14 ms·

Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

591 points by ftufek 2y ago

Navenaps 2y 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.
thebeardisred 2y ago
Just an ex-CoreOS person stopping by to smile and say "someone should really figure out how to do that safely."
whiteboardr 2y ago
Doesn’t sound good. If at all.
6stringmerc 2y ago
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.
hashishen 2y ago
thank God mine is before they decided to add smart features to a speaker
AdmiralAsshat 2y 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 2y ago
  Wouldn’t radio silence increase damages to customers and result in increased liability?
  - barbazoo 2y ago
    Only if you connect the soundbar via Bluetooth /s
  - reverendsteveii 2y 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.
    - account42 2y ago
      Sounds like we need to increase liability for witholding information from customers when that causes damages to make the result of that equation align with consumer interests.
  - zamalek 2y 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.
  - commandlinefan 2y 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.
    - hhh 2y ago
      It’s still one of the best antimalwares on the planet.
knowitnone 2y ago
So glad everything's connected to the internet \s.
tylerflick 2y ago
I have one of these systems. Not sure why anyone would ever leave it connected to the internet though.
- ziddoap 2y 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 2y 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.
  - lopis 2y 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 2y 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.
    - ziddoap 2y ago
      This is an absolutely ridiculous take, on multiple levels.
- ellisv 2y 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.
nancyminusone 2y ago
See you on Louis Rossman later today!
- carra 2y ago
  One of the first things I thought of when reading the title.
crtasm 2y ago
List price $2,000. What was the update supposed to improve/fix?
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  Someone's promotion packet?
- mcs5280 2y ago
  Probably some new AI/tracking/ad delivery features
  - jakeydus 2y 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.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Anyone who uses smart tv features and connects one directly to the internet is insane.
      - onemoresoop 2y ago
        Id extend that to all smart TVs and all 'smart' devices as such.
    - vosper 2y ago
      > 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. Plug in an Apple TV?
yread 2y 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 2y 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.
thimabi 2y 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 2y 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.
- grishka 2y 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.
- MiddleEndian 2y ago
  Automated updates are a way for companies to push updates on you without having to first convince you that the updates are good.
  - freedomben 2y ago
    Also allows them to ship unfinished/buggy and poorly tested software and "fix it later OTA."
- lostdog 2y ago
  Damaging or removing features should reopen the return window. Then they will be more careful about what they change.
staticman2 2y 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 2y ago
My bluray player has an ethernet port on the back, but I never ever connect it to the internet.
ajaimk 2y ago
Really glad I never connected mine to wifi
tomstokes 2y 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.
- mytailorisrich 2y ago
  Indeed a golden factory firmware version that will be booted automatically if all else fails and that provides minimum connectivity is crucial.
  - OtherShrezzing 2y 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.
    - stego-tech 2y ago
      They could, and that's been a way for attackers to "jailbreak" devices and load custom firmware in the past. Though for the sake of reducing eWaste and enabling device repurposing and reuse, I do think this is the best path for firmware-updatable devices.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - csomar 2y ago
      The golden firmware should reset to the old/first firmware of the device and nothing else. Keep it as simple as possible and restore the customer device back to an operational state.
marcodiego 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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
- ethbr1 2y 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.
  - MiddleEndian 2y 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.
walrus01 2y 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.
slt2021 2y 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'?
- dlahoda 2y ago
  he uses apple may be... previous used https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/12/13/samsungs-chief-strategy-officer-admits-to-using-apples-iphone-ipad-mac-at-home 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.
  - dlahoda 2y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co5aw4/unremovable_ads_on_my_2500_samsung_smart_tv/ 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_smart_tv_unwanted_never_downloaded_xbox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/ztuv0l/samsung_sma...
drcongo 2y 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.
barbazoo 2y ago
Samsung should merge with Sonos, they are all doing a really great job :)
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Samsonos? Sonosung?
- jimt1234 2y 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.
  - nickthegreek 2y ago
    I have my sonos integrated nicely inside Home Assistant and can control all core and most extra features nicely without using the app.
elzbardico 2y 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_ 2y ago
  Their hardware is technically great. It is the software that sucks.
  - genewitch 2y 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
  - jillyboel 2y ago
    Their phones are alright but everything else they make sucks
  - qingcharles 2y 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.
  - elzbardico 2y ago
    It was a dishwasher, without any smart capability. Probably just a very simple micro-controller.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  reclameaqui.com.br is usually helpful.
eYrKEC2 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
    - account42 2y ago
      But you can at least for now still use those "smart" TVs as dumb displays for whatever device you want and just ignore the fact that the TV is running a full android stack or similar. There really is no need to scrounge for older devices with inferior display tech.
  - mrweasel 2y 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.
devmor 2y 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.
freehorse 2y ago
If you want your devices not to belong to you, connect them to the internet.
- jimt1234 2y ago
  Many devices these days are required to be connected to the internet, which is bizarre, but here we are.
  - freehorse 2y 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 2y 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.
X-Istence 2y ago
This is one of those cases where I am glad I don't have my soundbar connected to the internet...
- widerporst 2y 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.
maayank 2y 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 2y 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.
  - nickthegreek 2y 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.
  - maayank 2y ago
    Thanks, blocked! Fingers crossed it didn’t fetch it yet
yubiox 2y 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.
- hbn 2y 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.
  - doublerabbit 2y 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.
    - kiririn 2y ago
      Lightning ports very rarely fail or get loose - it’s more robust than usb-c in that regard, which is already a high bar - it’s probably dust in the port
      - doublerabbit 2y ago
        Not at all. I've cleaned, air-dusted it. The phone is six months old. I've taken it to the Apple store and they won't do anything. And now that they've disconnected the thunder-bolt adapter too. I know the quality is less than my XR. I own both and I have a box of three thunder bolt to audio cables, all have the same issues.
caminante 2y 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-Q990D-unresponsive-after-1020-firmware-update/m-p/3169163/highlight/true#M29079 https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Home-Theater/Samsung-Q99...
- pizzalife 2y ago
  Bad updates happen, but companies with good development practices don't ship catastrophically bad updates. Source: I worked at Samsung
- johnklos 2y 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_dieoff_explained/ 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.
  - caminante 2y 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
- nickthegreek 2y ago
  A soft brick is still a brick.
jtrueb 2y 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?
reverendsteveii 2y 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?
- jimt1234 2y 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.
  - reverendsteveii 2y 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.
  - NotYourLawyer 2y ago
    Before I bought my most recent vehicle, I did my research and figured out how to physically disconnect the modem / telemetry unit.
    - sodality2 2y ago
      Is this actually feasible for some decent percentage of cars nowadays? If so, where did you research?
      - NotYourLawyer 2y ago
        YouTube. I think in most cars it’s gonna be a discrete component that can just be unplugged. The big question is what functionality you lose, and whether you can live with that tradeoff.
jauntywundrkind 2y 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.
- arcanemachiner 2y ago
  Looking at /r/Chromecast, it seems the problem got fixed very recently.
iaw 2y 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 2y ago
vibe coding
drlobster 2y 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-blu-ray-players-were-bricked/ https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/the-real-story-how-samsung-b...
- drlobster 2y ago
  Also talked about here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23578920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23578920
- ftufek 2y 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 2y ago
    That's why my buddy said it's time to buy shares in bubble wrap
    - varispeed 2y ago
      Nah, just be a geezer and wrap it in bin bags and then tape around. It's bricked anyway, innit.
      - qingcharles 2y ago
        Waste of bin bags. Just write the address on the front in marker pen.
- mihaaly 2y 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.
mrbonner 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago
...nervously looks over at my Bambu X1-Carbon...
bigbacaloa 2y ago
[dead]
bregma 2y 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 2y ago
  Nothing that needs wifi or an app is allowed in my kitchen.
- pkkkzip 2y ago
  its crazy that the fridge and coffeemaker needs to talk to the internet
- hondo77 2y 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.
commandlinefan 2y ago
"We understand how frustrating an unresponsive soundbar can be." Isn't this about the most condescending thing they can start with?
- genewitch 2y ago
  "... and that's why we did it!"
- wnolens 2y ago
  It smells like corporate communication training. "Affirm the customer. Express that you hear their concerns and empathize"
  - account42 2y ago
    Does this actually work on anyone though. It just always feels so artificial that it's off putting.
- noisy_boy 2y 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.
  - commandlinefan 2y ago
    The made the “difficult decision” to reduce headcount. It’s “not a reflection” on individual performer’s merits.
baxuz 2y 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-s89c-owners-thread-no-price-talk.3267261/ https://www.avsforum.com/threads/2023-samsung-4k-s95c-s90c-s...
- bowmessage 2y ago
  My Q990C requires factory reset about once a week. It's maddening.
  - baxuz 2y ago
    It's the WPA3 encryption. It needs to be set to WPA2 only for it to not shit itself.
    - bowmessage 2y ago
      Wow, thank you, that is amazing news. Can I ask how you found this fix? I turned up nothing after scouring reddit on this one for a long time. EDIT: just checked, my router doesn't even support WPA3... I think it's typically the 5GHz network that upsets it, but I suppose I'll just continue resetting it for now.
      - account42 2y ago
        Why connect the sound bar to the Wifi at all???
        baxuz 2y ago
        Because I want to listen to Tidal on full quality and control playback via my phone. Bluetooth quality is garbage. I don't want to turn on my TV to listen to music (and Tizen only allows up to a certain quality), or use my nvidia shield, as it also turns on the TV via CEC. Other platforms also don't support full quality like FLAC or Atmos mixes.
genewitch 2y 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!
- gblargg 2y 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.
- binarymax 2y 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.
tzs 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
- dmos62 2y ago
  Do you find dumb TV software (dynamic backlight controls for example) and hardware on par with smart tvs?
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 2y 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.
- mrkeen 2y ago
  Same. I bought a couple of Chromecasts for that reason but they're supposedly discontinued now.
  - slig 2y ago
    They're discontinued and a week or so ago a certificate expired and millions of Chromecast V2 aren't working.
- _2d30 2y 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.
FartyMcFarter 2y ago
Reading this makes me glad that I didn't give my TV the WiFi credentials.
hyperluz 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
  - jillyboel 2y ago
    Maybe that worked 10 years ago but nowadays they figured out ssl certificate pinning
deleted 2y ago
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1970-01-01 2y ago
Just more evidence that buying something smart is dumb.
timewizard 2y ago
Samsumg did not bring THEIR home theater systems, they bricked CUSTOMER theater systems that did not belong to them.
jp1016 2y ago
Reminder to myself to not auto update anything or manually update to the latest version.
palata 2y ago
When will someone build a good theater system with an open source OS? That would be great!
- NotYourLawyer 2y 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.
- saturn8601 2y ago
  Be the change you want to see in the world.
gblargg 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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=5598&context=smallsat 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.
NotYourLawyer 2y ago
Why are these things connected to the internet at all?
Animats 2y ago
On forced updating: "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
- caminante 2y ago
  LOL. Lord giveth patch updates, e.g., mRNA vaccines, startup blogs, work from home...
p0w3n3d 2y 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 2y 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?
N19PEDL2 2y ago
Perhaps a stupid question, but why they don’t test the firmware updates internally before releasing them?
- sumedh 2y ago
  You dont need a testing team when the users can do all the testing for you.
- mikepurvis 2y 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 2y 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.
    - mikepurvis 2y ago
      There's no question about what it should be, but without technical leadership up the chain that understands and insists on this, it's easy to see how it could atrophy over time with cuts and staff turnover. Like once upon a time, someone established a lab with twenty different units in different states, and put in place a process for validating the releases on it, but that person is long gone, and parts of the lab haven't worked quite right in years, but the parts that do still give a green checkmark, and who wants to stick their neck out and block a release over some baroque process no one even understands, right? It's not like the lab ever seems to really catch a major issue, does it? Just send a :ship: emoji to the slack channel and wait to be assigned your next ticket in the sprint meeting.
0xFEE1DEAD 2y 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/mhsc00r/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Soundbars/comments/1jb1ymp/comment/...
- mmmlinux 2y 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 2y 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%.
    - jrockway 2y ago
      The key is to call in and ask how to put your device in airplane mode ;)
      - LoganDark 2y ago
        I love when I last called my cell phone carrier and they asked me to try putting my phone in airplane mode. I said "wouldn't that disconnect the call?", they went "no it will not", and guess what happened when I turned on airplane mode.
nickdothutton 2y 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 2y ago
One more reason to never allow a tv on the internet.
zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
Why does a sound bar need a firmware update?
jajko 2y 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.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nfriedly 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago
Jokes on them: I tried and failed to connect it to wifi and gave up.
cytocync 2y ago
[dead]
PeterStuer 2y ago
For those with mild dyslexia: The system did not brick after suffering through 1020 updates. 1020 is the update version label.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
account42 2y 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 2y ago
  With "AI".

591 points by ftufek 2y 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.

thebeardisred 2y ago

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

whiteboardr 2y ago

Doesn’t sound good. If at all.

6stringmerc 2y ago

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.

hashishen 2y ago

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

AdmiralAsshat 2y 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 2y ago
Wouldn’t radio silence increase damages to customers and result in increased liability?
- barbazoo 2y ago
  Only if you connect the soundbar via Bluetooth /s
- reverendsteveii 2y 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.
  - account42 2y ago
    Sounds like we need to increase liability for witholding information from customers when that causes damages to make the result of that equation align with consumer interests.
- zamalek 2y 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.
- commandlinefan 2y 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.
  - hhh 2y ago
    It’s still one of the best antimalwares on the planet.

knowitnone 2y ago

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

tylerflick 2y ago

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

ziddoap 2y 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 2y 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.
- lopis 2y 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 2y 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.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    This is an absolutely ridiculous take, on multiple levels.
ellisv 2y 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.

nancyminusone 2y ago

See you on Louis Rossman later today!

carra 2y ago
One of the first things I thought of when reading the title.

crtasm 2y ago

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

pavel_lishin 2y ago
Someone's promotion packet?
mcs5280 2y ago
Probably some new AI/tracking/ad delivery features
- jakeydus 2y 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.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Anyone who uses smart tv features and connects one directly to the internet is insane.
    - onemoresoop 2y ago
      Id extend that to all smart TVs and all 'smart' devices as such.
  - vosper 2y ago
    > 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. Plug in an Apple TV?

yread 2y 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 2y 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.

thimabi 2y 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 2y 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.
grishka 2y 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.
MiddleEndian 2y ago
Automated updates are a way for companies to push updates on you without having to first convince you that the updates are good.
- freedomben 2y ago
  Also allows them to ship unfinished/buggy and poorly tested software and "fix it later OTA."
lostdog 2y ago
Damaging or removing features should reopen the return window. Then they will be more careful about what they change.

staticman2 2y 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 2y ago

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

ajaimk 2y ago

Really glad I never connected mine to wifi

tomstokes 2y 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.

mytailorisrich 2y ago
Indeed a golden factory firmware version that will be booted automatically if all else fails and that provides minimum connectivity is crucial.
- OtherShrezzing 2y 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.
  - stego-tech 2y ago
    They could, and that's been a way for attackers to "jailbreak" devices and load custom firmware in the past. Though for the sake of reducing eWaste and enabling device repurposing and reuse, I do think this is the best path for firmware-updatable devices.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - csomar 2y ago
    The golden firmware should reset to the old/first firmware of the device and nothing else. Keep it as simple as possible and restore the customer device back to an operational state.

marcodiego 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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
ethbr1 2y 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.
- MiddleEndian 2y 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.

walrus01 2y 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.

slt2021 2y 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'?

dlahoda 2y ago
he uses apple may be... previous used https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/12/13/samsungs-chief-strategy-officer-admits-to-using-apples-iphone-ipad-mac-at-home 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.
- dlahoda 2y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co5aw4/unremovable_ads_on_my_2500_samsung_smart_tv/ 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_smart_tv_unwanted_never_downloaded_xbox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/ztuv0l/samsung_sma...

drcongo 2y 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.

barbazoo 2y ago

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

ethbr1 2y ago
Samsonos? Sonosung?
jimt1234 2y 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.
- nickthegreek 2y ago
  I have my sonos integrated nicely inside Home Assistant and can control all core and most extra features nicely without using the app.

elzbardico 2y 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_ 2y ago
Their hardware is technically great. It is the software that sucks.
- genewitch 2y 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
- jillyboel 2y ago
  Their phones are alright but everything else they make sucks
- qingcharles 2y 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.
- elzbardico 2y ago
  It was a dishwasher, without any smart capability. Probably just a very simple micro-controller.
marcosdumay 2y ago
reclameaqui.com.br is usually helpful.

eYrKEC2 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
  - account42 2y ago
    But you can at least for now still use those "smart" TVs as dumb displays for whatever device you want and just ignore the fact that the TV is running a full android stack or similar. There really is no need to scrounge for older devices with inferior display tech.
- mrweasel 2y 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.

devmor 2y 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.

freehorse 2y ago

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

jimt1234 2y ago
Many devices these days are required to be connected to the internet, which is bizarre, but here we are.
- freehorse 2y 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 2y 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.

X-Istence 2y ago

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

widerporst 2y 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.

maayank 2y 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 2y 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.
- nickthegreek 2y 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.
- maayank 2y ago
  Thanks, blocked! Fingers crossed it didn’t fetch it yet

yubiox 2y 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.

hbn 2y 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.
- doublerabbit 2y 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.
  - kiririn 2y ago
    Lightning ports very rarely fail or get loose - it’s more robust than usb-c in that regard, which is already a high bar - it’s probably dust in the port
    - doublerabbit 2y ago
      Not at all. I've cleaned, air-dusted it. The phone is six months old. I've taken it to the Apple store and they won't do anything. And now that they've disconnected the thunder-bolt adapter too. I know the quality is less than my XR. I own both and I have a box of three thunder bolt to audio cables, all have the same issues.

caminante 2y 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-Q990D-unresponsive-after-1020-firmware-update/m-p/3169163/highlight/true#M29079 https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Home-Theater/Samsung-Q99...

pizzalife 2y ago
Bad updates happen, but companies with good development practices don't ship catastrophically bad updates. Source: I worked at Samsung
johnklos 2y 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_dieoff_explained/ 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.
- caminante 2y 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
nickthegreek 2y ago
A soft brick is still a brick.

jtrueb 2y 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?

reverendsteveii 2y 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?

jimt1234 2y 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.
- reverendsteveii 2y 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.
- NotYourLawyer 2y ago
  Before I bought my most recent vehicle, I did my research and figured out how to physically disconnect the modem / telemetry unit.
  - sodality2 2y ago
    Is this actually feasible for some decent percentage of cars nowadays? If so, where did you research?
    - NotYourLawyer 2y ago
      YouTube. I think in most cars it’s gonna be a discrete component that can just be unplugged. The big question is what functionality you lose, and whether you can live with that tradeoff.

jauntywundrkind 2y 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.

arcanemachiner 2y ago
Looking at /r/Chromecast, it seems the problem got fixed very recently.

iaw 2y 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 2y ago

vibe coding

drlobster 2y 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-blu-ray-players-were-bricked/ https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/the-real-story-how-samsung-b...

drlobster 2y ago
Also talked about here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23578920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23578920
ftufek 2y 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 2y ago
  That's why my buddy said it's time to buy shares in bubble wrap
  - varispeed 2y ago
    Nah, just be a geezer and wrap it in bin bags and then tape around. It's bricked anyway, innit.
    - qingcharles 2y ago
      Waste of bin bags. Just write the address on the front in marker pen.
mihaaly 2y 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.

mrbonner 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago

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

bigbacaloa 2y ago

[dead]

bregma 2y 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 2y ago
Nothing that needs wifi or an app is allowed in my kitchen.
pkkkzip 2y ago
its crazy that the fridge and coffeemaker needs to talk to the internet
hondo77 2y 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.

commandlinefan 2y ago

"We understand how frustrating an unresponsive soundbar can be." Isn't this about the most condescending thing they can start with?

genewitch 2y ago
"... and that's why we did it!"
wnolens 2y ago
It smells like corporate communication training. "Affirm the customer. Express that you hear their concerns and empathize"
- account42 2y ago
  Does this actually work on anyone though. It just always feels so artificial that it's off putting.
noisy_boy 2y 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.
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  The made the “difficult decision” to reduce headcount. It’s “not a reflection” on individual performer’s merits.

baxuz 2y 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-s89c-owners-thread-no-price-talk.3267261/ https://www.avsforum.com/threads/2023-samsung-4k-s95c-s90c-s...

bowmessage 2y ago
My Q990C requires factory reset about once a week. It's maddening.
- baxuz 2y ago
  It's the WPA3 encryption. It needs to be set to WPA2 only for it to not shit itself.
  - bowmessage 2y ago
    Wow, thank you, that is amazing news. Can I ask how you found this fix? I turned up nothing after scouring reddit on this one for a long time. EDIT: just checked, my router doesn't even support WPA3... I think it's typically the 5GHz network that upsets it, but I suppose I'll just continue resetting it for now.
    - account42 2y ago
      Why connect the sound bar to the Wifi at all???
      - baxuz 2y ago
        Because I want to listen to Tidal on full quality and control playback via my phone. Bluetooth quality is garbage. I don't want to turn on my TV to listen to music (and Tizen only allows up to a certain quality), or use my nvidia shield, as it also turns on the TV via CEC. Other platforms also don't support full quality like FLAC or Atmos mixes.

genewitch 2y 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!

gblargg 2y 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.
binarymax 2y 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.

tzs 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.

dmos62 2y ago
Do you find dumb TV software (dynamic backlight controls for example) and hardware on par with smart tvs?
- SparkyMcUnicorn 2y 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.
mrkeen 2y ago
Same. I bought a couple of Chromecasts for that reason but they're supposedly discontinued now.
- slig 2y ago
  They're discontinued and a week or so ago a certificate expired and millions of Chromecast V2 aren't working.
_2d30 2y 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.

FartyMcFarter 2y ago

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

hyperluz 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
- jillyboel 2y ago
  Maybe that worked 10 years ago but nowadays they figured out ssl certificate pinning

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

1970-01-01 2y ago

Just more evidence that buying something smart is dumb.

timewizard 2y ago

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

jp1016 2y ago

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

palata 2y ago

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

NotYourLawyer 2y 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.
saturn8601 2y ago
Be the change you want to see in the world.

gblargg 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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=5598&context=smallsat 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.

NotYourLawyer 2y ago

Why are these things connected to the internet at all?

Animats 2y ago

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

caminante 2y ago
LOL. Lord giveth patch updates, e.g., mRNA vaccines, startup blogs, work from home...

p0w3n3d 2y 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 2y 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?

N19PEDL2 2y ago

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

sumedh 2y ago
You dont need a testing team when the users can do all the testing for you.
mikepurvis 2y 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 2y 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.
  - mikepurvis 2y ago
    There's no question about what it should be, but without technical leadership up the chain that understands and insists on this, it's easy to see how it could atrophy over time with cuts and staff turnover. Like once upon a time, someone established a lab with twenty different units in different states, and put in place a process for validating the releases on it, but that person is long gone, and parts of the lab haven't worked quite right in years, but the parts that do still give a green checkmark, and who wants to stick their neck out and block a release over some baroque process no one even understands, right? It's not like the lab ever seems to really catch a major issue, does it? Just send a :ship: emoji to the slack channel and wait to be assigned your next ticket in the sprint meeting.

0xFEE1DEAD 2y 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/mhsc00r/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Soundbars/comments/1jb1ymp/comment/...

mmmlinux 2y 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 2y 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%.
  - jrockway 2y ago
    The key is to call in and ask how to put your device in airplane mode ;)
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      I love when I last called my cell phone carrier and they asked me to try putting my phone in airplane mode. I said "wouldn't that disconnect the call?", they went "no it will not", and guess what happened when I turned on airplane mode.

nickdothutton 2y 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 2y ago

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

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

Why does a sound bar need a firmware update?

jajko 2y 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.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nfriedly 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago

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

cytocync 2y ago

[dead]

PeterStuer 2y ago

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

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

account42 2y 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 2y ago
With "AI".