Hacker News Reader

Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

Like many people may have, my first though was why would you buy a smart oven. He explains in a follow up that it was the only one offered by his home builder. And this is an important and overlooked point.

A lot of garbage that no reasonable person would ever buy ends up being weaseled in to new home sales because of deals the companies cut with the builders, knowing nobody buys a house based on whether they could have a user-scamming smart appliance as the default. This kind of thing is insidious- I have no idea what the solution is.

Though as a afterthought, it reminds me a bit of the microsoft antitrust stuff from 20+ years ago where they bundled IE as part of destroying Netscape (im sure there is more subtlety than that, that's the gist of what I remember)

View on HN

> I have no idea what the solution is.

I think this is a case where legislation is a clear win. It should be illegal for manufacturers to gate core functionality of stationary appliances behind an internet connection. Appliances already have a legal definition in the U.S. so it's not a far fetched idea.

I don't think this legislation will happen.

As part of the technocratic agenda, it is integral that all energy usage, water usage, etc is managed. For this to work, there needs to be 'kill switches'. Like the one's Biden has required new cars to have by 2025.

Technocrats want to (micro) manage everyone's usage of everything. The green agenda is the main sales pitch given for this, but also look out for needing to log on to go online because of ... terrorists, Russian internet attacks, child abuse, etc.

We are coding ourselves into dystopia.

Do... they? I follow a lot of people who I think you'd consider supporters of technocracy, and I've never seen anyone argue that it's good or important to have central monitoring of people's oven usage.

They want to monitor everything. Smart electricity meters provide this functionality.

Smart = spy. Eg, 'spy phones'.

But you skipped right past the main part of my question. Who are "they"? Do you have a particular person or group in mind who thinks smart ovens are good because it's important to spy on everyone's oven usage? I ask because I'm worried you've fallen into a common rhetorical trap, conflating everything you don't like into a singular conspiracy and presuming that there must be some group somewhere who's dedicated to promoting it.

You can read all about 'their' plans in many places. I would start at the WEF's web site.

The only thing I would suggest, is that you consider that when they are talking about stakeholders etc, you need to realise that they are not talking about the people - they are talking from the perspective of companies. (You are the steak, they are the steakholders, lol.)

The same companies that pay lobbyists to write legislation etc, for the governments that purport to serve the people.

These companies are owned by someone - who they are, we can't know. Unfortunately for us, a lot of the ownership details are hidden by offshore tax-exempt vehicles, etc.

Smart electricity meters seems very different to smart ovens. The state has a valid reason to be interested in your enter because they run the grid and need to manage load. They have no valid interest in what your running with that electricity.

Wasn't one of the first things they used this data for was to find people with grow-ops in their basements?

> Wasn't one of the first things they used this data for was to find people with grow-ops in their basements?

And in some cases instead of pot they found crypto mining rigs.

Please read all of Neil Postman's work immediately. It's much bigger than the oven. Thank you.

And did you know that Elon Musk's grandfather was a top technocrat in Canada?

https://www.technocracy.news/shock-elon-musks-grandfather-wa...

Everyone is so gung ho about all the companies that are throwing kill switches to Russia, and I'm just waiting for those same companies to start doing the same thing to anyone they want, for any reason. It's already happening.

Happened in Canada not even that long ago, and many people cheered about that too.

I’m curious about the specifics here. Could you provide a link or summarize? Thank you kindly :)

They froze the accounts of people at the protests without due process, and passed legislation to let them to it to anyone who supported them "directly or indirectly". i.e. carte blanche to send anyone into digital/financial exile with no recourse.

they repealed it soon after (I think), but the door is open for them or any other government to do it again.

Seizing funds suspected to be linked to criminal activity during investigations (before any charges) is nothing new. Those who are being targeted today had no complaints 20 years ago when similar clauses where written into anti-terror/anti-terror-funding laws

The problem isn't seizing donations, it's freezing the entire bank accounts of people connected to donations.

Providing material support can be a crime.

It might not be obviously illegal, but those bank accounts are frozen because the owners of the bank accounts are being investigated just as if they had been sending money to Al-Qaeda.

At least legally it all boils down to how the groups that received these donations are classified. Of course politically things are more complicated, but applying the same rules in different situations is why people where so concerned about this type of legislation in the first place.

> Providing material support can be a crime.

Yes, and? That's not a reason to freeze the account.

Of course that is reason to freeze the account, much like you would seize a gun from a gun owner who is suspected to have committed a crime with that gun.

It's more like seizing every other gun they own too. But also the average person needs their guns to get groceries and pay the electric bill. And they need guns to get a lawyer...

We also throw people in jail before trial which can make it quite difficult to pay the electric bill.

Yes, multiple things are bad.

We shouldn't do that for people that aren't much of a flight risk.

As a matter of procedure, people are detained while determining if they are a flight risk.

Many frozen accounts may similarly be unfrozen before trial, but determining if that’s reasonable takes time.

The only time I've heard investigators seizing specific amounts is when the money is cash. To my knowledge, access to all bank accounts belonging to a suspect is frozen as a matter of routine: feds don't wire out the $92,464.27 suspected to be related to fraud and leave the suspect with the balance.

To be clear, I'm not saying ots not a problem - it absolutely is[1]. However, it is not new.

1. It gives undue leverage for plea deals, and leaves suspect unable to pay for legal representation.

There was due process. My understanding was because of the 1 week state of emergency they were explicitly allowed to do this. There were court orders ahead of time.

Declaring a state of emergency is a way of saying "due process has been suspended", calling that itself due process is a bit too charitable imo

If there were court orders (i.e. the judicial system was given the opportunity to say no), what else would you call this?

The power of the state is large. It is reined in by some of its own components, but it is foolish to imagine that in a society that is not explicitly anarchist that it would somehow be limited in the way you seem to imagine.

What company wants to "throw kill switches to Russia" ?

They are being told to do it (or heavily implied that they will be told to do it very soon if they don't do it beforehand).

It's not that I don't see the risk of companies "doing the same thing to anyone they want", it's just that this is not the same as is happening w.r.t the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Let me be the one to challenge your claim of the enforced "Kill Switch" [0].

[0]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/infrastructure-bill-track-...

Especially stating that this is an eco-agenda is imho either misinformation or willfully partisan.

Its a control agenda.

The eco-agenda is the provided pretext that will mean we willingly accept what is offered, in the name of saving the planet.

Save the planet for the children!

"a control agenda" is one (landmine) label meant to represent a set of complex interactions; this kind of drastic oversimplification is daily fodder for politics, but literally destructive to actual fact-based inquiry leading to effective policy. Similar arguments have been made regarding product safety and hygiene requirements by "government" !

Except that such all-or-nothing logic is completely appropriate when talking about security of computational domains. Taking a device that is supposedly mine and configuring it to work against my interests repudiates the idea that I am the owner of it. Rather than representing my interests, it is now an agent of someone else's top-down policy. And if enough people modify "their" devices to remove such restrictions, then there's a good chance that even more systems of control get deployed to prevent them from doing so.

I was under the impression people are buying Teslas voluntarily, not because it’s mandated by the government.

I don't see how that's relevant. Both government and corporations are independently capable of pushing top-down controls onto society.

> Taking a device that is supposedly mine and configuring it to work against my interests repudiates the idea that I am the owner of it

strongly agree here!

>Except that such all-or-nothing logic is completely appropriate when talking about security of computational domains. Taking a device that is supposedly mine and configuring it to work against my interests repudiates the idea that I am the owner of it.

You mean like smartphones, proprietary operating systems, streaming devices, many (most?) IOT devices, digital books/music/movies and a host of other things?

Sorry, until there's some law/regulation (e.g., broadly confirming the First Sale doctrine[0] and/or similar stuff) that ship has sailed, my friend.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Mass adoption of centrally controlled devices doesn't change the paradigm of reasoning about computing freedom, though. This trend just means that the majority of computing devices aren't under the control of their owners, not that the idea of computational freedom is irrelevant.

In fact I would say barring some very strong laws that make de facto locked down devices outright illegal, there will always be more proprietary devices than libre ones. One of the chief goals of locking down computers is decommodification, meaning taking what could be a general purpose device and restricting it to one specific purpose. Even caring heavily about software freedom - I've got two librebooted desktops, two me_cleaned laptops, one microG phone, but still countless purpose-tailored devices that perform some proprietary function. If those proprietary functions (eg Google Voice SIP integration) could be straightforwardly done with libre software, then I could just consolidate those functions into the libre infrastructure.

These seems to just confirm there point while using a lot of weasel words to say it's not a "kill switch"....?

Seriously I've not read such a round about stretch of a justification in a long time.

What????

Cars already have this! The base model Corolla has had this for half a decade! Hyundai, MB, Nissan, all have this across the board.

If you're impaired for any reason (but mainly assured to be drowsiness), it detects your behavior and gives you a warning:

https://www.autoguide.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ti...

https://di-uploads-pod5.s3.amazonaws.com/sorgnissan/uploads/...

https://www.autotrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/RT_Dri...

All the bill does is say now those systems should escalate beyond a warning and be able to stop the vehicle.

These cars already have all the info they need, if you "accidentally" drive like an intoxicated person, it's going to be for a reason you need to be stopped over!

Like a medical episode, dangerous lack of sleep, texting and driving.

It has literally nothing to do with being a remote kill switch.

Saying it's a remote kill switch is like saying the mandatory backup camera system is as a mandatory surveillance tool...

It's such a huge leap you can't possibly make it in good faith...

What if you have to drive like a maniac to get your friend to the ER before he bleeds out?

(Yes, a friend of mine told me how he had to do just that. His friend died anyway, but it wasn't because the car quit.)

There are lots of cases where I might need to get the most out of the car.

Or maybe I just want to practice parallel parking. Erratic back and forth driving and turning.

So the car according to some algorithm decides to shut down the car and strand me. The worst part is, I have no idea what criteria that algorithm is using, so I have no idea what line to not cross.

None of this and I mean _none_ would trigger it.

Not recommending this or proud/bragging/endorsing this, but I drive fast. Too fast. 100 MPH for me is what most people feel doing 5 over.

I have *never* triggered these alerts unless I was genuinely tired.

You're talking about a system you don't have the faintest clue about, instead of whipping out irrelevant fantasy situations, ask how it works???

It will *not* react to intentional aggressive movement, it reacts to clearly unintentionally movement that are consistently late and low steering torque.

This is not stuff you can replicate "practicing parallel parking", or driving like you're re-enacting fast and furious!

I expect better of HN, you're jumping from a misleading interpretation to FUD without taking a moment to learn.

> a system you don't have the faintest clue about

Which I explicitly stated:

"The worst part is, I have no idea what criteria that algorithm is using"

> clearly unintentionally movement

How does a machine know I didn't intend it?

You know... when most people have no idea what they're talking about they seek clarity instead of writing 4 paragraphs of fantasy.

But you do you.

These systems don't trigger for "potentially bad" behavior like speeding, they trigger when you drive like an intoxicated or impaired driver.

Intentionally acting like an impaired drive is like intentionally walking like you're drunk... gravity doesn't care if you were pretending to stumble, you're still coming down.

So it doesn't matter if you intended to veer in and out if your in your lane with barely any steering torque being applied... that's how you cause an accident.

If you were dodging obstacles you'd be applying sharper input than a drunk person. You can't "fake" drunk without being a danger to yourself and others.

How does it know you're wandering in and out of your lane?

You can keep trying to go for gotchas... but it's not worth your time or mine.

What do you think is going to happen, ADAS is going to have a tracking error that makes you look like an impaired driver?

These systems are even starting to take in eyesight and

You're like a person going in front of a judge trying to argue:

"Well the officer heard gunshots and watched me, the only person in the room, run away with a smoking gun as the guy fell..."

"But maybe I didn't shoot him!! Maybe I was shooting out the window and felt like going for a run!!"

You're not really going to fool anyone... if it drives like it's impaired, it's impaired. Doesn't matter if it's alcohol, sleep, texting, etc.

Yeah, well, I've been in software for 45 years. Magical algorithms like that always have both bugs and unintended consequences.

"if it drives like it's impaired, it's impaired"

It's just magic I'm supposed to trust.

No thanks.

P.S. I worked on the 757 stabilizer trim design. While I didn't work on the avionics boxes that fitted to it, I know was designed to never allow the software to have the last word. Because software has bugs in it. It always does.

Yes, I know about the 737MAX. There's a switch to turn physically off the stab trim. All the electronics that drive the trim, including MCAS, are upstream of that switch, and that switch rules. Another switch that overrides all the software is the column trim switch. The 3rd crew that experienced MCAS failure that you never hear about used these switches to override MCAS and land safely.

P.P.S. I let my car drift out of the lane if there's no oncoming traffic to give a crazy cyclist / kid on a skateboard more room, or to give that mom with kids more room, or to avoid an icy patch, or to avoid a pothole, or to get my wheels on a drier stretch of pavement to avoid hydroplaning. Heck, if it's safe to do so, I'll move over a full lane to avoid kids.

I've a very soft driving style, because I'm used to cars with very direct steering, and when I get into rentals these systems trigger like crazy with me, they're super annoying.

"Driving like a maniac" to save one person is essentially one possible answer to the trolley problem.

I'm not saying that I condone that particular answer being applied to this particular case, but it's well without the bounds of moral philosophy to say "you should not be able to make this choice".

If the remote kill switch exists, it's going to be hijacked into government having the power to disable your car. It starts innocuously, something that everyone will agree with, like drunk drivers. Next will be drug dealers, who could disagree with that? Then deadbeat parents who owe child support. Then tax-owing deadbeats. Then who knows what other classes of "undesirables".

Proof? It already happened: driver licenses already went through every one of those steps, getting hijacked way beyond the original purpose of denoting that you had the training to drive a car, into government-imposed threats against all sorts of "bad" behavior.

I don't trust any expansion of government power in good faith.

Again, this is just like saying that a camera existing enables the government to hack it, so rear view cameras are part of forming a surveillance state.

There is literally no reason for automakers to do this, and yes I know now the FUD comes in "well they will cuz reasons! cuz gubbmint!"

But just like the rear view camera... you're imagining that they'll spend significant time and money to do something with no use other than incriminating themselves...

So sure maybe your rear view camera can be rigged to stream to their servers 24/7, some already record and upload incidents anyways right?

But it's a massive jump from the happy path.

This is 100000x easier to do on the car without looping in a remote server and opens them up to 100000000000x more liability if the interface is hacked.

They wouldn't do it.

> Again, this is just like saying that a camera existing enables the government to hack it, so rear view cameras are part of forming a surveillance state.

That might be the best example of a straw-man that I've ever seen.

>> Again, this is just like saying that a camera existing enables the government to hack it, so rear view cameras are part of forming a surveillance state.

>That might be the best example of a straw-man that I've ever seen.

I think that was the point.

Replace "rear view cameras" with "onboard tools to detect and deter/prevent impaired driving" and you have the same straw man.

This right here, that was an ironic comment to read on their part...

Why do you assume these systems are static? It's not a given that the systems available in 2025 will have any resemblance to the ones available today. And in fact they may have mandatory upgrade abilities, so the car you buy may not be the same as the car you have 5 years later.

It's needlessly wordy, that I agree on, but here's the important part: the actual text of the bill is "equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology"

I guess one way you could implement that is a remote kill switch, but at least when I first read the text I thought it would just be something like a built-in breathalyzer you had to pass before the car would let you drive.

People claiming this is evidence of a kill switch are hard extrapolating with (as far as I've seen) no evidence that gets you from the bill's text to a kill switch.

There is no such thing as a switch that can only work from some arbitrary cause. The switch is either capable of disabling the car or not.

"equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology"

Is indistinguishable from

"equipped with driving prevention technology"

"equipped with a mechanism that prevents driving without the key"

is distinguishable from

"equipped with a mechanism that prevents driving".

Doesn't the reason you can't drive actually matter?

The ignition lock doesn't know or care what the reason is that you don't have the key.

On the books, the lock is there to allow only the owner to operate the car.

Yet here you are, without the key, but still the owner, and yet you still can't operate the car.

The ignition is not preventing you from operating the car because you are not the owner.

Tools get misused constantly and there's no end to mission creep when "think of the children", "you're helping the terrorists win", "the cartels were involved", etc. cards are played. Also we are in an era of incredibly flexible definitions of words. What you consider to be 'impaired driving' today might not be what the government considers it to be when they don't like you.

By this logic I can stretch any law to any meaning.

The original claim was a bill mandating a remote kill switch and we've now backpedalled to "words might have a different meaning tomorrow".

So all laws bad, or just this one?

I almost agree with you.

The way Snopes presents it sounds like there is enough wiggle room in the requirements for it to be a kill switch:

> Passively monitor the performance of a driver to accurately identify whether they are impaired.

> Prevent or limit operation if impairment is detected.

> “Passively” detect whether the BAC of a driver is equal to or higher than the legal limit. In such cases, the system could “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected.”

That link doesn't even challenge the claim, it just fails to completely verify it.

Even the most reasonable people can't make the argument when the direction is so wildly independent of reality. For example, water usage limits on dishwashers that make people run the cycle twice and end up using more water and more electricity than the old ones.

I find dryers are particularly bad at this. Mine has 5 levels of dry-ness. Even on "ultra dry" the clothes usually come out damp. So I run "ultra dry" twice. Lol.

I had a roommate who used to do this (thus sending our utility bill up along with some other power wasting habits), and I once asked them the question I'm about to ask now:

other than for moments when you plan on wearing something as soon as it comes out of the dryer, what prevents one from using the normal dry cycle, and then letting whatever garments that don't get completely 100% dried-air dry in the closet or up on hangers on a shower pole or something?

Mold will grow on damp cotton clothes -- not enough to see with the naked eye, but some people are more sensitive.

Also important: some people live in areas with higher ambient humidity than other areas. If you live in an area where swamp coolers are a viable option in the summer, then of course you'll have trouble understanding why some people don't see hanging up damp clothes to be a reasonable option.

When you put these in a drawer, they don't dry. They get moldy.

Right, so you hang them, briefly, until they do dry. Then you put them away as normal.

With the premium that house space demand, a cloth track, even a foldable one, can ruin your living space for hours a week. And since there's a strong correlation by laundry and weekends, you'd get your living space stalled the days you need it the most.

Or, do the simpler thing and make sure they come out dry from the dryer.

@dvtm if you're just going to hang your clothes up to dry, then what's the point of having a dryer in the first place?

Hanging clothes on a rack inside is easy, but hanging sheets inside is not. I use my dryer for sheets when weather or time of day makes the outside line not a solution. I also use the dryer occasionally if I need some particular clothes in a hurry.

I never put things through the dryer and then hang them though; my dryer works, and I don't even use the highest setting.

In some locations, it’s illegal to dry your clothes on an outside line.

Which is absolutely infuriating from both a climate and a freedom point of view.

This is not true. In fact, in the context of this discussion, the opposite is true, that is to say, there are many HOAs (i.e. corporations) that prohibit hanging clothes outside, but there are actually several state laws which ban such prohibitions, so this is actually a case where regulations are protecting people's freedoms, not restricting them, like your comment implies.

Maine, Arizona and Vermont all prohibit hanging clothes outside to dry.

19 states prohibit prohibitions by municipalities, but most states leave it up to the municipality to decide.

> Maine, Arizona and Vermont all prohibit hanging clothes outside to dry.

Are you sure you don't have that backwards? From what I can find these are "right to dry" states which have banned clothesline bans (eg your HOA can try to ban it, and the state overrides it)

Not all people who own driers live in the US.

You have this half-backwards: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin - these states all have "right to dry" laws.

> Now, amidst growing concern about wasteful energy use, clothesline proponents argue that the traditional method of drying laundry is not only cheaper but better for the environment. Lawmakers in some 19 states have agreed, enacting “right to dry” laws that prohibit clothesline bans,

> The exact nature of “right to dry” laws varies from state to state—while some prohibit clothesline bans directly, others recognize a right to use solar power that implicitly may preclude those in authority from preventing a homeowner from drying laundry in the sun.

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/20_right_to_dry_stat...

The county next to where I live has banned vinyl siding for the entire county. It's not an HOA rule, it's a countywide government rule. Wouldn't be surprised to find out there are counties or towns that have their own clothesline ban.

I just bought a clothes rack for the wet clothes. The clothes last longer anyway. Don't use the dryer anymore unless I need the clothes right away.

Living in the Deep South…that’s not an option lol

I live in drizzly Seattle. It takes about 24 hrs for the clothes to dry, but there's no mildew problem if your house is dry.

In the summer I sometimes put the rack out on the deck. The fresh smell of sun-dried clothes can't be beat.

I grew up in Phoenix. Drying the clothes consisted of:

1. taking them out of the washer

2. putting them on the line

3. going back to to the beginning of the line, and taking them off, as they are now dry

I'm not joking.

> The fresh smell of sun-dried clothes can't be beat.

I see your sun dried clothes and raise you one fresh cut lawn.

Haha, mowing the lawn ignites my hay fever. No thanks!

Seattle houses are heated near continiously outside some summer hours, so the house interiors are relatively dry. In a place where you don't have heaters or ACs on a lot and the climate is humid, stuff stays humid.

I have the heat on maybe 6 months a year.

With a wife and 2 kids waiting 24hrs for strategic placed massive loads of clothes to dry just isn’t an option either lol Phoenix with that dry heat I bet was effective as a high end dryer!

Steve Baer (Zomes, Nightwall, and many other inventions) noted in his book "Sunspots" that:

   * if a person replaces a solar powered drying technology like a clothes line or rack with a fuel-powered dryer, the GDP and/or other similar measures of economic health improve

   * if a person replaces a fuel-powered dryer with a solar powered dryer like a clothes line or rack, the same measures apparently get worse

His conclusion (in the 1970s/early 1980s) was these measures are clearly fucked.

In the UK a fatal road traffic accident increases GDP by more than a million pounds.

Have the exhaust vents for your building been cleaned recently? That's exactly the behaviour you'd expect if the exhaust system is clogged by lint.

My less than one year old brand new LG washer dryer has a perfectly functional set of buttons to configure it, but it will not allow me to do so without connecting to their app on my phone over Bluetooth and giving them permission to read my web browsing history.

These machines were over $1000 and they changed the terms on the app a week after we bought it. Not that we'd ever connect it to our phones anyway.

I, for instance, cannot tell it to dry on low heat for a long time until it's actually dry. It is impossible to configure it manually, it beggars belief.

And of course they know full well how much of a nightmare it is to return appliances that heavy and expensive, so it's always a surprise. Why would I even think to look for such a ridiculous anti-feature? I'm not creative enough to think of these regressions since the 90s, what's next, I can't turn it on at all without a face id? The features have barely even changed in that time...

Same with my new television that wanted me to agree to terms and conditions after spending over an hour mounting it on a wall. They seriously weaponize the inconvenience of returning these things... thankfully I had an extra computer to connect to it instead but most people don't.

I think a regulation on appliances saying they must have all features that are standard or advertised available with no extra steps is a good start. Yeah, this person has an issue with builder kickbacks too, but the core issue is hardly limited to new construction or contractors.

> it will not allow me to do so without connecting to their app on my phone over Bluetooth and giving them permission to read my web browsing history.

In your words, it beggars belief. So if you don't connect your phones to it, how do you operate it? Do you have some dedicated throwaway device?

It has a variety of default options I can select from. Some I can make limited changes to.

For the case I mentioned I have to run it on delicates, change the dry level to maximum, and then run it three times.

We have an LG wall oven that had a binding arbitration sticker on it. Anyone that uses it enters into a binding arbitration agreement with LG according to the sticker.

Of course, there's no notice at time of sale, and by the time you see the sticker, you're looking at redoing brand new kitchen cabinetry if you return the stove.

I suspect it is not a legal contract (post sale, well after returns become infeasible). If it is somehow binding, when companies pull crap like that, I think the "I reject" path should involve them reimbursing you for your time and any sunk cost you incurred before being informed of the contract.

This may be by design: A certain dampness helps during ironing.

Just something my mom taught me. In typical tech nerd fashion, I don't iron.

For example, water usage limits on dishwashers that make people run the cycle twice and end up using more water and more electricity than the old ones.

It's a similar phenomenon to "low flush" toilets that clog and/or have to be flushed multiple times, using roughly the same or even more water than what they replaced.

Get a Niagara. 0.8 gallons per flush. Best flushing toilet I have ever used in my life, at any gallon per flush level. Sustainable/conserving doesn't have to suck.

Can confirm.

However, their quality control is kind of terrible (2/2 had defects in the porcelain causing them to run indefinitely out of the box). I patched both up, and now they're OK.

In fairness, Niagara offered to ship replacements for both free of charge.

Also, they cost a tiny fraction of the other (worse specced) water conserving options, and, thanks to covid we bought them from sketchyplumbingoutlet.com or some such site (they could have been returns for all I know).

Anyway, they flush better than any other residential toilet I've encountered (including high flow and low flow ones), and use 0.8 gallons per flush.

You see this with appliances in general. Appliances are tools. They need to be maintained to some minimal degree and used properly.

I've rescued Dyson hand held vacuums where the only problem is that the previous owner forgot to give the removable filter a rinse. I see people shove plates in a dishwasher with food solids that end up caking on, or placing bowls upright so they rerun the cycle.

You're not wrong, but that's still what needs to happen.

Where in the bill does it mention kill switches for cars?

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr3684/text

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684...

That's probably intended to refer to 24220.c, but overlooks that the "advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology" prescribed for new cars 2025 and later is described in terms that are functionally identical to the driver awareness monitoring safety systems that already exist in high-end new cars right now.

Thank you.

> Technocrats want to (micro) manage everyone's usage of everything.

You've spelt "Totalitarians" wrong. This is totalitarianism.

This isn't just micromanagement. This is about total control. There's signs of totalitarianism all over the place, including US-culture itself. How kids are being raised. What they're being taught in school. How people behave towards each other.

>Technocrats want to (micro) manage everyone's usage of everything.

From Collins English dictionary: "A technocrat is a scientist, engineer, or other expert who is one of a group of similar people who have political power as well as technical knowledge."

I think you're conflating 'technocrats' with 'greedy people'.

I'm not saying people with technical knowledge and political power cannot be evil. What I'm saying is it doesn't require any special skill to be really greedy.

Technocrat has a common usage beyond what that particular dictionary has written. For politicians, it often means one who has a strong belief in the benefit of ruling by data (regardless of the accuracy of that data) and making use of technology to achieve their goals. The politician does not need to be an expert in the data nor the technology used to rule in a technocratic manner. They are often advised by those who do meet the dictionary definition, though it is worth pointing out that technocrats are humans and subject to the same biases and ethical and moral failings as everyone else.

I tend to see technocracy as rule by the scientifically trained, by technologists, by career civil servants, by industry, and by institutions. Technocrats gain their credibility as legitimate leaders from the approval of institutions like academia and industry in contrast to leaders whose legitimacy is directly based off of popular approval. Technocrats are often leading from behind the scenes and driving actual government policy despite being unelected.

I don't see technocrats as having the same biases, ethical and moral failings as everybody else, I think they're rather unique on all those points, and this is at the very core of what is good and bad about technocracy. When I think of a classic technocratic decision, I think of Margaret Thatcher closing down coal mines while crushing any union resistance, a technocrat-approved decision, and it significantly aided the economic success of Britain under Thatcher. Yet it exacerbated inequality and divisions within Britain that persist to this day. The severity of this fallout was blindingly obvious to the average northerner but it caught the average technocrat off-guard (decades of political ill-will tends not to be part of models), whom still lack effective solutions to resolve the issue, and the issue will drag down Britain for quite some time.

> When I think of a classic technocratic decision, I think of Margaret Thatcher closing down coal mines while crushing any union resistance, a technocrat-approved decision, and it significantly aided the economic success of Britain under Thatcher.

It is absolutely not a resolved matter that Thatcher's assault on the NUM significantly aided "the economic success of Britain".

Britain under Thatcher was a dismal and glum place. I left in 1989 and it only by revisiting various documentaries that I have come to realize what a shithole she helped make many parts of the country during her tenure. The fact that the City of London (the UK's Wall St.) did very well during this time in no way lets her off the hook for what her leadership did to most of the UK.

Or prosecute a few of these people for treason. Let's not mince words here. When you build a home and include a backdoor for foreign intelligence, you are committing treason.

The first comment in this thread is proposing that there is a corrupting force working with builders to install smart ovens. Centralising power in a regulator isn't targeted at the actual problem, and creates a single point of failure that might well end up with smart-ovens becoming mandatory in new builds, where possible.

"end up with smart-ovens becoming mandatory in new builds, where possible."

Oh for sure. To fight climate change(and dependence on russian oil and gas), we all have to get a smart oven, to make sure we are all using our energy in the most efficient way. And not too often. Let's say a budget of 1 moderate use per day per adult user. And if the grid gets too unstable, your oven might smartly switches off and on during baking, to help stabilize the grid.

> your oven might smartly switches off and on during baking, to help stabilize the grid

I think you're being needlessly pessimistic. Consider a few points:

1. By the time any "smart" oven is mandated by law technology has probably moved ahead so far of where we are today that all the asinine intricacies people are complaining about have been remedied. Just look at how far wifi has come, only 15 years ago you couldn't imagine an office that could connect to the internet reliably without anything but RJ45 cables.

2. Read the comments on the internet from the 90s or early 2000s about almost anything and see how pessimistic everyone was about the future of new technologies. This is probably even more true of nerds who live on the cutting edge and see things at a closer range but also at a slightly skewed angle.

3. So what? Seatbelt laws induced the same type of reaction initially, but over time people adjusted, and no one even notices the annoying chime every car makes if you start it without putting on your seatbelt first and not to mention giving away your freedom not to wear them because we decided for you it would be in society's best interest to lower the cost of auto insurance. And now not just because it would be illegal not to but also because the societal norms dictate that you wear your seatbelt every single time.

An oven is not a PC, just turn on and cook my food. And any energy savings with some wifi controlled monstrosity (if thats what were getting at) is better met with more sustainable energy sources that produce more power. Cutting energy is never going to be a solution of the future; producing more will be.

Control doesn't have to be malicious. For example electric oven:

1) Oven or any other appliance can just list current price of electricity.

2) High power appliances can tell network to book energy (how much/how long) so usage is more predictable.

It is more likely we end up with camera taking photos of our food and sending it to mothership - but one can still wish it will go other way.

Neither of these should be mandatory (for #2 at least not yet)

"Read the comments on the internet from the 90s or early 2000s about almost anything and see how pessimistic everyone was about the future of new technologies."

We live in a time, where allways on devices track and spy everything by default about everyone and secret algorithms decide what posts get viral and what gets blocked or banned automatically, with no chance for the ordinary person to contest these decisions.

And all of this gets used, to manipulate peoples attention to sell them shiny crap, or influence them politically, without them noticing.

But yeah, people adopted to that total surveillance and algorithm control and starting the day with tailored advertisement. Why resist the change of the glorious new age?

But apart from that, I absolutely would buy a wifi controlled smart oven, where I can check on food and maybe adjust temperature without going to the kitchen - but only if I control it and not some server in china or wherever.

Just look at how far wifi has come, only 15 years ago you couldn't imagine an office that could connect to the internet reliably without anything but RJ45 cables.

I still can't. When I'm at work, I plug in to wired Ethernet whenever possible. Otherwise, I get weird slowdown and dropouts all the time. I've done contract work at a number of business ranging from you've-definitely-heard-of-them Fortune 500 enterprises to local small businesses, and it's always the same. When I want a connection that's going to be reliable and consistent, (for example, when I'm taking a video call) I plug in a physical wire.

Read the comments on the internet from the 90s or early 2000s about almost anything and see how pessimistic everyone was about the future of new technologies. This is probably even more true of nerds who live on the cutting edge and see things at a closer range but also at a slightly skewed angle.

Many of those criticisms were absolutely correct. Stallman's worries about DRM have largely come to pass. We're living in a world where farmers can't repair their own tractors without taking out a service contract with John Deere. We're living in a new dark age where a large proportion of our visual cultural output, be it music, film or video games will be lost, simply because it isn't profitable for the original creating entity to preserve them, and copyright law prevents anyone else from doing so.

So what? Seatbelt laws induced the same type of reaction initially, but over time people adjusted, and no one even notices the annoying chime every car makes if you start it without putting on your seatbelt first

I do notice, and I find it annoying when my car insists that I put on my seatbelt, even when I'm just backing it out into the driveway so that I can wash it. I've noticed that newer cars detect when you've been driving for more than a certain amount of time (I think two hours is the threshold) and "advise" that you stop and take a break, regardless of your actual fatigue level. How long before this "advice" becomes more coercive?

> I think you're being needlessly pessimistic.

Is (s)he, though? electric cars stopping to load because of grid instabilities is a build-in mandatory feature in electric chargers in Europe. Which is a major part of why I got another petrol-powered car last month - it gives me the security that the car will be fuelled sufficiently for operations when I get to it in the morning.

2 - I'd say these comments were overly optimistic - had I told my 30 year younger me about how we were essentially dependant on large megacorps for our integrated mail/calendar/telephone needs, megacorps who can - and often do - kick users out randomly for no apparent reason, making them lose access to their digital identity not only with them, but with potentially hundreds of other organisations, how the idea of ownership would erode into perpetual renting which can be stopped by the media controller at any point with no prior warning, that he would 'buy' a digital book, but would be unable to read it because he happened to be abroad, how state governments were using hacking skills to eavesdrop on everyone and to plant evidence on computers... he would have thought I was reading too many cypherpunk novels.

The last 30 years in tech have made me utterly pessimistic about the sci-fi tech future. The only things that ever become true are the worst ones. A stove dictating me when to cook and for how long sounds like the least problem we will have in our future, even more boring dystopia.

I have begin to understand the folks who start to live off-grid in a cabin somewhere in Montana...

1. That regulator already has the power, so this in no way increases their ability to do something like that.

2. Yes, manufacturers making deals with builders is one reason people end up with Internet Of Shit devices, but not the only one. Sometimes people buy them because they weren't properly informed, or locks are added in a software update, or it's simply the best all-round product so the person makes a compromise, or the local shops don't even sell anything without these anti-features.

Either way, the existence of such an anti-feature is unacceptable. Why should we have to fix every single situation where people end up with these, when it's far more effective to just outlaw them?

(And please don't mention any freedom of the manufacturer, corporations don't have rights. They should serve the people and people alone.)

I wonder how long it will be before we hear reports of people having their ovens turned off to "conserve power" by their power company during the day. 20 years? 15? Place your bets!

Thing is that internet access is considered a utility, so it’s not unreasonable to expect it. Just like you need gas to operate a stove.

Gas is essential to the operation of a (gas) stove. Internet is not essential to the operation of any oven, even a smart one.

It's not like you're freezer will stop operating if you don't run a water line to the ice maker.

No, but this convection oven ceases to be a convection oven if it cannot convect. (I know convect isn't a word.)

Convect is a word, fyi.

oh nice!

And they’re likely paying a premium for the “smart” functionality. Pretty sure this is the version without Wi-Fi. https://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-30-in-6-7-cu-ft-Slide-In-Doub...

Water supply is also considered a utility, but that doesn't make it reasonable for a stove to require a water connection.

Yet I could see the chain of events leading to a store requiring a water connection by government mandate. Stove usage increases the likelyhood of fire. Fire is typically controlled with water in residential settings. No water -> no stove by law.

Water's not a good choice for dealing with kitchen fires, and even if it was, you already have water at the kitchen sink. Nobody's going to do a water-based automatic fire suppression system for residential stoves. There are just too many things preventing that idea from being reasonable or even tractable.

Yes, I know what a grease fire is! I'm not saying the the idea is good from a technical perspective, rather, I'm suggesting a line of thinking that would not be atypical of a government regulation.

Good luck trying to convince our anti-government regulation-hating culture to demand sensible laws restricting corporate abuse like this. It's considered "free market" and "job creating" and "freedom" to be maliciously exploited by corporatists.

I got new boilers (furnaces for radiator heating) installed recently, and halfway through one of the crew asked where they should install the boxes that connect the thermostats to the internet. Luckily they were completely separate, so I said I never agreed with that and they left them boxed up, because they had never thought to mention it. (They listened to my explanation that I would not have something that literally starts a fire in my house connected to the internet without at least being able to control the software it runs, but I think they were just being polite.)

I went to use the app for my hot tub and put in the 6 digit pin, except the last number I put in was a 4 instead of a 3. It logged me in, but the temperature looked off, then I realized I wasn’t connected to my hot tub, it was someone else. Turns out the 6-digit pins are sequential. And this is from a billion dollar pool company.

That's incredible

The temp said 20° (which is impossible in my climate). Good thing I didn’t crank the heat up.

This is true across a frighteningly large swath of “quasi industrial home control” stuff - all the vulnerabilities of industrial controls with zero of the attention paid to it.

What’s industrial home control?

All the commercial stuff from before the Apple Home craze. Automated sprinklers, lighting, controls. It’s been out there since the 70s and got rudimentary internet access early on - and lots of it is very slapdash (underlying assumptions that everything is local wire or low range radio from before internet was slapped on).

The S in IOT stands for security.

My neighbor has never properly setup the internet connection on his hot tub. It's still in access point mode, waiting for anyone to connect and take control of it. Going to guess that it at least has manual controls on the hot tub itself. If he wasn't such a difficult curmudgeon to talk to, I'd warn him about it, but he'll probably just think I'm trying to sell him something.

I mean you do realize a Wi-Fi connected thermostat just closes a pair of contacts that tell the boiler "heat on" or "heat off" and it's not "literally starting a fire" in your house. Assuming someone took over and had full control of your thermostat the worst they could do is turn the heat on and make you uncomfortable. All boilers/furnaces/etc have protection mechanisms built in and in no circumstance is the 'fire' controlled by the thermostat whatsoever. A thermostat simply sends a signal that 'calls' for heat or cooling. The only exception would be a mains-voltage thermostat that controls an electric wall heater but I've never seen those connected to Wi-Fi.

Correct, this is totally different than having a smart gas oven or stove. I too would never have plumbing or gas appliances hooked up to the internet. But my Nest thermostat is totally safe.

Whirlpool figured this out and deserves some praise here. All their new appliances that support Wi-Fi connectivity have a physical "Remote Enable" button that you must manually push every cycle to enable remote control of the device through the app. You cannot start the oven/washer/etc remotely unless someone has manually acknowledged it at the appliance and I believe it resets after 24 hours or when the cycle is complete.

I bet its all software though.

Of course, and it's remotely upgradable, too. That way, the manufacturer can install spyware anytime they want, and any hacker can use it to mine bitcoins.

I'm looking forward to banner ads on the front of my oven nagging me to buy more frozen pizza.

I'd give it maximum 3 years until this is a reality. The way this shift works in effect is that all the higher end appliances stocked by retailers are quickly swapped for IoT ones. When a consumer goes microwave shopping the only choices they are given are super budget crap or "premium" WiFi connected offerings. These transitions are very well coordinated between Big-Box retailers and manufacturers.

> But my Nest thermostat is totally safe.

It is not "totally safe" for your furnace to start in an unoccupied home, particularly after it's been off for an extended period. It's not impossible for critters to have setup shop in the warm space near a pilot light, and in an unoccupied home there's nobody to even smell what would be an obvious problem before it becomes a crisis.

This is FUD.

Thermocouple-based gas valves immediately extinguish the flow of gas when a pilot goes out in e.g. a pilot fed hot water heater. This has been standard for decades.

Pilot lights have not been used in gas furnaces in decades. Everything has been electronic ignition since the 80s at the latest. In fact they have been outlawed in some locales for close to 40 years.

> Thermocouple-based gas valves immediately extinguish the flow of gas when a pilot goes out in e.g. a pilot fed hot water heater. This has been standard for decades.

Who said the pilot light was out?

> Pilot lights have not been used in gas furnaces in decades. Everything has been electronic ignition since the 80s at the latest. In fact they have been outlawed in some locales for close to 40 years.

And the baby-boom produced how many homes with pilot lights? Thermostats are often upgraded on existing homes without touching anything else, and every single home I've lived in was built decades ago still having original HVAC.

My grandmother's house has a stove with at least 5 pilot lights on it (one for each burner); I'm not sure about her water heater, gas dryer, HVAC, etc. Just because pilot lights aren't commonly used in the past half century doesn't mean they don't exist.

Thermostats generally have an "off" setting, and it's historically not uncommon for homeowners to use this setting when the home is unoccupied as it clearly carries less risk in terms of both fire and unexpected energy costs than ones that may run the furnace.

Not only is your comment pedantic, it's not even correct.

The 'off' setting on a thermostat is no different than when it is not calling for heat and it does not make any other failure mode any less likely nor does it reduce the risk of fire. In fact, leaving a home without heat in some climates like the northeast leaves your home susceptible to pipes freezing which carries a much higher risk of damage to your home than a well-maintained boiler or furnace spontaneously burning your house down which happens almost never.

Homeowners typically use this setting because the overwhelming majority do not understand the mechanical systems in their homes.

The typical configuration for a steam boiler or hydronic heating is a single pair of wires. They are either closed (heat on) or open (heat off). That's it.

I worked in the HVAC industry. My comment is pedantic because it is correct.

> The 'off' setting on a thermostat is no different than when it is not calling for heat and it does not make any other failure mode any less likely nor does it reduce the risk of fire.

You're completely ignoring the difference between an unattended vs. attended fire. The former has a much higher risk of being destructive and spreading to the structure.

The "off" setting explicitly won't trigger in response to temperature change unattended, which is a similar concern to internet-connected thermostats; unattended operation. For those living in freezing climates they obviously must weigh the relative risks. That first use of the furnace in winter was always a monitored event back when I lived with parents in the midwest, and it was often accompanied by a burning smell we'd investigate and verify was just some dust and nothing serious.

Even if you refuse to acknowledge there's a difference in unattended vs. attended fire risks WRT the furnace, unexpected energy costs from continuously heating an unoccupied home can break the bank for some.

Even my Harman/Kardon amplifier's manual advises unplugging it when going on vacation because of the risk of it spuriously turning on wasting electricity and being a noise problem. Its capacity to waste energy (~1kw) is nowhere near that of a gas furnace, and it clearly doesn't utilize combustion as part of its normal operation.

Fortunately I no longer live anywhere burst pipes are a concern, and I'd never leave a heater setup to automatically run in my absence. It makes zero sense for my situation.

I find it amusing that you're qualifying statements with "well-maintained", which amounts to a tacit recognition of the risks. Well-maintained isn't the default, ignored and neglected is, especially for systems out of sight and out of mind.

You should not turn your furnace off in a cold climate, especially if the home is unoccupied. If the temperature drops below too low, the water in your pipes may freeze and expand, breaking the pipes and causing flooding. Without anyone home to notice the problem, the flooding can easily cause tens of thousands of dollars of damage.

https://totalph.ca/should-i-turn-my-furnace-off-before-i-go-...

Or you could just drain the pipes, too...

>just closes a pair of contacts that tell the boiler "heat on" or "heat off" and it's not "literally starting a fire" in your house

Unless you observe Shabbat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_on_Shabbat

>Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman recounts that he was approached by young rabbis in a seminary who asked him "is electricity fire?". He replied, "no", but asked why they wanted to know, and was shocked that they weren't interested in science at all, but just wanted to interpret the Talmud. Feynman said that electricity was not a chemical process, as fire is, and pointed out that there is electricity in atoms and thus every phenomenon that occurs in the world. Feynman proposed a simple way to eliminate the spark: '"If that's what's bothering you, you can put a condenser across the switch, so the electricity will go on and off without any spark whatsoever—anywhere.' But for some reason, they didn't like that idea either".

Feynman was SHOCKED I say SHOCKED they weren't interested in science at all! ;)

If only there was a technological solution to this.......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch

I believe thermostats are okay, as long as you don't adjust it. Many observant Jews use timers on Shabbos.

Didn't some company turn up the heaters at night, to increase the power costs.

Also this https://www.wired.com/story/water-heaters-power-grid-hack-bl...

A year or two ago, my newish car was at the shop, recovering from a fender bender, and I got a call from the police asking where it was. I told them and they said that matched with the coordinates they had. It turned out that the SOS system had malfunctioned, and the GPS and integrated 4g (which I didn't even know I had, because the car doesn't have a built in navigation system or voice phone) had been phoning home and telling the car company I was in trouble. I called the manufacturer and asked if I had a subscription to this service, and I was informed that the car had a subscription, and I couldn't cancel it. Luckily I appealed to the dealership and after a couple of days the sent me a "confidential" pdf with instructions on how to unplug the spy module...which of course threw up all kinds of scary warnings starting the car after that... until it suddenly didn't anymore. So now I have a dumb car, and I love it more than ever.

May I ask what kind of car that was, and what country?

AFAIK the SOS system is mandatory in any new car sold in EU since 31.3.2018.

Good. Every car needs to be tracked at all times. They are death machines, responsible for over s million deaths worldwide every year. It is insane we allow this.

so are knives but i don't think my folding pocket knife needs gps tracker built in

You raise a goood point, deaths by knife do approach (checks notes) a rounding error on the number of auto deaths.

mosquitoes?

I gotta know now...what make and model?

2017 BMW X3. I forget what the module is called, but it's behind the panel in the cargo area on the left side.

That's bizarre. Given that Germans generally care more about privacy than most, it's surprising that BMW would be doing that.

That module will soon be mandated by EU law [1], BMW just jumped the queue

[1] https://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/Articles/StV/Roadtraffic/n...

I can't imagine living in a place where there's enough police for any of them give a shit about stolen cars. Jealous!

I lived in Sonoma County for a while and there they followed up everything, even noise complaints. Same for the post office. It’s nice to live in a wealthy area.

It also helps when the police have very few complaints to follow up.

I think your BMW had those because both (4G hotspot and navigation) can be "enabled" remotely through upgrades to iDrive

We had a water heater installed a few years ago, that along with a heat exchanger heats the house, so it comes with a thermostat. Salesman tells me in glowing terms about the WiFi-enabled thermostat they're "giving" me, to which I reply "ABSOLUTELY NOT"... turns out they have an old-style one that's $300 cheaper, and... has worked fine for the entire time, without poking a severe security hole in my WiFi network.

They were being polite, as all service workers have to be. Tell me you've never worked s service industry job without telling me you've never worked a service industry job....

There are numerous safety interlocks in gas furnaces ranging from flame presence sensors to (usually) several heat limit switches, often which are wired directly in line between the gas solenoid and the furnace controller. The controller's logic has a lot of "expect this condition by this amount of time" rules, too.

The furnace's controller is usually separate from the system controller (the box that talks to thermostats, valves/dampers, pumps, etc.)

On forced hot air systems that are new enough, the furnace and system controller monitor outlet air temperature and shut down if it's too hot.

Gas furnaces are incredibly safe.

Also, the quote to install the system specified what thermostats they were going to install. It's on you to read the quote, not to get uppity at service personnel and lecture them people haxx0ring your furnace.

It’s even worse now in Canada — not smart devices, but water heater rentals. These companies charge astronomical rates per month for a rental, or a large “contract buy out fee”. They give kick backs to developers so almost all new builds in Ontario will have them.

Ahh, the Culligan/Water treatment/softener business model.

I suppose their lawyers figured out that people would just recycle them and stop paying.

If so, I suggest installing a water softener with an anti-backflow device but not installing a bladder pressure relief tank between it and the water heater. Also buy a whole house leak detector / shutoff valve.

If the resulting water heater tank rupture doesn't lead them to breach the maintenance side of the contract, look into over-softening the water so the sacrificial anode fails every 6-12 months.

(Edit: In case it wasn't clear, this is a great way to do unbounded amounts of damage to your house, so don't actually do this.)

I think it’s a regional thing, big in Ontario and Saskatchewan, unheard of elsewhere.

Always look into buyout terms. Though replacement heaters these days are lot more expensive than pre-covid :(

Could be worse.

I live in a city that has a centralised heating infrastructure (every building gets a hot water connection), and my apartment came equipped with a heat exchanger that connects to said heating system. I have to _lease_ this heat exchanger from the energy company, and I cannot opt out. The lease is like 50 euros per month, though the MSRP on the unit is only 400 euros or so. Then I still need to pay for actual heat consumption, which is also 3 times more expensive than a gas powered heater that is commonly found in my country.

Here the district heating is substantially cheaper than a gas furnace, at least in operation. I believe you have to buy the infrastructure and pay for the pipe that goes from the nearest joint to your building, though.

We don't do per-apartment heat exchangers, but rather one per building, typically with shared hot water radiators across all units in the building. Heat consumption is either estimated by a air/radiator temperature difference integrator on the radiator, or an electronic flow meter+temperature differential sensors on the unit's connection to the central hot water loop.

"I have no idea what the solution is."

Tell the builder not install a stove, just the build the location and socket. They say no, then go with a different builder.

My house had a glass top stove (it was a foreclosure with certain things done to it by the bank). I sold it on Craigslist. Since it was basically new, it covered the replacement.

So wait.. you get your oven when you buy your (new?) house?

Everywhere i've been, you're happy if you get a kitchen, and the oven is just like a washing machine... a standard-sized piece of equipment that fits in a standard-sized hole in your kitchen, that you buy in an electronics store.

Some ovens are built into kitchen benches.

But those are standardized too, and definitely not something a builder would demand you buy.

Usually you buy a house/apartment here, and then you buy a kitchen separately, and they ask you if you want a standard oven or a built-in one, and they leave a hole for either... I guess you can buy an oven with them too, and they install it, but you can definitely buy any standard sized one, and just screw it in, eg:

https://www.mimovrste.com/pecice

https://www.mimovrste.com/i/17170441/550/550 <- example diagram

You also need a separate cooktop for the builtin variant, but they can cut out a hole for that too (sizes are pretty much all standardized)

A lot of people still use standalone ovens+cooktops, eg: https://www.mimovrste.com/stedilniki/gorenje-kombinirani-ste...

I mean hell, my oven died a few months ago. We don’t have gas so induction is really the only way to go.

We current had induction and didn’t want to go back to radiant

Between all the appliance stores in my area we found a single unit that was in stock. Everything else was two months out.

Unfortunately it is a smart oven. Good thing is that it just nags is about adding it to WiFi but doesn’t force it.

But either way, we had no damn choice on a new oven due to supply chain issues.

Same. Need a double convection oven to replace our failing one. Shocking how few are available without wifi.

As has been said in other threads about connected TVs, if a few companies would just make dependable, serviceable, not-effing-internet-connected appliances, i for one, would buy all their products.

" I have no idea what the solution is."

Anti-trust against intel, ms, and amd, aka the trusted computing group is behind the "internet of things that spies on you"

https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/

They want to turn the internet into a giant perosanl computer only corporations own and control and they are doing that by putting a secret processor inside our cpu's we don't have access to that polices and enforces copyright law.

AKA you got a digital dictator in side your phone and PC.

The last 23+ years theres been a war on general computing devices so that they obey hardware and software companies and not their users.

So the best thing you can do is call the FTC and we sick anti-trust on intel, amd, and the trusted computing group, they are behind all this internet of things bs.

https://www.ftc.gov/

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10544

> I have no idea what the solution is

Refuse to have any oven and hire someone else to install one afterwards.

In my experience the builder will very happily install whatever you want. But they will charge you full price for the appliance you select, and give you no credit for the one you are not having installed.

Sounds like a bad deal, because it is. But... what are you going to do? Let them install the one they planned to, then rip it out and install the one you want later? Okay, maybe you can get enough for the original one to come out ahead financially, but mostly you won't, once labor is factored in. It's a wonderful racket for builders, they know exactly how to price it so you pay far more than the difference for every upgrade.

Why not tell them not to install it? My local big box stores install appliances for free or a nominal fee.

If you can afford to build your own home, you can afford it too!

Could do that, I guess, but it'd still end up the same way. They probably wouldn't give you a credit. And if they did, it would be a pittance. In the end, having the big box store install it, you end up spending the same as just paying the builder their price.

Like I said, it's a really great strategy for the builder. I was quite impressed with how my builder played the game, even though it was infuriating. I couldn't find a way to get around it and be financially ahead.

This seems like needless defeatism. Why settle for a worse out come for the same amount of money?

Even if it's slightly more, in every remodel that you're actually going to live in it makes sense to pony up an extra grand where it matters, like your appliances. "Builder grade" is only acceptable for people who don't have to live in it, and if you're hiring the builders then you need to make that clear...

> Why settle for a worse out come for the same amount of money?

I did not mean to imply that you should settle, or that I did. I paid for lots of upgrades. But they were expensive, a wash for me financially, and very lucrative for the builder. But short of being my own general contractor and building the house myself, I had no leverage to change that.

If I were building the house, I could say "I want dishwasher B instead of dishwasher A" and the price difference would be B-A. A typical homebuilder, on the other hand, can say "we include A with the build, and if you want B, it will cost $B". So maybe the better dishwasher is $600 instead of $500, but instead of paying $100 extra for my upgraded dishwasher, I pay more like $600 extra.

The only way to "win" financially is take the builder grade stuff, use it until it dies a natural death, and replace with better things as you go. Any other path to dishwasher B costs just as much as paying the price the builder demands for it.

Dishwashers aren't the best example, I agree, because they're easy to remove and install for any DIYer. But we ran into it on lots of things. Toto toilets instead of build grade? Full price. Better garage door opener? Full price. Etc. Things that are not nearly as easy for a DIYer to do (or, even if they are, like toilets, they have zero resale value).

The whole experience made me want to become a homebuilder :). Partly because I love houses, partly because it's such a lucrative business.

Depending on the local rules you may not be able to get a certificate of occupancy without a functional kitchen. That would be a reason the builder must install a stove. Wouldn’t have to be THIS stove but there may need to be A stove in order for the local government to approve you to finalize the deal with the builder.

> and give you no credit

so, are you not getting an itemised bill? You agree to a number for a house and stuff inside is assumed?

I wouldn't deal with a builder who wouldn't install the oven I bought.

The way it typically works is that you agree to a price for the house, and it will come with a standard set of appliances, usually appropriate to the neighborhood. In our case, the appliances were generally pretty decent, it wasn't really "builder grade" garbage.

During the build process you can elect to upgrade things if you want. That's where the gouging happens.

You could theoretically pre-negotiate the whole thing in advance with exactly the appliances you want, and then try to get the price to be reasonable. But remember that you're negotiating for a house in a hot market with other buyers ready to pull the trigger too. Good luck, if you want to play games, buyers do not have the position of power in negotiations right now.

Or you can just be your own general contractor. Or you could get a piece of land and hire a homebuilder to build to your specs exactly. What I'm talking about is more the typical neighborhood of homes built by one builder, where if you get in early enough in the process you can make customizations for surfaces, colors, flooring materials, windows, roofing, stuff like that. The basic architecture has already been decided (you can sometimes change the house plan to a different one, as long as it's one they already build, it fits the property footprint, and isn't a copy of another house nearby). Maybe you can adjust some walls or doors, but not much structural changes beyond that. You're paying for convenience, and 6 month build times instead of 2 years.

Specifically the only choice offering dual ovens in a single form-factor.

Also reminds me of laptops being bundled with tons of crapware no one would ever use. A lot easier to just delete that stuff than to remove an appliance from your home though.

This is literally the plot line of "Unauthorized Bread"

The thing is lots of people actually actively pursuing such so called smart devices, I personally know a few. They feels so good that they can control things from remote on their phones. For those people, they would happily connect their oven to WIFI for sure. And some self-claimed smart product managers will of course take a step further by making WIFI connection mandatory: you are going to need to connect them to network anyway!

We need to have laws in place to prevent such trend going further. It's super easy for vendors to put BS in but extremely hard if not totally impossible for ordinary users to disable or circumvent.

20 years ago our builder let us have any appliances from any source we wanted. My wife's company was doing a cross-promotion with GE at the time, and we got a decent discount on GE appliances so we loaded up. That turned out to be a mistake in hindsight.

I know there are builders that place a lot more restrictions on your choices so that they're always dealing with something familiar. I don't know how prevalent this is compared to my own experience, nor do I know how it has changed over the years.

> Like many people may have, my first though was why would you buy a smart oven. He explains in a follow up that it was the only one offered by his home builder. And this is an important and overlooked point.

Also you often don't get to choose features from an a la carte menu. "Smart" features are often bundled with the other features you actually want, so there's no easy choice as a consumer.

> I have no idea what the solution is

I would think that the solution would be the same as with any time you buy a house and are not happy with some small part of it: rip that shit out, sell it if you can and put the proceeds towards buying one you like.

People seem very defeatist towards smart devices, and I know they are becoming more prevalent (especially TVs) but I think we still have options

Why is the builder deciding on appliances, surely the person footing the bill should be able to decide?

Most new houses in the USA are factory affairs, built in large identical batches by a small number of giant builders who buy the appliances by the thousands at once.

The list of options on the menu is finite.

Individually, pushing back on such terms and having a strong alternative. "subtract the cost of the oven and leave the spot empty".

Collectively, through market leveling regulation. "Selling" a device where the manufacturer retains control after the transaction is straightforwardly in the category of fraud. But unfortunately we seem to need new laws rather than relying on straightforward torts.

Furthermore, reigning in the surveillance industry with a US GDPR would go a long way towards removing the incentives for this bullshit.

> He explains in a follow up that it was the only one offered by his home builder

That doesn't explain why he doesn't sell this (likely very expensive) oven at cost, and then use the proceeds to buy a (likely much cheaper) regular oven.

> That doesn't explain why he doesn't sell this (likely very expensive) oven at cost, and then use the proceeds to buy a (likely much cheaper) regular oven.

Maybe because that sounds like a lot of trouble that might actually lead to a worse result from his perspective?

He says he actually loves the oven otherwise.

I had my home built. I used a local builder and had complete control over everything that went into the build, from the type of foundation to the make and model of the oven. If you're paying the money you have the control.

True.. but in todays supply chain issues, you might not get that house done for a long long time.

I purchased a built house, six months after my neighbour. I was in 2 days after close. I took the stove and dishwasher the builder picked.

My neighbour has been waiting for 2 years now. Still not able to move in. Many of the places near me broke ground a year ago, and some still have no walls.

>the only one offered by his home builder

Then obviously he's powerless and the corporates have won.

Or, yano just like tell them you want it changed or you'll get someone else to take your hundreds of thousands of dollars to build your house.

It's likely they bought the house from the home builder e.g. something like Toll Brothers. So the alternative is to take their hundreds of thousands of dollars and buy another house.

Appliances are not that expensive, and you are free to sell whatever is in your home and buy what you'd like. If you're getting a good deal on the home you can break even, if not ahead on that.

Once again, this isn't a pack of oreos you're buying from the supermarket and asking to swap a vanilla in the pack.

Negotiating details is perfectly reasonable at this price point. Swap out the oven or I don't buy the house. This is a case of accepting no and then paying for the privilege.

>Once again, this isn't a pack of oreos you're buying from the supermarket and asking to swap a vanilla in the pack.

That's actually the perfect analogy.

>Negotiating details is perfectly reasonable at this price point.

There is no negotiation possible. It's take it or leave it. Toll Brothers don't care if you walk away; they'll turn around and sell it to someone else.

>Swap out the oven or I don't buy the house.

Right, exactly. Except if you insist on this then the result is you don't buy the house 100% of the time. There's no negotiation.

> it was the only one offered by his home builder.

pointless excuses.

it was a stupid purchase just the same.

before someone say blaming victims: buying an extremely overpriced appliance just so you can have it included in your expensive custom home is not a even slightly difficult thing to avoid in life. cmon. just say no and buy it later on, for cheaper no less!

this is even more sily than being forced to buy a phone with data plan just to have access to public services or apply to a job. those things should be talked about. not freaking overpriced appliances sold for custom homes because your architect didn't have other options.

I think this is where I'd leave any appliances out of the build spec. Give me the outlets, but let me choose my own appliances.

I would like to remotely turn on my oven to preheat, but I don't want this enough to get a wifi equipped appliance.

Craigslist is a thing, nothing stops you from selling stuff you dont want and replacing it with stuff you do want.

Thanks for the insight!

Yeah like you can sell your smart TV and buy one of the approximately zero remaining consumer-available non-smart TVs.

Voting with your wallet didn't work so far, but stay the course! Any moment now it'll start working, I'm certain.

I mean, there's no reason you can't buy used.

(though, yes, it phenomenally sucks that you can't buy one new anymore)

Approximately zero does not equal zero.

Affirmation: I got a Spectre non-smart piece-of-shit TV before they sold out at Walmart. It's such a piece of shit it only lets you play mp3s from a directory on flash drive.

Trust me, there's a piece of shit out there somewhere with your name on it. It's just a matter of whether you're going to put in the effort required to find it.

"It's the question that drives us, Neo." -The Matrix

why would i want my tv to play mp3s?

A lot of times when I'm entertaining and cooking, I'll put some music on. Usually around the holidays.

My TV gets a single HDMI in, from my receiver; no wifi. Everything else gets plugged into the receiver. Everything internet related gets played from an external devices, to the receiver, to the TV.

Cause shitty TVs are known the world over for their quality sound?

Flat panel sound has gotten shittier over time. The move toward thinner and thinner units means jankier speakers.

What I meant is: that is the extent of non-TV business that the TV will do. There's no connecting to wifi, hence no phoning home.

IDK, my TV went out 3 days before the Super Bowl and I bought a perfectly fine Sceptre (not Spectre) TV from Amazon and got it the morning of the game. As a dumb TV it does exactly what it's supposed to.

side note: I've previously stated that I refuse to buy from Amazon but in this case I had to bite the bullet and take them up on their free month of Prime so that I'd get it by the Super Bowl. They also had other brands with various levels of dumbness.

If you’re happy with 55” or less of 1080p, used LCD TVs are dirt cheap.

Like, I bought a 42” for the cabin for $40, and got a replacement remote for $8 off Aliexpress. I could sell the stand and power supply for about $100 because they’re shared with more “modern”/bigger units.

Everyone is buying the latest 4K smart junk. And losing the stand when they wall-mount it.

(Cabin doesn’t have internet, so I was actually worried about a smart tv disabling itself)

> It's such a piece of shit it only lets you play mp3s from a directory on flash drive.

That's doesn't seem a big problem if you use an external Kodi box. I'll be relocating in months and will likely buy a signage display if I can't find a new bigger enough non smart TV. I only use my current non smart TV for RF channels while everything else comes through a unlocked chromebox with Kodi. It plays everything and doesn't contain spyware or ads.

Not disagreeing with the sentiment here, but I was recently surprised to find my LG smart TV allowed me to reject their terms of service and privacy policy.

If you reject them, it cuts off access to all of the smart tv stuff (including the App Store, apps, etc). Seems like telemetry also stops.

I was pretty delighted to discover this.

I did the same with my Sony Bravia, although I still have access to apps I want to use. I don't even know what the features are that I rejected cause I don't care about them.

My Samsung tv puts itself in “demo mode” if you aren’t on the Wi-Fi and it’ll shut itself down and reset all its settings every hour.

> Samsung

I see your problem.

But why would you but anything but an LG OLED?

Mine bleeds pretty bad around the edge. Not bad enough I'd go through a replacement process but I won't buy one again.

That is just the nature of TVs, you aren’t going to get vastly better QC by going with a different brand.

I just buy from somewhere with easy returns.

My contractor dropped my previous tv which was like 10 years old and that’s what he got as a replacement. Went from 1080p to 4k.

Unfortunately, that was your mistake.

Never buy anything Samsung branded. No phones, no consumer SSDs, no TVs, no monitors, no laptops, no phones and tablets, no fridges and wash machines and driers. Nothing. The entire brand is toxic.

Hell, don't even do business with their fab, ask Nvidia about how that turned out for them.

Does it not periodically bug you if you do that? That's what happened with mine until I eventually relented and started getting bugged by their "notification" advertising instead

My LCD TV doesn't even have a digital tuner built in. I have a separate (also not internet connected) box to receive OTA digital TV. It's "HD" in the sense of 1366x768, I think. It's probably around 15 years old, barely used.

What would you pay for it?

Yep, but then there is the labor to uninstall, reinstall, and the effort to sell the original. The builder will actually install whatever you want, and the price is just low enough that you would not come out ahead doing the Craigslist swap later. They'll just make you pay the full price of whatever appliance you choose, no credit for the appliance you did not have installed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com