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Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

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Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#271

Post by robohoe »

rangerelf wrote: post #143
ok123456 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung's appliances have a pretty bad reputation in general, especially the refrigerators and side loading washing machines.

Never again will I buy anything Samsung. They have steadfastly refused to fix my fridge's ice maker even though they have admitted it's a design fault, and retailers will not take it back as faulty because the ice maker is not considered vital to the functioning of the refrigerator in general.

Same. Samsung has had a bad reputation for a while. I remember having issues with their CRT monitors back in mid 2000s. I bought one of their smart TVs back in 2011 and it's had issues with the panel ever since with randomly showing purple & pink lines. Their cell phones have also been crap in my personal experience.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#273

Post by mam3 »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #76
mam3 wrote: post #6

This is bad.

Please elaborate. These kind of comments don’t really belong on hacker news without more content.

If youd actually browse HN you would know. One less step away from full ownership of your own devices and one more toward the consumer even more dependent on the compagnies.

Who cares about a bunch of stolen TVs ?

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#274

Post by rootusrootus »

nicolas_t wrote: post #113
ok123456 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung's appliances have a pretty bad reputation in general, especially the refrigerators and side loading washing machines.

Anecdotal but I've had very good experience with Samsung front loading washing machine, might depend on regions of the world though, I've had one in Asia and one in Europe.

My Samsung front-loader failed the first time in less than a year. Right after that, the Samsung dryer I bought with it also failed.

My Samsung refrigerator had the display fail after two years, and the replacement display started failing in a month. I no longer bother buying replacement displays because everyone else agrees they never last more than a few months.

No more Samsung appliances for me, ever. And CR's credibility took a major hit in my eyes because I bought the washer & dryer on their recommendation, even after I already knew that Samsung refrigerators were garbage.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#275

Post by alerighi »

bluGill wrote: post #72
ballenf wrote: post #25

The ecological impact of this shouldn't be ignored. Imagine the number of iPhones that are activation locked due to oversight of owners before disposal. They are much more likely to become e-waste. Possession as the primary indicator of ownership isn't such a bad option after all. At the very least, there should be a well-known process to remove these locks.

> The ecological impact of this shouldn't be ignored. Pretty low so long as they only use it for theft. Thieves will soon learn not to steal TVs as there is no value in it. As such it is only a small number of bricked TVs that are landfilled early - nothing compared to all the TVs already landfilled. Now if this is used for something other than theft cases it can get bad, but in this case at least it is a good thing…

What proof? A receipt from a shop barely lasts the 2 years warranty product if you don't photocopy it, because it's printed on thermal paper. And a lot of people doesn't either keep it. Also is this service going to be maintained forever?

The reality is that new TVs and in general new electronics are effectively disposable products, not meant to last in the time. While I have at my house an old CRT with valves in it, that I can repair simply with a soldering iron, as I did a couple of times, and other old electronic devices that still works fine, it's not the same for modern crap. When it breaks the only option is to throw it in a landfill.

We should start form the past, where everything came with its schematic in it, and thus the facto open source, where they didn't even imagined something opposed to that, it was natural when you purchase something to be in full control of it, to have the right to know how it worked and how to repair it when it failed.

And nobody, I mean no user, complained that there wasn't a way to remotely block their TV in case someone steal it.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#276

Post by myaccounthaha »

foobarian wrote: post #194
rangerelf wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never again will I buy anything Samsung. They have steadfastly refused to fix my fridge's ice maker even though they have admitted it's a design fault, and retailers will not take it back as faulty because the ice maker is not considered vital to the functioning of the refrigerator in general.

Me neither! I got their fridge, and in my case the deicing functionality is faulty. There is a little metal tab behind the back panel that heats up an ice dam to keep the condensation flowing out, that happens to be too short by about 2cm. They skimped on 2cm of aluminum and now I will never buy anything Samsung ever again. So in short, it seems that they can neither make a proper ice maker nor ice un-maker :-)

Hey I had that same issue with my old fridge, a guy on YouTube helped me solve it! Take a short piece of the copper ground wire from a length of Romex and wrap it around the heating element, then have it point down into the drip area. It should conduct enough heat to keep the fins from icing up. It's not ideal but it saved me from replacing the (I think) evaporator fan for a third or fourth time, plus all the ruined food. Also had to replace the mainboard on the pile of junk fridge. So glad I don't own it anymore.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#277

Post by meowster »

jakearmitage wrote: post #262

It is impossible to find a "dumb" TV today. It sucks, because I was currently looking for a new 75+ inch one, but everything out there is just smart crap.

They're out of stock now, but they were available last time I checked a few months ago.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-75-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-HD...

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#278

Post by rootusrootus »

Unklejoe wrote: post #157
nicolas_t wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal but I've had very good experience with Samsung front loading washing machine, might depend on regions of the world though, I've had one in Asia and one in Europe.

That's crazy because I've had terrible experience with Samsung front loader washing machines. I own a few rental properties, so I tend to go through appliances a lot and I've had more Samsung washers and dryers fail than anything else. The dryers are the worst. They use a plastic tensioner pulley for the belt, but the pulley doesn't have a bearing...it just rides on a metal sleeve. This eventually wears out and cause…

> This eventually wears out and causes the belt to fly off.

On my dryer it took less than a year before it tossed the belt.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#279

Post by robohoe »

criddell wrote: post #115
ollien wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently bought a TCL TV specifically because I trust Roku to maintain their software more than someone like Samsung. The ads drive me insane, even if they're relatively unobtrusive. At least in that case the TV was much cheaper (~$500 for a 55" TV)

Roku watches what you are watching and shares that data with their trusted partners. Same as Android TV (whatever it's called now) and Amazon Fire. AFAIK, the only mainstream streaming device that doesn't do this is Apple TV.

You can block them talking back to the mothership using Pi-Hole or PFBlockerNG.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#280

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

ok123456 wrote: post #106
drewg123 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a high-end Samsung 4K tv in 2015 or so for about $3000. I picked it after a week of research that showed it had the highest quality panel. After taking delivery of the TV, we noticed it had bright lower left and right corners that we later found out were due to new packaging that pinched the TV and caused most of the TVs in that batch to be ruined. Samsung claimed that the corners were "in spec" and refused…

Samsung's appliances have a pretty bad reputation in general, especially the refrigerators and side loading washing machines.

We bought a 1.5k refrigerator which died after 2 years (warranty expires exactly at that time in Europe). We had extended repair, it died again after another year.

Never again!

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