Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse • Hacker News Board

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#301

Post by javajosh » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

arduinomancer wrote: post #287

This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble? Why is everyone so confused that smart TVs are popular? Being able to just turn on your TV and open Netflix without messing around with inputs/other devices is a huge benefit for non-technological people. And it probably costs <$50 for the manufacturer to include whatever chip is running linux in the TV, its a no-brainer.

It's Samsung hate, not smart tv hate (although there's that too).

(I have a smart tv but honestly I don't want it anymore. I'm creeped out by the whole idea of it, and I don't like how it's always updating, or complains with blinking lights when it's not on the internet. No ads though. For now. It's kinda hard to find a dumb TV but I may just go with either a large-ish computer monitor or a projector.)

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#302

Post by yardie » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

hellbannedguy wrote: post #267

jandrese wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ice makers are notoriously flimsy. Serious race to the bottom by the manufacturers. The good news is that they're easy to replace (undo a couple of bolts and unplug a cable and they usually come right out), bad news is the replacements are ridiculously expensive, like $100 each and come with all of the same design flaws the original had. There is also surprisingly little standardization which makes the replacements e…

Most were up to a few years ago, but the big players went out of their way to make dependable ice makers--I thought. The last two refrigerators I bought had dependable ice makers. I just overheard an installer talking to a neighbor while installing his refrigerator. The tech said most modern refrigerations only last 10 years at best though.

10 years is actually quite good for major appliances. If you're warrantied for 3 and manage to get 10 years out if it you've exceeded the design parameters. Environmentally, replacing a broken fridge is usually the only time someone will even research something more energy efficient.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#303

Post by vjust » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

How can they know for sure that some activation was invalid. I'd think this could be challenged in court. If hypothetically the SA govt. declares amnesty for the looting, then will Samsung unlock it. Just saying.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#304

Post by gruez » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #245

gruez wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it depends on who initiates the lock. If a company can choose to arbitrarily lock my device then inevitably it will be misused. In the case of phones it is usually the customer initiating a lock, either from Find My Phone style apps or through the carrier itself. why does this matter? In either case the entity responsible for handling the lock request is the company itself.

The company has to coordinate it because otherwise I would need to have a server that supports some remote locking protocol and my phone configured for it. Who initiates it matters because if a TV vendor can arbitrarily brick your TV for something after you've paid cash for it, then that smells of theft. The same thing if a TelCo could or would arbitrarily brick a device I paid for. The distinction is that I'm tellin…

>Who initiates it matters because if a TV vendor can arbitrarily brick your TV for something after you've paid cash for it, then that smells of theft. The same thing if a TelCo could or would arbitrarily brick a device I paid for. The distinction is that I'm telling them to do this to my phone.

What happened in south africa:

* TVs are sitting inside a factory

* TVs are owned by samsung

* factory gets robbed

* the owner (samsung) tells the manufacturer (samsung) to brick the devices

I fail to see how it's different than:

* iPhone is sitting in your pocket

* iPhone is owned by you

* you get robbed

* the owner (you) tells the manufacturer (apple) to brick the device

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#305

Post by zamadatix » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

mrkramer wrote: post #200

PeterisP wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMEI blacklisting has nothing to do with private information or user of previous phone number, it does not try to do that, it's a technique that attempts to prevent stolen phones to be used by anyone as the operators would refuse to allow that device (identified by the device's IMEI number) to connect to their network.

But the crucial question is when was device stolen; "a priori" of someone using it or "a posteriori" of someone using it. Samsung refers to TV being stolen "a priori" of consumer using it("A TV blocking system has been activated on Samsung television sets stolen from our warehouse") but if a TV is stolen posteriori of someone using it maybe blocking can come in handy in order to protect consumer's private information…

I think the same question comes into play here as well, what does blocking have to do with protecting private information?

If it actually had some tie-in to the previous users information I'd follow why it's relevant to the conversation better. As is blocking IMEIs and TVs from registering seems completely unrelated to stealing the existing local data so I can't follow the distinction.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#306

Post by mrkramer » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

mrkramer wrote: post #174

Jaepa wrote: post #73

How different is this from IMEI blacklisting of stolen phones? The secondary market for stolen phones has kind of disappeared despite cost of phones increasing. EDIT: I think there is plenty of reason to want an open source tv os. They are terrible, ad ridden, bloated commodities. But this seems to be only valid use of DRM I can think of.

On your phone you might have unencrypted private content and information on the other hand on Smart TV you have entertainment apps and entertainment content no private information at least that is what I think most people have and do. I don't anybody who stores private information on the Smart TV so when stolen Smart TVs start to circulate on the market no private information can be acquired or accessed(besides maybe…

I don't know anybody*

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#307

Post by est31 » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

InitialLastName wrote: post #232

ezconnect wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem of current consumers. The modern TVs have an equivalent no smart same spec screen but only available to corporate users with all the modern inputs just without the smart. If only we could get access to that market.

> If only we could get access to that market. You often have access to it, it's just a higher price (sometimes double) because it isn't subsidized by advertising.

The subsidies from advertising don't cause thousands of dollars of difference. It's maybe a few dozen, or few hundred at the most. Facebook's yearly revenue per user is about 33 USD, and they probably have a way better grip on your eyeballs. A TV lives about 5 to 7 years.

The way larger component is due to effects of scale which punishes products that run in small batches, and the effect that the "business" version of something is usually more expensive, but available with higher quality, than the consumer version.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#308

Post by ukyrgf » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #56

The larger question for society is do we even want smart everything? I rarely see this issue debated. Undoubtedly, software enables complex/rich functionality for what were hitherto relatively "dumb" devices, but the same flexibility can also lead to exploits, backdoors, bugs and place too much control in the hands of the manufacturers and many other nameless parties. The most important aspect here is remote connecti…

A few months back I found a very nice Samsung TV locked in a closet. I looked it up and it cost like $3,500 a few years back. When I asked about it, my boss said "I bought it to watch soccer but it doesn't have any apps, what good is it?" He had never heard of Roku/Apple TV/Fire TV.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#309

Post by com2kid » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

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.

Front loading washing machines just seem like an all around more fragile design that is also less usable.

I have an HE top loader. It uses just as little water, but it can wash a lot more clothes when needed. I can push a button and it stops being HE and can fill its tub up to wash blankets and comforters.

Also front loaders just can't clean synthetic fabrics that water beads off of. I've seen fabrics come out of a front loader almost completely dry because the tiny bit of water that is used can't even penetrate the outer layer of fabric. Mostly my Ikea comforters, I put one in a front loader I used to have and after a complete wash cycle it wasn't even damp, and it was still very dirty.

Finally, front loaders are mechanically more complex. For one, if that seal fails, well, it leaks. The simplicity of a Top loaders means they can last longer, and in the very least top loaders don't get all gunked up around the door seal. I have seen so many front loaders that smell awful because no one ever cleans the crud out of the seal, ick!

Aside from space savings, I really don't get the point of a front loader at all. Maybe the tumbling action is better at some types of cleaning?

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#310

Post by danlugo92 » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #288

ren_engineer wrote: post #50

forget smart TVs, I want somebody to just make a decent dumb TV. Same thing goes for cars, I feel like there is a huge market for "dumb" products. Manufacturers feel the need to keep adding features for some reason

For cars stuff is even harder now. EU for example has regulations that make mandatory for all new cars to come with tracking devices and logging of what you do with the car. EDIT: just remembered the name of one of such things. It is "eCall", now mandatory on EU. It mandates all cars must have GPS, Galileo, microphone, logging, cellphone transmitter, and be able to detect a serious emergency happened and call the pol…

Sounds like something out of China.