I tried to adjust the time on my alarm clock
devblogs.microsoft.com
devblogs.microsoft.com
I'm going to repeat that: in order to use my super-duper computer I had to create an account with Microsoft.
How ridiculous is that?
* Yes, I know I could've faked the machine being offline, then clicked through some gray-on-gray links in 3px font and I'd be granted a reprieve. But, please, as much as I like reading about Windows quirks on Raymond's blog, he is not exactly in position to complain about a device needing an online account to operate.
Raymond Chen complains about Microsoft products often. He even has a response to people who say that he is the man in a glass house throwing stones: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060713-12/?p=30...
And while you can say "he works on Windows too, not another Microsoft product", he doesn't work on or review all the business plans, technical designs, or pull requests for all of Windows either. He does serve on an internal Windows API review board, though.
Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on products including Windows. However, I have only interacted with Raymond Chen in a couple of email threads. Regrettably but perhaps understandably, he was curt in both.
...And they're not in the web archive either :S
Edit: As a cousin post mentions, this option may only be available if the computer is not connected to the internet. Which is annoying as heck.
Apple's mobile devices run an operating system that has this same requirement with the same bypass. MacOS also prompts for a password during set up. Android phones prompt for a Google account on set up.
Its not ridiculous if you think of an operating system as a tool for generating profit for microsoft.
It is ridiculous if you view an operating system as a tool to serve only the users needs and not suck all of your data up for advertising.
I agree, so we should rag on them.
There is only 2 issue:
The link have the same size than the rest of the text.
The text mean nothing to an user.See screenshot here: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/295445-microsoft-reall...
Though I guess I do have an alarm clock that needs an app to set it since my only alarm clock is my phone. But if I bought a standalone alarm clock, I'd want it to be really stand-alone, not dependent on my phone.
There have been a handful of posts on this theme. The idea being that food labels disclose the raw facts about things like high-fructose corn syrup and saturated fats. Likewise IoT packaging should do the same.
https://www.troyhunt.com/what-would-it-look-like-if-we-put-w...
https://www.symantec.com/blogs/expert-perspectives/why-we-ne...
I assume the clock has wifi to set the time via ntp already, so adding an app was easy, in the eyes of the hardware division, who never think about the complexity of software, or the cost of it.
Maybe on digital clocks, but on analog clocks you just spin the knob to the correct time. Not annoying at all.
I have this nice clock on my bedside table: https://www.marathonwatch.com/collections/clocks/products/an... This one is also good: https://www.lemnos.jp/en/archives/1367
Only having one kinda inaccurate alarm on an analog clock would be annoying, also having to change the time twice a year, and correct for errors.
It's surely not annoying enough to buy an alarm clock you can only set via and app on your phone which also requires you sign up for an online account. That, to me, sounds far more annoying. I'll stick with my £5 digital alarm clock.
I use GPS for time transfer. Works great everywhere in the world.
Except on basements. Or on buildings with no view of the sky.
I'm not sure, on the two digital clocks I'm using, changing the time or the alarm takes at most 30 s. On the other it will ring every day at the same time, including on week-ends, but then since it's quick enough to change the alarm it's not a big deal. If I wanted day-of-week dependent alarms, I'd use my smartphone for this.
My android phone used to spontaneously reboot once a month or so and since it was encrypted, it wouldn't finish booting until I entered my unlock code, so the alarm would not go off. I haven't had that problem in a year or more plus now I think even an encrypted device will boot up enough to make the alarm work (though I'm not certain).
Also, about once a month or so, I either forget to plug my phone in or don't get the cord plugged in all the way and I wake up to a dead phone.
A standalone alarm clock (battery operated or with battery backup) is much more reliable.
Though nowadays when I need to get up on time (like to catch an early flight), I set an alarm on a second device, either my wife's phone or a tablet but if I didn't have that option, I'd use an alarm block as backup.
My daily driver, Sony Ericsson ELM, rings an alarm each morning I need it, for the last ~9 years. Even when it's off, even if the battery is dead (once had a problem with a charger, couldn't even boot the phone, but it rang each morning for a week).
My iPhone? If it dies, it dies. Not even talking about Android.
Read the box or documentation carefully before buying, though, because sometimes the functionality is greatly reduced when running on the backup battery. Mine, for example, stops displaying the time when on backup, and I think alarms will not go off. The backup is just to save you having to set the time and alarms when power comes back.
For those times I really need to wake up on time, even if power has gone out in the night and is still out in the morning, I use an old fashioned Westclox Baby Ben wind-up clock that I've had for 40 years [1].
[1] https://clockhistory.com/0/westclox/series/series-14-1/style...
Back when I was doing hourly shift-work and I absolutely had to be to work on-time, I used a battery operated travel alarm clock like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Casio-PQ15-1K-Travel-Alarm-Thermomete...
The AAA battery lasted a long time (like a year or more).
But after you overslept and unlocked your phone it actually sounded the alarm, regardless how much time has passed.
Also, a standalone alarm clock won't automatically switch to daylight saving time... on the year daylight saving time was finally discontinued. Happened to many people a few weeks ago (at least the daylight saving time switch, like the federal/state/municipal elections, is always on a Sunday).
[1] https://www.lumie.com/products/bodyclock-starter-30-refurbis...
Is clicking a couple physical buttons on an actual device such a strain?
If you're frequently setting multiple alarms, as many people do on their phones for various reasons, does it benefit you to use this rather than just using your phone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWVB
I've had several that set automatically after plugging in, without the need for wifi.
Still leads to the same problem.
Also, as @rjsw mentions, accessing NTP doesn't help with setting alarms. Just setting the clock time - assuming your timezone is set correctly by the device.
It can't possibly be expensive. Pocket calculators cost $5.
The best features are the following: It has a battery-backed time-keeping chip which means it has never needed to have the time reset due to any loss of power to its main power supply. It has a piezo alarm that will sound if the main power is out and the alarm is on and triggered.
It also has a slide switch labeled "DST -on DST -off" so in theory I would never have to +/- the time EVER once it was on the right time zone.
I found it in a outlet-style store when I was looking for a WWV clock and this clock answers all my clock needs without needing WiFi, Bluetooth, any other antenna (for AM/FM radio it might be using the power cord, but I don't need that). It doesn't need to be told a password and I don't need to set up an account.
I think it was marked down to $10 when I bought it.
It's cruel to describe such a thing without providing a link or at least a brand name/model number.
Yeah, that's why I don't own one. Since I'm not ready to invest in one with a bell/gong, at least my smartphone has a proper speaker. Piezos are good for smoke alarms and such, but waking up to one is awful.
Also bought at a physical store, though I don't remember how much it cost. I think I last used it around 2011, though I do still have it. Wonder if it still works...
/s
1. Set up a Siri Shortcut "when alarm goes off, play Spotify". Haven't done it, but having been knee-deep in Shortcuts this weekend, I'm confident that it is possible, and (on latest iOS) not difficult even for a Shortcuts n00b. (For Android, I know Tasker can do this.)
2. Fiddle with buggy and not-maintained-as-soon-as-it-shipped application to set alarm clock. Application must run on a computer that, coincidentally, can serve as a full-function WiFi-enabled alarm clock and can set its own damned time.
Also, alarm clocks tell the time with a quick glance. I like to know what time it is in the middle of the night, just by looking at a clock.
You might simply like the look of the alarm clock more than your phone, but still want to be able to use some of those smart features.
My dumb alarm clock is the last and only thing I possess that requires I set the time manually. And it drifts. Even my wristwatch autosynchronizes every night to the time server signal sent over RF from Denver. I've seriously considered modding the alarm clock to autosync that way as well.
My alarm clock is a sunrise alarm clock with a 100W bulb. Can't quite replace with a cell phone. But maybe with smart bulbs. Hmm, I might have to rethink this whole thing.
Who needs radio sync signals, NTP servers, or a freaking GPS module (lol) when we have this great hardwired 60 Hz frequency reference which is measured and adjusted for long-term stability...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Long-term_st...
> Today, AC-power network operators regulate the daily average frequency so that clocks stay within a few seconds of correct time. In practice the nominal frequency is raised or lowered by a specific percentage to maintain synchronization. Over the course of a day, the average frequency is maintained at the nominal value within a few hundred parts per million.[19] In the synchronous grid of Continental Europe, the deviation between network phase time and UTC (based on International Atomic Time) is calculated at 08:00 each day in a control center in Switzerland. The target frequency is then adjusted by up to ±0.01 Hz (±0.02%) from 50 Hz as needed, to ensure a long-term frequency average of exactly 50 Hz × 60 s/min × 60 min/h × 24 h/d = 4320000 cycles per day.[20] In North America, whenever the error exceeds 10 seconds for the east, 3 seconds for Texas, or 2 seconds for the west, a correction of ±0.02 Hz (0.033%) is applied. Time error corrections start and end either on the hour or on the half-hour.[21][22] Efforts to remove the TEC in North America are described at electric clock.
The reason these clocks are so bad is that they use bad RTC units to save a couple dollars. A bad RTC can be had for pennies. A good one (like a DS3231) is $4! Thus, we are all stuck with bad clocks; AC powered or otherwise.
GPS/NTP/WWVB exist to get the time right initially. A clock will be wrong if you set it to the wrong time, even if you have a perfect frequency reference.
That might be a fun project, but I'd worry a bit about the future of RF time sync. The program was almost shut down this year but was funded after a small fight. I wouldn't be surprised if the funding doesn't come through the next round.
That being said, NTP only returns GMT. You still have to hardcode your timezone and whether DST is active or not, right?
https://github.com/heeen/vfd-clock
looking back at the code, doesn't seem like I handled DST though. I would probably use something like wifimanager now to allow dynamically configuring wifi and other things
You're thinking of GPS.
I made a second trip to the store that day just to return the the thing.
The clock has no app and doesn’t require an account. At start up, is has a softAP that you connect to with your phone so that you can give it your wifi credentials via a simple self hosted web server/form.
Why use internet for time? Simple, I couldn’t find a stable RTC on a small, inexpensive, off the self microcontroller board. But I could find one with wifi. My early prototypes used an Arduino UNO. That has awful RTC stability since is doesn’t use a crystal but rather an R/C oscillator for timing.
I don’t think my customers want an extra app if there really is no reason. Why not use a built in web server?
The app's been deleted.
"That'll be $15. What's your phone number?" "No."
... strange look for a moment, finally followed by just taking my $15 and not knowing who I am or being able to easily track me.
The funny thing is that in many stores that have "loyalty programs", when I tell them I'm not signed up and am not interested in signing up, they'll just use a different loyalty card number instead (I assume it's the clerk's, but I'm not sure).
I don't know why grocery stores don't seem to care, whether it's corporate policy, or employee culture.
I don't. Personally, I don't care if they do this or not -- it's entirely irrelevant to me. I was just noting it out of amusement.
In general, I tend to avoid stores that have a loyalty program, because (as you note) their "loyalty card" prices tend to be the same as the normal prices at stores that don't.
"Thank you mister... Tester #2? You have $98,427 in savings this year".
Never worked again.
1. Maybe others could chime in or assist.
2. Brands that sell fragile and frustrating garbage like this should be exposed.
Edit: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=40523
>Things that increase the likelihood that your comment will be edited or deleted: ... More generally, comments that identify a specific company, program, or person.
I have no way of verifying anything in this article so as far as I'm concerned it's fake. I need a picture or at least a make and model so I know the alarm clock in question actually exists.
I actually find it more valuable that it's written this way. Rather than pointing out one brand of product as the problem, it encourages readers to keenly review a product's "features" before purchasing.
Even if it is fake, it's a simple post explaining a completely feasible, frustrating situation.
You have the world's largest database of consumer products at your fingertips, it's easy to verify his claims.
https://www.lacrossetechnology.com/c82929-connected-projecti...
A lot of devices have a hard requirement for 2.4ghz and 802.11n and the need for awareness of this is not trivial.
I have been reduced to keeping track of each mac address on my network and it seems like all the IOT devices use the same group of generic Chinese chipsets.
I bought one of those "atomic clocks" 20 years ago that pick up the time from some government radio station. It's always dead on correct, and adjusts automatically for DST. There is no user interface, put a battery in and hang it on the wall. Best clock I ever bought.
https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-politics/time-may-be-running-...
It is weird that a person working in IT pretends not to know why the clock reqiures an app. Of course to vacuum personal information, geolocation and hardware identifiers of all devices nearby.
On one hand, he clearly does hardcore technical stuff on the job so he can't have much time. The blog meanders between hard core windows programming and human interest stuff. All that says hobby project.
But it runs on microsoft infrastructure, he must put in a lot of time to write the posts and curate the discussions. The marketing value for microsoft must be non-trivial. So that says company provided resources.
Now I agree, having to make an account to use your device absolutely sucks, why on earth would you need that?
And it sounds as though the user experience of connecting to the clock also sucks.
BUT, if this is done correctly (eg wave nfc phone near your clock, and the appropriate app fires up and connects automtically etc), then I see this is a good future. In this clock example, you wouldn't need to 'advance the hour' for DST - the phone would just set the correct time automatically with a swipe.
My phone becomes a universal remote. No longer those crappy LCD screens (or just LED lights), and weird buttons on every applicance that I have to learn to use. Not to mention they are expensive parts of the device, and take a lot of development effort.
Also those screens and buttons are always the first to break, and are totally unrepairable except by ordering a spare from the manufacturer (if they still make them). Unlike say a broken valve in a washing machine that can often be repaired or replaced with a commodity equivalent.
So, I'm going to say that using phones as a standard appliance interface is potentially a huge UI improvement, cost-saver, and reliability/repairability improvement - if it's done well. Or of course a dystopian nightmare if done badly.
I couldn't disagree more. Phones UIs tend to be pretty terrible (the good ones just rise to "not terrible"), and I certainly don't want the various devices I use to have one. That's why I will not buy devices that require it.
The limited hardware almost guarantees a poor experience, and of course no consistency whatsoever across appliances.
Sure, 3 buttons is ok just to set the time perhaps, but quickly becomes unusable with more complex requirements - and then you get crappy lcd screens, and custom menu systems, etc. even bad apps are usually better.
The connected can be controlled by apps or heck, APIs, perhaps offers full flexibility etc. However, what guarantees the controlling app is going to keep being updated? What if there's a wi-fi vulnerability in a few years? What if there are calls to company servers that go offline? What if you phone is off and you want to quickly set the time?
The unconnected can be controlled by a physical unchanging interface. It offers few extra features, its buttons will wear and break, etc. But it probably will function just fine in 10 years time, is probably extremely easy -- and less time consuming in total to set. I disagree the experience will be poor or inconsistent -- those products usually obey a common language of household appliances that works well enough. Physical buttons are usually very responsive and easy to use. There is not much to go wrong.
The ultimate measures here are probably net productivity (time wasted on clock and setting time), cognitive load, and robustness. If you have specific timing requirements maybe the networked clock is for you, but for most people I'd say the good old digital clock is probably still easily best.
Maybe in the future the digital infrastructure will be standardized and simplified enough that more appliances will become connected, but the real value of 'iot-enabling' is still quite low for most objects.
Remember, newer or more flexible isn't necessarily better (even for very complex systems: see UNIX philosophy).
Well, it depends on the appliance. Some really are terrible. But on the whole, I think appliance controls tend to be more usable than smartphone interfaces.
As it is, every device has its own bespoke iOS app and Android app. The apps’ user interfaces usually suck, but you could say the same about the buttons. More importantly, at least on the iOS side, apps need continual maintenance to avoid breakage on new devices or OS versions, ranging from quick updates for new screen sizes to the dreaded 32-to-64-bit transition. But that maintenance is likely to stop being provided as soon as the manufacturer is focused on their next thing, turning the device into a ticking time bomb of future unusability. With an unrepairable device, at least you only run into the problem if something breaks!
App rot is a problem no doubt but do apps break quicker than the crappy hardware UI? I'm not so sure. probablty on iOS that's true.
The only kind of hardware buttons I seem to be able to regularly break are the microswitches in mice. They used to last forever, and I think I still have an optical mouse from early 2000s that has perfectly working switches (but tracking & malfunction speed aren't comparable to any modern mouse). The switches in modern mice tend to develop problems in a year or two.
I have a Casio clock on my nightstand, it must be from before 2000, if not from before 1995. The display segments are failing, but apart from that: No button broke yet, calendar is still working, so is the alarm.
No, no and again no. The future were I need a smartphone to set my clock is not a good one for me, however you put it.
Also you need to learn to use whatever limited UI /menus they've managed to cram into such limiting UI hardware, rather than the whole richness and usability of an app.
Not so bad for an alarm clock perhaps - until it has multiple daily//weekly alarms with custom sounds, custom snooze schedule, custom lighting profile, etc, etc - ah but a reason it doesn't have any of this stuff is because it would be too difficult to cram into a 3-button UI.
Anyway, a limited hardware UI is also much more problematic for many other appliances. Better just to do away with it completely (saving cost, improving reliability) and use a phone or cheap tablet which are ubiquitous these dayss, or even a new market for cheap dedicated universal smart remotes.
PS downvoting me (twice!) because you don't agree wiith my point is fairly childish I think, and should be reserved for insulting , nonsensical and troll posts, etc. IMHO.
Then, not only do you need a smartphone to operate an alarm clock, you also need it to have NFC.
How is a phone better? When your app "breaks" from code rot and you can't upgrade it, or run it on your new device, you're in the same boat.
In theory you make a good point, but in the real world we just aren't that lucky.
It's hilarious, but also sad.
I bought a digital clock home from the US, and it synched it time using the mains frequency, so it was 20% slow, so it would show the right time once every 0.6 days or so.
There might have been a pin to control 50Hz vs 60Hz but I couldn't find docs.
Instead I bought a 60Hz generator chip, and figured out how to solder it in to make the clock keep time.
Unfortunately they used the positive and negative parts of the AC cycle to control the LED display (saving half control lines by using diodes).
So although it kept time, I couldn't read the time on the display.
Note that my time is more valuable, I suspect I will invest many more days making it work!
[0] "Even a stopped/broken clock is right twice a day."
The larger mystery is why he didn't immediately return the clock as soon as he discovered this requirement.
Any of my friends/family would be laughing along with me, and giving me shit for not being able to setup "something as simple as an alarm clock".
It wasn't even a passive thing he could have overlooked -- he had to actively download an app!
Under no circumstances would I—after realizing that it required an app to function—continue with setup.
_That's_ what's baffling to me about this post. Why didn't he do the same? What the hell did he expect? All I want to know is "_what_ benefit did you think would come from using this that led you to continue with setup despite all of the obvious negatives?"
Either that expected benefit is _huge_—in which case, why not mention it?—or he didn't anticipate any downsides—in which, I don't know, maybe pay more attention in the world.
In any case, this post was essentially devoid of any meaningful information.
Good plan, but unfortunately you’d need to be able to set an alarm to know when it was midnight.
The other clock is digital, so adjusting time is easier, except that it forgets to do this when changing to and from summertime. The only solution is to unplug the power cable. Why this clock doesn't know this is a mystery. It only has to check once a week. I don't know how this radio signal works, but can't they send info about winter- or summertime along with the time?
The reality is, at least in the Eastern US, that you probably don't successfully receive the signal often enough to ever get the DST bit. When I lived in Chicago, I used WWVB clocks and they worked fine, when I moved to New York, I never got them to sync. I also have a bunch of chips for receiving the signal and they have never worked. You have to use the new phase modulated signal, and nobody sells chips for receiving these. (Naturally the older AM receivers are a cheap single-chip solution. So would a receiver for the phase-modulated data, but nobody feels like making one, so you are stuck.)
Also, it might have been a gift from a well-meaning friend or family member.
Not me, if only because that's entirely unnecessary for a clock to do what I want a clock to do (including setting the time itself).
I'm a little older than Raymond (I think), and I am probably just now reaching the point where I consistently think to myself, "nooo, you know full well how this is going to end." when faced with a bad potential purchase.
I ended up getting a nice, solidly built radio with a wood cabinet that has a volunteer knob, an AM/FM knob, and a tuner knob. No app required.
The one quality of life feature it does have is a little light that lights up when you've hit a signal on the tuner. This is nice because the exact position required for a station can drift. I assume this is due to atmospheric effects and other interference.
Took me a second to get it.
It may not be good enough for a tech billionaire but it doesn’t ask any questions. I may not have an executive position at Microsoft or an alarm clock that mines my data but I’ve got two dollars and a Casio.
> Statements do not establish the official position of Microsoft Corporation.
I get that a fitness tracker is kinda worthless without syncing the data up. But I was happy just seeing my daily steps and being able to tell the time and I couldn't even do the latter.
That's his problem right there: getting an internet-connected "smart" alarm clock. Ditto for other internet connected appliances.
The controls are a large "alarm/snooze" button, small "Time", "Hour" and "Min" buttons, and an on/off "Alarm" slider.
The display is a segmented red LED display, with one round light indicating PM (just turns off for AM) and one round light on the opposite side indicating the alarm slider is on.
It runs on AC power, with a 9V battery backup.
Hopefully they won't stop making them, since I don't think there is anything you could add or take away.
There are not many devices where the logic of the controls is so simple and standard you could almost design a clone from memory.
Hell, I just bought an in-wall sunset/sunrise timer to control some grow lights for my plants in the winter. Works great, literally a simple board and backup battery in a wall switch.
If you want your room to brighten for wake, I don't know, invest in some actual home automation? I've got a dimmer on my master cans and it is _trivial_ to do this sort of thing, except with much larger benefits overall and a much more robust/supported ecosystem. Sigh…
This all reminds me of John Siracusa and his fixation with the perfect toaster oven .. something tells me he would buy one with WIFI and smartphone app if it was available.
I mean, isn't that exactly what the time adjustement signal is for? I have several watches which have this technology and they are precise like crazy - I don't understand why you'd need wifi for something so simple.
As such, it's in the interest of the vendor to smuggle "smartness" into as many products as possible, whether or not there is consumer demand for it - or even if there is explicit desire not to have it.
Common appliances dont need to be soo different just to stand out to be honest.
I had a fancier Sony clock that was designed to make it impossible to set the time. I couldn't figure it out, so I threw it away. Ridiculous!
I have 4 car clocks, 2 oven clocks, 4 wall clocks, and 2 bedside clocks that need setting manually. My phone and PC are automatic, luckily.
Or you have to run an old network specifically for the IoT garbage and firewall it off heavily from the Internet, after doing god knows how much research into each device to figure out what cloud services they use.
Personally, I have a problem with my cheapish Android phone where it will suddenly and for no apparent reason decide it's been moved to UTC, and move the time ahead to UTC. It forgets about this delusion when I restart it. So far this has only happened in the middle of the day (and all it's done is mess up the period it's supposed to be silent during, when I'm at work, thus the downside so far has been a couple annoying dinging noises at my desk).
Also, I have a fancy alarm clock which alarms by gradually lighting up the room, instead of by blaring loud noises. I find this a more agreeable way to wake up in the mornings. I also like having a dim, but legible time display on my nightstand to glance at when I wake up in the night, rather than having to press a button on my phone, which is then way too bright to look at in my dark bedroom.
Finally, apart from software bugs, single-purpose alarm clocks are quite cheap and reliable. Although it is not in my bedroom anymore, I still have an alarm clock that was my bedside alarm clock when I was in elementary school. It's thirty years old by now, yet it still works perfectly. The alarm function still works (although it's quieter than it once was). The display still is flawless (although it's dimmer than it once was). It's a simple, reliable device. My phone...isn't.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/nov/01/ipho...
It's one of those things you really don't realize until your phone suddenly dies on you and you have to scramble to get a replacement.
My phone sometimes dies for some reason overnight, my alarm clock doesn't. No software updates, no[1] battery to die, etc.
[1] okay, there's a backup watch battery in there
This is what I want life to be like. Changing clocks is a bullshit problem. It's not worth thought.
I've given up trying to program my thermostat.
Here's how a cat feeder should work:
1. put cat food in the hopper
2. plug it in
Then, it dispenses food 4 times in the next 24 hours, starting when it gets power. That's it. No clock, no modes, no options, no "lock" mode. For the super-advanced model, add a dial to adjust the amount of food dropped.
(I fix "everything" at home, including things that doesn't make sense to fix and I justify it by saying to myself it is a hobby and I'm learning, but fixing an 80 year old fridge is something I haven't even thought of..!)
The 1970s were a low point, with bad seals, insulation, and heavy-duty case heaters for defrost cycle.
One of the objectively most efficient units we studied was a 1950s Crosley Shelvador, one of the early self-defrosting concepts. Rather than operate on a timer, as modern refrigerators do, this one actually counted door-openings, a more useful measure, as frost accumulates as warm, humid air displaces dry, cooled air, and condenses on interior surfaces. More openings => more frost.
It also had sufficient insulation and tight-fitting, long-lasting door-seals.
The unit was also a beauty.
The programme, in which most refrigerators were scrapped (coolant captured, metals recycled), saw this on set aside, though it eventually met with an untimely accident.
________________________________
Notes:
1. Though if you're going to take a self-described Space Alien Cat on its word, you might care to re-assess your life decisions.
While I'm generally a fan of simple appliances in concept, there are several significant changes that have occurred in the last 20 years you might want to just peruse.
As an aside, my dryer has wifi, but I only ever use that feature just to alert me on my phone that the loads are complete. I've never gotten that shitty software to actually start a load successfully. Not even upset about it, I didn't buy it for the wifi.
The internet of things is useless but don't let that hold you back from finding some really efficient modern technology.
It's a front loading Panasonic in case anyone is interested.
I purchased the repair manual and gambled on the parts that I thought were the problem, plus a couple of cheap parts on either side of where I thought the problem might be. I was able to disassemble the washer, swap out what I thought needed swapping out, and I was done. Worked fine.
Tech enthusiast: All my devices are IoT-ified! I can control everything via Google Home! I love living in the future!
Software engineer: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2005, and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it so much as makes an unexpected noise
Just don't ever connect it via WiFi, Ethernet, or Bluetooth to any kind of source of Internet connectivity.
Once they get to the point where they require online connectivity to do anything at all (like power on), then it's time to dump them for something simpler -- and more expensive.
Yeah, there's something about being close to software that makes it more frightening, not less.
As Randall would say: https://xkcd.com/2030/
Who knew that defrosting three ice-makers twice a day had an energy cost?
I disagree. Yes, a lot of this stuff is junk, but it's also getting harder to avoid. Lots of products have had many of their perfectly-fine controls removed and replaced by "app-based control." Even if you can avoid it, sometimes you have to buy a lower-end item to do so, and miss out other features you'd otherwise like.
For instance: it appears all recent Roomba models require Wifi [1] and an app [2] to set cleaning schedules, while older models accomplished exactly the same configuration with a button cluster and 7-segment display [3]. I personally had to hunt around quite a bit to find a discontinued old model to avoid all the connected garbage.
[1] https://homesupport.irobot.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17734...
[2] https://homesupport.irobot.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9029/....
[3] https://homesupport.irobot.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/490/~...
I recently got a pair of Bose QC 35 headphones and out of the box they are non functional until connected to the app. I had to borrow a phone to connect them to the app to set up and then thankfully they started working on my own devices with bt and wired without needing an app.
Headphones should just work out of the box. The only useful function the app provides is firmware updates and a way to map the button to NC level.
Also, they include a physical audio cable which works all the time... I'm curious what could have caused your headset to not function normally, as I deal with many, many, many QC35s (my company gives one to each hired employee) and have never heard of (or experienced myself!) the app being a pre-req.
Yeah, I ran into this problem when I bought a second Roomba. Fortunately, I found a retailer who was selling older models (at a discount, too). If that had not been an option, and if I couldn't find any reasonable used units, then I would have just not purchased one at all.
I did my research; knew it was wifi-enabled, but could be used without the app or an internet connection. So that's what I did at first.
Then I tried to configure it to use the manufacturer's app, so that I could check power consumption and consumables remotely. The app refused to let me use it without registering an account with the manufacturer. As part of account setup it demanded my street address, then when I entered it it crashed. (Hint: there's a slash in my street address. Yes, this is my official address as per the Post Office. Yes, Scottish street addresses are odd.) Nevertheless: the app crashed. It handed me a long alphanumeric error code returned by the server ... then thereafter refused to let me abort the registration process or edit the address, instead delivering a variety of new and exciting long alphanumeric server-side error codes every time I tried it.
I was not impressed. (I'm guessing it passed the address through to a SQL or other DBMS that didn't properly escape or filter the raw input ... and got part-way through initializing some records that were part of the account but was unable to recover from the dodgy input data, leaving me in limbo.)
TLDR: my washing machine disapproves of my street address.
(Luckily it works just fine without knowing it. So there's that.)
> It’s not obvious from the box that you need an
> app to set up the clock. The person who bought
> the clock did so for the “project the time on the
> ceiling” feature, which is a pretty awesome feature
If your system clock is too far behind, SSL certificates will fail validation. I suspect during QA the certificates were valid for the reset date, but the current certificate is not.
I encountered this issue several times as a PC repair technician. We would turn a computer on after summer break and find its CMOS battery had died and the system date had reset. The computer was unable to browse sites secured with SSL certificates. The start time of those certificates were in the future relative to the system time, so the system thought they were invalid.
I'd have thought phones had swallowed up alarm clocks along with maps, calculators, walkmen, etc by now.
Nah. If we define "walkmen" as meaning "dedicated portable music players", then people are still using all those things. I see everything in your list being used regularly (except for paper maps -- although I used one of those last week). Not nearly as much as before smartphones, but still.
From my point of view, it's not a "frustration" issue, it's a privacy/security issue.