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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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.
if its not a non profit it would be closer to true
It’s not because it includes company control.
This reminds me. I need to call my uncle and ask him about that Fridge at his country place that’s been running since 1994. He’s selling his place and I want that fridge!
It’s been running since 1994? He should probably think about catching it!
daaaaad!
Sorry kiddo but you know I had to do it
Sadly, fridges are the one appliance that uses the most energy, it runs 24/7, so running an older model will cost you a lot in the long term. I have a 20 year old fridge that hasn’t had a problem ever, save a broken glass shelf and a door basket, and I’m replacing it with a dumb one with the best energy rating. It’s the same with cars, although it’s getting harder to find “dumb” cars.
Old fridges don’t cost that much. My uncle’s fridge costs him 3 dollars a month to run in Quebec. Compare that to a new fridge. There’s not that much of a difference. The whole “energy efficient” narrative is borderline bullshit when it comes to fridges.
My fridge is about that old too. It’s entirely possible that fridge will still be chugging along in 2050. Whereas a brand new Samsung fridge has about a zero chance of lasting until 2050.
Not zero, about the same as the survivorship bias of old appliances.
And the electricity cost will be about 10 times lower.
It wont be ten times lower. I promise. I’ve researched this. Old Fridges only cost a bit more to run. Factor in the cost of buying a new fridge you now have to buy every 5 to 10 years and you actually come out ahead. My uncle’s fridge costs him 3 dollars a month to run. That’s not that bad.
Just don’t get the screen wet, if the screen is broken, the fridge won’t work for “safety” reasons.
Drink verification can to access refrigerator.
Then you are stuck, cause the verification can is inside.
That’s why it’s important to have a redundant backup fridge with a recovery verification can.
Yes! Why hasn’t anyone posted the copypasta for this?
On a related note, I was looking at RTINGS recently at their recommended TVs. One really important item for me is that I’m not subjected to ads.
It turns out that every single smart TV they tested has ads, and there’s no way to opt out of those ads.
https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/ads-in-smart-tv
It’s not possible to “vote with your dollars” to choose a TV that doesn’t have ads, because 100% of the TVs have ads now.
I know you can get a commercial flat panel intended for restaurants and stuff that doesn’t have any of those features, but those are hard to find, expensive, and don’t have basic features like multiple inputs.
If you think you can get around this by refusing to connect your TV to the Internet, some of them start to interfere with your use of them until you do connect them. Which ones? I wish RTINGS told me.
And, making it all worse, you know that every one of these things is going to have an EULA that allows them to enshittify it even more at some future date. And, you can’t get around that either, because either they’re designed to stop working if they don’t a recent update, or there’s a bomb planted in an update that only activates months later, so rolling back (if that’s even possible) won’t help you.
I know US law is never going to help consumers with this, but I do hope eventually Europe addresses this. People in Europe do still sometimes seem to have some rights when it comes to big companies.
“there’s no way to opt out of… ads”
FYI… You want an oubliette for ads, and PiHole is your friend there. No hyperbole. Easy install & upkeep, remarkably effective, active community of devs & fans of all sorts, and just nice people all the way down, IMHE. 🙇🏼♂️✊🏻
Essentially, said ads have to come from somewhere before being presented to your eyeballs/eardrums, and a PiHole let’s the ad servers think they’re doing exactly that, but sends them into the void, instead. Clean, efficient, silent.
Fuck capitalism, but don’t tell it you’re doing so. No reason to notify it of it’s failure to inundate your household. 🤓🖖🏼
PiHole let’s the ad servers think they’re doing exactly that
PiHole blocks the ads by manipulating the DNS entries of known ad servers. So, the ad servers don’t get any traffic. It’s the ad clients that are affected. The ad servers never get any traffic.
Do the PiHole block lists work for TVs? Probably. But, the block lists are mostly built for web / app clients. It probably works if your TV uses Google TV. But, it’s possible that other TV operating systems like Tizen use a different source for its ads that isn’t on the blocklist. The worst case would be if the ads came from the same domain as the updates for the TV OS. You could block that domain, but then your TV couldn’t get updates. And some TVs, if they can’t get updates will start to complain and interfere with your use of them.
I wouldn’t want to risk it, so I’d prefer to get a dumb TV that still had all the standard TV features: a TV tuner, multiple inputs, a high refresh rate, decent speakers, etc. But, failing that, I’d be OK with a smart TV that didn’t have ads built in. But, apparently neither of those things is easy to find anymore.
I wouldn’t want to risk it
You’ve already made your choice. 🤷🏼♂️
It’s not possible to “vote with your dollars” to choose a TV that doesn’t have ads, because 100% of the smart TVs have ads now.
There, FTFY.
At least Sceptre has a wide selection of dumb TVs. There are more brands if you search.It was 100% of the TVs that RTINGS had reviewed, which was 501 different TVs, but apparently no SCEPTRE TVs at all.
Unfortunately, it looks like the SCEPTRE TVs don’t get very good ratings:
HD picture quality was only decent. It did an excellent job displaying the finest detail of HD content. Color accuracy was acceptable, but below that of most models…
This model has fair sound quality with below average performance.
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/tvs/sceptre-c550cv-u/m393713/
So, I guess there is one manufacturer who still makes dumb TVs, it’s their low-end line and doesn’t get good reviews, but it is a dumb tv, which is nice.
I don’t know if this is helpful, but I recently bought a 55” Hisense and I just plug my old-school Roku USB stick into it. The UI is super basic and ad-free. It’s not 4k or anything, but for streaming shows and playing PS5 it works like a charm.
Here’s what RTINGS says about one of the Hisense TVs:
Ads Yes
Opt-out No
Suggested Content in Home Yes
Opt-out of Suggested Content No
Unfortunately, like most TVs on the market, the smart interface contains ads, and you can’t disable them.
And someone on another site has a video showing an ad playing as soon as their Hisense TV is turned on. The person posting says it doesn’t happen every time. And, maybe it’s disabled if you have it set to turn on using “input 2” or whatever your USB stick is connected to. But, an unskippable ad on start-up means I’m not going to risk buying a Hisense TV.
Just don’t connect your TV to the internet? I really don’t get why anyone would do such a thing in the first place.
Never had any ads on a TCL TV because it can’t reach any servers. And it happily is chugging along.
Just don’t connect your TV to the internet? I
Some TV models start to complain if they’re not connected to the internet, interfering with your use of them.
Do you really need multiple inputs? Pair it with a nice receiver and let that handle the inputs.
How much is a nice receiver going to cost me?
Whatever it takes! This is how you get the best home audio!
Ok, so that isn’t a suitable recommendation.
If you’re serious, there’s a range of products available to match your needs. Do you want full surround support? Just stereo? Bells and whistles or basics? How many inputs? Specific power requirements? The price ranges can take you anywhere from the low hundreds to the many thousands. Need some requirements first.
The price ranges can take you anywhere from the low hundreds
So, the price of a TV. If I had lots of money to spend I’d love to have one, but realistically it’s not worth it when it’s that expensive. I’ll just get a TV with multiple inputs.
Is there a kind of open source dumb appliance movement out there? It sure seems like we need one.
They wouldn’t be free as in beer, but it would be awesome to have widely available instructions to take existing mass produced parts and assemble a functional and serviceable appliance.
Or maybe just a control module and some sensors that you can use to retrofit smart appliances.
I’m sure the big companies would keep them from gaining mass adoption though, thanks to cheap appliances with ads and junk parts. They probably already have.
I had an idea to create FOSH (Free open source hardware) license and wiki that contains schematics and plans for making your own hardware, be it a fridge or printer, or handheld label machine but i dont know if it will be worth anyones time. I dont have electrical engineering degree so i couldnt do more than test the products and maintain the website.
Or … just don’t connect it to the internet?
It is not because it has a wifi antenna or an ethernet port that you need to connect it. Especially if you only want to use the dumb features anyway.
Or … just don’t connect it to the internet?
It is not because it has a wifi antenna or an ethernet port that you need to connect it.
This is increasingly becoming a false statement, unfortunately. Companies are indeed forcing customers to connect in order to use the regular features. For instance, Roku TVs won’t let you change to a regular HDMI input without first connecting and accepting their ToS and updates.
Secondly, even when the forced connection hasn’t been implemented yet, the problem is not entirely fixed. These fridges with digital panels are notorious for randomly having that panel fail, and then the ENTIRE FRIDGE stops working, even though the actually useful compressor and refrigeration loop is intact. Of course, the company will also refuse to sell you a replacement digital panel.
A smart appliance disconnected is still significantly worse than a dumb appliance.
That’s why I also mentioned them being made cheaply and using junk parts.
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
We have determined that we’ll be able to fill 80% of the user’s display with advertising before inducing seizures.
You’ll have to own the Oasis first.
…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.
PiHole saves the day yet again.
Until it’s deemed illegal to block ads and you lose points on your social credit rating, more bodies for the corporate prison system.
The fridge couldn’t reach the manufacturer’s servers, it gives an error and locks itself refusing to being open and a message appears “Cannot verify subscription status. Contact technical support”
Sounds like something that can be fixed by a little angle grinding.
That’s what she said?
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!
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)
Of course there will be a weird bug whereby sometimes one of the people will not be counted
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.
You also need to purchase a minimum of 60% of what the ads promote otherwise you clearly didn’t pay attention and your fridge will stay locked or starts heating instead of cooling.
I think there was a Black Mirror episode like this.
Did all these companies watch Black Mirror and say “great idea”?
We’ll be drinking our pee on Twitch to be able to afford to pay for our ice dispensor.
Ah yes, the good old Torment Nexus approach.
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.
Also the ads are taking 3x as long as normal to load because your fridge, washer, dryer, smart picture frame, and smart light bulbs are part of a botnet-for-hire, unbeknownst to you
Brawndo’s got what plants crave!
