Samsung Family Hub for 2025 Update Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem

https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-family-hub-2025-update-elevates-smart-home-ecosystem/

by janandonly • 9 months ago

302 315 9 months ago

news.samsung.com

roscas• 9 months ago

"Samsung Family Hub™ for 2025 Update Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem The software update includes a more unified user experience across connected devices, enhancements to AI Vision Inside™, expanded Knox Security and more"

In plain English now, Samgung will put advertising on your face but mostly important is that they will know and sell the data about what you buy.

They call it Smart Home. Yeah, "smart". They are the smart ones, not those who buy this **.

medbrane• 9 months ago

But hey, your fridge is now more secure because blockchain (I'm not kidding, it's in the press release)

tormeh• 9 months ago

I'm not fact-checking that because that's horrifying. Beyond parody. But I guess that's a trend currently.

Edit: I checked because one shouldn't be outraged without fact checking. It's true.

bradly• 9 months ago

It appears to also use a peer-to-peer solution to preventing botnets. So a botnet to prevent botnets.

heresie-dabord• 9 months ago

Update Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem

If you are not elevating the privacy of me and my family, CORPORATRON can suck it.

I will spend my money to elevate the sales of a company that respects privacy instead.

qmr5• 9 months ago

I will spend my money to elevate the sales of a company that respects privacy instead.

Is there such a thing?

celeritascelery2• 9 months ago

I don’t see where it says they are adding advertising. Is something there corporate speak for ads?

estimator72922• 9 months ago

"Elevating" is being used as a euphemism for "constantly advertising"

oakesm9• 9 months ago

It’s buried in the “new widgets” section:

As part of the Family Hub™ software update, we are piloting a new widget for select Cover screens themes of Family Hub™ refrigerators. The widget will display useful day-to-day information such as news, calendar and weather forecasts, along with curated advertisements

jbreckmckye3• 9 months ago

Buried half way down,

    As part of the Family Hub™
    software update, we are 
    piloting a new widget
    for select Cover screens
    themes of Family Hub™ 
    refrigerators. The 
    widget will display 
    useful day-to-day
    information such as 
    news, calendar and 
    weather forecasts, along 
    with curated 
    advertisements.[11]

Wow!! Elevating!!!

fourneau• 9 months ago

If you look closely, there's an ad in the picture where the fridge's clock says 12:30.

"Shop Samsung Water Filters - Subscribe and Save 40%"

qmr5• 9 months ago

Thanks, I hate it.

batrat• 9 months ago

It is in the notes, in the article, there is no tracking:

"[11] Ads on Family Hub Cover screens will serve contextual or non-personal ads. Family Hub devices are not collectiong personal information or tracking consumers."

autoexec• 9 months ago

I don't believe them, but if even they aren't lying to your face today they'll be pushing an update to add tracking tomorrow. Samsung is absolute trash and not to be trusted. They've demonstrated this so many times and in so many ways that anyone investing in "Samsung Family Hub" deserves what they get.

robin_reala2• 9 months ago

It’s really quite impressive how much this press release turns me off from every buying any white goods from Samsung at any point in the future. It’s a vortex of “no”.

zrobotics• 9 months ago

Just putting this out there: 4 months ago a friend's Samsung fridge (6 months old at the time, 2500USD price) failed due to a refrigerant leak. They had to spend 20 hours total on online chat and phone calls to get their warranty claim, and it took several weeks.

So you absolutely don't want any Samsung appliances, even the non 'smart' ones.

foobarian3• 9 months ago

Every single Samsung appliance we had failed in sad ways. Stove knobs cracked and fell off. Fridge condensation mitigation failed leading to flooding. Fridge icemaker doesnt defrost properly and gets stuck. The worst thing is, these are not primary functions of the appliance - but as a result the whole thing gets tossed when replaced. (We inherited them from previous owners, was not by choice).

darth_avocado2• 9 months ago

This is what amazes me. I swore off Samsung because of their unreliability: smartphones, TVs, refrigerators are terrible despite demanding a premium price over other cheaper players that offer better quality. Instead of investing time and effort in making their products better they’re doing the exact opposite. No one has ever said “the fridge is going to show me ads now? Better throw away my old one and get this bad boy on launch day”. Just make your products better people.

pimeys• 9 months ago

That is an expensive fridge too. We just bought a new Miele fridge. Very high quality materials, an awesome fridge in every way. It was an expensive one, 1400 euros.

So in US you pay a thousand more for a fridge that shows advertisement?

We had a Samsung dishwasher before. It was about 500 euros and started leaking water after five years. Now we have an expensive Miele which was about thousand euros. Seems that they don't share the same issue.

Rebelgecko2• 9 months ago

I had a similar experience after I got a stove and microwave from Samsung. It was such a shitshow they ended up giving me the microwave for free, but with the hours I spent dealing with support it basically came out to the equivalent of minimum wage .

robin_reala2• 9 months ago

I learned that lesson the hard way already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44489161 . Samsung: not even once.

vintermann• 9 months ago

It's really to the point that I don't trust any electronics store which takes in this fridge and tries to foist it on its customers.

NetMageSCW2• 9 months ago

Sadly they have the best OLED TV this year, at a time when I am looking to buy.

delusional3• 9 months ago

How much is "technically the best" worth compared to "convenient, secure, and good"?

sroussey2• 9 months ago

You absolutely do not want these smart tvs connected to the internet. Do it once maybe to update firmware. Then use them as a dumb tv and put an apple TV in front of it.

All tvs from all manufacturers have microphones and they do listen an sell info.

Everyone things Facebook is listening but it really is your tv.

foobarian3• 9 months ago

I hope their OLED is better than their QLED because the latter has white splotches all over the screen from backlight bleeding through. I would throw it in the bin if I felt more strongly about it.

lobito252• 9 months ago

But not the best OS for sure.

unethical_ban3• 9 months ago

Sony and LG have comparable video quality.

ryandrake4• 9 months ago

This doesn't make the overall product better, though. People get so tunnel visioned on one narrow feature being the best and use that to justify purchasing a product that is overall hostile to them. This is why these practices never die.

In 2030, it will be "Well, the TV sends a 24/7 video of my living room to Samsung, plays a 5 minute ad every 10 minutes of content, displays in 480i unless I pay a $100/mo subscription, and it will kill my pets, but hey, it has the best display in the world, so I'm thinking about buying it."

p1esk• 9 months ago

I thought LG G5 is the best OLED TV in 2025

kivle• 9 months ago

Bought one, and I have regrets... Every time I turn it on and start watching something, after about 10 minutes a nag screen modal pops up for me to activate AI voice features. At first I entered the wizard and hit cancel. But that's not good enough, It will just keep showing up until you hit accept and activate it. I have since then deleted the Bixby account. We'll see how long it takes until it starts nagging me again.

Also random features require you to be logged in to a Samsung account on the TV. Like picture-in-picture for instance.

I'm considering refunding it, but it has absolutely brilliant picture quality though.

clickety_clack4• 9 months ago

Samsung products in general I think. I was looking at computer monitors yesterday and found I have a vague feeling of distrust towards Samsung now.

estimator72922• 9 months ago

Samsung is forever dead to me. A couple years ago I was working with a customer, showing them something on my phone. In the middle of the interaction, actively using my phone, Samsung forced it to reboot for an update I never agreed to.

..and fucking bricked my phone. Right there on the spot in the middle of a sale.

Plus the whole Tizen situation on the Gear watches was incredibly disappointing. I paid all kinds of money for a nice watch that had zero utility outside of Samsung's tiny, tiny walled garden and their very few, very broken apps. I'll never not be mad about it.

wiseowise4• 9 months ago

Are you me? Around 4-5 years ago I had a very important doctor appointment, my Samsung phone just decided to die on a way there.

jqpabc123• 9 months ago

"Smart" hardware means "smart" for the manufacturer --- very "dumb" for the user/purchaser.

baggy_trough• 9 months ago

I'd be elevating this fridge right over the edge of a dumpster.

rectang2• 9 months ago

Can you hack into "smart" fridges like this one to see when they are going unused, implying when the residents are away and the home is a good target for burglary?

gruez2• 9 months ago

Unless you're someone that's specifically worth targeting (eg. crypto billionaire), no burglar is going through the effort for this. Moreover even without smart fridges, you'd have to contend with similar threats from other internet connected devices (eg. laptops or routers), which can also infer whether the home is occupied or not.

iso1631• 9 months ago

I think the plot of Home Alone leaves a lot to answer for

dns_snek2• 9 months ago

I think the concern is that hacking an IOT platform would give you names, physical addresses, and household occupancy for all of their customers. Once you cross-reference that with another database you have a list of wealthiest households in a given zip code whose owners are on vacation, with live access to cameras inside their home.

rectang2• 9 months ago

I'm thinking more about a systemic approach rather than a one-off — in other words, surveying all units to identify potential targets rather than evaluating the risk for a single target. Recently we have seen a rise in criminal organizations who target high-profile targets known to be away (e.g. sports figures and entertainers whose schedules are known), and it seems like such a tool could be of use to such orgs as an additional signal — and to broaden their target base to non-celebrities.

Also, while "smart" Samsung fridges are the topic of this article, the concept generalizes to any internet connected devices within "smart" homes which exhibit a combination of "hackable" and revealing-of-occupancy. Samsung refrigerators are unlikely to be the most attractive vector when there are e.g. "smart" light bulbs out there which are vulnerable and never going to be patched because the manufacturer went out of business.

FWIW, I'm not a pen tester or security specialist — just a security-conscious generalist software developer. I see evidence left behind of scanning attacks in web logs, but haven't actually crafted such mass attacks myself.

Striggor62• 9 months ago

Junkies looking to hit a house for some jewellery and a Playstation aren't spending months developing Ocean's Eleven style schemes

trashcan• 9 months ago

beezlewax• 9 months ago

This stuff is so disgusting.

disambiguation• 9 months ago

https://app.opencve.io/cve/?vendor=samsung

throwuxiytayq2• 9 months ago

Gotta love these complete fucking morons in charge. I could put together an LLM that would make better long-term product decisions than these VC-brained monkeys, and I’d only need single-digit B of parameters to beat their single-digit IQ. Congratulations on transitioning your brand from toxic to radioactive.

IlikeKitties4• 9 months ago

Normies buy this stuff. You misjudge how much normies do not care.

foobarian3• 9 months ago

I would happily buy this fridge and just disable the screen/cameras/smart stuff IF: all the essential functions actually worked properly.

bloomingeek2• 9 months ago

They don't care because they don't understand the possibilities of the tech. I've tried to give my extended family members some quick info on what not to do online and how to safely use their gizmos. Most of the time I get a blank stare.

Caution, incoming naive comment(s): Companies should put their customer's well being before profits, because we all know most people don't understand what's going on with their digital devises. (Yes, customers should care more, but companies shouldn't be allowed to take advantage of those who can't grasp the techiness of the products.) Techiness, I just made that up. :)

pier25• 9 months ago

Just like smart TVs, I'm pretty sure smart fridges will end up analyzing your buying/consumption habits and selling that data.

Ylpertnodi• 9 months ago

There's many things you could put in a fridge to confuse the analysis. Maybe.

bloomingeek2• 9 months ago

Excellent idea! But beware, your sense of humor or protest-like product placement in your spy fridge could have consequences. This crazy world we live in is always looking to hurt/blame/expose/burn somebody.

NetMageSCW2• 9 months ago

“adds”

DANmode• 9 months ago

No, “ads”.

cess112• 9 months ago

The people who developed the software for this ought to become outcasts from the profession, refused invitations to conferences, excluded from unions and so on.

delusional3• 9 months ago

LOL. We're on hackernews. This sort of stuff is basically the bread and butter of this venture capital funded website.

soared• 9 months ago

Not far off

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/tovala

A SMART-OVEN-PAIRED SUBSCRIPTION MEAL SERVICE.

ryandrake4• 9 months ago

Yea, one thing I've learned--if you ever even suggest that software engineers should be held responsible for writing harmful software or working on unethical projects, you're going to get downvoted so fast your head will spin. HN commenters will happily build the Torment Nexus as long as the JIRA ticket is filled out correctly and they have clear requirements.

cess112• 9 months ago

Sounds like the right place to voice this suggestion.

If I only did it where everyone agrees with me it'd be a waste of time, of which none of us have very much.

add-sub-mul-div• 9 months ago

Buddy, you're on the wrong web site!

I was guilty of it myself at times during my career, but luckily I was able to retire just before things started to get unavoidably shitty.

1970-01-01• 9 months ago

The important question is what happens if I don't connect it to Wi-Fi? Does the compressor motor refuse to work??

gdulli2• 9 months ago

That is important because as a buyer, I need to be able to tell the difference between the legitimate unacceptable extant user experiences vs. the FUD about things that are trivially avoidable but still get forwarded and reposted with exaggeration and hysteria.

I can't always avoid the latter category on principle.

unethical_ban3• 9 months ago

I assume the "smart features" will refuse to work.

We need a law that requires IoT devices have a method of shutting off connectivity entirely, and requiring that core functionality remains intact.

eep_social2• 9 months ago

let’s start with cars. I’ve accepted that I’ll never buy a new car again which is a real shame as EVs have a ton of potential. I’d be so happy to be wrong but the trend seems to be inescapable right now.

gdulli2• 9 months ago

I just got an S25 and having a Samsung account at all is optional. I never had one on my previous Galaxy phones either. I couldn't even accidentally use their AI or other intrusive crap with a misclick because I'd be taken to a screen where I have to sign up and agree to their privacy policy etc. Which obviously I don't.

I wouldn't consider buying a smart/Samsung refrigerator at all but I'm curious, is having blockchain, AI, and a Samsung account mandatory here? Or do they allow for discerning users who don't want that stuff? Is that market segment important to them?

Arainach• 9 months ago

Is that market segment important to them?

No, it is not. Cheaper fridges with ads sell more and make more.

bobsmooth• 9 months ago

Make sure you install Good Lock, fixes many of the frustrations of OneUI.

conradfr• 9 months ago

Besides the ads I barely understood what any of those features do, let alone why I would want them.

clickety_clack4• 9 months ago

None of the features even touch on ideas related to keeping food cold.

They’re so deep in advertising that the only feature they can think their customers are interested in are related to seeing ads.

baq• 9 months ago

When I was furnishing my home a decade ago I went out of my way to not buy anything Samsung. Sad to see it only got worse.

game_the0ry• 9 months ago

"Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem"

The type of corpo-speak that gives an mba a rock hard erection.

Vulgar jokes aside, I want to know who is buying ads on fridges and what the roas on a fridge ad is.

busyant2• 9 months ago

I want to know who is buying ads on fridges and what the roas on a fridge ad is.

Who knows, really? But maybe the same people who put ads on the gas station pumps that I use?

Those things blare at max volume and I still have no idea what they're selling.

Amusing anecdote: About 60 years ago, my grandfather (immigrant who was not well versed in mass-production) wrote a letter to the local newspaper asking that they omit the advertisements when they built his copy of the paper. "I never read them" he said.

My mother had to explain to him how his copy was gonna be just like everyone else's.

harvey92• 9 months ago

Any chance he was just trolling them? Mass production of printed pages started a few centuries before he was born so I doubt he honestly thought his paper was custom-made.

ryandrake4• 9 months ago

It'll be like those disgusting bottom-of-the-barrel YouTube ads, but contextual: "Need to clean out your stuck poop (video brown liquid)? Eat more fiber, because what's in this fridge....."

gosub1002• 9 months ago

Probably slimy politicians, desperate to tell you how horrible the other tribe is while selling you their tribe's promises that will never happen. I'm sure campaign ads have taken a huge hit over previous decades when people actually watched TV or listened to radio.

Oras• 9 months ago

If I am the product, can I have the fridge for free then?

This is so annoying, Amazon did it with Kindle, now Samsung with fridges?!

IncreasePosts• 9 months ago

I would never buy a fridge with a monitor built in, but I did buy a house that came with one. I'll have to make sure I keep clicking don't agree to the new ToS

ksajadi• 9 months ago

My Samsung TV keeps blocking around 20% of the display at random times to tell me their terms and conditions have changed. Of course I have the option of checking it by reading the whole thing on my TV and then running a diff to see what’s changed but I don’t have an option to opt out of the terms.

It’s way too frequent and runs at random times in the middle of a movie so I always choose Accept.

Give me a dumb TV any time of the day now

malfist• 9 months ago

Disconnect it from the internet and use an appletv. It can't update then.

This works until apple enshitifies

cyanydeez2• 9 months ago

"Give some other monopoly rulr over your attention"

mystraline2• 9 months ago

Damn good point.

Unless you have root and can do anything the hardware is capable of, it's not your device. And you shouldn't let any sort of non-owned devices on your network.

Why? Cause devices controlled by other orgs are a foothold situation. And we've had countless attacks of footholds being used as internal points of attack, DDoS, and other attacks.

That also means that all your "cloud devices" should be able to work 100% offline. If not, return them as defective.

TheNewsIsHere3• 9 months ago

This is ultimately what we did in my house for every Samsung TV.

Their smart TV stuff used to be marginally interesting. When Samsung TV Plus launched it was fantastic. They weren’t yet sure of how to handle ads so even the ad space was still nice, and marginally useful.

As they figured out the ad strategy, apps started disappearing and new ones appeared that couldn’t be uninstalled.

Then the OS updates started cratering performance. I have a Samsung smart TV from after 2020 that takes about 4 seconds to register a single remote control command in the smart TV GUI.

NoiseBert69• 9 months ago

I'd never give a Samsung device unfiltered internet access.

edoceo• 9 months ago

I just avoid all Samsung CE.

procaryote• 9 months ago

I'd never buy another samsung device

jbreckmckye3• 9 months ago

At the risk of a smart-ass reply, I think you could say the same for almost any consumer electronics

Even if you don't suspect malfeasance / advertising / surveillance, a lot of these devices and their software are sloppily developed and highly insecure

OhMeadhbh2• 9 months ago

A couple years ago I thought my fridge was appropriately blocked from the intarwebs. But a router update flipped the bit on activating the default guest network (which I normally keep turned off.) So for about 6 months my fridge was getting out to the net via the guest network. I found out about it when I got a call from my ISP asking what the heck was going on. Apparently a bot net had found my fridge and was doing all manner of bad things.

Moral of the story is... always double check your router settings to make sure enshittified iot devices aren't making you look like a newb.

qwertox2• 9 months ago

"unfiltered internet access"? How would you even know what to filter?

Block it entirely, and hope it that doesn't connect to your Samsung phone via Bluetooth or WiFi and use it as a proxy.

prmoustache4• 9 months ago

How long until they ship with embedded 5G modem? Would you wrap your Samsung devices with alu foil?

rjzzleep• 9 months ago

Samsung is truly the worst of all big tech companies. All their first party apps contain ads. They kill hard fuses if you want to change things, and meanwhile bundle the devices of a large segment of the costumer base with first party Israeli spyware with full system and background install access.

I bought a Samsung watch once, had to reverse it to enable functionality that was advertised a year before but never delivered. It died because the watch decided to suck in water during a reboot while swimming, they quoted me almost the full price to repair it, even though it was clearly a software bug that caused another advertised feature (namely it's ipx rating) to fail.

And while I also wouldn't give Xiaomi iot devices on the network full internet access, at least I can use those things normally.

ainiriand• 9 months ago

Muy samsung odyssey g9 monitor connected for the first time through my phone, also Samsung.

beAbU2• 9 months ago

I'd never give a Samsung device ~~unfiltered~~ internet access.

FTFY

reeredfdfdf• 9 months ago

I'm still using my Samsung dumb TV from circa 2008. paired with ancient Chromecast. No way I'm going to buy a smart TV as long as this combination keeps working. No ads, and things mostly just work, and it cost me next to nothing.

randallsquared• 9 months ago

Even a smart TV is dumb enough if you use it as HDMI out for your actual streaming device (Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, whatever) and never connect it to the internet. There were rumors about smart TVs connecting to unsecured wifi networks a few years ago, but I don't remember any verified cases or TVs.

rubyfan• 9 months ago

I never agreed to the original terms and won’t let my Samsung TV on wifi for this reason.

scosman• 9 months ago

I let my TV on wifi, but block internet access at the router. Things like Airplay and Chromecast still work great, but no ads/tracking/etc.

buildbot• 9 months ago

Same!!! I do every so often connect it to update it if a newer firmware is actually worth it… The extra upside to not accepting the terms is that none of the samsung bloatware apps even start - the TV runs much faster than just with the wifi disconnected.

everyone• 9 months ago

It doesnt matter if you do or dont, those things are worthless in court in any reasonable country. They frequently want their users to agree to illegal things.

qmr5• 9 months ago

Why did you connect it to the internet in the first place?

esalman2• 9 months ago

This. If you want online content use a stream box.

nerdponx• 9 months ago

It’s way too frequent and runs at random times in the middle of a movie so I always choose Accept.

This is deliberate

DenisM• 9 months ago

You may be looking for a “commercial LCD display”.

sspiff• 9 months ago

How about just not connecting your TV to the Internet? Then it's just a dumb display?

AceJohnny22• 9 months ago

When I was shopping for a TV years ago, Samsung had all the features I wanted (for gaming).

But Samsung's ad behavior led me to buy a Vizio TV instead.

c420• 9 months ago

I've got some bad news for you, Walmart acquired Vizio two years ago:

"This acquisition is not merely about expanding Walmart's product lineup but rather part of a sophisticated commercial strategy to integrate its retail operations, owned media channels and TV hardware into a cohesive ecosystem. This ecosystem is designed to generate and share data, influence shopping behavior and, ultimately, drive sales through an innovative approach to advertising..." "...By owning a television manufacturer, Walmart can now directly serve and, crucially, measure the impact of ads on consumer behavior. This capability significantly enhances Walmart's potential to convert advertisements into retail purchases."

https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcou...

barrotes• 9 months ago

The best Smart TV is the one that is just 24/24 HDMI connected to your old Linux laptop with a GUI tweaked to act as a Smart TV with an air mouse as remote.

CivBase• 9 months ago

When I upgraded my desktop, I only needed to pickup a case and a few extra parts to have enough for a functional home theater PC. Running standard Fedora Workstation, controlled with Logitech K400+.

I stubbornly refuse to ever connect my TV to the internet.

godelski• 9 months ago

I use my TV as a monitor and this still happens. When you don't accept it just gets more aggressive. I'm pretty sure there's a "bug"[0] that ends up slowing the TV down because it keeps that process going.

I'm pretty confident you can't agree to a contract if you can't opt out. I don't want new features and I'm fine if everything stays the same. And no, please do not adjust the image settings again... I didn't want the AI frame interpolation then and I don't want it now

[0] with Samsung engineers I don't believe they've tested anything and just assumed the user would accept it instead of deny it 20 times. It'll also get less buggy when I do a reboot, so I'm pretty sure it's a memory leak

We are talking about a company where if I press the exit button there's a 50% chance I get the menu or not. It's literally a random result. If I'm in, say, Netflix, press exit, I'll turn to my computer screen and half the time the Samsung menu will open and half the time it won't.

Also starting the TV will flash my desktop and then go "ops, no signal" and I have to just keep restarting the TV and switching inputs (not touching the hdmi cable btw) until it works. And no, my desktop doesn't sleep and yes this issue is the reason why.

So I am 100% sure it's not conspiratorial, I'm 100% sure they just suck at their job. I'm sure the fridge will be great...

koksik202• 9 months ago

I just use my smart tv as tv and use PS5 as media box avoids all this hassle. There is nothing on cable/satellite tv other than ads anyway

apexalpha• 9 months ago

Give me a dumb TV any time of the day now

Just disconnect your current one from the internet.

PaulRobinson3• 9 months ago

It will sell very well because it a) will be cheaper than non-advertising laden fridges, b) will make more money meaning they can spend more on marketing and c) it has an air of "living in the future" about it.

Most of us here see it for what it is, because we know what happens to the data.

I think the future is going to have more of this.

But, I can also imagine people paying more for almost everything that is ad-supported today to get non-ad supported versions in the future, not because of the data concerns, but because of the opportunity for status signalling - ad-supported devices like this will be seen as something "only poor people have" within two decades. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Jolter2• 9 months ago

Within two years they will launch a monthly ad-free subscription tier.

PaulRobinson3• 9 months ago

That might force them into providing better warranty support: if my fridge isn't working any more, I'm going to stop paying them money. Obviously subscription-free becomes another tier of status, but if by paying a monthly fee I get 24 hour maintenance support for fear of losing my sub revenue, well...

There's already parallels around this to an extent. I pay Apple money every month for storage, ad-free TV, music and games, confident my data is my data. As a result, they might have a customer for life, because the alternatives are awful in comparison even if I pay less per month or overall for them.

Mo3• 9 months ago

Paired with "priority support" and "cheaper" repairs for the much more frequent breakdowns

jbreckmckye3• 9 months ago

It will sell very well because it a) will be cheaper than non-advertising laden fridges,

Will it? Investors would prefer full price fridges with full price ads.

Most consumers won't even know they've installed adware until the appliance is turned on, and what are they gonna do? go to all the effort of returning and buying another fridge?

Captive audience

PaulRobinson3• 9 months ago

Dark patterns like that will die out soon enough and they'll harm the share price: Samsung are going to tell customers what they're getting.

And while investors would prefer full price fridges with full price ads, the ad economy only makes sense once you have decent reach, so it makes sense to lower the cost of acquisition of the device, take the hit as a customer acquisition cost and then sell the larger reach to advertisers.

This is the model for every ad-supported device and service to date, I'm not sure they're going to reinvent those economics for a fridge.

999900000999• 9 months ago

All that smart tech can't be offset by the small amount of ad revenue they generate.

It's still much cheaper to buy a normal fridge without all of this.

iammjm• 9 months ago

I still struggle to imagine why would I ever need a smart fridge.

seydor• 9 months ago

When buying a fridge with a smartphone in it what do you expect, more fridge or more phone?

dangoodmanUT• 9 months ago

I like my subzero

No screens except a little lcd at the top when you open it to see the temps

No WiFi, no Bluetooth, just a cold fucking box

darknavi• 9 months ago

Totally agree. The house we bought in 2019 has a Subzero and it's the best fridge I've had. No frills (other than an ice maker), it just works. I dread the day I have to repair or replace it ($$) but it's been rock solid in the 5-6 years we've lived here so far.

lambdaone• 9 months ago

This really is a Black-Mirror-esque hellscape, and the fact that this is marketed as something to be desired is absolutely astonishing.

iamcalledrob• 9 months ago

Just watched the Black Mirror "Common People" episode which is on this subject.

It's one of the creepiest because of just how close to the present day it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People_(Black_Mirror)

atmosx• 9 months ago

Smart devices are a bad idea. And while I won’t mess with my Mercedes, I prefer dummy TV + media server/appleTV or chromecast.

daneel_w• 9 months ago

Infuriating.

clickety_clack4• 9 months ago

What is the “best” fridge to get now? Like, say a standard American fridge with a stainless steel door with a freezer compartment, just for food (no tech, screens, ice making or water dispensing nonsense).

0xC0ncord• 9 months ago

There are plenty of fridges that don't incorporate "smart" features. There's nothing really complicated about a giant box that you put food in to keep cold and maybe an integrated water dispenser.

I've been shopping for a new fridge lately, and from what I gather most "smart" fridges are still extremely expensive and that makes "non-smart" fridges still very desirable. In other words, "smart" features may not be new, but they aren't standard on a typical fridge... yet.

jedimastert2• 9 months ago

Samsung still makes regular fridges too, although I'm confused by the fact that you put water-dispensing/ice-making and screens together.

I have a Samsung Bespoke, for example, and you can 100% turn the ice-making off and just use that part of the freezer for more freezer space. No screen, the from it blank because all the water dispensing stuff is on the inside and I think (?) you can get one without it

clickety_clack4• 9 months ago

The water dispensing/ice making stuff just seem like a needless complication to me, with extra parts that probably decrease the life of the machine.

I just want a high quality, decent-looking box that stops food from going off.

seany• 9 months ago

Really any option that has true dual compressors is going to be fairly solid. We just got a Bosch 800 and have been quiet happy with it

jabroni_salad• 9 months ago

I have been happy enough with my GE fridge. However I got fancy and went for the one that puts the freezer on the bottom instead of the top.

I will say, when I went to my local appliance store (NOT bestbuy) they had literally zero options on the floor with a touch screen.

userbinator2• 9 months ago

A used one. For every person who hates this "smart" stuff, there's probably a dozen other sheeple gladly "upgrading" and getting rid of a fridge that's been working just fine for a very long time and will likely continue doing so.

zb3• 9 months ago

Hmm, do Samsung executives/developers actually use this stuff at home? Does the author who wrote this BS piece actually leave those ads enabled?

jcalvinowens• 9 months ago

Family Hub™ refrigerators[4] with AI Vision Inside technology will receive upgrades to enable recognition of frequently used packaged foods and even more fresh fruits and vegetables to help families reduce food waste and save money.

This has to be one of the silliest solutions in search of a problem I've ever seen. The fridge costs $3000, by the way.

squigz5• 9 months ago

I think there's some potential here, with regards to keeping track of when things were added/might go bad. At least for me, who easily forgets things until it's too late.

dboreham• 9 months ago

A thing that can read the expiry dates on food packages that take me 20 minutes to find because they're printed in light gray on gray background would be useful.

j456• 9 months ago

Folks seem to use tools like grocy.

If a Fridge had a barcode scanner built into it, that might be a start.

scuff3d2• 9 months ago

Put a magnetic whiteboard on the fridge. Write what you got when shopping and when you got it. 2 dollar solution, no invasive AI bullshit.

the_snooze• 9 months ago

It's a lot of complexity and engineering just to avoid giving food the ol' sniff test. Tech bros need to stop inventing problems for which we already have time-tested solutions.

qmr5• 9 months ago

Strawberries are as low as $1 a pound at Felipe's.

jdiff6• 9 months ago

I'm working part time at an appliance showroom, it's exactly as silly as it sounds. We don't sell fruits and veggies, but we did have some pumpkins around. Put one in, it's confident I just fed it either an apple, an orange, or an onion. Some bottled drinks? Clearly a mango. Maybe an eggplant.

And it can't register anything placed in the flex drawer, freezer, or fridge doors. In order to actually take advantage of its fridge inventory system, you still have to manually enter in or correct every single item you place into your fridge.

It's inconvenient for looking up recipes, since fridges are not placed for visibility from your countertop. It can be used for music but the speakers aren't worth the extra money. Videos and movies? The screen's the wrong aspect ratio for anything but big screen TikTok. And again, fridges are not positioned to gather around.

And that last bit is the crux of the issue. I've talked to our Samsung reps and they keep talking about fridges like they're gathering points. Like people congregate around their fridges. That was the guiding principle behind this fridge, and it's so disconnected from reality that the appliance itself can't help but be irredeemably pointless.

xorcist2• 9 months ago

How does it work in practice? Do you have to scan an item when you put it in or take it of the fridge?

Because in practice, fridges look nothing like in the commercials. Very few people would put a whole apple and a carton of milk on a shelf and nothing more. That would be highly uneconomical, because there's far too much air that will escape when you open and close the door.

It is normal to have lots and lots of small boxes and other stuff stacked on each other which would make it hard if not impossble to operate a camera inside.

magicalhippo• 9 months ago

Like people congregate around their fridges

In my experience they do. At least at parties, cause that's where the beer is kept.

A smart fridge tracking the contents and doing facial recognition on who's opening it sounds awesome.

Then it can alert everyone Tom just stole Bob's IPA sounds very useful, to avoid those awkward "who stole my beer" moments.

qnleigh• 9 months ago

I found it hilarious that they're bragging about how "AI Vision Inside will now recognize 37 fresh food items, including..." I don't think this was impressive even five years ago, but it's certainly not impressive now.

spixy• 9 months ago

Sure if I want to "save money", I will buy a fridge for $3000, totally makes sense.

more_corn• 9 months ago

I have already started my permanent and total Samsung boycott.

curioussquirrel• 9 months ago

Although I loathe ads, I think that for new products where the presence of ads is disclosed clearly upfront, this is acceptable. Especially if this comes with a discount. We have Kindles with and without ads and people are generally fine with it.

But the fact that this gets retrofitted to fridges that people already bought, without any way of opting out or other mitigation, is criminal. Is this a lawsuit in the making? Am I naive?

jdiff6• 9 months ago

Those Kindles, which I am also (mostly) okay with, are also $100 devices whose price is subsidized by those ads.

These fridges are $3500 typically, and theoretically an MSRP of $4700. They're at the high end of consumer appliances.

I don't believe it's a lawsuit in the making, this is (at least partially) America, land of freedom from consumer protections, but it is horrid.

j456• 9 months ago

Kindles didn't always have ads at the same price.

j456• 9 months ago

The fridges originally didn't have ads.

gosub1002• 9 months ago

I dont like them either, but if the fridge were cheaper (this one isn't) or had other features I wanted, I'd consider buying it and just covering up the ad screen.

Another concern is energy consumption. In this age of energy star and touting how efficient appliances are, it doesn't make sense to have a screen that is always-on.

The real killer feature Samsung needs is an automatic warranty. I would never buy Samsung again, unless they started a new trend where all repairs are covered for 10 years (not sold as an add-on during checkout).

Pooge• 9 months ago

this is acceptable

This is not. An appliance—which should never be connected to the Internet in the first place—that costs 4 digits in USD should never show you ads in any way. You obviously don't "loathe" ads if you're even capable of reasoning about that kind of behavior. Stop trying to shove ads 24/7 in every millimeter of available space.

On the upside, it will be very easy to find more reliable and cheaper fridges than that.

neilv• 9 months ago

To technologists with societal awarenesses, this whole direction of Samsung is concerning.

But a personally funny thing about this particular episode, to me, is that when I left a very nice CS PhD program, to switch schools, to work on AI+HCI for software agents (before the enabling AI tech was ready)... the most common soundbite that the PI gave to prospective corporate sponsors who visited most days, was something like... "You could have a 'digital butler', who knows what you have in your fridge, and orders milk when you're running out."

(Aside: The students working on agents and wearable computing at the time were actually disproportionately ones also interested in privacy, at the university. Maybe because we were Internet-savvy from shortly before the dotcom gold rush (default Internet person sentiment was pro-privacy, pro-altruism, etc.), or maybe because we tended to be technical and thinking forward about emerging networked applications, and could guess where this was going.)

On HN, we always see a bunch of loud voices about various facets of IoT dystopia, but that doesn't reflect the broad population, yet. And as more people start to become aware, they tend to get sold diversionary snake oil solutions by influencers (e.g., "keep buying and deploying these devices, just set up a PiHole, and you'll totally be OK; like and subscribe"), while dystopian product movements march onward.

ctxc• 9 months ago

"Knox...advanced security solution built on private blockchain technology"

Hmm. What would you need consensus and immutability for?

Nonsensical.

j456• 9 months ago

Placing all home automation gear on a dedicated guest or IOT SSID is critical.

Best to treat them all like hostile devices and limit what they can do to what you bought them to do.

ryandrake4• 9 months ago

Or don't buy them in the first place. Since nobody here likes regulation, why don't we start at least trying (hopelessly) to vote with our wallets?

j456• 9 months ago

That's a good choice - buying things that behave is much more preferable, but often like tvs and other gear, ads can come in, or the "free" cloud they depend on disappears.

therobots9273• 9 months ago

I had to disconnect my Samsung smart TV from the internet because every time I turned it on it would immediately go to the live TV app and play a minimum of one minute of some random show from the 90s. Now I use Apple TV. This is the kind of thing that needs heavy regulation.

httgp• 9 months ago

I’m struggling with this too, and I cannot disable or remove the live TV app. If I get an Apple TV, can I have the TV always default to it on startup?

therobots9273• 9 months ago

Yes but only if you disconnect the TV from the internet. I think I was able to do it in the settings of the TV but you could also change your WiFi password.

blibble• 9 months ago

did Samsung not realise that HBO's "Silicon Valley" was supposed to be satire?

guess they tuned out before the fridges inevitably get rooted and ended up as part of a botnet

jesse_dot_id• 9 months ago

I don't buy insta-botnets and I never will.

anjel• 9 months ago

Up next: those 1 inch OLED displays that are all the rage

zvmaz• 9 months ago

I don't buy any appliance that has "smart" in it. Yeah, no, thanks.

AnimalMuppet• 9 months ago

So, let me see: I can pay $1200 for a really nice fridge that keeps my food cold. Or I can pay $3000 for a fridge that keeps my food cold, and also shows me ads. Is being shown ads worth $1800 to me?

Hmm... decisions...

sathackr• 9 months ago

[11] Ads on Family Hub Cover screens will serve contextual or non-personal ads. Family Hub devices are not collectiong[sic] personal information or tracking consumers.

How are they serving "contextual" ads without collecting/tracking anything?

harvey92• 9 months ago

Probably lifestyle and food/kitchenware ads. They know you can afford a smart fridge even if they know nothing else about you.

throwacct• 9 months ago

I mean, if you buy a "smart" appliance at this point, you want the ads and everything else that would come after.

brewtide• 9 months ago

I'm shopping for a new range, because mine just died a few weeks before good ole "T-day". This is one of the primary reasons a Samsung range isn't crossing my list at all.

hexbin010• 9 months ago

Honestly, there have been plenty of warning signs that Samsung appliances are trash for well over a decade if not more. If you own one, sell it some other idiot

RajT88• 9 months ago

Anyone figured out how to get lineageos on their Smart Fridge yet?

knorker• 9 months ago

Across the spectrum of all Samsung consumer hardware, phones, fridges, smart watches, earbuds, TVs, etc., they are probably the most consumer hostile company in existence.

I would NEVER buy one of their devices again. I've learned that they will punch you in the face every time, with deliberate choices made just out of spite (like pulse meter on smart watches, IIRC, only being available if you have a Samsung phone. Pixel phone is a no).

Connecting one of their TVs or fridges to the internet? Lol, not today, Satan. Not in this lifetime.

dwighttk• 9 months ago

ads?

butz• 9 months ago

We need that guy that made smart vacuum cleaner work fully offline to purchase one of "elevated" fridges :).

steve-atx-7600• 9 months ago

Would be nice if they could make a fridge that was simply reliable. I bought one of their fridge’s and couple years later had to do a ridiculous number of mods to the ice maker and fridge that were in the Samsung official service bulletin at the time of purchase. It’s reliable now, but will never buy anything from them again. Many similar models from 2010s had similar issues.

ChrisArchitect• 9 months ago

[dupe]

Two weeks old news OP?

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45737338

and Previous outrages:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45291107

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45262808

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292666

gnarlouse3• 9 months ago

The reason this type of shit keeps happening is because theres no MAD in classwarfare. Think about that.

wiseowise4• 9 months ago

Lower class has no weapons at all. Choice is illusion when all alternatives are the same.

gnarlouse3• 9 months ago

Weapons available to the lower class:

- corporate economic boycotting

- voting for independents

- disconnecting from social media platforms

- disconnecting from ai platforms

Regular people still have a chance to demand a stake in the future. They're just not even trying because they're all psychologically demolished and partitioned.

hirako2000• 9 months ago

The fact that I cannot tell with absolute certainty that the title of this thread has a typo makes my head hurt.

Edit: in fact after reading the article, I can. The title is meant to read "Ads".

busymom0• 9 months ago

They should add a monthly subscription to open the fridge door next.

tempodox• 9 months ago

That’s some funny typo for “ads” in the post title.

crest• 9 months ago

"unified user experience" == the ads are synced across devices

zatkin• 9 months ago

My wife and I are in the market for a new refrigerator and we have never heard anything good about Samsung. I was at least expecting different "tiers" to have different reputations, but no, it's the entire _brand_ that is bad. Parts getting defective within the first few years, low quality materials, and now this? No thanks.

Digory• 9 months ago

Always buy the warranty with Samsung refrigerators. After three failed attempts to repair our ice maker, the insurer refunded the purchase price.

anymouse123456• 9 months ago

Samsung consistently treats their customers with contempt.

Never buy a second thing from a company that treats you with contempt.

adverbly• 9 months ago

I swear somebody should come in with an appliance brand which literally just builds things like they did 40 years ago before planned obsolescence and smart technology.

They would clean up.

I think the only thing that's actually improved is energy efficiency. But honestly my favorite appliances are my super old washer and dryer. I don't care that they are less energy efficient. Easy to use, nothing breaks and they have lasted forever.

userbinator2• 9 months ago

It seems that they're all focused extremely precisely on tiny efficiency gains in standardised tests and stuffing in unwanted hostile "smartness" at the expense of longevity and simplicity. At least the former is mostly due to regulations; and there have been some good changes recently in that area, although it's hard to tell whether they'll have any effect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43065757

ifh-hn• 9 months ago

I don't care if this is down voted, or flagged: fuck Samsung!

mito88• 9 months ago

yes!

daft_pink• 9 months ago

Never buying a samsung device ever again.

jeena• 9 months ago

I bought the Samsung SmartTag 2 to track the children, keys, etc. and connect them to HomeAssistant. Turns out Samsung actively blocks me from me being able to connect HA to their solution and the guy who was able to keep circumventing it and created a HA component which worked, gave up on it and archived the git repo.

Now only I who has a Samsung phone is able to use it, my wife and the children can't make them ring when they're looking for them and can't see on the map where the things might be.

Aerbil313• 8 months ago

You want a smart home? Home Assistant is FOSS, integrates with every device you own, and much more advanced than any proprietary platform. Look no further: https://home-assistant.io

I'm just a happy user.

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