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Comment by ndriscoll | Hacker News Reader

This is why OTA updates should simply be illegal/considered negligent engineering. If you want a convenient update, let people plug their phones or computers in via a USB port or something, or take it to a mechanic to do so. There shouldn't be security concerns with an appliance because it shouldn't be writable outside of an owner-intended maintenance mode, which should be impossible to activate wirelessly.

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Wait until when fridge or TV will come with its own 5G chip and they will get bricked by remote update because it is time to buy a new one and there will be nothing you can do about it.

They don't have to do this. The cheap materials in the compressor or cheap capacitors used on the power supply board will just silently fall. And the cost to repair the problem, for the average person, will be slightly less than just buying a newer version of the crap that just broke.

My LG refrigerator recently stopped cooling. The error code suggested it was the defrost mechanism. It was more of a hassle of a repair than I wanted to take on so I found an authorized repair shop on the LG site and opted for their flat rate repair.

First trip the repairman replaced all of the defroster parts and sensors. It failed again with the same code 18 hours later. The second time he replaced the main board and at least one other part. It now works great and I have effectively a new fridge aside from the compressor for less than $400.

Compressor still has three years of warranty left and we expect to move before then. It can (hopefully) be someone else's problem.

I've got various IP subranges categorized by probability of having to block them in the router's firewall.

Main idea was locking updates to once or twice a year and resort to HomeAssistant.

It's at 33% execution stage so no idea on the feasibility.

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