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Comment on We'll pay you $10,000 to DE-shitify this Samsung refrigerator

neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

I don’t know if this would be possible given the bounty’s requirements.

Let’s say you come up with some new firmware for the fridge that replaces all the hostnames on the advertising calls with ‘localhost’. Great. But if all other features on the device need to keep functioning, including any phone-home firmware update functionality, the fridge will re-enshitify itself on its next update. It either needs new fridge hardware (not allowed in the bounty requirements) or some kind of network container (like pi-hole, also not allowed).

So the entire bounty is an exercise in futility. But… perhaps that’s the point.

This is a demonstration of why the law, as written, is fucked and needs to be changed. I think that may be the main the point.

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Sandbar_Trekker@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yeah, one of the main points of this project is to help them reform Sec 1201 of the DMCA.

As far as for how to do it, I’m not sure if you would have to come up with something that would work even through an official Samsung update. From what I can tell, it would be enough to have it work with Home Assistant instead while blocking future updates. It’s definitely worth a question to the bounty team to get clarification on that point though.

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Sandbar_Trekker@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Following up on this. I sent an email out to the team and got a response already.

To summarize, they would rather the solution work through updates for security fixes, but they were willing to compromise if automatic updates were disabled with the option for users to manually update somehow:

Tap for email/response
Initial email: > Hi, > > Just a quick question about this point in the bounty: > > - Restore the fridge to its original functionality, by removing any possibility of adverts being presented on the display (all other smart features must be retained) > > When you say, “all other smart features must be retained” does this mean that the solution must retain the ability to allow the fridge to automatically update its firmware if Samsung pushes out a future update? > > Would it be okay if, instead, we disabled the automatic update but still allowed the end user to manually update if they really wanted to? > > Or would it be okay if the end user could just reapply the solution after an official firmware update? > > Thanks,
> <Redacted> Response: > Hey <Redacted>, > > Just chatted with the team, and we think it would be better for it to have updates, and optional ones sounds like a sensible compromise. We don’t want to sacrifice security for control. I hope that answers your question. Thanks!

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