Why is my LG Washing Machine using 3.6GB of data/day? | Hacker News Reader

Why is my LG Washing Machine using 3.6GB of data/day?

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104 pointsshaicoleman150 comments

The idea of a washing machine, coffee maker, refrigerator, etc. including a network card strikes me as a solution in search of a problem. Unless you are the company marketing these devices and the problem is "how can start getting in on the user data collection game".

If the machine had an open API that I could control and utilize entirely locally, I can see (minor) advantages to most of these. Really anything that is a somewhat highish power load and only needs to run very intermittently, having a way to control it with home automation (which requires some kind of wireless connection), could be of some use.

THe problem is that they are including this network connectivity in a completely closed down way where you, the user, do not actually have any control over what is sent to or from the device. that kind of connection I agree is worse than useless: actively malicious and bad, and I would pay extra to not have it.

My plan to solve this is buy an all in one like the new ge prestige unit when my washer or dryer breaks. That runs on a regular outlet so there are many, many cheap esphome based outlets that monitor power draw that will work. At that point its a trivial rule in home assisant to notify me when the thibg is done.

Do those even work with the type of power load a washing machine needs? I'm thinking of how you shouldn't connect the washing machine to a power bar

If it can handle the normal amperage a US outlet can supply, it should be fine. Washers don't use that much electricity; they run on standard 120V/15A outlets in the US.

Exactly, and they also provide the network stuff over and above an already complex local lcd/button/touchscreen UI.

They should just provide a local API, conforming to a standard, and then 3rd party remote control software could drive it. The physical UI on the machine itself is then just and on/off start/stop button.

Why paying extra? You just don't connect them to your local wifi, that's what I did with my Bosch devices. It's not like they can connect by themselves (can they?)

For now. I could see a lot of these devices including a cell modem in the future.

I don't particularly want any appliances that connect to the internet, but it would be quite fun to have a washing machine API that reported sensor data like water temperature, weight of load, drum rotation speed during the spin cycle, door lock/unlock status etc.

I am a practical person and I'm not above trading convenience for security, but I have quite a few "smart" devices at home that endlessly blink waiting for me to connect them to a network as I utterly see no point in that.

I wish that I could feed my washer and dryer into my home automation system, but I can’t. I want to do this so I know whether the laundry will get stinky or not. Right now I measure the power consumption and have a sensor on the door of my washer and dryer. That works, but imagine if I could just get an mqtt stream of events! I will never connect an appliance like that to my network in the real world, but I can dream!

I have a "dumb" washer and dryer and I would like to make them smart as well. Mainly I want alerts when the cycle stops. Can you share more details about your solution?

I do this with a Zigbee smart plug plus a simple rule in home assistant: notify me if power use drops below 2w for more than 5 mins.

I use home assistant, with the same logic as the other poster mentioned. Home assistant allows you to create automations based on events.

Just mount a small accelerometer on them to tell when they're operating. There are plenty of cheap options on the market nowadays.

I did the accelerometer at first. It was way easier to measure power consumption. :)

A washing machine that is networked can be scheduled to run automatically when electricity prices are low, or when your local solar panels are at full production.

Unfortunately, it can also be used to pipe data from your TV that you intentionally have not hooked up to the internet because you don’t trust the shady things certain TV manufacturers do with your data.

Seriously? It can't be scheduled if it's not networked?

Can't is a really strong word. Customer convenience drives sales.

You need to think about the average consumer. You first have to time sync. Then you have to program it. Do you remember VCRs? 9/10 people could not program their VCR. Oh yeah, and when the power goes out and you forget to reset the clock your schedule is no longer correct.

And with that, you still have no dynamic control.

These days you can put in a touch screen UI that more people would be able to understand. You can spend those funds you wasted on the cloud servers and maintenance to build it.

> the power goes out and you forget to reset the clock

Btw what's with that crap in 2024? Alarm clock manufacturers have mostly learned to put in a slot for a backup battery for the time, why can't anyone else learn that?

My coffee maker can be programmed to start at a certain hour - with some difficulty :) - but if the power goes out it loses the clock. It wasn't the cheapest, they had enough BoM to put in something that detects when it needs descaling for example. So why the hell not a battery slot too?

The de scale is just a timer.

After x hours of operation, the light will go on.

> You need to think about the average consumer. You first have to time sync. Then you have to program it.

Yes. If you want to save money you have to learn something, even something so incredibly complicated as setting the clock and adjusting the schedule.

You can wire a relay in parallel to the start button and control it with your own controller.

Ripple control (low-frequency digital tones superimposed over AC) worked before the Internet.

I can't imagine there's much value in LG knowing how often I wash my clothes.

On the other hand, it's nice to get a notification when the cycle is done if I'm on the other side of the house. Refrigerator sending a notification to my phone if the door isn't closed could come in handy some day too.

LG doesn't care - the advertising industry does.

data is always valuable to someone. if you collect it, then you can sell it to someone who desires it.

> I can't imagine there's much value in LG knowing how often I wash my clothes.

Depending on what their sensors can collect, usage data could certainly be helpful in building a more robust product.

Re: the refrigerator door. I’ve always wondered if just engineering a door that shuts itself is a better option here… like a servo that swings the door around enough to shut… what’s the overhead for either unnecessary piece of technology…

What if there's an obstruction?

Then it won't be able to close.

The main reason my fridge door doesn't close is if there's an obstruction. So a motor won't do much (unless its unreasonably strong). It's easy enough to adjust a fridge to tilt slightly backwards so gravity closes the door by itself.

what if the cat’s inside?

Depends whether the cat is dead or alive

It's both

Just incline your fridge a bit so the door closes on its own weight.

A no tech solution is better than a low tech solution.

This doesn't work; the door needs to swing to 140 degrees, once it swings past this range, it would never be able to round the corner to close.

I've had an idea for the longest time to hook up a smart outlet to my washer and just monitor when it starts using a bunch of electricity and when it stops doing that. That way I could DIY myself washer notifications, since I never hear when the machine goes off and its time estimates are near useless.

If you decide to do that, make sure you use something rated to handle that kind of load. The cheaper ones really aren't meant for more than switching on and off some lights.

I actually have a Tapo P110 ready for it, just haven't gotten to the "doing" part of "do it yourself". It has "MAX 3680W - MAX 16A" printed below the socket, so I assume it's fine.

Both use cases could be done with simple speakers.

Meanwhile, I'm here with:

* Smart Air Filter

* Smart Air Fryer

* Smart Meat Thermometer

* Smart Sous Vide

* Smart Coffee Maker

* Smart Blinds

"Smart Blinds" are much more useful than your other examples IMHO.

I'm wondering - are there developers who think that this functionality is something any user actually needs? Or is it the higher-up part of the company pushing on "we need internet connectivity in every appliance we put out and we need it by yesterday"?

> The idea of a washing machine, coffee maker, refrigerator, etc. including a network card strikes me as a solution in search of a problem.

There are tons of problems that networking these solves. Maybe minor to most people, but convenience is key.

A common example for me: If I am packing for a trip last minute and doing laundry, I don’t want to have to keep going down two flights to check if my washer or dryer is done, disrupting what I am doing.

But I don’t like the idea of everything being connected, so I will live with the problem.

The cheapest washer/dryer of the past 3 decades came with a audible timer; most annoyingly loud.

Mine is not loud enough, even at its loudest setting (mine can be controlled with a knob) for me to hear it in by bedroom. But it will wake up people sleeping right above it.

My washing machine shows how many minutes it will take based on the combination of options chosen. I mostly just remember the number and walk down after so many minutes. Or I could put a timer for that many minutes on my watch. No need for a network stack and spyware on the washing machine.

If the execution wasn't shit, I would love it. It's not important, but I would find it fun if I could control/get data from these devices over network.

The execution, however, is almost always shit.

It's frequently spoken about all kinds of devices that they are mining data.

I'm actually really curious, as someone far away, what does this actually look like?

Are PMs at these companies putting data collection stuff into their roadmaps "just in case," or is this a directive that comes from the higher ups with a specific business plan for how they are going to monetize the data? How does someone actually buy washing machine data? Are they selling the data? If so, where, how, to whom? Do I approach LG or does LG approach me? Are the numbers of how much money these companies are making on data actually real? Is there an eBay for washing machine data? Is it an API that streams it out in real time that they expose or do they just give you a 100GB CSV?

So many questions. So many.

I have an app install on my phone for my Siemens dish washing machine.

Things that are genuinely useful about it:

- It tells me when a cycle has finished.

- It keeps count of used tablets and I can customize the count at which it reminds me that I need to get new ones.

- It tells me when I should do a "cleaning cycle", i.e. that I should run an empty load in "Machine Care" mode to avoid it starting to get odours. However, a bit annoying about this it only tells me as I turn on the dishwasher, i.e. just as I've finished loading it and am about to run it, it would be much better if it told me at the end of the previous cycle.

- I can schedule a cycle to begin/end at a particular time.

Mildly useful:

- I can see how much time is left of the cycle (it's a built-in unit meaning I can't see any display without opening it).

- From the app I can choose to "pause" the cycle for a little, this could be useful when watching TV or doing some other activity where you want quiet until later.

- I can use the app to select the desired mode and begin a cycle, however, this is only barely useful as I can't use the app until I press the power button on the dishwasher (however, not that relevant since if there's no tablet insert, there is no way it could possibly be started remotely anyway).

If there is no significant extra cost, I would like my next clothes washing machine to be able to send me a push notification when its cycle is done.

A smart oven would also potentially be nice in that you can remotely turn on the oven from a place like your office or at a particular time so that it's already heated by the time you get home, or you can tell it turn off after a timer.

I would definitely prefer if it was an open platform, but in truth, as a founder in small startup who also has young kids, I don't have the time right now to work out how to set up custom automations.

> - It tells me when I should do a "cleaning cycle", i.e. that I should run an empty load in "Machine Care" mode to avoid it starting to get odours.

Leave the door cracked so the drum can completely dry between uses and the machine will never smell.

Same goes for washing machines.

My new Samsung induction oven has an app. That app doesn’t do the only functionality I could ever care about - turn it on to preheat! Best it does is allow you to set the temp and bake/broil etc, but then you have to physically press start on the oven. What a silly waste of an app.

Ultimately, though, that's a safety feature. You don't know what's happening with the oven, what's on it, or etc.

I have a Smart Load Center (main electrical panel) from Leviton (https://www.leviton.com/en/products/residential/load-centers...). It does a lot of thing, can show me events of power loss etc., current draw per circuit, etc., etc.

What you CANNOT do is reset a breaker via the app. And you never will, per my electrician, for safety reasons - is there a fire hazard? is someone working on the cabling? And so on.

Ok, I can see that, but shouldn’t it be my risk to take in this case (which seems quite a bit less risky than flicking a breaker on remotely when someone other than the app user might be working on it)?

i surely hope that safety feature is designed in such a way that you can't ever actually turn on the oven without standing in front of it, lest someone is able to break into the system and turn it on without you knowing. the risk is just to great.

sure, the benefit of the app at that point is questionable, but the alternative should then be to simply have no app.

> lest someone is able to break into the system and turn it on without you knowing

Allow users to set their own unique PINs that they have to type in to unlock the “oven on” command every time they use it.

Surely there has to be a tradeoff here where a user can be allowed to be a grown up and make their own decision. I mean, I have to click “I promise not to look at the giant screen on my dashboard while driving” every time I start my car.

And what’s the worst case? That my oven is on and wasting money? If it could be set to get so hot that it causes a fire then that’s a totally different issue.

the most likely scenario is that something is inside the oven that should not be there. and that causes the fire. say you bake something, and then leave it inside to cool off, and then turn the oven back on forgetting that there is still something inside. so turning on should only be possible while you can actually see what is inside.

Or what's in it when you turn it on.

Likely, during the development process of the product, an App was desired. And these ideas about remote preheating were included. But later removed when the conceptual process ended and the Regulatory Compliance phase was started.

It's worse than a "solution in search of a problem." It's a problem in and of itself. Networked appliances almost always need some remote back-end to talk to. But companies don't have much incentive to maintain those back-ends for the 10-year+ life of a washing machine, coffee maker, refrigerator, etc.

So you end up in at least one of two situations: Either you lose functionality over time as companies deprecate those back-ends even though the hardware is still good (i.e., forced obsolescence leading to e-waste), and/or your outdated device ends up being a target for botnets to propagate themselves.

IoT is such a damn scam in the long-term.

Is there any FLOSS washing machine software?

Far from it, for different reasons. All appliances will be network connected in the future as the world electricity supply shifts to renewables. It simply doesn't matter if my e.g. dishwasher switches on at 10PM when I press the button, just that it's ready the next morning. But it matters if it runs when electricity is expensive because of low wind or cheap because of high wind. Or if there's a lot of sun during the day or not. This will not need gigabytes of data though.

edit: should've read more, someone already mentioned it in the thread

but while I am here, another good example is for instance heating. I visited friends in their small mountain house recently and was wondering how they got it warm so quickly because they just got there. They said, oh we have a new oven, we switched it on remotely when we were on our way driving.

I am the owner of this rogue washing machine.

If anyone has any ideas on how to investigate this, I'm open to ideas. As of now, I've just blocked the internet access.

It may be worth sandboxing it into a dedicated network then analyze the traffic and see what it does in detail, for example if it accesses the local network then relays something outside, or if it opens ports waiting for connections, etc. I wonder if merely downloading so much data and storing it into its internal flash could wear it in a short time forcing the user to call for repair.

Have you tried tcpdump’ing its payload on your router? If it’s plain text it should be obvious what it’s doing. If it isn’t you can still sniff which domains it’s connecting to from SNI ClietnHello message but payload will be encrypted. You can still get to it but that would require some decent soldering and hw debugging skills…

I'd pcap a bunch of the traffic -- in particular the DNS requests -- that will tell you where it is connecting. Hopefully it is using TLS, and then the SNI headers can give you more information.

I run a local DNS resolver and so I capture all the lookup responses so that I can turn IP addresses back into names. Depending on what firewall/router you have, you may be able to log connections. I use a locally hosted free Gravwell process to grab these logs and correlate with the DNS queries to find which systems are talking to where. If your home network is like mine, then there are probably a bunch of systems that you want to block from talking outside.

Right now it looks like it has stopped uploading data.

Looking at my router log, the only web history request is:

2024-1-08 19:44:10 LG_Smart_Laundry2_open aic-common.lgthinq.com

This was likely after I had removed it from my main wifi and reconnected it to a segregated wifi. I don't see any logs for prior to this point.

Might be legit, LG ThinQ is their smart appliance page. And aic-common.lgthinq.com is registered to LG.

Genuinely unsure what would be taking that much data though but honestly my first guess is a bug of some kind. Kind of wondering if the App has some sort of issue reporting page on it, might be worth sending in something about it. Might not get a response, it but could get some gears turning on their end behind the scenes.

https://gist.github.com/Jonathan727/9ef58e7a64806d1e01112b20...

For those interested, you can setup tcpdump on Asus router pretty easily to monitor traffic going through the router. You don't even need to mess with the firmware on the router.

1. Install Entware https://github.com/Entware/Entware/wiki/Install-on-Asus-stoc...

2. Then install tcpdump: `opkg install tcpdump`

From there, you can monitor any traffic going through your router.

You can have fun with Wireshark https://www.wireshark.org/

Depending on the details in each of the layers[1] you might be able to spoof traffic towards it to trick it things.

you may need to try MITM the certs/key exchange stuff[2], hopefully they have a broken implementation that doesnt validate signatures etc.

[1]: https://www.bmc.com/blogs/osi-model-7-layers/

[2]: first promising hit when i googled: https://gbhackers.com/mitm-attack-https-connection-ssl-strip...

Looks like the android app at least does certificate pinning https://github.com/zimmra/frida-rootbypass-and-sslunpinning-...

I wash Really hoping for some wireshark goodness in that thread!

I can’t tell if that typo was a deliberate pun or not.

What software/router do you have, that shows this upload/download graph?

If you have a openwrt router than it should be quite simple. Redirect the traffic from the ip of the washing machine to a machine that has mitmproxy installed (using iptables). Hopefully the protocol is https and it doesn't have some form of certificate pinning. That should get you the raw requests/responses.

Does it stop functioning intermittently? I've seen cases of devices in the middle of a failed OTA, and the device keeps requesting the OTA again. If it's going on and offline often, this might the case.

The next post in that thread is even weirder. Apparently, you can use the Wi-Fi functionality to.. "download cycles"? Like, the machine itself includes some presets for certain washing procedures/cycles, and the app provides additional ones. But the question is *why?* Why didn't they just include them on the washing machine's hardware? It's not like you'd need updates for these cycles - imagine needing to download Denim Wash 1.4 or something.

I think that was a joke. DLC normally means downloadable content.

The downloadable cycles thing is very much real. There's a screenshot and I checked LG's documentation to make sure, it's a real thing in their ThinQ app (https://www.lg.com/us/support/help-library/lg-thinq-how-to-u...)

now that would be something. imagine future washing instructions on your clothes label stating which version of a wash cycle is required.

on the other hand, some way to tell the washing machine what clothes are inside by letting it scan the labels so that it can automatically pick the right cycle, now that would be useful.

IIRC you can create your own custom washing cycle. Not sure how useful it is though.

I put all these 'smart' devices on separate network (wifi) that has adguard home as resolver. It makes ir relatively easy to identify what is which device talking to and even block it.

Maybe it set itself up to route all packets for cleaning and sanitizing?

Why is washing machine connected to internet?

It would be mildly useful to get alerts when a load is done. I know I've forgotten about laundry in the washer for a while that I wouldn't have minded a notification on my phone that it was done. Or if some maintenance needed to be done, a reminder. Or one could schedule usage during certain hours to minimize energy usage.

But these are not super important use cases.

What would you do with such an alert if you received it while not at home?

You don’t have to be away from home for that to be useful. Even just in another room where you can’t hear it and are otherwise preoccupied. Or you can call your children and ask them to switch it over.

If you don't need the notifications when you aren't home, then there's no reason why it needs to talk to the internet. You could still get the notifications just using a local LAN connection.

It could, but for wider use and more capability, Internet would be the default choice.

Also, I live on a small property compared to those in my area (a few acres), and my WiFi doesn’t cover most of it. So a LAN notification wouldn’t work when I am out gardening.

But a timer would. That's what I use for this sort of thing, personally. The amount of time it takes for a wash cycle is predictable.

> The amount of time it takes for a wash cycle is predictable.

Not on my machine. It’s generally +/- 15 minutes for a given cycle, but it does more or less based on load size, which it somehow determines on its own.

Sounds like this isn’t a feature you would like, but I hope how you can see it is certainly helpful to others.

Oh, I certainly see its utility. It's the cost/benefit ratio that I question -- it seems very unfavorable. But everyone has their own cost/benefit computation. Mine is no more or less legitimate than anyone else's.

Depending on where I am I might go back home and put out the washing

My washing machine beeps when the load is complete; I think it continues to beep every few minutes for half an hour or more.

There's a simple delay-start button too.

Since it's necessary to be at the machine to load or unload clothes, I think the only possibly gain from a network would be rescheduling a delayed start earlier/later/not-at-all.

I kid you not, LG Washer's have DLCs (Downloadable Laundry Cycles). It adds no value.

https://twitter.com/Johnie/status/1744795720480411927

I had basically hooked up the washer to wifi when we first got it and forgot about it. The thing is, the washer doesn't let you disconnect the wifi after it's configured. It only allows you to switch to a different wifi and only if that wifi has internet.

Hook it up to the guest network (it prevents snooping your network) an then change the guest network password to withhold access.

Block its MAC address on your WiFi router - as long as it doesn’t keep changing its MAC address.

in that case you can use a whitelist and block all unknown MACs

so when the internet is down, you can't wash? that should not be allowed.

Here's an old pcap from an LG dryer to the same remote host(s).

https://gist.github.com/Jonathan727/9ef58e7a64806d1e01112b20...

I have LG Washer connected to my network. The network stack on my model is terrible and would constantly fail after period of time receiving multicast packets from other devices. I had to segment it on to it's own SSID/VLAN/IP Address and ensure no other traffic reached it. It has been stable since then.

Mine has only used 3MB over the last month, which seems low.

As to why. It is connected to home automation system and will announce on Sonos when the wash (or dry) is complete. I also had it connected to LEDs on light switch that would blink when clothes were in the machines waiting to get moved.

That's nice! If random network traffic can cause a crash, what are the odds of something exploitable is lurking there?

Maybe it’s part of a botnet?

That was my first thought. Or maybe it's stuck in a loop downloading an update that's failing for some reason.

My first thought was something failing and repeating, but note the upload is far greater than the download.

... It will be.

Given the ratio of upload to download I think you probably nailed it.

I have a Bosch induction cooktop with wifi, and a Bosch oven without wifi. The cooktop has updated its firmware automatically a few times, and I have no idea why. The oven's timer always froze when it attempted to count down past 1:01. It was fixed by a service person who drove over and replaced the entire controller board.

So much wrong with this situation: Why does an oven need a computer in the first place? How can you release software for an oven where the timer doesn't work? How is it economical to make an unflashable controller board? Etc.

BTW, I got a look at the board, and turns out Bosch doesn't even make its own oven controllers.

> Why does an oven need a computer in the first place?

What do you mean? What else is going to control the temperature, display, timer, etc.? I’m pretty sure my oven from 25 years ago had what I would call a “computer”.

My oven has a knob that I manually twist. To timer. No display at all. Not much electronic at all.

That’s how my old gas oven was, and now I miss it!

You could do it all with discrete chips on a board. No need for a computer really. Temperature -> PID controller, display -> 7 segment decoder, timer -> timer chip.

Something like a circuit board with a bunch of discretes would be how I would expect an oven from 25 years ago to look. Maybe there's a microcontroller to coordinate things, but I think you could get by without it

> What else is going to control the temperature

An op-amp and a thermistor and variable resistor (for selecting the desired temperature), perhaps? I dunno though, I don't even have a GCSE in electronics.

> display, timer

Why does it have these? My oven doesn't have these, just an LED that lights up when the oven is on but yet hot enough.

> Why does it have these?

Because people want them, and more.

> My oven doesn't have these, just an LED that lights up when the oven is on but yet hot enough.

I’m glad you have that option, but I’m not interested in using appliances that are no more advanced than what my great grandparents used.

Why do you want them, exactly? If I want to set a timer, I can just speak and be heard by one of the phones, tablet, watches, and orbs dotted around the place which collectively cover all three main voice assistants.

And what's to display? It's an oven, not a website. Temperature is a dial, is it hot enough or not is just yes/no.

It’s simple: convenience.

Just like your Internet connected listening devices.

You really can't fathom why someone would want a timer on their oven? The things HN posters will be willfully obtuse about is incredible.

I get why "a timer" is useful. It's specifically "on your oven" which is the part that makes no sense.

We get as many timers as we want, whenever we want, summoned out of the αἰθήρ as needed whenever we invoke the names of the synthetic húsvættir that have shipped in all our phones for the last decade or so.

The question is "why do you need yet another one?", and the fact you think it is so important that it has to be specifically embodied on an oven as to be flabbergasted that I don't think it's important, seems… well, I won't call you "willfully obtuse" because I recognise how minds other than mine work differently, but it does seem very silly.

All you really need to control is the temperature. You don’t need any electronics at all to do that. You can just use physics.

https://www.cookerspareparts.com/news/post/gas-oven-thermost...

The cooktop has wifi? What could that possibly be used for?

I don’t know what the customer would use it for. So far, it’s been used to update its own firmware. (Perhaps to fix a WiFi bug…)

My washer has the option of connecting to the internet for its "Download Cycle" mode but I'm surprised that anyone actually uses that

I just assumed it came about from some manager saying "You know what washing machines need? An app."

I was looking forward to being able to remotely control aspects of the dryer, but disappointed that my LG only allows control if the button is physically pushed to enable remote (and it only lets you do one remote instruction before it requires being pressed again)

I had imagined I could trigger a dryer cycle while I was away, or just wanted to run a couple cycles before I had a chance to actually empty it. Sadly that requires physical coordination of remembering to set it beforehand and then only getting one spin with it.

The only beneficial thing I get is the notification that a cycle is done, or perhaps an error (haven't got one yet)

I can see some data collection (after it is announced and agreed upon) being useful. How hot was the water coming in? How much water did this cycle use? Was the cycle stopped? Was it stopped and restarted, and if so, when? (So as to tell between "I missed that sock" and "I wanted to add some liquid a quarter of the way through") What time of day am I being used? Perhaps even a "you did a load two days ago and now it is getting mildewy" alarm.

Some data could actually be valuable for product design and iteration. That sounds like a few kilobytes per month.

Probably a much simpler answer. The programmers who work on a washing machine are probably inexperienced low wage disempowered help. And there’s an innocent rx/tx loop for a home grown notification system and noone on the team knows better or knows how to use a packet sniffer or perf analyzer.

Never attribute to malfeasance what incompetence can explain.

Put a packet sniffer on it. Bet it doesn’t use https, that costs extra for microcontrollers. Dollars to doughnuts it’s a teenager on a road trip.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

I could never 'get' twitter/X, how do I see the 'conversation'?

Why is his machine using so much, are there any comments? A thread? Or is this just thrown out there for likes?

Yes, there's a thread. Yes, X sucks now and doesn't let you view threads without an account. You can use nitter (https://nitter.net) to view it:

https://nitter.net/Johnie/status/1744556503183585471#m

There is no legitimate reason for that. Your washing machine is infected and part of a bot net. Contact LG and get them to help you reset and secure it. You might also want to take a look at all of your devices on your home internet. It seems attackers have gotten into your internal network.

I bought a Bluetooth-connectible blood pressure measuring device. The first app was decent, the second app? Several screens were behind "Upgrade to premium to unlock this feature". And then it started gamifying, "measure your blood pressure every day to earn points", redeemable for... fucking what?

Fuck youuuuu, Omron!

I got a non-connected Omron precisely because of this. I keep track of readings manually in a spreadsheet. Takes less time than the actual measurement taking. Also makes me super aware of my blood pressure values and ranges.

I should give a plug to my favourite fitness app, FitNotes.

It's free, and not crippled, with a paid tier that has extra desirable features. It's usable entirely offline, although it does have cloud integration and backup features.

The cool part I use on FitNotes is its Body Tracker, which lets me track and graph all my vitals across time. I can set goals and observe trends. I can export all data at any time. It's really flexible and full-featured.

I manually add mine to Apple Health. That way I can immediately record readings from doctor visits or such and I am a fan of their trend tracking and notifications. Weight too.

I am with you on the necessity of it, but some people are indeed motivated by gamifying things (just look at Smart watches and fitness trackers). If that works for people to be healthier, that’s great.

Bluetooth medical devices are recalled often. The FDA publishes a list, but for proactive alerting, I use a third party:

https://maude.innolitics.com/

https://nitter.net/Johnie/status/1744556503183585471

That's 41.7 kilobytes per second, easily enough for a permanent phone call.

So, who wants to bet it turns out the NSA really is spying on us with microphones in our washing machines?

It needs more bytes to wash faster.

The real question is: why are you allowing your appliances access to the internet at all?

The really real question is: why is OP not using the washing machine to mine bitcoins for themselves? / make their own DDOS botnet?

I mean I'm kinda curious in smart machines that I can hookup to my own dashboard or self hosted smart assistant to automate something like make coffee every day at 9am. Or to see how long till the laundry is done.

But I would never let a smart device connect to the cloud aka internet. I'd isolate it on a clan and I'd probably be sniffing the network traffic and autosave the last month of traffic.

I trust my network....I don't trust devices that run who knows what firmware/software.

I know it seems paranoid and to some it probably is but iv read to many storied of smart devices being insecure or the company going under and then you being left with something that dosnt work because it can't talk to their cloud server.

I like the smart tech when I'm in control of the data and not reliant on some company.

the more important question is why did you let your washing machine have access to your wifi network to begin with?

It's laundering bitcoins

Using PoW: Proof of Wash

LG stoves are next.

They will be upgraded to PoS: Proof of Steak

Someone missed the "exfiltration" product features bullet point

Send them a bill for violating your home's fair use policy? Bandwidth isn't free, you know.

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