Review: The June oven made me want a camera in every cooking device | Hacker News Reader

Review: The June oven made me want a camera in every cooking device

arstechnica.com

31 pointsfeross16 comments

Of course, I don't want the government reading my emails, but if June or the NSA or some hacker wants to watch me toast my third bagel of the day, I think the most they'll glean from that is that someone in my household is carbo-loading.

Don't you think your health insurance company would like to keep an eye on your diet to make sure you're eating healthy enough? Do you want Pillsbury to send you ads after June told them you make a lot of cookies?

Seems like there is a treasure-trove of personal data to be mined from such an oven (i.e. what time you eat meals, whether you're home for lunch, what days your girlfriend joins you for dinner, etc)

That review honestly doesn't make a great case.

I have wondered why toasters seem to be such a difficult problem. I have a good one and it toasts evenly but determining doneness for a given type of bread is still pretty much a manual process.

Well, this was pretty much solved in 1949 with the the Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster: http://www.automaticbeyondbelief.org/

Unfortunately this amazing, simple, elegant solution was discontinued in the 1990s.

Surely this just takes the feel/romance away from cooking (More generally rather than referring to this toaster in particular)?

$250 feels like a lot for what is ultimately a gimmick. A sous-vide immersion circulator costs less than that, and that's actually ~useful~

$250 was for the Breville. The June Oven is $600.

I'd quibble over the romance part. Efficient cooking through technology is a hallmark of human civilization or else we'd all cook over open flames.

> Efficient cooking through technology is a hallmark of human civilization or else we'd all cook over open flames.

Efficiency has never been mentioned in the review, and does not appear to be a criteria.

I'd question whether a toaster-oven for toast bread would be as efficient as a normal 2-slice bread toaster. I'd suggest a toaster oven would be hugely inefficient in comparison.

I have no idea either way, but it seems that a toaster oven would be much more efficient because it's insulated and enclosed. A normal toaster is basically a very small room heater that happens to operate near bread.

Someone please do the web search and provide the answer.

A toaster both dries and toasts slices of bread. So having an enclosed space is not necessarily an advantage.

It’s up there with using a bazooka to kill a fly, but the best toaster I’ve had is a benzomatic+Searzall. The intensely hot but non-penetrating heat adds a bit of crunch without drying the innards of the bread.

For $250 you can get the Cuisnart steam convection oven, far more versatile than either the Breville or June. Proofing and cooking bread with the steam makes a large difference, and you can steam cook roulades like they do in commercial kitchens.

We don’t use our large oven for much of anything anymore.

What about cooking frozen food ? How big is the difference ?

Our household has a rule: no “smart” devices that fail the moment the company is acquihired or bankrupted. That’s why I have a monoprice sous vide instead of the Joule. This device sounds like it toes that line. And that’s not even counting the “I put a camera in my kitchen” factor. I worry what your insurance company could do with your food information.

Also, toast is a 2-3 time a year thing in my household, so I don’t even bother with a $12 toaster, let alone a $250 one.

The Breville stuff is complete garbage. Bought a expresso machine a few years ago, crapped within 1 year, William Sonoma gave a new one, crapped again, I fix it with parts from eBay, then craps again.

Unsealed shit switches in a humid environment, no conformal coating on PCB. Not even real FR4, a cheap cardboard laminate found in chineseium toys.

Fancy stainless on the outside, garbage on the inside.

This is just an advertisement right? $600 is absurd for a toaster oven, camera or not. "Bubble of everything" indeed.

Absolutely off-topic, I initially read "June oven" like I would have read "March hare" ...

I was expecting an IR camera ...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com