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Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

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Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#71

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 firmwa…

But .. but then they can escape the extortion to a working state..

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#72

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 firmwa…

Great points! As an addendum to this, if #2 becomes untenable for whatever reason (such as a vulnerability in the factory firmware image), then this #3 would be good to strive for as well:

3. have a set of conditions to mark the running firmware image as "safe" and have it become the new fallback firmware image for this scenario. That way you can have a recently up-to-date firmware version constantly trailing the new ones

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#73

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

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.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#74

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 firmwa…

Indeed a golden factory firmware version that will be booted automatically if all else fails and that provides minimum connectivity is crucial.

Ability to reset to original out of the box firmware is not only about failsafe. It's also a protection from "bug fixes" taking away features you had out of the box.

I'm still pissed off about LG removing record to disk option from our TV after an upgrade. I've only connected it to internet & upgraded assuming some of those bug fixes resolved few dlna issues otherwise it's always on internet block list.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#76
post #62

Unplug the soundbar and listen to the sound from the TV while you wait until Samsung fixes their shit. What's the problem?

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.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed a golden factory firmware version that will be booted automatically if all else fails and that provides minimum connectivity is crucial.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#78
post #58

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 firmwa…

This is what everybody wants, but almost nobody does. Time to market, etc.

You need to have the firmware equivalent of a platform team.

It's common now for medium and large companies to have some variant of a cloud platform team: People responsible for shared practices, infrastructure, and processes in the cloud.

Smart hardware companies have done the same for decades. You have a firmware platform team that handles things like update protocols, recovery protocols, testing checklists, on-device OTA update architecture, and other critical functions.

When you're a company like Samsung that continuously releases and develops products this actually increases your time to market rather than decreasing it. You let each product team focus on the parts of the firmware that make their product valuable and free them from having to roll their own update systems

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#79
post #12

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.

Automated updates are a way for companies to push updates on you without having to first convince you that the updates are good.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#80
post #34
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably some new AI/tracking/ad delivery features

It's a speaker system. It plays sound. Why could it possibly have AI, tracking, or ad delivery?

> It's a speaker system. It plays sound. Why could it possibly have AI, tracking, or ad delivery?

To recognize what you listen to, build a profile, feed it back to Samsung, which will use it in deciding what crap to display on your Samsung TV (and any other devices) associated to the same profile. For all we know it's even listening to your conversation in the room, I mean, it's Samsung - they literally do this:

https://entertainment.ie/trending/yes-your-samsung-smart-tv-...

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/samsungs-warning-our-smart...

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