They’re offloading authentication to your email provider. It’s basically quick and cheap oauth. I think it’s because they’re trying to avoid being a vector for a data breach.

Most phone OSes now have a “lockdown mode” which temporarily disables biometric authentication until you use a PIN to unlock it.

I don’t remember, but I hold my kids’ hands whenever they want me to and whenever I am concerned that they’ll run off into a dangerous situation. (And, to your second-to-last paragraph, I’m a dad haha)

My five-year-old and three-year-old sons actively seek it out. My eight-year-old daughter is ok with it, but doesn’t usually seek it out. My eleven-year-old son doesn’t need it and doesn’t ask for it; if we’re in a crowded place and I need to keep him close, I’ll usually just put a hand on his shoulder.

I don’t like the sky replacement stuff and never use it, but I can imagine that it’s because a photo of the moon is a photo of the moon, while a photo with sky replacement is a photo of something else where the sky just happens to be in the background. Pretty substantial difference.

One is a touch-up. The other is just replacing my photo with a better photo.

The difference was before, it didn’t make the fuzzy moon a clear moon when they took a photo. It was a misleading ad for a feature the phone didn’t actually have.

No, it did. The “feature” was actually released.

My wife and I have phones where we keep our shared calendars, yes. But we have four kids who also have their own lives and schedules, and they often want to know what’s going on, what our plans are, etc. They would value being able to see the day’s upcoming events, too; when the play dates are, when the dentist appointments are, when the days off of school are, what we’re eating for dinner, all of that. Currently, their only access to that information is through our phones.

Having a screen in the kitchen that only shows calendars and a couple of other pieces of data would be useful. We wouldn’t want to be able to watch videos or browse websites on it, though.

Interesting. I have not had that experience, on Tiktok or elsewhere. I do have a similar experience with tech reviewers’ videos on Youtube, though. Albeit not the sponsored ones.

There’s an archive.is link in the original post: https://archive.is/20251027141201/https://www.theverge.com/report/806797/samsung-family-hub-smart-fridge-ads-opt-out

I’m wary of running afoul of copyright laws to literally paste it here, but I think you should be able to get it there.

We’ve tried paper. And dry-erase. The problem is that we keep our calendars and todos and schedules on our phones, which don’t automatically update the paper; and by the second week, we tend to just stop manually updating it. There’s a paper calendar in my office that I just flipped to October last week (from August).

The only way that really seems to work, where we don’t forget an event, is having a single digital shared calendar.

I agree with you there.

We’re a family of six, and the kids don’t have phones. It’s tough to coordinate schedules already and it’s only going to get worse.

I recognize that I’m an edge case.

This is an amazing article. I’m serious. Very well written. This is my favorite part:

I asked Higby why they were bringing ads to the fridges. He said via email, “This pilot further explores how a connected appliance can deliver genuinely useful, contextual information. The refrigerator is already a daily hub, and we’re testing a responsible, user-controlled way to make that space more helpful.”

This is similar to the justification Panos Panay, Amazon’s head of Devices & Services, made to me last month when I asked him about advertising on its Echo devices. He said it was looking to be “elegantly elevating the information that a customer needs.”

Do these people actually believe this? Do they see advertisements in their own lives and think, “ah yes, that was useful and contextual. That was a helpful ad, elegantly elevating my information.” I’ve seen some delusional people in executive-level roles, but that would be a special new class of delusion. Nobody likes ads. I recognize that some people have higher and lower tolerances for them, but nobody is actually grateful for them. Right?! I need to believe this is true.

Both companies claim they want to offer “curated,” “relevant” ads that might “enhance the experience.” I can buy that to some extent when it’s ads for features that your smart fridge or smart display offers. This tech is complicated and capable, and most people only tap into a fraction of what their devices can do.

That’s generous. But ok, maybe I can grant the premise.

But there is no future where third-party advertisements will ever be welcome in people’s homes like this — even if they happen to show me a brand of pet food right when my dog is looking at me with hungry eyes.

Right. Exactly. No matter what, I can think of no situation in which an ad is serving the customer’s interests. Maybe in the case of a coupon? But even then, I think it’s dubious.

Not a “smart” fridge per se, but I can see the use of a screen on my fridge; something where we can see our family calendar, leave notes for each other, and maybe also be able to access the grocery shopping list. Weather would be nice too, though you can keep the news widget (yikes). Something in a visible location in our house, where we go every day.

I’m not sure what other features they advertise with a smart fridge, but those few would be nice; especially if I could just plug a raspberry pi into it and skip all of the Samsung nonsense entirely.

🎶 The answer is always capitalism 🎵

Study Boldly Claims 4K And 8K TVs Aren’t Much Better Than HD To Your Eyes, But Is It True?

The rare exception to Betteridge’s Law.

But yeah, this matches my experience. I can tell the difference between 1080 and 4k from my couch if I work at it, but not enough to impact my enjoyment of what I’m watching, and definitely not as much as the difference HDR makes.

Even at computer monitor distance, running a 4k monitor at 1440 with high pixel density is probably going to be a better experience than wrenching every single pixel you can get out of it. Framerate is better than resolution for gaming, for the most part.

Sounds like you may have some trouble with a certain point of view.

Imagine people in the past saying ‘I googled it and <copy-pasted content of first link>’. Absurd

Am I getting old or just missing something? That actually happened in the 00s-10s. It was even a joke in Parks and Rec.

When BioShock Infinite came out, I thought, “oh, I’m so glad the industry finally figured escort missions out and we won’t have problems with it anymore.”

And yet.

This is what I did. Haven’t felt the need to take it off of airplane mode yet.

Sir Patrick Stewart’s autobiography has a heartbreaking account of his father’s nightly bar visits, and it sounds like he didn’t drink alone.