We need to summarize the 4 most prevalent themes of opinions expressed in this Hacker News discussion. Provide concise themes, include direct quotations with attribution where appropriate. Must fix HTML entities. Output markdown. Keep summary short and focused on these 4 themes.
We need to read the discussion and extract themes. Likely themes: reliability of IoT, software quality vs hardware, consumer demand for smart features, concerns about privacy/security, durability and repairability of older appliances, planned obsolescence, usefulness of smart features, etc.
We need to pick the 4 most prevalent themes.
Let's scan discussion.
Start: thesuitonym: The R in IoT stands for reliability. fooqux: And the S stands for security. sebastiennight: We have RIoTS already... two more letters and we get a Scrabble. someonebaggy: If we'd had RIoTS this stuff might've already been fixed. Sharlin: The Q in Samsung stands for software quality. pjmlp: Tizen security flaws... OptionOfT: The E in MBA stands for experience. anon48293: Certainly not in their QLED technology.. ThrowawayTestr: Remember that Samsung is more of a kingdom of feuding lords than a single unified company pimlottc: No, it stands for Respect for the Customer sandworm101: The fridge compressor answers to software? Idiocy. It need be nothing more than a relay attached to a thermocouple. I can see having a smart screen to deliver aps/ads and to collect data on people in the home, but why on earth would that need to actually manipulate temperatures? chii: Fridge sellers dont want their product to be seen as commodities, because they can't charge a high margin on those type of products. hylaride: ... (story about old fridge lasting 20 years) f6v: Old fridges last over two decades. I don't think that Samsung and others want these to last as long. gedy: I guess the sellers and industries should have thought of this when they offloaded manufacturing to cheap countries that can and will undercut them. pjc50: Samsung fridges are made in Korea. i.e. not outsourced. They're just very bad at software. boelboel: Most non high-end samsung fridges aren't built in Korea, lower-end fridges are made in Vietnam and midrange fridges are made in China or Thailand. Regardless of Samsung outsourcing they still have to compete with outsourcing firms. There's only so much demand for fridges, 100-200 million fridges a year worldwide, and most of the consumer fridges end up primarily competing on price. vlovich123: Because the temperature is adjusted and they want to be able to display the current temperature as well as the target on said display? And once youâve done that, your bean counters will pressure you to shave the BOM. avian: > they want to be able to display the current temperature Do they really? When replacing my 20 year old fridge (that had an actual mechanical temperature gauge) with a new one I specifically bought one that had a (now digital, of course) display for the current temperature. It turned out that the temperature display is completely faked... Everything is getting dumber. sandworm101: It probably has more to do with consumer fridges being a bang-bang controller situation where temperature will always fluctuate several degrees either side of the desired number. avian: Well, yes. Hence my comment. Or are you saying old fridges didn't have a bang-bang controller and hence could have an honest thermometer built in? Hizonner: A thermocouple won't drive a relay. Grombobulous: My non-Samsung fridge lets me change the temperature settings from my phone. Thatâs why the compressor answers to software. How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didnât? I find that the anti-smart device brigade among tech enthusiasts is very detached from the reality of what consumers want. The general public does demand smart features and they want them to work well. The sin here isnât that the fridge is smart, the sin is that bad software was pushed out. My particular refrigerator also has a purposefully limited set of features. Youâll notice that real luxury brands like Sub-Zero donât pack their refrigerators with crazy feature lists and touch screens. Their smart apps are basic and focus on essentials like âdoor left openâ or âchange filterâ notifications and remote temperature adjustment. They donât have complicated features like craft cocktail ice and even basic stuff like water dispensing is an optional extra (since itâs assumed that luxury clients may have a separate dedicated reverse osmosis and sparkling water machine for that). They donât push out frequent updates and they keep their smart functions as modular components since itâs assumed that the refrigerator will remain installed permanently for decades (e.g., you can add a newer control system with touch screen and WiFi to your older Sub-Zero fridge). It would be nice if non-luxury brands followed some of these philosophies a little more. cesarb: > How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didnât? ...why do you need to change the fridge temperature remotely? Grombobulous: I paid $11,000 for my luxury built-in refrigerator, I expect that functionality to exist since itâs trivial to implement. I could implement that in a weekend on an ESP board. crtasm: When you had an offline fridge did you ever find yourself in a situation where remotely setting the temperature would have been useful? Grombobulous: Iâm away on vacation and weather reports say there might be a thunderstorm at my house with high probability of power outage, so maybe I lower the temperature setting to try and extend the life of the contents. Kids/nanny/housekeeper changes the temperature against my wishes. Iâve left the house for a long vacation with the fridge emptied and Iâd like to change the temperature to consume less power while Iâm gone, forgot to do it before I left. And again itâs trivially simple functionality that costs almost no money or development effort to I implement. epcoa: > so maybe I lower the temperature setting to try and extend the life of the contents. Bullshit. The ideal refrigerator temperature is already close enough to freezing that any small adjustment you could make is unlikely to do any good. If this was actually a good idea then by your logic (similar to odd love for printer manufacturers) the all wise manufacturers would have already incorporated this into their âsmartâ fridges. crisnoble: So you spend 11k on a smart fridge, have a nanny, but maniacally control the temperature depending on contents, possible weather scenarios and and if you are vacation. Makes sense. Maybe that is why I'm still poor, imagine all the money I've wasted never once adjusting my fridge temp remotely (or even manually) in the last 14 years. Boxxed: By that logic there's a whole lot more useless crap it should do. Grombobulous: Would you buy a car that cost $50,000 without air conditioning even if you donât need air conditioning? Do you think a $50,000 car that doesnât have air conditioning is a good value? CWuestefeld: My non-Samsung fridge lets me change the temperature settings from my phone. Thatâs why the compressor answers to software. How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didnât?
I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic, so I'll bite: why on Earth would you ever want to change the temperature settings of your fridge? Ensorceled: Check out his comments in this thread, this guy appears to be a corporate apologist. kstrauser: Check them out on other threads, too. I think heâs just a garden troll. Grombobulous: I donât really appreciate being assumed to be a troll just because Iâm holding a contrary opinion. Thatâs very much against the guidelines of this site. I think if you are the type who is interested in digging up comment history youâll find plenty of comments from me that show that Iâm pretty much a regular person who has respectful conversations. I apologize if I didnât follow the popular âcorporation badâ narrative. Like, I do recognize that ink is grossly overpriced and all that. At the same time, I donât really think we are held hostage by printer companies these days. I buy ink once a year or less and itâs not even a laser printer. It isnât a significant expense or inconvenience. account42: Does a relay with a thermocouple get you the cycles required for no-frost features? I agree that there should be adequate safeguards at every turn but its not like computerized control of fridge temperature doesn't make sense. gausswho: 2028 headline: Coordinated attack causes all fridges in Topeka to explode, causes city-wide fire. methyl: Better to freeze a fridge than to cook it amelius: This holds for most things, actually. iAMkenough: Reminded me of the August incident where the freezers at multiple U.S. Department of Defense commissionaires were remotely triggered to enter into "defrost" mode and cooked all their refrigerated food overnight. pelagicAustral: Not as bad a putting a mime in the fridge screen, I suppose... phkahler: Reminds me of when Nest thermostats stopped turning on the furnace without an internet connection. If your product fails at its primary job because of some other priority its junk. A thermostat can be as simple as a coiled spring with a mercury switch - no software. Same here, what stupid functionality was so important they failed to ensure the fridge would fridge? IoT is not for me. ex1fm3ta: ioT is nice but only for people who know how to make softwares. pixl97: The problem here is there is almost always incentive to make that software shit. WarmWash: I am not an SWE, rather a hardware guy with light software experience, and the next home project on my docket is getting AI to write the code for my own ESP32 thermostat (with a nice e-paper display too). We have a mix of splits, central air, and gas baseboard, so being able to customize all that to fit our utility pricing time slots is a dream. cryptoegorophy: Similar to when printer stops printing black when color is gone. whizzter: That probably means you've been wasting toner on "enhanced darkness" (check if it's turned on/off). account42: Color inkjets demand color ink for tracking dots even if it isn't used for anything else. jiveturkey: inkjet printers to not print the tracking dots. it's laser printers that do it. Groxx: I've had multiple that do it. they're quite visible in the right light. you can also see it when your yellow cartridge runs out, despite printing exclusively black and white, while the other color ones are full. "most" might not, I can't claim anything there and EFF claims most don't, when they were checking on it in 2015-2017. I'm pretty darn sure that some do though. pygy_: No, itâs because it canât print the yellow dots watermark for tracking. That "feature" and incompetence at The Intercept leaked the identity of Reality Winner. Grombobulous: I have never understood the negative controversy around this. I expect the printer to use whatever inks it has on hand to print in the best quality it can. The use of ink is an inevitability. It always struck me as one of those things analogous to âI donât understand why my car needs oil when I already put gas in it.â Just give the machine the stuff it requires to operate. Ensorceled: This is disingenuous; a car needs both gas and oil to run. A printer should only need black ink to print black and white documents. Grombobulous: Thatâs what you think, though, you didnât design the printer. I assume you donât have a background in color theory or chemistry or whatever else you need to produce ink. For all you know, the black ink isnât really a perfect black and the color inks are used in conjunction with the black ink. I also think a lot of people are just being cheap about it. Itâs just not a big deal. In my experience a color inkjet printer makes a much better print than a black and white laser printer. If you are willing to sacrifice print quality then buy a black and white laser printer. Ensorceled: > Thatâs what you think, though, you didnât design the printer. I assume you donât have a background in color theory or chemistry or whatever else you need to produce ink. Do you? Monotone printers are a thing and have been since the 60's. Grombobulous: I agree, monotone printers are available technology, and monotone printers have worse output quality than a color inkjet printer. If you want a monotone printer, buy one. I just have a little bit of confusion around the situation where people who bought color inkjet printers arenât willing to put color ink in the printer. hamburglar: Youâre aware, arenât you, that a color inkjet that only squirts ink out of the black cartridge is, technically speaking, a black and white inkjet printer? A color inkjet is literally a superset of a black and white one. Grombobulous: You think there is zero chance that the ink formulation differs between a color printer versus a black and white printer? hamburglar: You are bending over backwards to justify this user hostile practice. Most people wouldnât choose to not print at all just because it âisnât really a perfect black.â Theyâre just trying to get their homework printed. I bought a color laser in 2004 and Iâve never replaced the C M or Y toner because I almost never print color. Miraculously, it is still happy to print âimperfectâ black and white, which is exactly what I want. jaapz: Your engine explodes when it doesnt have oil. A printer can still print black when color ink is gone xattt: A device like a printer can work without certain inks without damage, but at the cost of quality. Humans have historically been able to decide when quality is low enough that replacement/repair is necessary in these situations. This goes for almost anything: appliances, farming equipment, clothing, etc. Having a device/appliance/tool that decides for you that âitâs timeâ, especially when the manufacturer has a vested interest in coercing you into a buying a replacement right away, takes away that owner agency. Grombobulous: My printer could theoretically print a black and white page in magneta when my black ink runs out, too. But logically, it doesnât want to do that. I just donât think itâs a big deal to consider the printer a device that requires all inks to be present to function properly. If the printer is consuming some color inks in order to print black colors better the implication is that less black ink is being consumed. Either way youâre buying ink. Some people are just cheap. kstrauser: Itâs not cheapness. My kid couldnât print her homework because I was low on cyan. Itâs not that I donât want to buy more ink, but that the thing I was printing only needed black. If it werenât a color printer, the output wouldâve been identical and it wouldnât have needed cyan. Grombobulous: Alternatively, the printer allows you to keep going regardless of status of the print ink and then the printer gets bad reviews and complaints about bad print quality. Your unpreparedness on your kidsâ homework isnât the fault of the manufacturer. I canât blame Ticonderoga if I run out of pencils. If you ran out of black ink youâd be similarly in trouble. epcoa: This is the dumbest shit Iâve ever heard. A standard mono laser printer can somehow print adequately without ANY color toner. Grombobulous: Because it has a different ink formulation thatâs designed for mono-colored printing. Letâs make another analogy: two wheels fall off my car. You tell me âhey, motorcycles exist, you can still use that car!!â But my car isnât a motorcycle, itâs a car. xattt: > Your unpreparedness on your kidsâ homework isnât the fault of the manufacturer. I canât blame Ticonderoga if I run out of pencils. That analogy doesnât hold up. You have other colour pencils at hand, but you canât use them because the blue pencil is worn down. Let me use my goshdarn pencils. kakacik: No, its tracking dots if you send a criminal printed letter for ransom, they will track you down very quickly. Some people don't like being tracked continuously. There are 0 other reasons, you being ignorant of basic facts and repeating your weird mantra doesn't change that. Citizen_Lame: He also supports ID verification on phones/computers. Probably some troll. Grombobulous: Having opinions doesnât make me a troll, please donât assume mal-intentions. I am presenting my opinions and having good faith discussions. xattt: There was a brief period before IoT turned to IoS, when the first manufacturers seemed to make an effort in implementation. 21asdffdsa12: IoT need standardized inter-connection APIs enforced on every partecipant. If you can defect to another supplier- and ecosystem and he can revive your device after a e.g. a "downdate"- the lock in effect disappears and the competition reappars. quickthrowman: A bimetallic strip thermostat with a âcool/off/heatâ mode switch and âon/off/autoâ for fan control is all anyone actually needs with a fixed speed compressor and generic furnace with a fixed speed fan. If you have a fancy modulating furnace and variable speed compressor or a variable speed heat pump, a thermostat that uses a PID would work better. vablings: Fixed speed compressors are okay for AC condensers but for tighter applications like heat pumps a variable speed drive offers a good efficiency gain, the problem is there is no standardization established for the driving of say a variable motor since they are all redesigned and unique so when the controller goes kaputz you are out 3-4000 dollars for something that costs 30 dollars to manufacture liveoneggs: Nest/Google also hid microphones in products so ... auto