a bit insane for a soundbar? How can those things produce any decent bass without volume?

globular-toast3• 1 year ago

They come with (shitty) subwoofers (crossover probably something hilarious like 100Hz).

thimabi• 1 year ago

It bothers me that many devices are so easily remotely bricked and that keeping them offline is the only way to avoid such issues.

Automated updates were supposed to give us peace of mind instead of having us worried about what bug or enshittification will follow.

I’d wager that, for most Internet-connected appliances, keeping them offline or disabling autoupdates have way more pros than cons.

BobaFloutist• 1 year ago

If you think about it, keeping them offline is a huge security improvement even without the risk of bricking update, so in ways an automated update regime that convinces you to keep your device offline is giving you peace of mind. In a way.

grishka4• 1 year ago

If it allows anyone to remotely execute arbitrary code on a device without the user's consent, it's called an RCE vulnerability. About as serous as software vulnerabilities go, needs to be patched yesterday.

But if it only allows the manufacturer to remotely execute arbitrary code on a device without the user's consent, it's called an automatic software update mechanism and most people somehow consider that it's totally fine.

MiddleEndian3• 1 year ago

Automated updates are a way for companies to push updates on you without having to first convince you that the updates are good.

freedomben2• 1 year ago

Also allows them to ship unfinished/buggy and poorly tested software and "fix it later OTA."

lostdog• 1 year ago

Damaging or removing features should reopen the return window. Then they will be more careful about what they change.

onemoresoop3• 1 year ago

I agree but it's a headache even if you are able to return.

staticman22• 1 year ago

Ironically the 2022 Samsung soundbar model I have hasn't gotten a single firmware update since January 2023. I bought it new from Samsung after that day.

I am moderately surprised that they even update their firmware on some models.

WalterBright• 1 year ago

My bluray player has an ethernet port on the back, but I never ever connect it to the internet.

ajaimk• 1 year ago

Really glad I never connected mine to wifi

tomstokes4• 1 year ago

Two important features I insist on for products I develop:

1. Staged rollout of firmware updates. It’s common practice for apps and software but for some reason it’s less common with firmware. Rolling out to 1% (or less, depending on scale) of devices and waiting a day is cheap insurance. Side note: Build a good relationship with customer service people so you hear about these things immediately.

2. A failsafe firmware reset back to factory state. Some sequence that resets the device completely back to the way it was when it came out of the box, firmware included, as a last resort. In conjunction, your automated tests need to confirm that every factory firmware you’ve ever released can update to the latest firmware.

mytailorisrich2• 1 year ago

Indeed a golden factory firmware version that will be booted automatically if all else fails and that provides minimum connectivity is crucial.

OtherShrezzing• 1 year ago

I wonder if that opens a threat vector from a security point of view? If an attacker knows that the golden firmware has some critical vulnerability which they can exploit easily, they can activate it at will by bricking the device and waiting for it to restart.

devsda• 1 year ago

Ability to reset to original out of the box firmware is not only about failsafe. It's also a protection from "bug fixes" taking away features you had out of the box.

I'm still pissed off about LG removing record to disk option from our TV after an upgrade. I've only connected it to internet & upgraded assuming some of those bug fixes resolved few dlna issues otherwise it's always on internet block list.

tomstokes4• 1 year ago

will be booted automatically if all else fails

I prefer to keep the factory firmware reset to a manual process that requires user intervention.

For example, holding down the reset button for 10 seconds after plugging the device in.

In my experience, it's not a good idea to have a device automatically roll back firmware and erase user data after failed boots. These mechanisms get triggered too easily during certain power outages (power comes on then goes off just long enough to cause multiple failed boots) or when users are doing simple things like rearranging their power cables.

devmor2• 1 year ago

#2 has been a godsend in the custom/HEDT PC market. Many expensive motherboards now come with a "dual BIOS" system that gives you an older known working image to boot from, in case flashing a new version broke something that can't be easily undone.

shantara• 1 year ago

Another amazing feature is the ability to flash a BIOS from an unbootable system. You insert a flash drive with the firmware file into a USB port, press a hardware button and the BIOS gets updated, even without a CPU socketed.

Tijdreiziger4• 1 year ago

HEDT = High-End DeskTop, which (until 2022) referred to CPUs with more cores and separate sockets compared to ‘normal’ consumer CPUs, apparently.

https://tweakers.net/reviews/10334/het-einde-van-de-high-end... (Dutch)

amelius• 1 year ago

This is what everybody wants, but almost nobody does. Time to market, etc.

tomstokes4• 1 year ago

You need to have the firmware equivalent of a platform team.

It's common now for medium and large companies to have some variant of a cloud platform team: People responsible for shared practices, infrastructure, and processes in the cloud.

Smart hardware companies have done the same for decades. You have a firmware platform team that handles things like update protocols, recovery protocols, testing checklists, on-device OTA update architecture, and other critical functions.

When you're a company like Samsung that continuously releases and develops products this actually increases your time to market rather than decreasing it. You let each product team focus on the parts of the firmware that make their product valuable and free them from having to roll their own update systems

drdaeman• 1 year ago

It's almost exact same thing as purchasing an insurance.

If the management folks have personal health insurance, surely they must understand the concept and the need. And this is a much better deal because unlike actual insurance this is more like "invest once, enjoy forever" type of thing. And multi-stage boot chain, recovery partition and staged rollouts are not some rocket science that needs some serious expertise.

Yet, here we go. Humans are not really rational actors after all, and collective humans are even less so.

javchz• 1 year ago

I suppose the closest equivalent would be motherboards with dual BIOS.

There if something goes wrong during an update, you always have a backup BIOS with the previous version (not necessarily factory settings). If the system fails to boot, it automatically switches to the backup BIOS and restores the main BIOS to the last working version.

ashoeafoot2• 1 year ago

But .. but then they can escape the extortion to a working state..

ymyms3• 1 year ago

Great points! As an addendum to this, if #2 becomes untenable for whatever reason (such as a vulnerability in the factory firmware image), then this #3 would be good to strive for as well:

3. have a set of conditions to mark the running firmware image as "safe" and have it become the new fallback firmware image for this scenario. That way you can have a recently up-to-date firmware version constantly trailing the new ones

Zenbit_UX2• 1 year ago

IMO this is a terrible idea for many reasons but the most important of which is: As a consumer I should have the right to have my device revert any b.s. update and get my setup to how it was the day I bought it.

So many companies have begun rolling out updates that makes the device I purchased call home before allowing any user functions and if/when that server goes down my device becomes a brick. This behavior essentially invalidates my ownership of the product and renders it to a service, provided at will by the manufacturer.

Your idea ensures my device will one day become a brick as soon as the manufacturer decides to mark their update requiring internet check-ins “safe”.

If you think I’m exaggerating check out Louis Rossmann‘s YouTube channel.

bmicraft2• 1 year ago

Unfortunate you'd need to weave that all the way through the whole product stack in order not to end up in a state that looks like it's working at first glance but actually isn't doing what it is supposed to - like everything running but not showing an image, or everything running except networking is dead (-> also no further updates possible), or (remote) input devices, etc etc

jandrese• 1 year ago

The second point is the really important one here. Mistakes happen, having a factory reset that actually works is crucial to avoiding extremely expensive recalls.

I'm reminded of the time a random NPR station accidentally bricked the infotainment systems on thousands of Mazdas and because there was no factory reset feature they had to spend millions replacing head units. That's just bad design.

EvanAnderson• 1 year ago

A failsafe firmware reset back to factory state.

This doesn't work if your threat model includes denying rollbacks to prevent exploiting bugs in old firmware. I'd love to be able to roll-back firmware on some of my devices to allow me to "jailbreak" them using old firmware.

In some cases your newer firmware may be blowing e-fuses that prevent old firmware from functioning. See the Nintendo Switch, for an example.

To be clear: I think this is anti-consumer and wrong, but manufacturers absolutely do it.

Edit: I also think it should be illegal, by way of consumer regulation. I don't think consumers should have option to waive their right to manufacturers not damaging hardware they own.

ChuckMcM• 1 year ago

This doesn't get enough attention, waaaay too many of these issues are traced back to the vendor trying to "prevent" someone from using their product in a way that they don't like.

throwawayk7h• 1 year ago

This is a good reason for manufacturers not to deny rollbacks, and a good reason not to have e-fuses.

basch3• 1 year ago

Blow the fuse after its confirmed working. Or always allow a one version rollback.

Im not a fan of firmware lockdowns but I understand other people may value security over moddability.

Szpadel• 1 year ago

even with that "requirement" add special minimal recovery that can be booted with special buttons sequence by bootloader and allows some form of flashing signed firmware.

this should be especially trivial when your device have some usb ports.

you can keep all requirements of only newer or the same version of firmware to flash, with all refuse checks.

if you mess up, you can allow consumers to flash fix using regular pendrive

0x4573• 1 year ago

Yes, they do it, but usually in devices where it's basically part of DRM. I don't think engineers put that much though in security of soundbars.

xp845• 1 year ago

Yup! Depends on what's a higher priority: Preventing catastrophic destruction of the device, OR, "protecting" some IP from ultra-small-scale piracy, even though ultimately anyone bent on piracy will be able to pirate anyway.

Clearly the latter is heavily preferred by most companies.

protocolture• 1 year ago

Big part of the UBNT vs Cambium dispute. IIRC UBNT won in court, but just to prevent the Cambium firmware being installed on their hardware the next few firmware versions fixed it so that it cant be easily reverted.

Whats worse is that a lot of the affected hardware was near or EOL anyway, so Cambium was simply helping rescue devices headed for the scrap heap.

efitz• 1 year ago

Sometimes they do it because it’s contractually required if they want to get access to proprietary standards, for example to allow them to play copy-protected content.

Copyright and patent have morphed into evils that drive anti-consumer and anti-competitive behavior, and have driven a “subscription” model that allows rent seekers to achieve their wildest dreams.

water9• 1 year ago

Blowing efuses is a destructive action and it should not be legal for a company to destroy parts of your electronic device that you paid for

grumple• 1 year ago

I think the correct way to do this is to allow a rollback to the immediately previous working version. Before updating, write current firmware to failsafe data storage, then do the update. Then a firmware reset sends you back to the last good version. I'm pretty sure this is already done by many hardware and software manufacturers, such as me.

clysm• 1 year ago

Yes it does work… with an A/B update system.

Android systems can do this today. After an orderly shutdown of new software, then it can mark the new stuff as good and not allow older software to boot.

croes• 1 year ago

But then at least have backup firmware of the one you want to update, so you can go one step back in case of errors.

nomel• 1 year ago

Is that applicable here? We're talking about speakers. For most/low security devices, a firmware rollback, or a firmware-download mode, are fine. In this case, it would probably have prevented millions in losses, with the risk being a...jailbroken speaker?

account4219• 1 year ago

This practice should simply be illegal or at least make the manufacturer liable for a full refund plus interest. We shouldn't let manufacturers brick devices that we own.

omoikane• 1 year ago

1. Staged rollout of firmware update

Especially if there is an internal testing stage before actually rolling out to production. It's possible that the users seeing the bricked devices are in fact limited to the initial wave, but the damage is already done.

steveBK123• 1 year ago

Sonos completely missed the boat on these two simple concepts as well.

See their new app debacle which coupled a non-reversible firmware update that made the hardware incompatible with the old app.

AlotOfReading3• 1 year ago

Most companies don't do this because it's not one of their organizational priorities to have reliable updates. The infrastructure is usually custom built and maintained by a couple of folks who have a dozen other responsibilities they're told are more important. Testing is usually limited by hardware availability and release velocity. "One of every board revision we've ever produced" simply isn't available and waiting two days to run through every firmware version before you release updates is a conversational non-starter with the PMs.

There are commercial offerings (like mender.io, never used) that basically specialize in providing rock solid update infrastructure, but that again takes investment and organizational priority that doesn't exist for non-feature code.

x0x0• 1 year ago

Different industry, but I (a long time ago) worked in a place that built scientific instruments.

"One of every board revision we've ever produced"

The, ah, "special" people we had running engineering didn't even put in the work to be capable of the software querying the board rev. We had to play games like running certain motors past a position limit and seeing if there were limit switches there (or not) to guesstimate board revs.

I'm guessing stories like this are common.

boricj4• 1 year ago

I'm working on embedded systems and I've seen and heard some horror stories just on the device's side. Piles and piles of pre- and post-reboot shell scripts filled with race conditions against the system's services and themselves. When these break, if you're lucky a factory reset is enough to fix the system, if you're unlucky they become field bricks.

I'm trying to buck the trend though and on the new embedded system I'm working on, I've specifically designed the upgrade system to be as reliable as I can make it. It goes something like this:

- The new firmware is downloaded to the secondary application slot.

- Just prior to rebooting, the entire state data of the system is serialized as a document and stored on a flash partition.

- The upgrade flag is set, the system reboots and MCUboot does its thing.

- The new firmware finds out a upgrade happened, clears out all the data partitions, restores from the document and then clears out its partition.

The system is basically sanitized and restored after each upgrade. It's also the same codepath that handles saving and restoring the system's configuration by the end-user as well as settings management. If the document schema is for an older version, run the N-to-N+1 schema upgraders on it prior to applying instead of trying to patch the system in-place. If something goes horribly wrong, flip a jumper to trigger the heavy-duty sanitization that nukes the entire external flash (internal flash only contains the bootloader, primary application slot and factory parameters so it's essentially read-only once the application boots).

It might be hubris, but I hope it's good enough that I'll never see a bricked card that can't be resurrected by a factory reset with this project (assuming no hardware damage, no internal flash corruption and no bricking firmware getting signed with production keys seeping through the cracks despite all the checks in place).

JimDabell2• 1 year ago

Reverting to factory state seems riskier than last known good state. You could run into things like TLS root authorities not being recognised, deprecated cipher suites, etc. Just because that version worked a decade ago, it doesn’t mean it’s compatible with the world today.

tomstokes4• 1 year ago

Reverting to factory state seems riskier than last known good state.

Reverting to factory state is the last resort. You don't have users do it unless there is no other good state to return to on the device.

Just because that version worked a decade ago, it doesn’t mean it’s compatible with the world today.

That's why I said you have to include this in your test procedures.

When you're planning for the long term you can accommodate for these things on your servers.

Galxeagle• 1 year ago

I get the sense that #2 is viewed as a risk for DRM, given all the work that goes into preventing firmware downgrades to potentially insecure firmware. Specifically thinking of the Nintendo Switch[1] that goes so far as to blow fuses on each firmware upgrade!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23534793

Tijdreiziger4• 1 year ago

eFuses were already on the Xbox 360/PS3 generation. Smartphones also use them to lock out proprietary photography algorithms if you unlock the bootloader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFuse

gorlilla• 1 year ago

This is the de facto playbook for one of the Mega-Evil Corp.'s CPE firmware (Gateways, IPTV receivers, etc...).

New firmware is pushed in phases 1%, 5%, 10%, 25%, 50% then full scale.

Each stage has some delay incorporated for acquisition/application and then for telemetry (including support contacts from affected accounts) to determine impact and allow for regression fixes.

The other reason they would phase launches is because of firmware builds being used across multiple CPE models and hardware revisions, where only a small subset of hardware could wind up being problematic, but not discovered until deployment.

When you have millions of devices deployed, even a fraction of devices having an issue can create a shit storm on the support side of things.

It all seems so obvious once you know to think about it.

gwerbret• 1 year ago

Both are very reasonable features, of course. Here are (some of) the real-world challenges to their implementation:

#1: Requires competence, and/or management that isn't too focused on velocity and features to listen to their engineers' warnings about exactly the sort of problem being discussed here.

#2: Many firmware updates explicitly and specifically want to strip away features that the hardware shipped with (by introducing DRM, paywalls, etc.), so see the comment about management above.

ErrantX• 1 year ago

Another good one is; please always split any security updates from feature changes (and backport the updates per whatever versioning policy you have for those lagging the latest).

After many years of being burned I always delay system level non-security -related updates at least several days after launch to mitigate the risk.

greesil• 1 year ago

Also a dev or dogfood population of devices used by employees

liendolucas• 1 year ago

The important feature here I would insist on is to let the user decide when to do a firmware update. Not the other way round. That's the way to build a good consumer relationship.

Why on earth a sound bar needs to update its firmware? Why firmware needs to be in a couple of tweeters and a woofer? It should basically output audio from an input source.

ethan_smith2• 1 year ago

I completely agree with both points and would add a third: design for offline use first (maybe treat every OTA update as - this might be the final version this device ever receives). Products should work perfectly fine without an internet connection, heck that's how they worked until 5-7 years ago. Core features should never depend on cloud services, and updates should be opt-in, not forced.

Offline first approach respects user autonomy and creates a natural safety net against bad updates. Plus, it means your product keeps working even when servers change or get shut down years later or a nuclear war happens. Sure, connectivity has benefits, but a speaker's main job is playing sound, not phoning home. Building offline-first also forces better engineering decisions about longevity and graceful degradation.

It's so hard to find any offline-first apps/devices nowawdays, which is sad to see in a world of algorithms and AI.

This whole situation reminds me of this: https://programmerhumor.io/linux-memes/thats-the-attitude-sa...

the_snooze• 1 year ago

But you see, the problem with offline use is the manufacturer can't claw back value in the future. How will you keep shareholders happy if you can't arbitrarily push ads, hobble existing functionality, or impose a new subscription service?

weinzierl• 1 year ago

"A failsafe firmware reset back to factory state"

A failsafe firmware reset back to a safe and secure state yes. The factory state is not necessarily that, so no.

I think devices should keep a last known good state firmware but keeping a full factory state immutable firmware would be irresponsible for many usecases.

fhd22• 1 year ago

What hardware reset typically does, in my experience, is to reinstall the last firmware you installed. Many don't even have the space to keep some original and/or safe image in addition. I'm working on one device where we delete much of the existing system to make space for even downloading a new firmware image. It's wild.

werdnapk• 1 year ago

As a user/customer, if I'm part of that 1% with an issue and get the same sort of "canned" response you see on the mentioned thread, I feel like me as a user doesn't matter. I guess the next step is calling customer support and then having the person on the phone making me go through their checklist of things I've already tried and again, feeling like this is of no use.

I think it usually takes a big rollout for these big companies to actually "hear" their users.

neilv• 1 year ago

For this $1500 street price soundbar, I'm wondering whether they consciously decided not to invest in BOM cost or software effort that would help avoid bricking.

I'm not sure I understand various industries' conventions...

While interviewing for a principal engineer job, I was meeting individually with a bunch of team leads and managers, and one engineer asked how would I design firmware updating for the company's product (which was more critical, complex, and expensive than a soundbar).

I assumed they were probably trying to see whether I would throw in some robustness/resilience (not oversimplify it). So I sketched it out, while hitting notes like diffs, downloading and assembling in staging space, imperfect networking, having at least two firmware "slots", backing out upon boot loop or failure soon after boot, gradual deployment to installed base, contrasting with some less-critical consumer product firmware update practices, etc.

(Either that was a bad answer, or they got distracted thinking about something I'd said, because I was getting odd subconscious backchannel cues, and they were unresponsive when I tried elicit more requirements or guidance about what they were looking for. Maybe there was some standard embedded systems programmer canned answer that I was supposed to recite (analogous to the Web brogrammer 'system design' interview), and they couldn't think of how to nudge me towards the shibboleth without saying it?)

gblargg3• 1 year ago

A failsafe firmware reset back to factory state.

Or perhaps to the very first released firmware version. This way they don't have to support updating from any version to the latest, just from the first one.

crazygringo2• 1 year ago

2. A failsafe firmware reset back to factory state.

Do you mean like a physical button? That could work, though I'm not sure I've ever seen it. Holding down power for 10 seconds (or whatever) usually just erases user data, but doesn't reset firmware. Are you aware of any device that does this? But does it require some meta-firmware to roll back the firmware? What if that meta-firmware has a security flaw and needs to be updated? And that update is faulty?

If you're talking about a code sent from your servers to devices to reset, that seems like asking for the impossible. If a firmware update bricks the device, that may very well brick its ability to receive codes at all.

In both situations, it starts to feel like a problem of infinite regress...

boricj4• 1 year ago

2. A failsafe firmware reset back to factory state. Some sequence that resets the device completely back to the way it was when it came out of the box, firmware included, as a last resort.

That's a nifty mechanism that also allows downgrade attacks, so it has cybersecurity implications that may or may not be acceptable. Furthermore, it might not be practical or even be possible to restore the system to factory condition due to technical reasons.

The team next door allows its systems to downgrade to a previous minor version with a mandatory factory reset. It however refuses downgrading to a previous major version because it implies the bootloader was upgraded or the storage was repartitioned and they really don't want to rollback that.

account4219• 1 year ago

Except when it comes to firmware, downgrade "attacks" are not attacks at all but just owners making use of THEIR devices. The real attack is the company trying to retain control over something they have sold.

walrus01• 1 year ago

This is one of the reasons why my home theater system is built from discrete parts (not an all-in-one soundbar), with a high quality receiver that never talks to the internet, doesn't have an ethernet cable and has no wifi access (it works fine as a bluetooth sink when I want to play something from my phone into it), separately purchased 5.1 speaker system, and roll of 16awg stranded copper speaker cable from monoprice.

marcodiego• 1 year ago

Should be codified by law:

  - If a firmware can be updated, it must keep a minimum ROM feature so it can be recovered. 
  - No device should be updated without the *owner* explicit intention to do so.
  - Full docs must be released if the vendor stops supporting it.

mmanfrin• 1 year ago

- No device should be updated without the owner explicit intention to do so.

Ahh! But you are just leasing the software!! Samsung is technically the owner!!

tremon• 1 year ago

  - if the manufacturer retains some form of ownership after "sale", it is obligated to provide free repairs/replacements for the duration of the contract

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 1 year ago

If it's a lease maybe it should cost money, nobody would buy these stupid pieces of shit if they all had $1 / year peppercorns attached

ethbr14• 1 year ago

No device should be updated without the *owner* explicit intention to do so.

That point has practical issues, because most consumer electronic customers are technically dumb.

Consequently, you end up with a long-tail of deployed device firmware versions, which makes support a nightmare (fix this external integration that broke... across 20 different versions).

I'd phrase it more in terms of:

   - Every device must include an option for owners to disable automatic firmware updates.

MiddleEndian3• 1 year ago

That point has practical issues, because most consumer electronic customers are technically dumb.

It's a speaker that worked fine until Samsung unilaterally broke it. I don't think the customers are the dumb ones here.

lopis2• 1 year ago

No device should be updated without the owner explicit intention to do so.

I want to be able to opt-in to updates of my devices with official updates without the fear of them being turned into useless e-waste...

mnau2• 1 year ago

In EU, Cyber Resilience Act requires automatic updates, so the second point is moot.

Most owners want just plug and play, so it makes sense.

Even third point is pretty moot. We don't do that for hardware, why for software... A component is no longer manufactured? Tough luck, hopefully you stockpiled it.

Hizonner2• 1 year ago

Um, that's not what "moot" means.

quotemstr• 1 year ago

Your second condition practically guarantees proliferation of exploitable IoT devices.

rzz3• 1 year ago

A law? As an engineer, I really don’t want a bunch of technologically-inept congressmen telling me how I have to build software, firmware, or hardware.

mateus1• 1 year ago

As an engineer you should be familiar with laws and regulations. Try creating health care software without regarding HIPAA, for example, should make for lots of fun and lawsuits!

evgen• 1 year ago

As if engineers actually get to make decisions about software, firmware, or hardware. Ha! That is truly hilarious.

I would rather have a bunch of mildly responsive legislators setting the boundaries of what is acceptable than a bunch of middle-managers trying to justify their salary to their private equity overlords.

Henchman21• 1 year ago

As an end user I don’t really care what you want. I want the thing I paid money for to keep working after you’ve disappeared. Otherwise, in my estimation you’ve stolen from me.

Prison time is an appropriate remedy for theft.

agilob3• 1 year ago

As an engineer

Construction, hardware, radiation, dam and wastewater engineers are highly regulated professions. Do you take responsibility for bugs in your technology? Do you have insurance for your mistakes in professional work? Are you an engineer or a coder? Are you certified to do your job or just passed a boot camp?

tedunangst• 1 year ago

Found the guy who wants to talk about traffic lights without a license.

https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li...

slt2021• 1 year ago

Similar to Crowdstrike failed auto update incident.

What was the need for the global instance 0->1 rollout of the firmware over the air ???????????????

could they perhaps test it on a small subset? perhaps on Samsung CEO's home system, not the customers'?

dlahoda2• 1 year ago

he uses apple may be...

previous used https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/12/13/samsungs-chief-st...

new one uses, but just does not tell it.

apply display is good with apple tv.

and ceo dislikes automatically installed free to play tv apps and ads. as samsung does.

dlahoda2• 1 year ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co5aw4/unrem... 2500 usd samsung tv with unremovable ads.

and here unwanted apps installed randomly

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/ztuv0l/samsung_sma...

barbazoo2• 1 year ago

Samsung should merge with Sonos, they are all doing a really great job :)

ethbr14• 1 year ago

Samsonos? Sonosung?

jimt12344• 1 year ago

I loved my Sonos soundbar. It sounded amazing. But it required me to use their terrible app. That's why I got rid of it (the app was REALLY bad!) - luckily, before they started bricking customers' devices.

nickthegreek3• 1 year ago

I have my sonos integrated nicely inside Home Assistant and can control all core and most extra features nicely without using the app.

elzbardico2• 1 year ago

Samsung sucks. Their customer support is a joke. And this is across the world. Right now I am back in Brazil, just got a new samsung product. It was delivered non-functioning. Hours since I submitted a ticket. No answer. Talking to a real human being is impossible.

sva_• 1 year ago

Their hardware is technically great. It is the software that sucks.

genewitch7• 1 year ago

hard disagree, i gave my anecdote as a top-level comment, but they have an across-vertical problem in their company, but why fix it if they make money

jillyboel2• 1 year ago

Their phones are alright but everything else they make sucks

qingcharles2• 1 year ago

It seems that way. The camera on the S24U seems to be a decent piece of engineering which is totally hosed by awful software and a sensor that can't be accessed at full res by third party apps.

elzbardico2• 1 year ago

It was a dishwasher, without any smart capability. Probably just a very simple micro-controller.

marcosdumay• 1 year ago

reclameaqui.com.br is usually helpful.

eYrKEC2• 1 year ago

My Samsung TV got more and more unusable with every update. Over the years, saved apps, like Youtube, started to disappear every time it woke up. Then it would default to their Samsung TV app, rather than your last app. Samsung TV app happened to be on the Baywatch channel every time my young children started the stupid thing. Finally, after it took 2 minutes to load the youtube app, I factory-reset the device, disconnected the internet from it, and put a Beelink mini PC in front of it. Works flawlessly.

Samsung product life cycle support seems like planned obsolescence.

napolux• 1 year ago

I have a similar experience with my high-end Samsung TV from 2013. The TV itself still works perfectly so I'm not replacing it soon (still 1080p, not 4K, but...), but over time, Samsung has steadily removed key features with each update. When I first bought it, it supported Skype video calls (and now the integrated webcam can't be used at all), IPTV streaming, and various third-party apps — all of which are now gone.

NEVER BUYING A SAMSUNG TV AGAIN

pjmlp• 1 year ago

The issue is not Samsung per se, it is the smart TV crap we can't get rid of.

With luck there are some old TVs still on remaining stock and that is about it.

mrweasel• 1 year ago

This is exactly why "Smart" TVs don't make any sense. My in-laws have a perfectly fine Sony TV, it's nok 4K, but the HD picture quality is amazing still. Apps have slowly started to disappear as they are no longer being updated and new one aren't being added.

I don't know how this work, but either Sony or the streaming service must be making the apps, and neither seems interested in maintaining apps for a 10+ year old TV. So when the streaming services are updating their backend, older TV don't get updated applications.

Smart TVs make absolutely no sense, the streaming service are moving to fast, so you'll need a cheaper box, or a product that is support for a decade.

zamalek2• 1 year ago

LGs, while still smart TVs, are relatively competent at being dumb TVs. Your only other options these days (sans rescuing a dumb TV from e-waste) are commercial panels and projectors.

MaxikCZ• 1 year ago

My experience with LG wasnt any better. Thorough about a year the tv became increasingly unresponsive. You start it, after 30 seconds the sound andpicture appeared, and for about 2 full minutes it would not react to inputs what so ever (except turning off). So if you happen to turn the tv off with higher volume, you could not launch it in the evening without it blasting for 2+ minutes at night. Abhorent

bobdvb11• 1 year ago

Microsoft removed support for Skype on TV, not Samsung.

Most apps get removed because the people writing them don't want to support them anymore. The Samsung framework from 2013 was always trouble and it doesn't support many current W3C features that you'd want as a developer. Most people I know are drawing the line at supporting 2014 or 2016 Samsung devices.

Could Samsung update their devices to ensure they still supported modern frameworks? Possibly, but they don't really get any revenue from providing OS upgrades and those devices suck in terms of RAM and CPU.

toolslive• 1 year ago

what bother's me even more is that they are constantly spying on me (phone home, what am I watching, ...) and pushing advertisements to my TV. My next TV will probably not be connected to the internet.

hbn2• 1 year ago

Well I'm not sure what use you'd have out of Skype integration when Skype itself is being axed in a couple of months

KeplerBoy• 1 year ago

Still appreciating my 2011 high end Samsung TV. I believe it's the last non-smart product year. It could stream videos from a network share but that's about it.

Judging by current trends i will have to replace the attached chromecast before the TV breaks.

sgt• 1 year ago

It's kinda common knowledge at this point that almost all Smart TV's suck, especially Samsung. I went the Samsung route as well - the TV itself is fine, but the software is horrible.

The solution (that I hope everyone knows about by now) is to buy an Apple TV and connect it. Once the TV starts, it shows Apple TV from the get-go and not any of the Samsung stuff.

lostmsu• 1 year ago

Why are other apps gone?

jerf• 1 year ago

I pulled my Samsung Smart TV off the network a while ago, precisely because it was getting slower and slower over time. The allegations of spying pushed me over, but the apparent belief that they own my TV would also have done it.

I want a separation between my display device and the thing serving it anyhow, but that's just me in my techie world. The fact that performance got worse with each update, though, that's just over the line for everyone. I mean, if you're going to babble about how you're upgrading my experience, shouldn't you, you know, upgrade my experience instead of constantly downgrading it? My experience gets downgraded, but gee golly, it sure seems like yours is getting upgraded.

Well. It's really not that hard to not plug in the ethernet cable.

My Roku boxes have also had the same trajectory over the years. As time rolls on, they just get slower and slower with each update. Slowly, but surely. How exactly this is accomplished I'm not even sure, it's not like they're overflowing with new features or doing bold new computations for my benefit. They just get a little bit slower every effing time. But at least replacing my Roku boxes is $20-40 now. Hey, sure, OK, a $40 thing probably can't be expected to work 5 years from now. If nothing else, video codecs do march on and specs may exceed what the hardware decoders can handle. OK. My $1000+ TV does not get that grace. It damned well better be able to turn on in less than 30 seconds, even 10 years, 20 years from now. No excuses.

eckesicle• 1 year ago

I also had the Baywatch bug. Neo QLED right?

Every time you’d start the tv it’d switch to the Samsung Baywatch 24/7 stream.

So inappropriate for the children.

Ylpertnodi• 1 year ago

So inappropriate for the children.

The bug, or Baywatch itself?

mbowcut2• 1 year ago

I had a smart TV that gradually got slower and slower until it became basically useless. I figured it was just running out of RAM as apps got larger with updates over the years.

hadlock• 1 year ago

We bought a samsung tv in 2016 and it slowly became unusable by mid-2020. Fortunately it got dropped by the movers and we were able to justify buying a new TV (LG). The LG UI/UX is awful though, I wish we'd bought a sony. LG TVs don't have a way to simply select "HDMI1/2/3/4" you're stuck using it's "smart" detection system, which can only be reset by physically unplugging the HDMI cables from the back of the TV, which is never easy to get to. Apparently the solution is to buy Sony and just pay the extra price.

I have a "smart" Samsung TV in my home office but it's never been plugged into the network and has a chromecast and various networked devices plugged in to it as a "dumb tv", that has been working out great, the TV still turns on/off easily and is as fast as the day I bought it (makes sense, it's still running the factory firmware).

tzs3• 1 year ago

LG TVs don't have a way to simply select "HDMI1/2/3/4" you're stuck using it's "smart" detection system, which can only be reset by physically unplugging the HDMI cables from the back of the TV, which is never easy to get to. Apparently the solution is to buy Sony and just pay the extra price.

Another possible solution is to only use one input on the TV. Connect an A/V receiver to that one input and connect all your other devices to the A/V receiver. Then you should only need to deal with switching inputs on the TV if you want to watch over the air TV using the TV's tuner. You can probably even get rid of that need by getting a stand-alone TV tuner and hooking that up to the A/V receiver.

Many A/V receivers have network interfaces that you can use to control them if for some reason you don't want to use their remote. Most Denon receivers for example have an HTTP server that presents a web-based interface if you browse to it from a computer or mobile device.

They also run a simple HTTP based API that is easy to use from scripts. For example here is a shell script that gets the current volume setting of mine:

  URL=http://192.168.0.xx/goform/AppCommand.xml
  cat > tmp.$$ <<HERE
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <tx>
    <cmd id="1">GetVolumeLevel</cmd>
  </tx>
  HERE
  curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: text/xml" --upload-file tmp.$$ $URL
  rm tmp.$$

which when run gives me this at the moment:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
  <rx>
  <cmd>
  <volume>-45.0</volume>
  <disptype>RELATIVE</disptype>
  <dispvalue>-45.0dB</dispvalue>
  </cmd>
  </rx>

Dwedit• 1 year ago

I had a Samsung QLED TV, and still had to upgrade the firmware once. Thankfully you can do this by USB storage without connecting the TV to the Internet. The preloaded firmware had audio issues where sound would drop out, even when playing through the built-in speakers, and I haven't seen that issue happen since upgrading the firmware.

bobdvb11• 1 year ago

I never worked for Samsung, but I built TVs for JVC and LG, among many other brands. I don't work in consumer electronics anymore but a decade ago that was my field.

TVs are a wildly unprofitable business. It's astoundingly bad. You get 4-6 months to make any profit on a new model before it gets discounted so heavily by retailers that you're taking a bath on each one sold. So every dollar in the BOM (bill of materials) has to be carefully considered, and not far back the CPUs in practically every TV was single core or dual core, and still under 1GHz. Bottom of the bin ARM cores you'd think twice to fit to a cheap tablet.

They sit within a custom app framework which was written before HTML5 was a standard. Or, hey want to write in an old version of .NET? Or Adobe Stagecraft, another name for Adobe Flash on TV?

Apps get dropped on TVs because the app developers don't want to support ancient frameworks. It's like asking them to still support IE10. You either hold back the evolution of the app, or you declare some generation of TV now obsolete. Some developers will freeze their app, put it in maintenance mode only and concentrate on the new one, but even then that maintenance requires some effort. And the backend developers want to shutdown the API endpoints that are getting 0.1% of the traffic but costing them time and money to keep. Yes, those older TVs are literally 0.1% or less of use even on a supported app.

After a decade in consumer electronics, working with some of the biggest brands in the world (my work was awarded an Emmy) I can confidently say that I never saw anyone doing what could be described as 'planned obsolescence'. The single biggest driver for a TV or other similar device being shit is cost, because >95% of customers want a cheap deal. Samsung, LG and Sony are competing with cheap white label brands where the customer doesn't care what they're buying. So the good brands have to keep their prices somewhere close to the cheap products in order to give the customers something to pick from. If a device contains cheap components, it was because someone said "If we shave $1 off here, it'll take $3 off the shelf price." I once encountered a situation where a retailer, who was buying cheap set-top boxes from China to stick a now defunct brandname on, argued to halve the size of an EEPROM. It saved them less than 5c on each box made.

For long life support of the OS and frameworks, aside from the fact that the CPU and RAM are poor, Samsung, LG and Sony don't make much money from the apps. It barely pays to run the app store itself, let alone maintain upgrades to the OS for an ever increasing, aging range of products.

And we as consumers have to take responsibility for the fact that we want to buy cheap, disposable electronics. We'll always look for the deal and buy it on sale. Given the choice of high quality and cheap, most people choose cheap. So they're hearing the message and delivering.

Tijdreiziger4• 1 year ago

Yeah, but is there a way for consumers to compare the compute performance of any given TV?

If OEMs differentiated their TVs based on compute performance, consumers might be able to make an informed choice. (See smartphones: consumers expect a Galaxy Sxx to have faster compute than a Galaxy Axx.)

If not, consumers just see TVs with similar specs at different prices, so of course they’re going to pick the cheaper one.

3np2• 1 year ago

Thanks for sharing. Without insight beyond being a consumer, I do think there's room for disription (ideally from within the industry itself) vs 10y ago.

Comparing models from 2005/2015/2025, for example. Most people literally can't tell 4k from 1080 and anything new in the HD race mostly feels like a scam. The software capabilities are all there. I think to differentiate from the no-name stuff, longevity is going to become a more significant differentiator.

BoingBoomTschak• 1 year ago

The problem is getting that jank even when you buy the expensive models, though.

Workaccount2• 1 year ago

I can confidently say that I never saw anyone doing what could be described as 'planned obsolescence'. The single biggest driver for a TV or other similar device being shit is cost, because >95% of customers want a cheap deal.

You are literally the first person I have ever seen say this online, besides myself. I have worked in hardware for years and can vouch that there is no such thing as planned obsolescence, but obsession over cost is paramount. People think LED bulbs fail because they are engineered that way, but really it's because they just buy whatever is cheapest. You cannot even really support a decent mid-grade market because it just gets eviscerated by low cost competitors.

jiggawatts4• 1 year ago

TVs are a wildly unprofitable business... not far back the CPUs in practically every TV was single core or dual core

Explain to me then how an Apple TV device for $125 (Retail! not BOM!) can be staggeringly faster and generally better than any TV controller board I've seen?

I really want to highlight how ludicrous the difference is: My $4,000 "flagship" OLED TV has a 1080p SDR GUI that has multi-second pauses and stutters at all times but "somehow" Apple can show me a silky smooth 4K GUI in 10 bit HDR.

This is dumbass hardware-manufacturer thinking of "We saved 5c! Yay!" Of course, now every customer paying thousands is pissed and doesn't trust the vendor.

This is also why the TVs go obsolete in a matter of months, because the manufacturers are putting out a firehose of crap that rots on the shelves in months.

Apple TV hasn't had a refresh in years and people are still buying it at full retail price.

I do. Not. Trust. TV vendors. None of them. I trust Apple. I will spend thousands more with Apple on phones, laptops, speakers, or whatever they will make because of precisely this self-defeating decisions from traditional hardware vendors.

I really want to grab one of these CEOs by the lapels and scream in their face for a little while: "JUST COPY APPLE!"

mystified5016• 1 year ago

This describes essentially all Samsung products: really cool for the first few months then progressively accelerating slide straight into the trash.

I'm never buying any Samsung products again if I can avoid it. A forced update bricked my damn phone when it forcibly restarted while I was showing something to a client.

Samsung doesn't give a shit. They'll trash the device you paid for and tell you to suck it up and buy a new one.

withinrafael• 1 year ago

Yep, I stopped using Samsung products not too long ago.

Reminds me of the time when a Samsung VP (or whatever his title was) showed up at a Microsoft Build conference to promote their TVs and the shiny new Tizen .NET Framework that shipped inbox. I asked if they planned to backport it to last year’s model—which I had just purchased—so we could test with and target existing TVs in the market. He looked me straight in the eye and, with a smarmy grin, said (paraphrasing), 'No, we want consumers to buy new TVs.' I walked away disgusted and abandoned any idea of targeting that platform.

Similarly, I vaguely recall a Samsung event that had leadership--CEO?--flat out say they wanted consumers to buy new TVs every year or so. I couldn't immediately find the quote though.

deergomoo3• 1 year ago

I find it appalling that no matter how much money you spend on a Samsung TV, you'll get banner ads in the fucking source switcher. Absolute total disregard for their users.

LG still has bits that are ultimately ads, but at least they're less egregious, presented as suggested content in a Home view that already aggregates content from various sources. Not ads for fucking McDonalds and similar. At least that was the case as of a couple of years ago—I disconnected my LG from the internet the day I got an Apple TV and never looked back.

Just let me buy a large class leading display without trying to insert yourself into my life, please. I'm already paying through the nose for it.

rplnt• 1 year ago

Sounds like every Android vendor, woth Google leading the pack.

(disclaimer: maybe 5-10 years ago)

eitally2• 1 year ago

Contrary to lots of other opinions here, I bought a 65" Samsung TV at the beginning of covid and I sincerely don't have any significant complaints. The remote is easy to use, launching apps is straightforward, connecting an ARC soundbar was no problem, nor was connecting a Chromecast and an Xbox, and it "just works". Every once in a blue moon (maybe twice a year-ish) I've had to power cycle it to fix a wifi connectivity issue, which may well just be a result of DHCP lease expiration on my network.

I have a modern Sony Bravia, too, which is running "Google TV" natively. On the plus side, the UI is just about identical to what you get with a Google TV dongle (which I also have, plugged into an old 32" monitor in front of my bike trainer), but it's also a really heavy interface that's also increasingly rich in ads. If your household is like mine, and holds subscriptions to a half dozen or more streaming services, some of which are bundled and some of which are either discounted or comped via entirely different subscriptions (mobile phone) or membership (credit card), it's really not helpful to have Google show me subscriptions I might want to add-on to my Google TV sub, nor do I appreciate seeing ads for content from things I don't subscribe to. Also, the Sony remote has about 50 buttons -- not a fan.

All things considered, I end up having to fiddle with the Sony TV far more frequently than the Samsung one, usually because of network or app issues.

We have an old Roku stick plugged into an old tv in a spare room, too, and it's almost intolerably slow. It's primary use case is to plug into our projector for backyard movies in nice weather, so I keep it around, but man is it dog slow.

jiggawatts4• 1 year ago

don't have any significant complaints.

Are you happy with it spying on you?

That's what all Samsung televisions do, and there is no way to turn it off. They advertise on their own web page that they monitor the content viewed on their televisions for targeted advertising.

This isn't via some sort of metadata, they take screenshots at regular intervals and upload them to very insecure hosting.

I hope you never look at any "sensitive" content on your TV!

Namidairo• 1 year ago

I had a similarly negative experience, sadly. Samsung managed to break HDMI-CEC in the final firmware update for one of their tvs, and wouldn't allow downgrading.

Which tends not to be great for a tv one wants to use with a Chromecast or similar media box...

devmor2• 1 year ago

I will never understand why people are willing to connect so many of their devices to the internet for minimal features. I went out of my way to build a network that prevents even the things I want to have local wifi access from being accessible to the internet.

freehorse2• 1 year ago

If you want your devices not to belong to you, connect them to the internet.

jimt12344• 1 year ago

Many devices these days are required to be connected to the internet, which is bizarre, but here we are.

freehorse2• 1 year ago

Yeah like these "cheap" HP printers, which have to be connected to the internet so that they can force you into a subscription, use their own inks only etc. They do not belong to you either.

deskr• 1 year ago

Thoughts and prayers for the poor soul that owns the bug.

I've done my share of embarrassing mistakes and each time I've felt awful. Nothing on this scale though.

yread• 1 year ago

Unplug the soundbar and listen to the sound from the TV while you wait until Samsung fixes their shit. What's the problem?

winkelmann• 1 year ago

The question is if it still works "enough" to update to a working firmware, or if it's so broken that it can only be fixed by flashing the EEPROM directly.

X-Istence• 1 year ago

This is one of those cases where I am glad I don't have my soundbar connected to the internet...

widerporst• 1 year ago

True, that would be preferable, but alas Samsung is bent on making their products as big of a pain in the arse as possible.

At least with my Samsung soundbar, the remote can change the volume, the subwoofer volume and change between modes (standard, surround, game). But if I want to enable night mode, I have to use the SmartThings app. There's no way to enable it using the remote. What's worse, the app often hangs when connecting to the soundbar, requiring me to force stop and restart it. So sometimes toggling a feature that should be a single button on the remote takes me over a minute.

Samsung is right next to HP on my list of brands I will never ever buy in my entire life.

maayank2• 1 year ago

I’m currently away from home but can deny list domains on the dns level. Anyone knows the domain this update is using? Blocked samsung.com

jms703• 1 year ago

To prevent automatic firmware updates, ads, and any other spying I'm not aware of, I block these in DNS:

*.samsungcloudsolution.com

*.samsungosp.com

*.samsungqbe.com

*.samsungcloud.tv

*.samsungads.com

The first one gets the most hits.

I also don't connect my Samsung displays to Wifi anymore. Unless I notice a problem that I have to search to fix. Then if there's a firmware update that fixes the issues, I'll do it.

NextDNS and ControlD are helpful for blocking this sort if thing, or Pi-Hole if you want to set it up yourself.

nickthegreek3• 1 year ago

My samsung was so noisy that I went to forget the wifi network... but it couldnt. So I ended up blocking its mac at the router. Prior to that it was always the #1 blocked device on my pihole.

maayank2• 1 year ago

Thanks, blocked! Fingers crossed it didn’t fetch it yet

yubiox• 1 year ago

I made the mistake of connecting my bose noise cancelling earbuds to the phone app so I could disable autoplay. They updated without any warning and now they won't charge properly and the noise cancelling sucks. It used to be amazing. Never connect anything and never take updates unless you need a specific fix.

hbn2• 1 year ago

I swear AirPods in general are just less reliable than they used to be too. I feel like I need to be doing incantations for them to work sometimes, whereas I recall them feeling like magic compared to BT headphones I've used in the past, the way they would seamlessly pair, start/stop music when you pull one out, etc.

It reminds me of some discussion I was seeing the other day about how the dynamic island on the newer iPhones is way buggier than it was at launch. Someone suggested that this happens because the S-tier engineers are tasked with building these things to blow everyone out of the water at launch, and then B-tier developers are tasked with maintaining them for the following years, at which point stuff starts regressing.

doublerabbit2• 1 year ago

Build quality too.

My iPhone XR that I am deliberately keeping on lower iOS for jail breaking reasons that when comparing the thunderbolt port to the iPhone 13.

The quality lacks so much that I am unable to listen to music with a wired headphone adapter.

Any slight jiggle of the adapter will cause it to disconnect. I don't want to use BT headphones.

Lammy• 1 year ago

FYI: The Bose app also phones home with your media metadata by default. There's an option to disable it tucked away on the same screen as the Privacy Policy.

mihaaly3• 1 year ago

"never take updates unless you need a specific fix"

Weirdly, serious groups, among them Signal seem to be clueless about this rule. In Signal, in their security concious context, this is a bit of puzzle to me why. They have updates every few days sometime, but no more than 2 weeks pass by without their update banner appears in the most prominent spot in their desktop app: above all of your recent chats, with background higlight to pop out even more, if someone would miss in important messaging. Like if this was the most important thing for everyone around - so much that it is made not possible to turn off -, to keep their software very very fresh, the freshest possible! It is generously allowed not to download updates immediatly, but that's it. The alert is always there.

But there are so little changes between updates. Once I checked the history, dominantly marginal things. Yet, the prime spot in their UI is occupied with these marginal things too, all the time (it must not be critical update in every few days because that frequency of security risks would be too worrysome for an app like Signal!).

And this is just one of the examples out there, there are too many similar ones (serious or marginal use apps alike).

Looks like software engineers lost sense throughout time, thinking the central spot of the user's mind is occupied like their own with the maintenance and state of their precious product. Not the task at hand where some whatever tool should help, without grabbing the attention away from the task all the time (also with all those frequent 'helpful' pop-up tips many software employ - I am looking at you Teams as prime perpetrator - for self advertisement, that is an other senseless narcissistic attitude).

caminante4• 1 year ago

HN title is editorialized. I assume "bricked" is a lot worse, i.e., permanent.

Comments show that there might be resolutions and potential for firmware patch. [0] Bad updates happen.

[0] https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Home-Theater/Samsung-Q99...

pizzalife• 1 year ago

Bad updates happen, but companies with good development practices don't ship catastrophically bad updates. Source: I worked at Samsung

johnklos• 1 year ago

"bricked" usually means bricked for most people - those of us with EPROM programmers wouldn't count.

They did this with their Blu-Ray players about five years ago:

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/18/samsung_bluray_mass_d...

Each device had to be shipped to a repair center because they needed to directly re-flash the flash storage. The issue with the Blu-Ray players was that an update caused it to get in to a state where it would boot loop before it even got to a point that anything could be done, manually or otherwise.

What we don't know yet with this issue is whether the devices are booting enough to apply another firmware update. It may be possible to do this, fixing this issue. If that's the case "bricked" would be technically incorrect, but for now, it's not a wholly inaccurate term.

caminante4• 1 year ago

"bricked" usually means bricked for most people

This is too circular for me. Google "bricked" and you get the Oxford Languages definition, which says "...typically on a permanent basis."

e: HN headline has been corrected

nickthegreek3• 1 year ago

A soft brick is still a brick.

caminante4• 1 year ago

Yet, as you note, still different.

I'll take a chance on a hardware update if the forums say "soft brick." If people are saying "brick," then I'm only moving forward if I'm prepared to write off the device.

edit: HN headline has been corrected

ftufek2• 1 year ago

Unfortunately those "solutions" don't work, the person who had a potential solution was able to at least go through the inputs, this is not the case here, you can't even go through the inputs.

I've tried all the potential solutions this morning. It seems permanent unless Samsung somehow finds some magic to fix it, especially since the soundbar won't connect to WiFi/internet and doesn't do anything with the USB plugged in.

jtrueb• 1 year ago

A lot of folks in this thread say rollback to a known firmware version is required. Where are they getting all this microcontroller ROM?

drcongo• 1 year ago

I own one Samsung product, a very expensive fridge freezer, and it's been garbage since the day I bought it. I'll never buy a Samsung product again.

reverendsteveii7• 1 year ago

Do you guys miss owning things and they were just...yours? Like, you paid money for them and then you had them and you had full control over them and someone half a world away wasn't able to reach into your house and break them or make them do evil things?

jimt12344• 1 year ago

I drive a 30-year-old Nissan pickup truck for this exact reason. Not sure why, but I get a small sense of joy knowing that the corporate overlords aren't "watching" me drive. Of course they're "watching" me on my phone (as I drive the beater truck), but that's a different story.

reverendsteveii7• 1 year ago

my headphones just popped up an alert on my phone that turned out to be an ad for a nascar race. that got their app uninstalled. if they ever realize that they can start shoving ads directly into my ears that's when the headphones themselves get taken out back and smashed with a hammer.

NotYourLawyer5• 1 year ago

Before I bought my most recent vehicle, I did my research and figured out how to physically disconnect the modem / telemetry unit.

ed_mercer• 1 year ago

That old truck is probably polluting 10-30× more than a modern one. While corporations have their flaws, they have spent time and money making engines more efficient and reducing harmful emissions.

z3c0• 1 year ago

A couple days ago, I was thrown by one of my Windows devices pitching an ad for a video game to me in the notifications. I immediately disabled the related setting, which was of course enabled by default. Every device you buy is rigged by default to encourage you to buy more things.

albert_e• 1 year ago

You _thought_ You disabled that setting forever.

It only takes a routine Windows Update to bring those setting back to helpful defaults.

And those updates are helpfully set to download and install by default.

isoprophlex• 1 year ago

You will own nothing, you will have no privacy, and you will be happy.

(Or not, of course...)

crazygringo2• 1 year ago

Not really. My iPhone, and especially my AirPods, have gotten massive feature upgrades since I bought them, and I didn't have to pay a thing.

And I assume my WiFi router updates have helped prevent people doing evil things with my devices.

Samsung's update here is obviously a massive fail, but it's one consumer device out of tens of thousands. I think it's clear the benefits outweigh the harms on the whole. Definitely sucks if you bought this particular soundbar though.

reverendsteveii7• 1 year ago

Maybe the issue to me is that I don't get to pick. My headphones have only gotten the ability to show ads on my phone because some of the functionality is only available via an app which pops up alerts to buy more headphones. My router updates have probably improved security but they definitely keep resetting my DNS which gives people the ability to track my browsing and I don't think that's an accident. I don't get to decide that I only want the security update, or the functionality update, it comes bundled with the privacy invasion and the constant shrieking of advertisements like baby birds. These "free" updates are not without cost. Nothing is actually free, not even on the internet. I'd love to go to a model where I get to pick among features to add to my devices, but if my decision is between everything or nothing I pick nothing.

jajko3• 1 year ago

You don't understand the situation in this case. This is not some auto-update, people have to put some serious effort into updating manually... effin soundbar.

Why on earth would anybody do that? I have these speakers, exactly model D, it works flawlessly either via eArc with TV or Bluetooth with both android and apple, there is absolutely nothing to fix or improve. You have to tinker with USB key and obscure series of actions or install a dedicated app on phone to force an update - why would anybody ever need such an app in first place? I am minimizing amount of apps on my phone, and not installing every semi-unknown low quality crap just because I can. That's basic security 101.

You can tweak basses directly on remote for these. These speakers are not HiFi albeit cca fine performers, realistically you will never need more from them (and TBH that one feature is absolutely stellar idea that many much more expensive receivers don't have, when kids go sleep I lower basses since they travel easier through walls and doors).

Its like pushing unknown BIOS updates to motherboard when your PC works perfectly fine, and then complaining it isn't anymore. Its sad state of 2025 electronics in general, but it was exactly same 10 or even 15 years ago, this ain't something new or unknown.

account4219• 1 year ago

there is absolutely nothing to fix or improve

Turning of the dammed display would be an improvement. I don't want an animation playing telling me that yes it's still connected to the TV via eARC every time I change the volume on the TV.

Being able to disable the "microphone off" indicator LED would also be great.

globular-toast3• 1 year ago

It's hilarious because I bought second hand Focal Aria 936 floor standing speakers for half the price one of these sound bars will set you back. They were only slightly more than one of these sound bars second hand!

It's not even like people don't have the option, they're just suckers for marketing and don't fully research anything. Free markets are useless if the consumers are this dumb.

jauntywundrkind• 1 year ago

Side note, it's frustrating that this link tries to open in an app on my Samsung phone.

I installed the GitHub app a long time ago, and that had similar behaviors that kept me from the web-based experience I know & love & which is more URL based. Finding that disappointing, I uninstalled the app. But still, GitHub results in Google don't show the URL, they just say "app installed" where the URL would be. What a colossal regression.

More to the topic, we are on day 4 of Google Chromecast Audio & 2nd generation being broken. Supposedly an expired cert. Amazing neglect, ya'll.

arcanemachiner2• 1 year ago

Looking at /r/Chromecast, it seems the problem got fixed very recently.

iaw• 1 year ago

I am looking to get a new monitor in the next year or so and have been considering ultra-wides. During my research the proportion of people that had horrible experiences with Samsung monitors, typically right after warranty expired, was enough to deter me from the entire brand in the future.

yobibyte• 1 year ago

vibe coding

drlobster2• 1 year ago

They did this before, about five years ago. I had to send it back to them for a fix and it came back a few weeks later.

https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/the-real-story-how-samsung-b...

drlobster2• 1 year ago

Also talked about here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23578920

ftufek2• 1 year ago

Yeah, some people say they got replacements through the warranty. The problem is, this thing is really big and heavy, so boxing it up is a real pain, especially if you've had it a while and already threw out the original box.

SpaceNoodled• 1 year ago

That's why my buddy said it's time to buy shares in bubble wrap

mihaaly3• 1 year ago

I assume you never bought Samsung again.

'Having' (paid for) a device for not having it for weeks is not that customer friendly attitude. It is almost in the same league with how UK furniture makers exploit customers. You get into the shop, see something nice, start ordering it, casually ask about the delivery date, cancelling the whole thing and run to an Ikea after learning that it will take somewhere between 4-6 months, depending on the workload of the factory. They are insane! I mean those who actually buy this way. The manufacturers are just brazen. Thinking that someone goes into the shop for leaving behind money for the honor of using a product of theirs sometime in the unspecific mid term future, instead of like NOW!? Shameless.

csomar2• 1 year ago

I assume you never bought Samsung again.

I boycotted Samsung after having similar troubles with their computer screens. Essentially, they chose a weird adapter for the screen that I can't find anywhere making the screen essentially useless.

I no longer buy anything Samsung. I can't say the same about other people as Samsung is essentially an Advertising company that happens to have consumer products.

mrbonner• 1 year ago

I just snapped after 2014. Used to be a Samsung consumer with their TVs, galaxy phones, security cams, etc... Their hardware wasn't that bad. It was the software update either buggy or bricking my devices that threw me off. I swear never to allow another Samsuck (my little girl coined that) device in my home and family lives again.

tim333• 1 year ago

My Samsung printer is ok. Thankfully it doesn't get updates. My only Samsung product. After that HP bought them and turned them to the dark side.

not_your_vase• 1 year ago

  > Have you tried to factory reset your soundbar?

2 years ago, when LLMs started to become huge, I was really hoping that by this time AI would do this 1st line tech support, with actually helpful questions, suggestions and deductions.

dghughes• 1 year ago

...nervously looks over at my Bambu X1-Carbon...

bregma• 1 year ago

I recently replaced all my kitchen appliances with matching mid-scale Samsung-branded ones. The first thing I did after powering them on for the first time was disable the WiFi. For this reason.

Also, it's entirely unclear to me why I need WiFi or a remote server for my dishwasher or refrigerator in the first place. What possible value-add is there?

Finnucane• 1 year ago

Nothing that needs wifi or an app is allowed in my kitchen.

pkkkzip• 1 year ago

its crazy that the fridge and coffeemaker needs to talk to the internet

hondo77• 1 year ago

Probably so the appliance can let a server know to have your phone notify you that your appliance is done doing what it was doing.

commandlinefan3• 1 year ago

"We understand how frustrating an unresponsive soundbar can be."

Isn't this about the most condescending thing they can start with?

genewitch7• 1 year ago

"... and that's why we did it!"

wnolens• 1 year ago

It smells like corporate communication training. "Affirm the customer. Express that you hear their concerns and empathize"

account4219• 1 year ago

Does this actually work on anyone though. It just always feels so artificial that it's off putting.

noisy_boy• 1 year ago

Hyperbole and condescension is the mainstay of corporate-speak. Everything is "incredibly <rosy_adjective_for_subject_of_condescension>", "nothing more important than <thing_they_are_guilty_of_not_doing>" and "hearts go out to <people_suffering_due_to_their_actions>". Makes me want to puke.

commandlinefan3• 1 year ago

The made the “difficult decision” to reduce headcount. It’s “not a reflection” on individual performer’s merits.

baxuz5• 1 year ago

I got a good deal for an S90C + Q990C combo. It was 50% off off their regular price which was already quite a bit cheaper than the comparable LG/Sony counterparts.

After 1 year, I am 100% sure that I will never again buy a Samsung product, no matter how cheap it is.

Just look at the first sticky here: https://www.avsforum.com/threads/2023-samsung-4k-s95c-s90c-s...

bowmessage2• 1 year ago

My Q990C requires factory reset about once a week. It's maddening.

baxuz5• 1 year ago

It's the WPA3 encryption. It needs to be set to WPA2 only for it to not shit itself.

ncr100• 1 year ago

Ah, well, the S95D on the other hand ......... uh.

I got one hoping it works be great but they add bugs to each release.

The video decoding macro blocks around dark objects at certain illuminations.

The TV complains it's running out of space (wth) after I installed only 6 TV streaming apps. 4gb of storage is the cause and when it gets to 1gb it complains, daily.

It makes power on off sounds, "bling", when off, and when on. Surprise!

The apps all have bugs, because Tizen OS is unpopular and difficult to develop well on.

baxuz5• 1 year ago

I mean it's all the same garbage. LG and Sony is where it's at.

I'm planning on selling mine as soon as possible, as I can't stand the judder on 24fps content as well.

Not to mention other quirks like limited passthrough support

genewitch7• 1 year ago

I have been boycotting samsung since ~2014; because of my experience with two, brand new, ~$1000 samsung devices, neither a phone. Their customer service blew me off, because both devices had intermittent issues. I tell people to avoid the company and its products.

both devices were malfunctioning within the first month.

1) 4k60 32" monitor, the power button always flaked and it would randomly shut off, thus necessitating unplugging and plugging it back in, 2-3 times a day. customer service: "unplug all monitor cables and plug just power in. what is on the screen? oh, then it's fine. have a nice day!"

2) Refrigerator. Intermittent fan issues were the reason i called. i ended up having to replace, for cause, the heating elements in the refrigerator side as well as the fans due to ice damage to the impellers; then the ice machine started leaking inside the freezer door somewhere, and that leak would freeze on the bottom of the freezer and push the door open, letting water just drip on my floor for hours, nearly damaging the subfloor. I also had to replace the motherboard. So now i have a water-less, ice-less refrigerator.

i could go on about how their SD cards are quite fast but don't last long if you have them in outdoor devices (like dashcams, trail cams, security cameras) - the only raspberry pi i've ever had to throw away had a samsung SD card in it that overheated to the point of contact burns - i went to unplug it to reboot it and received a welt from the SD card for my troubles.

I'm just one person, but read enough anecdotes and you can ignore them all!

gblargg3• 1 year ago

I had to stop getting Samsung Pro Endurance microSD cards after three in a row failed after a few months (write speed dropped below 2 MB/s). This was after the update to the blue and white color scheme (and higher endurance figures, hah); the older black, red, and white ones worked great and I fortunately got over a dozen of them.

binarymax2• 1 year ago

Sometimes you have to hack their support script to get a replacement or a refund. After the first support call if you don't get what you want and it happened again, Call back to open a new support ticket. Pretend to walk through their steps but not do anything, and when they asked what was on the screen I would say it's blank and not turning on.

genewitch7• 1 year ago

or - and this is gunna sound crazy - I don't compromise my ethics and lie to a company to get "service". Instead, i'll loudly tell everyone that Samsung is a crappy company that doesn't care about their customers.

tzs3• 1 year ago

Not a good year so far for Samsung. Just under two months ago on a large number of their TVs with voice control it started only recognizing commands in Russian. It took them several days to get that straightened out.

It was educational. I learned that I completely suck at trying to speak Russian. I could type "channel 4" into Google Translate on my iPad, press the Mic button on my TV remote, and press the speak icon on Google Translate and the channel would change.

But no matter how many times I listened to Google Translate say that in Russian I could not manage to match it close enough the TV to accept it.

VTimofeenko• 1 year ago

Assuming English is your first language, I can probably guess which specific parts of the "channel 4" Russian pronounciation gave you trouble. I'm sure your effort was valiant, but the language is just so different compared to English

krunck• 1 year ago

I hate smart TVs. Why put all the functionality in one device when a small part of it is going to become obsolete real soon while the TV part will continue to work for a decade or more. I buy dumb TVs and a separate "smart" component like Roku that can be replaced as easily as a shoelace.

mrkeen• 1 year ago

Same.

I bought a couple of Chromecasts for that reason but they're supposedly discontinued now.

slig• 1 year ago

They're discontinued and a week or so ago a certificate expired and millions of Chromecast V2 aren't working.

dmos62• 1 year ago

Do you find dumb TV software (dynamic backlight controls for example) and hardware on par with smart tvs?

SparkyMcUnicorn• 1 year ago

I go for smart tv's that can be dumb. As long as it reliably uses my input each time it starts and doesn't try to overlay anything, that's all I need.

Once or twice a year I'll go trough firmware update notes, connect it to the internet if there's things that can improve my "dumb" usage (fixes/improvements to refresh rate, Dolby xyz, etc.), then disconnect it from the internet again.

_2d30• 1 year ago

Yes I’m always very surprised that people deal with the awful software that are on the TVs.

I use an Apple TV which, while a relatively expensive solution, has a clean interface and integrates well with the rest of my hardware. Plus rarely are there ads being shoved in your face in the OS/Home Screen. Apps can still do as they like of course.

fullstop2• 1 year ago

The software on mine is pretty good, but I find myself using a PS5 for media streaming these days.

nelblu• 1 year ago

My strategy is to buy cheapest TV on the market (which is usually an ad loaded Crapware like hisense) and then never ever connect it to the internet but use HDMI to plug into a dedicated computer.

Basically all I need in a TV apart from the display is an HDMi. It works amazing, been using like this over 10 years now.

deergomoo3• 1 year ago

My strategy is to buy cheapest TV on the market

Unfortunately if you're a stickler for image quality this isn't an option. You can still not connect it to the internet of course, but if you're buying a high end TV there's no way to avoid all the other modern TV bullshit.

Namely needing to change the settings on every input for every source type. The first few days of a new TV is a regular trip into five layers of menus as you watch a new source combination for the first time (HDR Blu-Ray, Dolby Vision streaming movie, high framerate game) and have to turn off motion smoothing, turn off sharpening, turn the whites back down from basically blue to 6500K. I mean christ, there are still TVs out there shipping today that turn on overscan by default. Analogue TV broadcasts ended in 2012 here!

fullstop2• 1 year ago

I have a Hisense, and the one that I got (65U8G) isn't full of crapware and has a great picture. I played the panel lottery and won.

They do, of course, sell some very low-end sets.

ken47• 1 year ago

This post is about a soundbar, not a smart TV.

deergomoo3• 1 year ago

I lump modern TV bullshit (crappy "smart" features, motion smoothing, horrible default settings) in with modern car bullshit (huge touchscreens everywhere, the near total death of real physical controls).

Everyone you speak to at best is ambivalent and at worst vehemently hates it. And yet there's no sign of it slowing down. It's baffling.

FartyMcFarter• 1 year ago

Reading this makes me glad that I didn't give my TV the WiFi credentials.

hyperluz• 1 year ago

Sony bricked my WF-1000XM4 by overheating its batteries. Some users reported things melting. $250,00 of my work straight to the trash bin. Thank you Sony...not.

rd11235• 1 year ago

Good motivation for a PSA:

This happens more and more often, and there is a fairly easy + popular workaround (which also comes with 99% ad blocking as a bonus). Just either set up pi-hole locally OR use a hosted DNS service that does essentially the same thing.

Main idea: Ads, updates, etc. typically (not always) need to resolve hosts before connecting to servers. Simply resolve these hosts to 0.0.0.0 instead of a real IP.

Arguments for pi-hole or other local solution: Free. Private.

Arguments for hosted solution: No set-up headache, no local raspberry pi or other machine to maintain. Overall a bit simpler.

Guide for blocking updates after the service is set up (I just went through this a month or two ago to block updates to my LG TV):

Step 1: Search around for servers that correspond to updates for your device.

Step 2: Test these lists; realize that they are often incomplete.

Step 3: Shut your device off. Open pi-hole like service, and watch queries live. While doing so, turn on your device (and if you have the option, check for updates).

Step 4: Put all of the queried hosts you see into your block list.

Step 5: Later, you may encounter broken functionality. When this happens, look at your logs, and see which server(s) were blocked at that moment. Remove only those from the blocklist. (And cross your fingers that the manufacturer doesn't use the same hosts for typical functionality and updates.)

inetknght• 1 year ago

Step 5: Later, you may encounter broken functionality. When this happens, look at your logs, and see which server(s) were blocked at that moment

Eventually you end up with advertisements being served because the application refuses to show the content without the advertisements.

So let me cut back to your main idea:

Main idea: Ads, updates, etc. typically (not always) need to resolve hosts before connecting to servers. Simply resolve these hosts to 0.0.0.0 instead of a real IP.

Better solution: resolve these hosts to an address you control on your network. You could even resolve it to a "public" address and add a static route to your router.

You can then choose to serve no-content from that address.

jillyboel2• 1 year ago

Maybe that worked 10 years ago but nowadays they figured out ssl certificate pinning

lurking_swe2• 1 year ago

why connect the junk to the internet to begin with? it’s a TV. I can buy a better streaming box and plug it in. People really over complicate things sometimes IMO.

wvenable• 1 year ago

This happens more and more often, and there is a fairly easy + popular workaround (which also comes with 99% ad blocking as a bonus). Just either set up pi-hole locally OR use a hosted DNS service that does essentially the same thing.

DNS over HTTPS is going to render this method ineffectual eventually. Smart devices are going to stop trusting anything on the local network.

globular-toast3• 1 year ago

Even easier: just don't connect it to your network. Everything connected to my network runs free software that I control. If you absolutely must have something on your local network then have it in a VLAN that has no internet access and can't access your main LAN.

1970-01-01• 1 year ago

Just more evidence that buying something smart is dumb.

timewizard2• 1 year ago

Samsumg did not bring THEIR home theater systems, they bricked CUSTOMER theater systems that did not belong to them.

jp1016• 1 year ago

Reminder to myself to not auto update anything or manually update to the latest version.

palata2• 1 year ago

When will someone build a good theater system with an open source OS? That would be great!

NotYourLawyer5• 1 year ago

Just get a receiver and some standalone speakers. It doesn’t need an OS, and there’s no reason for it to talk to the internet.

saturn86012• 1 year ago

Be the change you want to see in the world.

gblargg3• 1 year ago

I made the mistake of updating my HIKMICRO mini thermal camera. Before it worked as a normal UVC USB webcam with any app or camera/video program on the PC. After it just has weird green coloration with hardly any variation, and only works properly in their Android app. I contacted company but they didn't care, nor provided any way to "downgrade" the firmware to the original version.

treme• 1 year ago

I think it hasn't even been a year since Samsung bricked bunch of their phones with firmware update. They really must have no proper engineering team behind update process.

jijji• 1 year ago

why would a soundbar need a firmware update?...seems like a solution looking for a problem... what's next my toaster needs a firmware update?!?!

space_firmware• 1 year ago

Sigh, another day, another consumer product without fault tolerant update systems. SpaceX has a white paper on doing this with their satellites for Starlink. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5...

It is bad engineering on Samsung's part to even be able to brick their product with an update.

NotYourLawyer5• 1 year ago

Why are these things connected to the internet at all?

Animats• 1 year ago

On forced updating: "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

caminante4• 1 year ago

LOL. Lord giveth patch updates, e.g., mRNA vaccines, startup blogs, work from home...

p0w3n3d• 1 year ago

Software crisis. The more you build the less you understand, the more you can affect, the less control you give to people etc.

This will bite us again and again in general.

renewiltord• 1 year ago

I always really enjoy these community forums. They are total garbage.

Hello, I am Rene, a community expert on the Hacker News Experience Forums. I see you are having trouble with an auto-flagged post. I will try to help you with your auto-flagged post. Have you tried turning off your kitchen tap and turning it back on again?

N19PEDL22• 1 year ago

Perhaps a stupid question, but why they don’t test the firmware updates internally before releasing them?

mikepurvis6• 1 year ago

They almost certainly do, but there's always ways that the test jig differs from the units in the field, for example:

- The test jig is probably pristine, so no hundreds of hours of telemetry data clogging up the internal storage.

- The test jig might be on ethernet whereas a lot of users would be using wifi.

- The test jig probably targets specific A -> B upgrades rather than testing progressive upgrade across every version that's ever existed.

- The test jig can't cover every permutation of config options.

- The test jig probably only does a bare minimal smoke test after the install, so if the problem takes a bit to kick in, it might not show up.

Not to say that it's certainly any of these, but all are possible contributors. In the coming days it'll become clearer what particular pattern the affected devices follows, and/or clever people with JTAG dongles will reverse engineer the problem and spill the beans.

Y_Y• 1 year ago

The test jig should be in expected conditions. We have simulated tests, and we have tests that run on the devices on my desk, but we also have a real world setup for consumer devices in a separate building that could be mistaken for the real deployment environment. That's not feasible for every company, but it's certainly feasible for Samsung. It doesn't mean you'll catch everything, but it does address some of your points.

kkarpkkarp• 1 year ago

so what are the users for? /s

agilob3• 1 year ago

Today a tech lead with admin role on GH opened a PR, approved it for himself and merged it, because he could override GH rules. The PR had failing unit tests. It went straight to prod and caused 20 minutes downtime of one functionality. We do test things, sometimes you're just not prepared for all the permutations of the idiocy out there...

This is more common than you think. Only a few days HP update bricked their printers https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/firmware-update-bric...

Similar thing happened to Hisense https://old.reddit.com/r/Hisense/comments/18xnmz9/the_latest...

Samsung phones: https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/galaxy-s10-phones-smar...

MattGaiser• 1 year ago

The answer seems to be that things get tested, but the results often get ignored.

sumedh• 1 year ago

You dont need a testing team when the users can do all the testing for you.

0xFEE1DEAD• 1 year ago

Someone on reddit [0] mentioned that they updated their device via USB and hadn't encountered any issues. If that's true, then it might actually have been the previous firmware update that silently bricked the device. Or maybe Samsung only test in a controlled lab environment without real world signal interference.

In any case, it's mind boggling how a multi billion dollar company lacks proper rollout strategies.

I have a pair of Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones, and their app constantly tells me to install the latest firmware update. After the 20th time I finally agreed - only to be met with the update instructions: I must perform the update in a place with no other bluetooth or wifi devices.

Where on earth would I even have to go to find a place without there being any 2.4Ghz signal interference?

I've never been more careful when pressing “Cancel,” making sure I don't accidentally tap “Agree and Continue”.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Soundbars/comments/1jb1ymp/comment/...

mmmlinux2• 1 year ago

My girlfriend had to wear a sleep monitoring device, and the instructions also had stuff to that effect. including putting all phones in airplane mode and unplug any assistant speaker things you might have. I assume the real purpose of this is to make you actually sleep. But they claimed it was to make the data collect properly...

TylerE• 1 year ago

It’s much more just typical manufacturer trying to avoid liability. It costs them nothing to say don’t do that, and if it cuts tech support costs by 1%.

bhaney3• 1 year ago

I also have a pair of XM4s. I installed the app briefly when I first got them so I could turn off the voice notifications on connection/mode change, and then immediately uninstalled it and have never needed it again. Why on earth would I want to update the firmware on my perfectly working headphones?

SequoiaHope• 1 year ago

What if they release a firmware update that ads “immersive advertisements” to your audio? I’d hate to miss out on that.

mh-• 1 year ago

The app enables other features like changing EQs, etc.

gmueckl• 1 year ago

How is the audio compression codec[0] negotiated between the phone and the headphones over Bluetooth? IIRC, Sony supports higher quality codes outside of the standard BT required ones. Is the app required for that negotiation or is it all in the operating system now?

[0] There is no lossless high quality audio over BT, only a bunch of lossy codecs.

mintplant• 1 year ago

Actual answer: better ANC. ANC algorithm improvements are one of the more common items I've seen in headphone firmware changelogs. Also, Bluetooth upgrades. I can't remember which, but one of my pairs of headphones gained multipoint support a year or so after release via a software update.

kalleboo• 1 year ago

* Resolves Bluetooth security issues (17 October 2024)

* Enhances the security features of the system software

* Improves Bluetooth connection stability

* Improves the hands-free calling quality

* Fixes an issue where the headphones cannot be paired on a Windows computer

* Fixes an issue where, when there are 2 Bluetooth devices connected at the same time, the connected devices repeatedly disconnect and reconnect

* Improves general performance of the headphones

numpad0• 1 year ago

Because a version 1.0 of anything predates power management bugs fixed in 1.28, massive connection improvement in 1.33, basic compatibility fix in 1.57, whole load of problems added in 2.00.00 and binary signature enforcement added at some point(not real world examples).

By the way, Sony wearable products make use of their proprietary NN inference library called Nnabla, with a free helper GUI app Neural Network Console for Windows that can export low-code code into Spresense board codes. It is apparently used across the brand for tiny and transparent features like on-head detection through accelerometers. Not super related, but just so you know...

mmis10002• 1 year ago

The firmware update does fix/cause battery issues depends on your batch. The wf-1000xm4 changed the battery model(thus voltage) it's using. And update the firmware to match the new battery model. However the new firmware did not handle different type of battery correctly. And damaged quite a few devices with incorrect voltage setting. (Some devices are also preload with these incorrect config) There is a firmware update to correct this setting problem.

luis8• 1 year ago

a faraday cage should do the trick

0xbadcafebee• 1 year ago

In any case, it's mind boggling how a multi billion dollar company lacks proper rollout strategies.

Having worked for several billion-dollar companies, I can tell you it's very common. The extremely short answer to why is "silos on silos on silos on silos". Quite often, each team rolls things out however the hell they feel like. And the teams don't have very good people on them. It doesn't have to be this way, but the people at these companies simply don't give a shit about doing it in a better way. Bad leadership ensures it continues.

userbinator3• 1 year ago

Where on earth would I even have to go to find a place without there being any 2.4Ghz signal interference?

Inside a microwave oven.

londons_explore2• 1 year ago

Actually doesn't work particularly well. I suspect signal reflections destroy the signal.

You get similar problems in other larger metal boxes, eg caravans. In a caravan, short high data rate packets are transmitted properly, but bigger packets get lost because they interfere with a reflection off an internal wall.

forgotTheLast• 1 year ago

The real reason is that Bluetooth is awful for data transmission and the bitrate absolutely plummets when there's crosstalk. I live in an older building with a ton of interference on the 2.4GHz band (WiFi, BT beacons, "smart" appliances) and updating any device over bluetooth is impossible.

mmis10002• 1 year ago

The new models actually handle update much better. The update is way slower (requires about 1 hour) compare to old model. But it allows you to continue using it while update. (It probably rate limited itself?)

xethos2• 1 year ago

Where on earth would I even have to go to find a place without there being any 2.4Ghz signal interference?

Unironic answer: most airports. Even small ones will have avionics shops, those avionics shops will have to test Emergency Locator Beacons, and those beacon signals are not meant to escape to the outside world during testing.

Thus, most have Faraday rooms, cages, or just small (2-3 cubic feet) boxes to block signals. I used to work for one of those teeny-tiny companies. Would not recommend working in aviation. That said, knocking on the door and offering to come back with doughnuts if they can help you out when it's not crazy busy, feels like less an insane idea than I'd have expected previously.

angus-g• 1 year ago

Would not recommend working in aviation

Why not?

Wololooo• 1 year ago

Sure there are places. But if you're an average consumer I doubt that you would be thrilled to book a gateway room to update your device...

colonial3• 1 year ago

Perhaps you could stick the phone and earbuds in a (non-running) microwave. They keep 2.4GHz in just fine, and Faraday cages don't discriminate based on direction.

You might have to line the inner walls with something to prevent the signal from bouncing back? I'm not sure.

nickdothutton• 1 year ago

This is why you phase release of updates to 1% of customers, then 2%, then 5% over a period of hours... while watching the help desk queues. Because testing is never perfect.

hosteur• 1 year ago

One more reason to never allow a tv on the internet.

zoklet-enjoyer• 1 year ago

Why does a sound bar need a firmware update?

jajko3• 1 year ago

I have those, desperately checking if they don't auto-update... whfff, luckily no.

I never patch such devices as long as they work, the only exception is phone and desktop. Those idiotic phone apps to tweak some minor stuff - thank you but I couldn't care less, I install maybe 1 new app to my phone a year and no, it won't be due to buying some effin' loudspeakers.

There is simply 0 real gain for me and always non-zero risk. Even those I hate updating, but grokking they are too important to leave some known hackable surface open.

nfriedly• 1 year ago

I have a samsung "smart" TV, and a few years back it started interrupting the DVD I was trying to watch every 15 minutes or so to tell me to check my internet connection. My internet was fine, but whatever server it was phoning home to had apparently gone down.

I ended up factory resetting the TV to make it forget my wifi credentials, and I just haven't put it back online since then. I haven't regretted it at all.

I think mine is compatible with the SammyGo custom firmware, so I might install that one of these days, and then maybe I'll reconnect it to my network. But, for now, I just have a PC connected to it and manage everything there.

nabaraz• 1 year ago

I got tired of constant updates/apps on home screen/lag and all on my Samsung TV and finally bought a Sony. Everything I do is through Apple TV and Xbox now, Sony is not connected to the internet.

Other than the slow boot (takes about 5 seconds to switch to Apple TV after pressing power button), I have no complaints.

yuumei• 1 year ago

I have the same Samsung sound bar and absolutely nothing works. We need to hard reset it every day because it refuses to work, switching between programmes in Netflix causes a horrible loud crack, the latest one is having speakers out of sync. Really bad. Unfortunately the rtings reviewers didn’t seem to test any of these things.

Ikatza• 1 year ago

Yet another reason why I don't connect appliances to the internet. My TV is plugged to an Nvidia Shield, and that's the device that gets online, since it was designed for that.

idontwantthis• 1 year ago

Jokes on them: I tried and failed to connect it to wifi and gave up.

PeterStuer• 1 year ago

For those with mild dyslexia: The system did not brick after suffering through 1020 updates. 1020 is the update version label.

Navenaps• 1 year ago

Yeah. I too got into the same problem. But the thing is, I just bought Q990D on Feb 22 and I got into this situation on Mar 8. The soundbar stuck into the mode that I was using and it becomes unresponsive.

account4219• 1 year ago

I never update any device firmware these days unless there is a specific problem I'm trying to solve. Even if the update is not outright buggy, chances are it comes with unwanted "improvements" like ads or similar "features".

OrangeMusic• 1 year ago

With "AI".

Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

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