Thread

Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges

323 points · 336 comments · nonfamous

Scubabear68 · 1790257414 · focus · HN ↗
This is my fear on the car side, as smart features start leaking from isolated areas in automobiles into the larger CAN bus....
1. qmr · 1790258023 · focus · HN ↗
  Why do you own such a vehicle then?
  You must not fear it that much.
  1. _aavaa_ · 1790258119 · focus · HN ↗
    “Ahh, and yet to participate in society.”
    This is a direction all manufacturers are going into, so there is little actual choice. And buying used is not a real solution; where do tomorrow’s used vehicles come from?
    qmr · 1790270958 · focus · HN ↗
    My vehicles save one of my motor bikes are all over 20 years old.
    _aavaa_ · 1790272695 · focus · HN ↗
    That works for you personally, but what are people going to do 20 years from now? Fight over the dwindling stock of 40 years of vehicles?
    To say nothing of the tradeoffs that come with an older vehicle (safety and pollution).
    asdff · 1790284746 · focus · HN ↗
    There are people today driving 40 year old vehicles. Or 60 year old vehicles. I even saw a model A at the grocery store lot once. There will be used cars for me.
    mrheosuper · 1790305028 · focus · HN ↗
    You really don't get it, right. The age is not a problem.
    And let be real, the 60 years old car, while there are some aspects they do better than modern one, overall they are much worse than mordern car.
    asdff · 1790310269 · focus · HN ↗
    Ehh. I'm still going to own a manual transmission car the rest of my life. New market isn't marketing to me going forward so I just won't participate in it. I'm sure there will be a million likeminded people keeping these puppies going as they've done.
    mrheosuper · 1790317035 · focus · HN ↗
    Most people i know having old cars also have at least 1 modern car. The main reason they drive old car is the feeling. Either their childhood dream, or just nostalgia. "Modern car suck" is not on their top 5.
    qmr · 1790360762 · focus · HN ↗
    Same. Was just discussing modern safety features and over reliance on the same with my son and telling him he will learn and test in a manual transmission.
    New cars are a want not a need. Well designed properly maintained cars can last a long long time. I ran into an old guy at my local coffee shop who has 550k on his 240 DL. Had to double take to make sure it wasn't klicks instead of miles. Chatted to him a bit, engine and transmission are all original and he gets notes on his car regularly with phone numbers of people who want to buy it.
    In our house we have two Saturn SLs at 100 and 130k, a Saturn SW at 200k and a Sienna at 270k. Rounding it out a 2006 and 2016 DL650 V Strom w 66k and 16k.
    I cringe at so much new car bullshit. Death of distraction free tactile interfaces with knobs and buttons, and where the fuck is the fucking parking brake?
    qmr · 1790360887 · focus · HN ↗
    Most people will continue to be useful idiots borrowing money they don't have to buy cars to impress people they don't like.
  2. someonebaggy · 1790258341 · focus · HN ↗
    all cars made in the last 15 years do it
    qmr · 1790270848 · focus · HN ↗
    My cars are all older than this.
    None of them have turned into pumpkins.
    asdff · 1790285074 · focus · HN ↗
    Economy cars like base model corolla are still normal cars.
  3. matkoniecz · 1790259276 · focus · HN ↗
    Starting own car company is not a viable solution for a typical person.
  4. pjc50 · 1790259937 · focus · HN ↗
    A chunk of smart features are either legally mandated (eCall) or soft-required for "safety" (Euro NCAP lanekeeping etc).
  5. cromka · 1790312972 · focus · HN ↗
    As others pointed out, your argument is a fallacy. Technically a "Tu Quoque", in practice this explains it better: <a href="https://iea.org.uk/yet-you-participate-in-society-in-defence-of-mr-gotcha" rel="nofollow">https://iea.org.uk/yet-you-participate-in-society-in-defence...
    qmr · 1790610672 · focus · HN ↗
    ... is it?
    There's no obligation to purchase such cars.
2. tobysmith568 · 1790258501 · focus · HN ↗
  My car has two screens, one screen for things like showing the speed / the indicator lights and one screen for maps / music.
  You can hard reset the latter one by holding down the home button for ten seconds, but while it turns back on the indicators don't function... even while driving
3. mingus88 · 1790259689 · focus · HN ↗
  I’ve been in a Rivian during two infotainment crashes. It’s scary but the car still drives. Everything not screen related worked, and you can just pull over like any other car breakdown.
  They take this type of bug very seriously but obviously any platform will have bugs. It’s the legacy automakers I worry about, since their software has always been outdated crap and this problem needs the best in test automation
  1. delecti · 1790261332 · focus · HN ↗
    Having worked in software at a legacy car company (Mercedes specifically), I wouldn't actually be too worried about most of them either (note: in this regard specifically, I could certainly criticize plenty of other things). There's a lot of institutional discipline keeping the stability and operation of the driving stuff separate from the screen stuff.
    bmurphy1976 · 1790262864 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not just the screen. Microchips and sloppy firmware are everywhere.
    My 2015 Jeep Cherokee had a freakout one day: the power steering stopped working mid-drive, on the highway. I was 50 minutes from my house, had to turn around and drive back home (an exhausting exercise given that modern cars are not built to function without power steering). I got to the dealer, parked in the lot, turned the car off, wait 30 seconds, turn it back on, everything worked fine.
    That never happened again, but once is enough to put somebody in a dangerous-to-life situation.
    It's not just the infotainment system we should be worrying about. Most modern cars are now distributed computer systems.
    JoeAltmaier · 1790263033 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes! Pretty much everything the driver touches is no longer directly controlling anything. THe brakes are anti-lock (electronic control can disconnect them). The steering depends on assist motors. The throttle is just a suggestion.
    Even my rear-view mirror is a camera, and currently it has failed (shows matrix style drippy blue lines instead of a picture.
    the_sleaze_ · 1790267201 · focus · HN ↗
    That's exactly how it should work however, even if power steering goes out the steering still works. Albeit in a degraded state.
  2. neogodless · 1790269499 · focus · HN ↗
    If you reboot infotainment in a Polestar 2, all HVAC stops working until the system is finished booting...
  3. alpaca128 · 1790280735 · focus · HN ↗
    A relative recently bought an electric Renault. When you open the door and sit in it you are greeted by an annoying voice assistant talking to you (can be disabled at least). It's also got sound effects for everything, but you cannot throttle its charging speed and the charging status shown in the app is often delayed by hours.
4. OnACoffeeBreak · 1790264520 · focus · HN ↗
  There was a YouTube video of (I think) a Kia that was towed into a shop because it would not start on the side of the road. The reason for no-start turned out to be a failed backup camera module. So, the car stranded the owner because it could not communicate to the backup camera.
  1. alpaca128 · 1790280377 · focus · HN ↗
    I also remember an incident where a rental car refused to start the engine because the driver made the mistake of parking it in an area without reception and it wouldn't start without phoning home to a server.

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