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Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

us.community.samsung.com

341–350 of 580 posts

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#341
post #200

Should be codified by law: - If a firmware can be updated, it must keep a minimum ROM feature so it can be recovered. - No device should be updated without the *owner* explicit intention to do so. - Full docs must be released if the vendor stops supporting it.

In EU, Cyber Resilience Act requires automatic updates, so the second point is moot. Most owners want just plug and play, so it makes sense. Even third point is pretty moot. We don't do that for hardware, why for software... A component is no longer manufactured? Tough luck, hopefully you stockpiled it.

Um, that's not what "moot" means.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#342
post #20

If the damage is actually as bad as it sounds, Samsung is probably talking with their lawyers and is being instructed to maintain radio silence so as to better prepare for the class-action lawsuit.

Wouldn’t radio silence increase damages to customers and result in increased liability?

That's logical reasoning, not corporation reasoning.

Nobody involved in the decision making cares about the customers. They only care about the potential hit to the bottom line, and if that's perceived as callous silence, they don't care. Unless, of course, they decide that appearing to care and being responsive results in less of a hit.

Silences like these are strategic and dependably predictable - engaging with customers on average costs more than remaining silent for whatever metric they've applied to the fix. If it takes longer than they thought, they might feel compelled to speak out, or they could just depend on the issue to fade into the 24 hour news cycle. Engaging with a customer runs the risk of them interacting with some threshold of people that will keep the negative story in the headlines for longer than it might otherwise be.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#343
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, some people say they got replacements through the warranty. The problem is, this thing is really big and heavy, so boxing it up is a real pain, especially if you've had it a while and already threw out the original box.

That's why my buddy said it's time to buy shares in bubble wrap

Nah, just be a geezer and wrap it in bin bags and then tape around. It's bricked anyway, innit.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#344
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Crowdstrike crashed half the computers on the planet for a full day? Well, if you do, you're one of the few, because people are still using Crowdstrike, and the stock is still doing well overall.

It’s still one of the best antimalwares on the planet.

That's fair. In fact, you might say that for a competently set up fleet of computers, nothing beats it.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#345
I always really enjoy these community forums. They are total garbage.

Hello, I am Rene, a community expert on the Hacker News Experience Forums. I see you are having trouble with an auto-flagged post. I will try to help you with your auto-flagged post. Have you tried turning off your kitchen tap and turning it back on again?

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#346

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…

> 2. A failsafe firmware reset back to factory state.

Do you mean like a physical button? That could work, though I'm not sure I've ever seen it. Holding down power for 10 seconds (or whatever) usually just erases user data, but doesn't reset firmware. Are you aware of any device that does this? But does it require some meta-firmware to roll back the firmware? What if that meta-firmware has a security flaw and needs to be updated? And that update is faulty?

If you're talking about a code sent from your servers to devices to reset, that seems like asking for the impossible. If a firmware update bricks the device, that may very well brick its ability to receive codes at all.

In both situations, it starts to feel like a problem of infinite regress...

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#347

Do you guys miss owning things and they were just...yours? Like, you paid money for them and then you had them and you had full control over them and someone half a world away wasn't able to reach into your house and break them or make them do evil things?

Not really. My iPhone, and especially my AirPods, have gotten massive feature upgrades since I bought them, and I didn't have to pay a thing.

And I assume my WiFi router updates have helped prevent people doing evil things with my devices.

Samsung's update here is obviously a massive fail, but it's one consumer device out of tens of thousands. I think it's clear the benefits outweigh the harms on the whole. Definitely sucks if you bought this particular soundbar though.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#349
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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: http…

How much benefit could that bring versus burning reputation and losing it all? These companies are so big and powerful but time and time again they keep on forgetting that they can't exist without the users and when users start leaving it's hard to reverse that trend.

There is no reputation to burn, they're well known to do this kind of stuff by anyone bothering to look it up, and nearly nobody looks it up anyway.

It's a pity because I liked some of their hardware in the past (an NX camera I still have, hard disks back in the IDE stone age, 3 LCD screens back from when they were a novelty - they only had a VGA connector) but I just stay away from them now. But 0.01% of their customers staying away is completely insignificant when they consider the profit opportunity of violating our privacy.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#350
post #205
post #39

My Samsung TV got more and more unusable with every update. Over the years, saved apps, like Youtube, started to disappear every time it woke up. Then it would default to their Samsung TV app, rather than your last app. Samsung TV app happened to be on the Baywatch channel every time my young children started the stupid thing. Finally, after it took 2 minutes to load the youtube app, I factory-reset the device, disco…

I never worked for Samsung, but I built TVs for JVC and LG, among many other brands. I don't work in consumer electronics anymore but a decade ago that was my field. TVs are a wildly unprofitable business. It's astoundingly bad. You get 4-6 months to make any profit on a new model before it gets discounted so heavily by retailers that you're taking a bath on each one sold. So every dollar in the BOM (bill of material…

Thanks for sharing. Without insight beyond being a consumer, I do think there's room for disription (ideally from within the industry itself) vs 10y ago.

Comparing models from 2005/2015/2025, for example. Most people literally can't tell 4k from 1080 and anything new in the HD race mostly feels like a scam. The software capabilities are all there. I think to differentiate from the no-name stuff, longevity is going to become a more significant differentiator.

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