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Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges (arstechnica.com)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/71343068

Some Samsung smart fridges stopped working on Tuesday due to a firmware update.

Korean outlets were the first to report the problems, which affect Samsung’s Bespoke AI line of fridges. Star News Korea, per a Google-provided translation, said that most of the affected devices were four-door fridges from 2024 or later.

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[–] 18 points 4 days ago (5 children)

You'd be surprised what kinds of things have firmware (although maybe not, if you work in IoT). A normal dumb fridge, a normal dumb dishwasher, most ovens, and definitely microwaves will have firmware. Even if they have no interface to update it. In some cases, the firmware was written using a chip programmer before the chip was soldered in. But there's still firmware. Any appliance with a clock will have it, because otherwise, you have to implement a clock in a CPLD or discrete logic gates or something. A microcontroller is just cheaper.

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  • [–] 32 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Right, but that's not firmware to update, which I interpreted as the differentiating factor.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago

    This very much was the point. OTA updates are a fucking robot idea for anything that can burn down a house, crash a car, or keep important things safe (like arthritis or immune therapy drugs that need to be kept cold).

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    Years ago I had to bring 10 tons of gravel to a work site using a wheelbarrow and a shovel. By the end of it my ability to load the wheelbarrow accurately and unload it efficiently was massively improved.

    I was the firmware. I got an update.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

    How long did it take you to do? I can't fathom how much work that must've taken

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    Well it was maybe 200 loads or so, the pile wasn't super far.from the site... We lifted and redid the foundation of a small log cabin near a lake, too close to the lake and it had started to sink. So basically we lifted the cottage, removed the old floor, and we installed cinder blocks and gravel under the walls before putting humidity barriers and reinstalling a new floor.

    The gravel was delivered in the driveway, and I had to wheel the wheelbarrow around the cottage to the entrance of the worksite to empty it in the empty space under the floor, then I would spread it where the cinder blocks go, and then gradually after everything was laid properly, we lowered the Jacks very slowly until the bottom logs of the log cabin rested on a steel angle resting on the cinder blocks.

    The whole thing basically took the whole summer but most of it I was doing by myself, including redoing the new plywood floor afterwards...

    This shit takes me back, omg... Here's an image for fun

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