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Comment by sdenton4 | Hacker News Reader

Once, some time ago, I was working on an Interesting Feature for an app using wifi hotspots to connect multiple devices. There were LOTS of problems getting this working properly on arbitrary devices, but I found that Joe-random devices pumped out of a back room in Shenzen... Actually usually weren't bad. The worst were Samsung devices: endless changes deep in the stack for no apparent reason, which created all kinds of funny behavior that had to be discovered the hard way and accounted for. (Also, it turns out there are like twenty different phones called the J2. Nightmare for bug reporting...)

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I've had surprisingly good luck with generic hardware based on well-known chipsets.

Samsung, though. They see themselves more like Apple and want to control more of the ecosystem, but they're not very good at it, and no one wants it. They make decent hardware, but they let their software ambitions get in the way.

cough ...bixby... cough

Man, I hate comments like this.

At least leave a link to whatever it is that you’re referencing or say why you think it's relevant.

Bixby is just Samsungs personal assistant program. Similar to Siri or Alexa.

I think it's reasonable to expect the HN crowd to know what Bixby is and why it's relevant. I agree that the comment doesn't add much to the discussion, though.

Sorry, to explain: Bixby is Samsung's attempt at jumping on the "intelligent assistant" bandwagon. It's technically pretty good, but it has been pushed down Samsung user's throats by being non-uninstallable, having a dedicated button on the phone to enable it (that is really hard to disable), and trampling over Google assistant in random ways (like causing occasional issues with Android Auto etc).

It's a lost cause that Samsung refuse to admit should be dead. It's pretty much the canonical example of Samsung making good hardware, but having a terrible plan when it comes to software.

Honestly, I figured everyone on HN would have at least heard of Bixby, as it's been a garbage fire for the last few years, and it touches on ML / mobile / questionable business decisions and terrible UX. This seems like a Venn diagram that includes ~90% of HN users.

Never heard of it, but I'm always happy to be part of the 10% of exceptional people.

Thanks for the explanation!

> The worst were Samsung devices: endless changes deep in the stack for no apparent reason,

Well, doesn't google do the same? They just pissed off because they are on the receiving end now.

They have become a lot better at upstreaming their changes.

Also note that the Zdnet headline seems bogus. Better look at the actual source[1] for their "news" which was posted to HN some time ago.

[1] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/02/mitigations-a...

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