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Comment by fatnoah | Hacker News Reader

I'm starting a kitchen upgrade, and the number of "connected" kitchen appliances is astonishing. I don't need my faucet to have Alexa, I don't want to read news on my refrigerator, and I don't want an app for my oven. I'm not aware of any companies keeping servers running for a product that matches the life expectancy of a kitchen appliance, nor do I want an AWS outage to keep me from making nachos.

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Now that you're actually in the process of upgrading, I suggest you take advantage of the fact that you're an actually-paying customer to slightly influence the retailer(s) you buy from.

"Can you show me only the non-smart appliances, please? Oh, you don't have any? Are you sure, can you ask the manager? Alright, I'm not interested in anything, have a nice day."

Sure, it doesn't mean very much on your own, but neither does voting - the value is in collective action. If everyone who specifically doesn't want a smart appliance, smart car, or smart TV makes a big deal about it, then manufacturers and retailers will start to notice.

It has been increasingly difficult to do that, probably because a lot of these "smart" appliances sells for more and thus have more "vote".

Last time I went to buy a refrigerator, there maybe only one or two that were freed of the extra features that I did not want, compared to the 30 or so that were on display. And TVs without wifi were nonexistent.

I mean, sure, it's increasingly hard to buy a non-smart appliance, but the value of making your preference known should be obvious.

Even if a regulatory solution is ideal (which I'm leaning toward), corrupt politicians will make it very difficult to get that regulation enacted, which means that "voting with your wallet" and making a big deal about it are both still necessary in the meantime, and will provide some benefit if done en-masse.

At first I thought you were exaggerating with the faucet with Alexa:

https://www.homedepot.com/b/Smart-Home-Smart-Kitchen-Smart-F...

I have found that Alexa does things randomly once a week or so, e.g. start playing music or responds to a question I didn't ask.

I would be concerned that Alexa would turn on the faucet silently without me knowing, potentially causing a flood.

I wouldn't buy one. Especially at that price point. But I admit that a faucet which could reliably do things like "dispense 6 ounces of water" is kind of a neat idea. But I wouldn't want it tied to Amazon or anything like that. It'd need to be self-contained, with it's own computer, speaker, mic, voice analysis, no internet connection required, and a reliable failure mode that never interferes with the handle working. In other words, something which will never exist.

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

>He had found a Nutri-Alexa machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

That's incredibly stupid. The onion article writes itself.

Buy professional appliances, for restaurants.

For some reason, they are often better along many axes: cheaper, easier to clean, more customizable, more powerful, more flexible, etc.

I really like the professional induction stoves, with actual physical dials, no touch crap.

And the best part, there is a huge used market for professional appliances in really good shape, for even lower price.

Commercial induction is pretty solid in a home. Microwaves too if you have a spare 220v hanging around in your kitchen. Mostly just because of the better controls as you mentioned though. A non-commercial appliance with a free spinning knob would be about as good.

Other than that though, and I have a lot of professional cooking experience, I wouldn't. They're generally uninsulated, made of just sheets of stainless steel. Touching them can burn you, they can have sharp edges and corners that can badly cut.

Their safety assumes frequent and thorough cleaning regimes. Where a residential system will have safer failure modes if not maintained correctly, a commercial one may just become a grease fire instead.

Also the dimensions and their dynamics just are often not good for the kinds of cooking you do at home. It takes an hour to heat a full-size uninsulated commercial stove's oven to baking temp. Commercial gear is generally built around that assumption: that you will turn it on once, every single day, and run it for 12-18 hours straight. That completely changes the design, efficiency, and maintenance constraints in ways that may not work at home.

I used to want a big two-basic stainless commercial sink with sprayer. I stayed in an airbnb with that once, and it turns out it takes several gallons of water to fill that even a few inches, a minimal amount to wash dishes. A restaurant's water line can do that in seconds, it can take minutes on a home one, depending.

There are definitely specific, individual pieces where the commercial versions are easily adapted to home use and superior. There are many more cases where they aren't. A blanket "buy commercial" is not good advice imo.

Thank you. I learned quite a bit from this.

This. When my Cuisinart food processor bowl broke for the 2nd time, I went and got a RobotCoupe professional model. The cheese grater attachment I got for it says that you shouldn't run it for longer than 4 hours! at a time. Once you start going commercial, you will not look back. Pay more (if you buy new), work forever and if they do break, there are people/places you can get them serviced.

Until the day it starts asking your support contract number…

I think they're designed to be more durable too. A consumer microwave / food processor isn't intended to run 8 hours a day.

Any particular brands on the induction stoves? I may want to move on from gas someday.

Can you recommend any particular sellers?

My oven stops working with some nonsensical error message when I try to use it above 350F, so I'm in the market for a new one.

Not OP, and not making any recommendations, but even something mainstream like webstaurantstore.com carries a fair amount of commercial cooking equipment. Enough to give you some ideas, at least.

Odds are there are a few restaurant supply stores around you. Most independent of any chain. They tend to be open the the public only 'working hours'. Find one that wants to serve you

Aren’t they too big for a regular home kitchen?

Not necessarily. Some might be, but generally there's demand for smaller appliances in commercial kitchens too. For example, think of the now ubiquitous food trucks -- they don't have a ton of room for the fridge or freezer, but still need one.

If anything, the consumer grade stuff tends to all be made roughly the same, and in many cases is just someone slapping their brand on an OEM appliance.

It's the same horseshit with smart thermostats. I expect a thermostat to last ten years minimum, if not twenty or thirty. How many times do these companies have to fuck their customers before people stop buying them? The very instant you become more profitable to abandon than to support everything you bought will stop working. If it can happen to Revolv customers it can happen to you.

I recently bought a thirty year old home complete with its contents whose owner was an old man. The newest thing in it was an air conditioner from 2007. Know what? Every single thing is in perfect working order. AC, fridge, stereo, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, thermostat. The list goes on and on. Everything from electric can openers to garage door openers works like it was brand new. If Google can't match that standard it can get stuffed.

Thermostat companies are too busy selling remote administration connections to power companies to allow them to control your thermostat to care about what you, the end user, wants.

Many Texans discovered this the hard way.

Dont worry, by 2035 or manufacturers will buy laws requiring all appliances to last only 5 years at most. It will be like the right to read, but for physical artifacts.

It's a weird and sad future in which we get voice-activated faucets before we get foot-pedal-operated faucets.

Agreed. The only one I want "connected" is my washer/dryer, and for that I only want the damn thing to be able to remind me it's done!

Things like that is where I wish local-only home automation had become more prevalent. Imagine if your washer or dishwasher could send a "completion reminder" to your home assistant to push to you. No need for a dozen different apps and C&C servers, just a local MQTT or SNMP like message to the on-prem hub or listener.

>I'm not aware of any companies keeping servers running for a product that matches the life expectancy of a kitchen appliance

I think this is the key right here. They want to reduce the life expectancy of kitchen appliances to force people to buy new ones sooner.

>nor do I want an AWS outage to keep me from making nachos.

This is a keeper.

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