This is definitely on the horizon and future generations won’t even be aware of a time when you didn’t pay a subscription for every aspect of life. (TikTok screencap)
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I think there was a Black Mirror episode like this.
Did all these companies watch Black Mirror and say “great idea”?
Meanwhile some Europeans inherited a 1962 Liebherr Fridge that still works in 2050
Most of the older stuff is really energy inefficient. That said they have looser tolerances so they break less and keep on chugging.
The new stuff has tighter tolerances and is made to reduce cost. These powers combined make them shit.
The worst part is that in a lot of cases paying more won’t actually get you out of the trash. They just strap smart garbage to the cheap shit. You have to pay 5 to 10 times the amount for an actual decent appliance (ie one that’s just good at doing what it is supposed to do) and even then it’s a gamble.
IDGAF about energy efficency when entire datacenters are dedicated to making uncanny valley porn from stolen data.
Yeah we had to replace our piece of shit Samsung fridge this year and after doing days of research it turns out pretty much all fridges are pieces of shit these days.
And the few that aren’t, start at $13k.
Angle grinder goes brrr
They already have the key functions of their smart fridges tied to the tablet shoved in the door. I’ve seen multiple instances of Samsung Family Hub fridges stop cooling and the fix was a factory reset of the tablet as it was unresponsive. Absolutely fucking deplorable imo. But also means if you make an “aggressive alteration”, the fridge probably gets bricked and you are left with an expensive and smelly cabinet.
meanwhile the fridge from 1986 is still running in my garage and doesn’t need me to ask how it’s feeling or update firmware
…That’s a Bosch refrigerator with a tablet stuck to it, presumably with a magnet. (Yes, we ruin everything for you on the Internet.)
Still. Samsung would absolutely try to pull this if they thought they could get away with it.
Well yeah I mean the image is a joke…
Sure, but for some godawful reason Samsung genuinely does make a series of refrigerators with a stupid touch screen in the door, it’s just that this isn’t one of them.
Another random fun fact about those, since we’re kibitzing and we’ll never get a chance to touch on this topic ever again, these silly fridges run Samsung’s Tizen operating system which at one point was supposed to be a successor to MeeGo, i.e. in and of itself the successor to the Maemo OS which ran on the venerable Nokia N900. But this categorically failed to set the world of mobile phones on fire, and nowadays is relegated to being used to making Samsung fridges and televisions annoying. Just one of those things, I guess.
Eye movement trackers will only count the ads you actually watch.
New gig economy side hustle arises, ad-watcher. I’ll come into your home and watch all your unskippable ads for $35 an hour plus tip
Won’t work if they have a serialization scheme, which all these manufacturers are doing these days, uniquely mapping the person to their fridge (its 2050 remember, everyone is neuro-chipped uniquely identified when interfacing with everything).
Additional members who can use the fridge $20/month, but you can map 3 members for $50/month (WOW best value!), and if multiple people watch the ad simultaneously, they can pool their ad time towards the countdown!
Of course there will be a weird bug whereby sometimes one of the people will not be counted
But only members from the same household are allowed. (like streaming services want these days)
Also, if you want your freezer to work, you need to pay an additional €20 for the premium plus package. Don’t see this as bad because now you can cancel that function during winter and activate it during the summer. So only pay for it when you need it. (the argument BMW gave for paying monthly for enabling stuff like seat heaters. For fuck sake, you already have the function in your car, it’s just paywalled)
The required brain chip app monitors attentional neural networks while stimulating the image centers to display ads. Common side effects are nausea, vomiting, over throwing the state, and vertigo.
Actually (put on fedora) a “smart” fridge is not necessarily bad.
No what absolutely sucks is lock-in and enshittification.
If you were to imagine a FLOSS OSHW fridge that used e.g. OpenFoodFacts and data from your purchases, e.g. OCRing your grocery list receipt or online purchases and genuinely helped with stock, recipes, diet, etc why not.
The WHOLE point is control, it’s not the technology.
Yeah. People hate “smart” stuff and IOT and i sometime do too, but owning a bit of automation tech makes me realise the shitty thing about these tech is we’re being forced to use it for even the basic shit and in THEIR term, which mean they can brick your stuff if they want to.
I have two aircond that comes with IOT that i can connect for extra feature, but that’s entirely optional stuff, i can operate it like a normal aircond. We need stronger consumer protection and more personal control.
Home Assistant ftw
It’s come so far! It used to just be for tech nerds and privacy extremists. But it’s so easy to use now, everyone who wants to enjoy the IoT world again without losing personal control can do it!
It’s cooking absolutely but we need a whole class of contributors that only work with support and uiux that really enjoy helping people because there’s always that one little thing that’s vague in the docs and obvious to everyone else
I get they can’t support an old device forever, but then a local API should be available by law.
Exactly, we don’t need to ditch computers and smartphones and go “back to nature” like some people say. We need control.
Counterpoint - we do not need appliances capable of running operating systems with userlands. A pre-programmed microcontroler should be more than enough for most appliances
I hate that any new tech nowadays is caveated by this perversion of right to ownership.
It’s gotten to the point that I either actively seek older tech, or just go for even more expensive niche tech by small private tech players like Framework. But then my worry becomes, are these small private tech companies actually principled or are they just waiting on their exit strategy to be bought out?
Theoretically, I suppose that you could reflash your fridge. It’s unlikely that it’s running a dedicated embedded system nowadays. It has to be either android or Linux (or maybe Windows if they’re idiots, which is always a possibility).
Why are we waiting 25 years for technology we have today? We shoud as a tip screen while we’re at it.
Ooh yes a tip screen pops up every time before allowing you access to the fridge then when you select the tip (because there’s no ‘no thanks’ option) it then asks you if you’d like to round up to the nearest $5 for charity.
oops this is the unopened one, here we go again
I try to leave and my bracelet mandated by the Terms of Service immediately administers an electric shock.
Mine has no ads, no sub. 🤷♂️
They stopped looking at a screen for a second to open the fridge, quick install a screen on the front! Prediction: Screens will appear inside the fridge as well.
It detects if you look away from the 67 ads and starts over if you do.
Draper’s law: Any screen a company can control will eventually display ads.
thats too absurd
I wonder how your comment will age in 1, 10, 100 years.
2050?? Lmao. More like 2026…
