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Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

This is the perfect story of 2020s era tech.

Just total engineering incompetence of forced updates with new features for no reason that degrade core workflows and introduce needless instability.

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I would guess it had new 'features'. Certainly nothing that improved things for the consumer since 'keep food cool' isn't something you need to periodically revise (or have an internet connection for). Probably some combination of "new ToS so we can collect more data about customer" and "collect more things about customer we can sell on the third parties".

Sure but the infotainment/smart BS should be firewall off from the "keep the food cold" life safety part of the appliance.

Even Tesla which plays fast & loose with some things.. the car does not come to a halt if the infotainment/GPS/etc tablet reboots. It's VERY disconcerting as you have no speedometer, the car is eerily silent, etc.. but the car still drives.

Just sloppy, cheap, lazy engineering.

Telsa answers to the NTSB. There are rules. A fridge? As long as it doesn't catch fire when you plug it in, it's 'let the market decide' sloppy, cheap, lazy products.

There are a lot more rules than that.

But it is true that the rules don’t anticipate a fridge that cannot refrigerate food if the advertisements aren’t playing properly.

And the best part - nobody learns, and people in general won't change their buying habits much.

"2020s-era tech" is a bit late. An unnecessary and destructive home-appliance update is a big part of the comedy film Popstar, shot over a decade ago already.

And fail (food)unsafe design. What the hell.

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