Samsung is rolling out an update to its refrigerators with displays that will enable them to show advertisements.
Why would your refrigerator have a screen?
Why would you buy such a refrigerator?
I recall the hype was to keep track of groceries or some such gimmick. I feel it to be unnecessary tech. How convenient that it shows ads. In any case, do not buy a Samsung appliance. They are total shite and will break down on you. Fridges, washing machines, dishwashers. All garbage. The televisions are fine.
Their TVs suck too. The remotes barely respond and they’re bogged down with ad-riddled garbage to the point I had to set up a parental lock just so I wasn’t force-fed trashy, outdated reality TV at 300 decibels when I power the damn thing on. Or worse, when the power goes out and it decides to blast at 3 AM. Unfortunately I didn’t make the choice to buy this thing.
Their phones are also locked down proprietary horse arse. I don’t understand the people who repeatedly pick the brand, but oh well.
I believe with their phones, it is because the hardware is honestly solid compared to much of the competition. Samsung phones (ESPECIALLY during the TouchWiz days) haven’t been known for having the best software.
Their TVs on the other hand, a lot of that is because they put underpowered SoCs in the TVs. Their high-end OLEDs are quite good, but that doesn’t fix the fact that Tizen is still a little clunky. Samsung LCDs on the other hand, unless you spend over $2,000 on one, tend to be junk, mostly because the backlights are too dim to accurately reproduce content except in a dark room, or because the backlights fail out too soon. You can get much better performance out of something like a TCL or Hisense for the money, as long as you have trust in those brands… being Chinese and all.
Samsung makes good screens they don’t make good TV’s.
To keep track of groceries? Just I don’t know, LOOK inside the fridge. Oh the cabinets and drawers don’t have screens, just slap a few of them on there to keep track of that shit too! Why stop at the fridge?
I’m not a huge fan of my Samsun monitor either actually. There’s a lot of stuff in there that I don’t want or use, and most of what is in there feels pretty half-assed. Will definitely be trying another brand when it comes to replace it.
Agreed. Bought a washer/dryer set and the washer literally shit out in a year, with repairs costing as much as the purchase. Fuck them.
Samsung Washers haven’t had a great reputation. A lot of people I know still recommend purchasing something like a Kenmore or Maytag, or Speed Queen. I have an LG Washer which has been pretty solid, but, yeah… repair costs if you go through a company versus doing it yourself can be insane.
My 10 year old LG Washer, to repair recently, would’ve cost around $550-$600 for Diagnostic, Repair, and parts if I went through a service center. That is the cost of a new machine. What I needed were new suspension springs (10 years of wear & tear), and a new Sump pump as the motor housing started to leak. About $100 in parts and a half hour of time. Through the repair company, the labor would’ve been half the cost. The parts? The other half.
Yeah, the suspension is what went out on mine, their part, has to be ordered through them. The repair guy was nice and literally told me that 3/4s the cost was literally the parts because they could only do manufacturer. What’s infuriating to me is the fact that older washers didn’t have auto balance or suspension. Everything was welded to the frame. Yeah sure it would bounce around a lot but you could easily just stop the washer and rebalance it. My parents washer and dryer were handed down from their parents and lasted 30 years with no issues.
Got my MILs ancient range/washer/dryer,all obviously from the 80s. Never gonna sell them; never gonna toss them. Parts are cheap and a YouTube video can show you how to install them. They’re old enough that all the anti right-to-repair garbage hadn’t really reached it’s peak yet.
Gotcha. Yeah, my longest lasting Washing Machine was a Maytag or GE that ran from the mid-80s all the way to about 2005. It only died because the wash tub bearings (or whatever they are called) started to fail and leak the wash water everywhere. The wash motor was also extremely loud just before that happened, so it was either already struggling against failing parts, or, it too was failing. It survived a house move as well. Electronically, there was no computer. It was just a dial controlled machine with various cycles tied to certain positions in the dial.
After that I had a Kenmore, which died after about a decade. It, too, developed a leak in the wash tub that couldn’t be fixed effectively without effectively buying a new machine.
The LG still works today, over 10 years later.
Funny you mention the suspension going bad. The manufacturer price for suspension rods for my washing machine was $230. I was able to source the part online for about $30. All I had to do was toss in some new grease on the joints after taking the top of the machine off, and replacing each rod. The Sump Pump Motor was about $120 from the manufacturer. I sourced the same part from the upstream supplier (which, as it turns out, is used in non-LG washers as well) and that was $60.
Any company that pushes this shit doesn’t deserve your money. Don’t buy their TVs.
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the hype was to keep track of groceries
Most of my groceries are in the pantry not the fridge. This tech was always for people who have a kitchen that is for show and never used.
I’m not against my refrigerator having a screen that I can control
But why have a screen at all?
Shopping list, digital post it notes, etc.
People have been sticking important things into fridge doors since there are fridges.
You carry a phone that supports these features in your pocket. Fridges don’t need screens imho
But then you need to use cloud services to sync with your family/roommates/etc. Not everyone lives alone.
So how are you gonna access the shopping list on the fridge when you are in the store (without using cloud services)? Taking a screenshot of sticky notes on the fridge works as good as taking a screenshot of the fridge screen. So in both cloud connected and not clod connected scenarios, the fridge screen is not needed and functions as a gimmick.
For just $15.99/month/user, you can store up to one thousand bytes of text in our super unsecured cloud service, and access it remotely with our Galaxy Pro Platinum Gold Fold Unfold Refold Defold Sync Edition!
*unavailable with any other devices, only available on our latest halo product, when we release the Galaxy PPGFURDSE 2026 in 3 months your device will become unavailable to sync with the fridge. Only available in 2, 3, and 5 year subscriptions, but we will kill the service after 17 months, no refunds.
Samsung. Because fuck you~.
Tablet is more flexible.
Magnetic whiteboard
Because not everything important is digital.
It there was any hope for these being useful that would have integrated with the mobile experience the same way CarPlay did.
These are it a tv screen on a fridge with a channel that is for the fridge, these are all proprietary junk that it’s the antithesis for a smart home because they control it not the home owner.
I would love a monitor on my fridge (it’d be better than most of the dusty old shit on mine right now. ) But I would want to have complete control of the hardware attached to that screen
I hope a DIY mod community springs up to help people take back the machines they own.
Yeah a small screen showing time, day, weather, moon phase, sunrise/set, moonrise/set and daily/weekly schedule would be awesome. I have friends who keep a weekly meal/social schedule on their fridge and when I was staying with them mid move it was really convenient to have what’s going on so prominently displayed
I haven’t been able to get home assistant working but I imagine it has something for home displays like that with a fair amount of customizability
Ads and the news are two things I absolutely don’t want on my refrigerator. This is a large eye level object in the room that days begin in. They’re putting ads there because they know its a really convenient place to display useful information.
Why do gas pumps have screens?
Everyone should know this. Share it.
Only sometimes. I’ve seen the mute button be disabled on numerous machines. Worth knowing and trying when the screen is blaring ads at you, but my success rate has been low in muting them.
Yeah, and it varies by station. I push all the buttons. Some times one works, some times not.
Never worked for me. Push that button. Pushed the button below/above. Held the button.
Pushed all the buttons.
None of it worked.
Hero. There’s only one gas station I use that has ads and I’ll try it there for sure. I deliberately avoid screened pumps.
To display ads.
Especially lately. The screens used to just be for controlling the pump or letting the station show a silent ad or two for products in their convenience store. Or community ads.
NOW THEY BLARE RANDOM ADS AS YOU GAS UP YOUR VEHICLE.
It’s bliss after hours when the gas station is about to close and the ads stop. You can pump up in peace. Although when the ads crash the pump, have fun paying for gas.
Only in banana republic would customer be less valuable than ad revenue
Normal ones, yes, even 3rd world countries:
have counters only (minimalism).
This is actually why I got a Costco membership. 90% of gas stations in my city have a TV screen now and fuck that noise.
“because I’m a dumbass”
“because I’m a dumbass”
–dumbass
So you can see the inside of your fridge while never seeing the inside of your fridge. /s
Well I suppose that would be sort of a useful feature especially if you could access the camera remotely while shopping but if you think about it that camera angle is impossible.
Just open the fucking door.
Only if you buy one.
The only smart feature a fridge needs is a beeper for when the door has been left open or water filter needs changing. It sure as heck doesn’t need WiFi.
What it actually needs is a little motor to close itself. If it knows I left it open it should be capable to close itself instead of crying like a useless piece of junk.
An expensive motor that breaks, or decides to close on you when you’re looking inside, or…
I guess appliance engineers are just stupid and bad at their jobs.
The people spending money on parts definitely are.
Is that existed it would either close after 10 seconds and try and cut you in half, what would leave the door open for 5 minutes before doing anything.
Mine is so “smart” that it doesn’t properly detect that it’s open with a cm or so gap. At least it beeped furiously when it detected that the freezer section had a dangerously high temperature half a day later.
But how else will you know you need to make an unnecessary purchase?!
I used to work at a popular electrical retailer in the UK, and Samsung had come to our offices with some of their latest appliances, including a fridge freezer with a screen like this. They were trying to demonstrate the feature where you could look inside your fridge so you didn’t need to open the door, amongst other things, but it was of course a horrible laggy mess. I told the rep that nobody is going to use this after the first time and it’s just easier to open the door and look inside. You could tell he thought it was shit too but couldn’t come out and say it, but his smirk said it all.
knowing samsung they prolly force retailers to have at least one of these things on display if u wanna sell samsung products
it was of course a horrible laggy mess.
So the freezer froze?
Windows exist
In classic fashion they’re doing it in a way where you can choose to not have them by not using particular display options, so that they can say with a straight face that they’re not forcing ads on you. Then once this bullshit is normalized and into everyone’s homes, making it non-optional on all screens is a much smaller leap in comparison.
Who could have possibly seen this coming…
This was always the endgame of smart homes, creating continuous ad revenue from everything you own. It was never about consumer experience for big companies.
This it’s why there is nothing “smart” in my house.
I do have a smart tv that’s not allowed access to the internet, and that’s because they’re all like that now.
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Nobody would be quoted as saying I’m smart, no need to apologize
Get ready to buy good quality, inexpensive refrigerators, without tech connectivity. Automatically adding tech to everything, just because it is new and shiny, isn’t always the right way to build your products. It sure fucked up the car industry.
Those will die off soon enough, through forced obsolescence and an inability to compete with ad-subsidised junk that spies on you.
All the terrible touch features they’re adding to cars these days makes me think a brand new car today would go obsolete before a 10 year old used car with 100k miles. New cars are unrepairable because of how complicated they are.
100% agree; the whole Touch Screen Everything UI like those found in Teslas are the absolute worst.
Having to take your eyes off the road to do literally anything to do with the climate system should be made illegal. Bring back tactile switches, FFS!
Gross, my fridge got hit with ransomware again and now all the food inside is encrypted. Time to see if my canned backups are any good.
…Where did I put those backups?
Wait a second… you’re into something here. What if a fridge could lock and unlock sections by Face ID? It could make sure my kids aren’t drinking my beer! Or eating my lunch for tomorrow. Or half a birthday cake. What if I could require my kids to grab an apple with a soda?
That would be kinda neat if I had money I couldn’t think of a better use for.
…drinking my beer! Or eating my lunch for tomorrow. Or half a birthday cake.
Could’ve just said “eating my lunch”, it’s obviously a beer and half of a birthday cake.
Someone hacked my fridge and gave it a virus. I ate the food and got gastroenteritis.
The food encryption was unnecessary, I already got DDOS’d when my wife and kids got there first and ate all the cake Before I got home from work.
The FBI called to help, maybe they can sort things out for you too. Thought they’d be busy with other stuff right now but I guess they need these Apple gift cards to upgrade my security…
And this is why I avoid Samsung products entirely. Vote with your wallet.
I avoid “smart” products — especially those with screens — for this reason.
I wonder how are you posting that comment…
You got me. I’m posting from my refrigerator.
I’m still holding out for when they finally put out a Linux fridge
Oh, that’s a surprise, I was guessing a SMARTphone, one of those with a screen.
On the plus side, considering the average lifespan of Samsung appliances, you probably won’t have to put up with it for very long.
Who could have seen this coming!?
To enhance our service and offer additional content to our users, advertisements will be displayed on the Cover Screen for the Weather, Color, and Daily Board themes.
I really hope that Steam games don’t head down this path over time. Internet-connected refrigerators I’m willing to avoid, but that’s not the only vector for this sort of thing.
EDIT: And as has been pointed out on here before, some Internet-connected cars are starting to have updates to show ads on their UIs pushed out. Any time you’ve already spent the money and are kind of locked in and the manufacturer has Internet connectivity to the device and can update the thing subsequent to purchase, you’re kind of in a bad position regarding leverage.
Valve, fortunately, has already codified a ban on advertisement in games sold and on the steam platform itself (The store page is curated by an algorithm fetching popular games or game genres desired by the player rather than advertisers) https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/advertising
Edit: There’s an exception for cross promotions and in-world/in-universe assets (giving logos on a race car in a racing game as an example)
Ah, thanks! Well, that’s one lone ray of light.
Oh god don’t tell them about ATMs.
They do have a screen and Internet connectivity, but I don’t think that ATMs are actually a great route (unless they force people to stop and wait to get their money, which I don’t think will fly and will cut into capacity). There isn’t much eyeball time on them. The reason a car or a refrigerator works is because you’re likely to be around it a lot.
I will say that the rise of gas pumps at gas stations that play back advertisements is pretty obnoxious, though.
I was recently at a gas station that scanned my license plate and then started showing me ads telling me to upgrade to a newer model of my car, while showing me ads for those ewer models from a used car website. It felt incredibly invasive and I haven’t been back to that gas station.
I’m still grouchy about a sandwich place that I liked that recently changed ownership putting in kiosks that apparently do facial recognition, as once I walked up, they suggested items that I’d purchased last time. That started me looking, and I’ve been noticing that a lot of the ordering kiosks that places have been installing around where I am have cameras (though none have been actively making suggestions). I can only imagine that that gets hooked into the tracking and advertising system at some point too, though.
Between increasing use of facial recognition and ALPRs, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to avoid targeted ads. I don’t have a fix for that. I mean, it’s illegal to block use of ALPRs. A lot of places also have anti-masking laws, though I suspect that in practice, they aren’t enforced much, and someone could theoretically put something on their face. I don’t especially want to run around wearing stuff on my face, though.
Those morph suits from A Scanner Darkly are looking less and less unhinged lately
unless they force people to stop and wait to get their money
Do you really feel like inconveniencing us is unlikely?
A few years ago before I moved away, PNC bank had a few branches with new ATMs that made me tap through ads for loans and special checking accounts.
But there are fewer people needing to use ATMs with all the card/tap/digital money transfer. The only time anyone is using an ATM is because they have to. And a high proportion of those people who have to use ATMs are going to be poor.
“Make ‘em wait through an ad, what are they gonna do?”
Please view this series of ads to retrieve your funds. Alternatively, you can retrieve your funds now for a $4.95 fee.
*this fee fluctuates based on several factors including but not limited to: the time of day, the number of detected people in line behind you, your estimated pulse, if you have overdrawn your account in the past [DECADE], if you are a cheap motherfucker on our lowest-fee plan, if the system detects that you are a pushover little bitch, if your credit score is less than 800, the amount of advertisements we detect you block from our servers, and more. Resistance is futile.
gas pumps at gas stations that play back advertisements
You have to approach almost parallel to the machine, not to scare them. As soon as you’re close enough, be ready to jump in front of it and skip the ad. This way you can successfully hunt down a tedious ad.
Well fine. No smart refrigerator then.
Btw, you could also just slap a tablet on any fridge.
Show me an ad in my own kitchen and that screen is going to be broken.
I moved to Germany. It’s been an experience because the tech status dialed back about 15 years. One area I don’t miss is the ever pervasive drive to have screens with ads on every surface.
I’m more than ready. I’m so ready that won’t ever buy a refrigerator with an internet connection in my life
