It’s our fault for buying these pieces of shit.
We need individual names and faces of executives, publicly linking them to their deeds.
“The corporation” didn’t do it.
They didn’t do it because “it’s their job”
They had a “screw humans over” button in front of them and knowingly pushed it when they themselves know they didn’t have to.
Corporations cannot act. People can, and they are the ones responsible.
And I’m just here using a fridge that’s been going since before the fall of Yugoslavia…
Any idiot that bought one of these fridges deserves what they get.
Why would you need a smart fridge ?
Throughout history mankind has suffered the burden of stupid fridges. We need to celebrate this momentous breakthrough.
Amen
As always, it’s because some people have too much money.
Dave , Daaaave . You’ve had too much ice cream tonight Dave. Eat some vegetables Dave, they are good for you
Eat some vegetables
I’m afraid I can’t do that 🍰
I’m never buying a “smart” appliance for my home if I can help it.
None of these need this shit. Give me basic ass buttons. I just need my fridge to be cold, make ice, and spit out water. That’s as smart as I want.
None of these things need a wifi connection.
This is the old man hill I will die on.
Do you not have a faucet?
I do, but the fridge has colder filtered water.
I didn’t buy this fridge, mind you.
But I used to just have a filtered jug in the fridge, the tap is fine but it’s nice to have very cold water when you want it.
Ice and water fun a fridge is a luxury, but a nice luxury, and requires zero computers to do it
I’m all in favor of smart appliances… as long as they don’t connect to the Internet. Give me a local HomeAssistant integration. That way, I can check what’s in my refrigerator from my bed without worrying about it showing me ads.
If I really wanted something like that, I’d just buy a dumb fridge and rig up a camera inside of it.
I’d be worried about either compromising the insulation or having to charge my fridge camera. Remember, this is me going to great lengths to be lazy.
I just need my fridge to be cold, make ice, and spit out water. That’s as smart as I want.
Yeah, the same applies to wives. She just needs to be hot, make dinners and swallow rather than spitting out. That’s as smart as I want.
What the fuck
fuck
That too.
this is some edgelord cringe
I’m sitting at home in my tracksuit watching my Andrew Dice Clay tapes and an ad comes on but I’m so deep into a quart of Red, White, and Blue that I can’t find the fast forward button on the remote. Better post on lemmy
Call the nurse, smells like grandpa needs to be changed again.
I once asked why anybody would want a smart fridge. Most people didn’t seem to know. The most common answer was that it could act as a focal point for a busy family for keeping track of things like appointments.
So, like a blackboard/whiteboard, cork board, or even a normal fridge, some paper, and magnets.
I’m no Luddite. I’ve got smart lamps so i can change the lighting in my living room & bedroom without getting up. And I’m looking into heating so i can have my heating come on when i leave work, rather than at a specific time. That saves effort and money.
But i just see no reason whatsoever for anybody to have a smart fridge.
I would very much like a tablet on the wall, like a digital cork board/calendar/photo frame etc
Building it into the fridge with what I assume are zero options about the actual software involved ain’t it though.
Those already exist and they don’t show ads
They have electrolytes.
The one smart feature I could see being nice is inventory tracking.
There’s some new regulation incoming in the EU where they’re doing QR codes on products with the price and also expiry date. A fridge that scans my milk carton as I put it in and then also knows the expiry date would be neat.
I don’t see this as something I could ever need, but for old people or people with various disabilities? Could have its use.
That’s the main use case I’ve heard as well. But, If I have to scan each item as I put it into the fridge, why not just scan it with my phone and keep a less expensive dumb fridge?
The LG concept one I saw that had this, just had enough cameras where there was no way you could put something in without it seeing the QR and scanning it automatically.
Lol. As a software engineer, give me the non-smart version of every appliance, home feature, and television. It’s why I went with a projector over a TV.
Classic!
smart tv: what is my purpose?
me: HDMI 1
How long until we have no real choice? The vast majority of TVs are smart TVs now
Which projector do you use?
I use an Epson and just hook up Roku for streaming or use a nearby PC. It has Android TV, but I never use it.
Unfortunately lots of affordable projectors are also “smart” these days, running some kind of Android TV
Yeah, but affordable projectors sadly all are garbage in the first place, regardless of being smart or not
Car, computer, printer, stove, TV etc…
The crazy thing is that most people don’t care. They will calmly close all the popup ads, obediently sit through YT ads and happily click on sponsored links on reddit. I know one guy who will close and re-open YT app to skip an add. Sometimes he has to do it 10 times in a row before the ad skips but he still thinks it justifies using YT app. People are weird.
My parents bought an Echo Show that they pretty much just ignore nowadays, except to set a timer or tell them the weather every once in a while. All it does all day is sit there and show ads for random stuff. It makes a terrible clock because its too busy showing ads half the time to actually show you the time in a font you can read from across the room. I know you can ask it to tell you the time, but thats so much slower than just looking at a normal clock
Introducing… the Echo Watch. Never be without your echo devices. Ever. We will murder you if you try to leave us. Also prime costs more now and you need an additional subscription.
Amazon. Because fuck you~.
I feel incredibly split on ads.
On one hand the incessant need to market things can be actually positive, offsetting service expenses, allowing things to be cheaper. Streaming is a perfect example of this, as people don’t seem to realise just how expensive it is to maintain the infrastructure for it compared to traditional cable infrastructure, not to mention keeping the apps maintained and bugfixed etc., and then we haven’t even talked about things like content licencing fees, residuals, and so on. Residuals alone mean that a single user can stream enough in just one month to “spend” their whole annual subscription fee on a single actor’s residuals (this is technically unlikely, as one would need to stream a singular TV show or movie 24/7 for 30 days, but still possible).
And obviously people want to pay less. The least possible, that is. Netflix at $5.99 was a steal. Disrupting cable, globally. But that price was also only possible because of various venture capitalists investing heavily in Netflix, which allowed them to pay for the service mostly from that money, and keep prices low to acquire more users. The recent hikes (all the way up to what, $20?) are the result of venture capital drying up, as Netflix went from a market-shaker startup to revenue generating machine. Which is the point of capitalism, isn’t it? Take an ide and make profit/revenue off it.
So how do you offset these increases? By involving a third party who’s willing to pay you, in return for inserting their service into yours, essentially providing your userbase to them. This would mostly be… Advertisers. Marketing.
The problem is that advertising is a cutthroat business, with intense (and incredibly dumb) KPIs to fulfill. For which they need targeting, for which they need data. And this constant crusade for absolutely pinpointed ads that result in the most sales is what’s making it such a disgusting business. It’s not enough to shove ads in your face, those ads HAVE to be perfectly tailored to you, and for that, every smidge of information will be utilised against you.
And this is where I’m torn. On one hand, taking these fuckers’ money to make services we do want, more affordable, is great. On the other hand, them wanting to know literally everything about us, and weaponising it against us, is fucking disgusting.
They are not showing ads for fun. They are showing them to sell stuff. People save $5 on Netflix and then spend $1000 on stupid shit they saw in the ads. Paying more for content without ads lets you escape the consumerist mindset and save money long term. Of course majority of people don’t want that. They are hooked on quick dopamine from buying another toy on Amazon and ads help them find new shit to buy. Other people simply can’t afford to avoid ads and are constantly brainwashed by then into buying one brand over another. Yes, I guess they do get cheap content in exchange but I still find it sad. The entire industry could die tomorrow and we would loose nothing of value.
Oh I fully agree with you. Marketing in general is one of the most evil business segments - only a notch above phone scammers, really. All of it is edged out not to actually market a product but to sell it to you no matter what. Doesn’t matter if you need it, or if you can afford it, or if what they say about the product is true or not, the goal is to sell sell sell. Nothing else matters but taking your money.
Streaming is a perfect example of this, as people don’t seem to realise just how expensive it is to maintain the infrastructure for it compared to traditional cable infrastructure
Much of the cost of streaming for platforms like Netflix, and especially YouTube, are due to the need to centralize it to allow for more data collection. The cost of streaming also gets overblown, by a lot. Companies like Google and Netflix are spending huge amounts of money trying to build out new features and offerings, like games, that make it look like maintaining the streaming service is far more expensive than it is
But that price was also only possible because of various venture capitalists investing heavily in Netflix
Netflix has never needed to rely on venture capital for their streaming platform. Netflix has made a gross profit every quarter since 2011 when this data starts. They have also had a net income all but one of those quarters, which is absolutely insane for a new tech company investing that much in R&D + licensing
The recent hikes (all the way up to what, $20?) are the result of venture capital drying up
No. They’re the result of perpetually increasing profit margins. They were very profitable before the price hikes. Their expenses have gone up far slower than their revenue. It’s simply extracting more wealth without providing additional value
as Netflix went from a market-shaker startup to revenue generating machine
It’s a bit pedantic, but Netflix wasn’t a startup when they got into streaming. They were an existing business that was profitable to fund their pivot to a technology platform
So how do you offset these increases?
Netflix has had an operating income (revenue - operating expenses) of $12.6B over the past 12 months. With ~300M subscribers, that’s about $3.50 per subscriber per month. Subscription prices are much lower in most countries than in the US. For the ~80M US subscribers, that is probably $6 in profit. The $5 cheaper ad tier is probably about what we’d expect their prices to be if they had simply continued to make a couple billion a year in profit. Also keep in mind they would probably get and retain more subscribers with a lower price, and their increased operating expenses includes them building out tons of stupid mobile games most people don’t want, and one-off necessary expenses like building out their original content capabilities
Note: This last bit is doing some napkin math and is subject to error. I didn’t feel like digging deep enough into their financials to get more exact numbers (such as the average subscription price for the rest of the world)
TL;DR – Much of the price increases and addition of ads can be attributed to increasing profit margins, not increased operating costs
And then scroll shit loads of ads on insta
Kill it with fire
Fridge is not mine, source: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/apparently_my_samsung_fridge_has_ads_now/?sort=top
“Start watching”, like anyone would wanna watch a series on their fridge, lol
Right? That’s what my Samsung smartwatch is for
I only know about this thing because louis rossman made a video on it and it’s just… Do you really go to your fridge to watch movies or listen to music? Do you really need cameras on the inside of your fridge? It’s so weird
