I get it when it comes to alarm systems. Being able to get a notification when someone breaks in is nice, because the alarm system is mostly doing its job when you're not at home. It makes sense.
What it does not make sense, in my humble opinion, is pretty much everything else. Why do I need voice activated lights, outside of a cool party trick ("hey, I can turn the lights on with my voice")? Why should a vacuum cleaner, even if a robot one, be able to upload a picture of a woman on the toilet to the Internet (which has actually happened)? Why should the fridge talk to you?
Ironically, this kind of stuff might become less and less appealing with remote working. If you're at home anyway, can't you just stand up and look at the fridge or turn that light on?
What help is a temperature alarm if you are away. A fridge is used daily, surely you'll notice if the temperature is not what it's supposed to be.
Well yeah duh if the door was shut properly every time fridges wouldn't need door or temperature alarms at all (most have an audible one already). But it's called an alarm for a reason, sometimes shit goes wrong and it's handy to know before all the food has been at room temperature all day. We had a freezer door pop open overnight once, because one of the drawers wasn't quite shut properly... in 40+ years of interacting with a fridge/freezer, yes occasionally mistakes are made
I also have friends and family and at least one will be aware and be willing to go to the house if necessary when we are away (only happened once when our intruder alarm went off for no apparent reason) and my neighbours would also pop in if I was at work.
Seriously your response showed such a lack of thinking of real world situations and usage I can only assume you work for the Google UI team or something
Ok, I’ll bite. What do you do? Your phone has just told you the fridge door is open. Now what? You aren’t at home, so you can’t close it.
We came home on Sunday to the fridge and freezer completely ambient temp and had to toss everything.
If we had a mobile alert on our phone, we could have turned around and closed it just fine, or asked our neighbor to.
(of course, where they're really useful is as office fridges, when the perpetrator wanders off oblivious but someone else gets driven mad by the just-barely-audible-beeping and hunts it down...)
Laughed out loud. This is gold.
You make the perfect argument for a physical alarm. I agree, that makes perfect sense, and is a cheap addition that significantly improves quality of life.
Will you be woken up by a midnight phone notification that the fridge is open? I tend to sleep stuff like that.
Does a once in 40 years mistake justify carrying an app around that does god knows what else, and the extra expense and hassle of a fridge that might or might not spy on you?
Do we need to therefore instrument our stoves, ovens, baths and basins to insulate ourselves from the other common domestic nightmare scenarios?
Also, you talk about intruder alarms? I thought we were talking about "smart" wifi connected fridges? That's a completely different scenario, and I fully agree with you. I pay a security company to monitor my alarm, and they visit my house within 5 minutes of the alarm triggering. But my fridge can stay as dumb as it gets, thanks. Literally the only thing its allowed to do is go brrr.
>Do we need to therefore instrument our stoves, ovens, baths and basins to insulate ourselves from the other common domestic nightmare scenarios?
Exactly. There are a lot of things that could go wrong in daily life.
Let's say you are sleeping and one of the bed slats bends or breaks (this has actually happened to me). It's messy, especially because you wake up and putting the bed slat back is not easy. So what do you do? You either ignore the fact it may happen, or you say "well if it does happen, I guess I'll sleep on the couch or something". No one that I know, even among the most "smart home" obsessed people, has a bed which automatically beeps or sends a push notification if the slats are about to break.
Ok, now you wake up and nothing bad happened so far. You have breakfast (maybe you have a smart fridge which ensures you're not running out of yogurt or whatever). Then you go dress yourself. But then you realize your favorite shirt has a stain you didn't notice. Do you have a drawer that automatically beeps if your clothes have stains? Probably not. You either remember to watch closely your clothes and wash them properly, or say "whatever, I'll go with something else and I'll wash that later".
And so on. Life is full of minor inconveniences. That doesn't mean you should necessarily fill your life with sensors and beepers for every possible scenario. I might be getting too philosophical, but part of life is also becoming aware that things happen and you can't always be 100% safe in any possible scenario.
And you're ignoring the first example about falling from your bed which, if things go wrong, can cause bone fractures which, especially in the US, could cost a lot more than $100.
People are taking this waaaayyyy out of context. I said it was handy. I didn't say it was a must feature or even one that make me choose a particular model or pay more for. But the fact my current fridge/freezer does it is a nice handy extra... I already have a billion things that spy on me, gather data so no I'm not particularly worried about what my fridge knows about me, the cameras all over the country I cannot avoid know far more already.
It's not the end of the world if some stuff inside goes bad. Again, not worth making it talk to the internet.
Well, our parents, and for the younger, our grandparents too, and us, have managed to do fine for like 60+ years of using fridges without an fridge door alarm.
Fun fact: for an alarm for when you are away for days, and you want to know if the fridge power went off and back on in between, you can freeze a jar of water in your freezer, put a coin on top, and leave it there.
If you find the coin in the bottom of the jar at some point, the fridge power/temperature has been off for a while.
Nah, rather it's the comparison that is off.
Without cars, for example, transportation was slow and constrainted, affecting commerce, work, and lots of other things. Whether good or bad (since there are negatives too) the introduction of the car was a huge change.
Network connected fridges? The incovenience they solve is so rare and small that most people don't give a damn about, not to mention the incovenience from their assorted crappy controls, the privacy issues, and other such factors, can be even higher and more constant.
Might as well compare the invention of fire with the Shake Weight.
Why are you fighting the guy over this feature? Everybody here is in agreement that network-connected fridges are not particularly useful but you're trying to make a point about open door alarms.
I'm not fighting anybody. I'm stating my opinion, which happens to be different than his. Isn't this the purpose of a forum?
>Everybody here is in agreement that network-connected fridges are not particularly useful but you're trying to make a point about open door alarms.
The context here is the fridge sending you online messages about the open door.
Your examples aren’t really great for that reason.
And sure that you’d notice before anyone consumed unsafe food?
And how often does a fridge door open on its own? Most people don't need other people (or things) to remind them that they should tie their shoes before getting out. If you don't need that, I assume you know you should close the fridge door.
We had a freezer door pop open overnight once... it was because one of the drawers wasn't quite shut properly, all was good for hours after closing it and then suddenly it popped open when we were in bed and we came down to the food at the front of the drawers defrosted.
When you use something day in day out for 40+ years you occasionally have an accidental bad interaction. Sometimes you press the wrong button on the TV remote, sometimes one of the drawers in the freezer is further forward by half an inch on one side and you didn't notice, it happens.
Most people, especially on HN, don't need to be reminded to think critically about how real world interactions actually might occur before posting poorly thought out responses for the sake of evangelically pushing a point, but here we are
I'm saying it can be useful, but only very rarely.
If dealing with an ugly path means streaming data all the time to the Internet and potentially decreasing the reliability of the whole thing, just because once every 5 or 10 years stuff defrosts...
No, it's for when the kids leave the door open or just don't close it properly - which is VERY frequent. The door alarm goes off once per week here, at least.
I prefer the sound of air alarm now.
Yes, but how often do you experience power outages … I think in the last
15 years it only happened to me once.
or other things that lead to weird temperature changes?
I've seen some grumblings that the switch (in the US) to R600 is killing durability, but I'm not sure I buy that. If you dig through some of the service literature out there you'll see that companies across the board are also cheapening the sealed systems (e.g. aluminum replacing copper).
you know you should close the fridge door.
I to had a LG refrigerator declared "unfixable" and bought back by LG, but I actually decided they were idiots and fixed it myself after having not only their local repair people fail to fix it, but the "expert" from LG's regional center come out and diagnose it. (It should be noted that he diagnosed the condenser, the only part not already replaced at that point, and that failed to fix it so, they declared it unfixable).
Turns out in my case, the leak was in the yoder loop, a modern trick for increasing the efficiency of a refrigerator by running a high pressure refrigerant line around the doors to avoid needing electric defrost loops (what pretty much every fridge made pre ~2005 or so has).
And since the yoder loop is embedded in the spray foam insulation between the exterior and interior of the fridge is is largely unrepairable because the insulation would have to be destroyed and somehow partially refilled, which wouldn't be possible without adding a bunch of access holes/etc to the exterior.
So, I bypassed it, as a "research project" before buying another fridge, something the LG folks told me wouldn't work, and the tech refused to do. Which funny enough i'm an EPA certified small appliance repair tech (don't ask! lol) so, it apparently is just up my alley. And guess what 5 years later is still going. I've had to manually defrost the ice maker fan once in that timeframe and it does tend to get some condensation build up on the bottom of the french doors, but nothing that wipeing it away every few days doens't solve.
As an additional bit of fun, this refrigerator has a steel condenser and both aluminum as well as copper tubing/fittings.
When I'm talking about the heater on mine not working, I'm talking about the heater for the evaporator. Without a working heater I'd get enough ice built up on the evaporator within a week to cause problems with the evaporator fan. If the fan doesn't work you're not gonna get much in the way of cool air into the fridge or freezer compartments.
- Calling in a warranty claim involved going through a troubleshooting script that wanted me to do things that my fridge could not do. LG needs to get their documentation in order so that their call center staff can at least approach being useful.
- LG punted me to an authorized service center first thing. I'm in the Bay Area which should, IMO, be a large enough market to have sufficient LG direct staff. LG needs to hire more repair staff.
- The third party ignored me for a few weeks and then I started making noise in LG's general direction. LG probably needs to up their warranty rates to entice third parties to actually service these calls.
- LG finally sent one of their techs out. He called me, I described the symptoms and the temperature graphs to give him an idea of what's going on. He finally admitted that he didn't have ANY parts for this fridge on his truck. So I told him to order what he thought needed. That took about two weeks. On his first visit he identified more stuff he wanted to replace so that took another few days because the west coast distribution center didn't have the parts and he missed the cutoff for the east coast center. LG needs to get their American logistics in order.
- LG pushed really hard to get the tech out here ASAP even though he had some idea as to what was wrong and was in no position to fix anything. LG ought to stop relying so heavily on useless metrics.
It's been a long enough time I don't remember the precise symptoms and I've no idea what actually failed beyond a thermistor so it's impossible to suggest engineering improvements. However I think LG ought to work on training their own techs to get their diagnostic skills up to snuff.
Although I'm pretty sure it's not one of LG's horrific linear compressors, I suspect the compressor failed or there was a refrigerant leak. Unlike the above poster I've working knowledge of automotive A/C not small appliances. In a car the refrigerant will carry the lubricant, so a refrigerant leak can indeed cause problems as the compressor eventually runs dry. For all I know the fridge's compressor uses an oil free design and failed for other reasons. I think the tech checked temperatures at the condenser and was happy with that – but remember unlike on a car refrigerators have no ports to check pressures. That's crucial in diagnosing problems, so techs are kinda flying blind here.
If the problem was with the sealed system then the solution is: LG needs to engineer their fridges properly. Fixing the sealed system in the field is something you can do (except for the yoder loop in the insulation) but it takes time and skill, things that most techs don't have. Basically those repairs won't last. Working with aluminum (welding, brazing, soldering) is tough, although I think LG is moving to using fancy compression fittings for repairs.
If it's basically anything else they need to again work on training their techs to diagnose these things properly.
I had the yoder loop conversation with the tech on the last call when they came out to verify it was still broken/unfixable, and he basically said bypassing it wasn't possible, which is odd since other companies can.
With the bonus that in our particular case, we were paying for the "labor" and getting the parts under warranty, which means that in the end I paid ~$1000 for repairs and LG claimed to have provided ~$1200 worth of parts (which is bullshit because an aluminum evaporator coil doesn't cost $400 unless it has a 20x retail markup). So, when they sent a check, it covered our sunk costs. But I had a fridge with a brand new compressor, evaporator, and condenser, as well as an upgraded control board/etc. This is part of the reason I took a crack and just ran it without the Yoder loop.
So, a couple of points: some other companies fix yoder loop leaks by bypassing them and feeding factory-provided heating coils through the now vacant line.
Also, the LG parts all had copper brazing points, so the tech never had to work with aluminum/steel directly.
Finally, I wonder, after your initial comment, if there was just a problem with the refrigerant charge, which was causing your fan to ice over as a byproduct because it was slightly under/overcharged from the factory.
now they had access points to check the pressure.
Also, the LG parts all had copper brazing points, so the tech never
had to work with aluminum/steel directly.
Finally, I wonder, after your initial comment, if there was just a
problem with the refrigerant charge, which was causing your fan to
ice over as a byproduct because it was slightly under/overcharged
from the factory.
With the LG I was a renter, so I was willing to push things along with LG and do as much diagnostic work as possible. But at the end of the day I didn't really want to dig into fixing anything myself because the fridge simply wasn't mine. I also didn't have room for a second "project" fridge. The landlady wasn't out anything because it was covered under the extended warranty (my initial call was a year + 1 day after the purchase) and LG bought it back for full retail price.
One of many problems with LG is that they seem to have a rotating cast of metrics driven clowns running LG America. Junking a fridge is almost certainly more cost effective than spending the time to fix it, train their techs in depth, and get their logistics in order. The tech that came out had previously worked for GE and had worse things to say about their brand of chaos.
Funny enough the Whirlpool that replaced it did have exposed insulation (and gobs of epoxy everywhere). It would've been worse than the LG, except it actually kept things cool.
And that way the the fridge can't die...and quietly take its built-in alarm with it.
What I am saying (though I cannot speak for anyone) is that I, on the contrary, would go out of my way to not get, not because I have thin foil hat or whatever, but because the reliability and privacy concerns this kind of thing carries far outweigh (in my scale) the benefit of having something that will come in useful once in a decade.
Note that things like that have already happened.
When an AWS region went down, things like doorbells and lights stopped working properly (https://financialpost.com/technology/personal-tech/pitfalls-...). Which, if you think about it, is ridiculous. I cannot turn my lights on because somewhere, potentially thousands of miles away, some datacenters failed, even if those datacenters could, ostensibly, only give me ads and "improvements" and not any core feature.
And when it comes to privacy, Roomba employees posted on Facebook picture of a woman on the toilet, a picture that was taken by the Roomba itself while cleaning (https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...). Now, you might say that the Roomba algorithm has to train a lot to be able to work properly, but why take pictures? And why upload them to the Internet?
Of course everyone makes their own judgement calls. I'm not offended if anyone gets smart fridges or voice activated lights.
It appears there's a misunderstanding here. When smart lightbulbs lose internet connection, they still function as regular lightbulbs.
In such cases, you simply revert to the traditional method of turning the light switch on and off manually, instead of using voice commands or an app.
That's a better way to install things, but it's not the only way that installation is done, and it's still excessive to need the internet for what could easily be a purely local operation. For device classes where "on/off" has historically been attached to the device itself (washer, stove, ...), it's more common than in the lightbulb case for the internet connection to be mandatory.
Pushing closer to tin-foil hat territory, when your lights can be controlled over the internet by servers you don't own, that operator can do nearly whatever they'd like. A common pattern in other industries (ocean navigation apps, OB2 monitors, ...) is to require a server for no good reason, sell a device at full market value, and then later extort the customer into some sort of subscription/data-leak to continue using their own devices. It's common for the remote server to just shut down (startup goes out of business, manufacturer decides it'd be nice if you bought a new device, ...). Less likely but worse if it happened, the server operator _could_ trigger epilectic seizures or whatever.
It’s by far the most common. Most people just buy Hue lightbulbs and an hub to use with their existing home setup, which involves physical light switches still being present.
> Pushing closer to tin-foil hat territory…
For lights specifically: If this is a threat model that worries you, it’s quite easy to setup something like home assistant.io with zigbee lights.
Your repudiation appears to be about centralized services, not about “smart” devices as a general concept.
Your position seems actually to be though that you can make smart devices acceptable if you're careful enough. That's probably true. However, I've seen the code people write, and I still personally wouldn't want a smart oven or any number of other such devices.
> Your repudiation appears to be about centralized services, not about “smart” devices as a general concept.
There's some truth to that. I focused on that point just because smart devices usually have a markup for their extra features, even though you don't really own the product, manufacturers have a habit of shutting them down, and most of the "smarts" are just figuring out how to generate extra ad revenue. That's not _all_ smart devices, but it's a lot of them. Contrast that with a centralized service like Overleaf, where I know I'm renting server time and disk space, and it's obvious what the threat models are (they can read anything sensitive, and I should probably make sure everything is backed up). Selling living room audio recordings on a device you paid more than fair market value for just feels a bit slimy, and I thought that might be a good touchpoint to illustrate what sorts of things can go wrong.
The person I responded to said:
> I cannot turn my lights on because somewhere, potentially thousands of miles away, some datacenters failed, even if those datacenters could, ostensibly, only give me ads and "improvements" and not any core feature.
That problem doesn't exist. Your smart lightbulbs fallback to being regular lightbulbs in the absence of an internet connection, even for the most popular centralized service ones today (Hue).
> There's some truth to that.
That seems like a separate, if related, problem. There are plenty of smart devices that don't involve centralized services. Check out homeassistant.io. Plenty of devices where you own the product and they can't be shut down.
What about my robo vacuum cleaner?
Also, you keep mentioning Hue as if this is what people buy. People with lots of disposable income buy Hue. Everyone else buys some cheap $noname Tuya crap (or get it installed by the contractors), and whether or not it works offline, they find out during their next Internet outage.
Those aren't lightbulbs, which is what we were talking about.
OTOH, this item's context is "KISS, because the complex products are hot & steamy piles of failure modes, all eager to show themselves off". From that PoV, the alarm features kinda sound like yet more things to break down.
Fridge quality today is lousy enough (and warranties + return policies have all but evaporated) that spending money elsewhere would've been a big win. Even if we're not talking reliability, I had to replace a 20 year old fridge with split shelves only to find that this feature is now only available on more expensive, less efficient, less reliable bottom freezer units. Another modern fridge I've dealt with recently (Whirlpool) was just breathtakingly poorly built. It worked, but imagine if Whirlopool had sunk money into QA instead of gizmos.
Presumably your built-in temp sensors are WiFi or bluetooth. What are the chances that's gonna get updated when the next WiFi standard starts to become more common? Will it support the next version of WPA? What happens when the power goes out?
When I had to diagnose a dying LG fridge, I got some cheapie ($20ish) RF temp probes. They're battery powered, the included receiver can set an alarm, and a cheapie software defined radio kit can decode the signals on Linux. I run rechargeable NiCad batteries in them and have moved them from the LG to a couple fridges since. Hands down a way better (and more robust) experience than anything a fridge manufacturer could dream up.
Door open alarms are comparatively much simpler and a good example of a feature with a much smaller inherent downside.
BTW, I'd also add that folks (not necessarily you) championing flashy features are forgetting just how dead nuts simple fridges used be. To the best of my knowledge my current fridge (Frigidaire / Electrolux) has a mechanical timer for the defrost cycle. The LG uses electronic controls to eek out a bit more efficiency. I know which one I'd rather replace.
Besides, if you've got to replace a fridge every five years now that's a win for the appliance manufacturers. Although, really, who offers anything more than a 1 year warranty anymore? That should tell you how long these things are expected to last.
I do wonder if that drives the higher prices we pay here though...?
When LG bought my fridge back the original warranty had expired a day prior and things were being handled under the terms of the extended warranty my landlady bought.
I personally like the idea of smart home things and everything connected. It feels like it opens up so many possibilities or ideas.
Do I need it for survival? No. But I do like the idea and how it triggers my imagination.
What is missing and what I should buy are different things. If my fridge has yogurt, bacon and some hamburgers, you might say "well, you are missing eggs". Except maybe I don't want eggs. I may be even allergic. Or maybe I like eggs but I'm in some low-protein diet for whatever reason.
The goal of a fridge is not to have literally everything, is to store everything you think you need for some days.
As for recipes, yes, that's more creative, but I guess I would just actively Google that (or even use an old fashioned recipe book!) if I were looking for original recipes. Of course, you can also ChatGPT it, but the direct fridge -> ChatGPT interaction is a bit weird because maybe I don't want original recipes or maybe I'm going to eat out.
So a hypothetical (?) app that sends me notifications about what recipes ChatGPT suggests by looking at my fridge wouldn't be very appealing unless you're always looking for new recipes. If you're mostly cooking ordinary things, continuous "You could cook X" would count as spam, much like a lot of people skip (or try to skip) ads on Youtube and ignore random "buy this at 70% discount" emails. And if you're that passionate about new recipes I guess you're probably interested in cooking and don't need the fridge to tell you what's missing.
Any potential benefit from such a device would be destroyed by the cancerous advertising industry.
If it's a huge problem psychologically for you, maybe you can just take the following 5 years or whatever time you estimate you will be using the product and calculate that into the base price to make your decision.
Adding advertising into the mix almost always makes the incentives align more poorly with the customer's interest. For example, the refrigerator manufacturer now has an incentive to increase food spoilage to increase ad conversions.
>Having a subscription can actually be beneficial in terms of incentive to keep up supporting the product in my view
So you want to pay them to show you ads in the hopes that that means they don't stop supporting your refrigerator? What does that even mean? They're not going to extend your warranty.
Because if the product stops working, I also stop paying subscription.
Right now there's an incentive to make short lasting products to have customer buy a new one, but with subscription the incentive changes.
Think of it like working conditions getting increasingly poor and abusive year over year, while your salary stays fixed.
It matters not because the deals are increasingly shit and abusive, but also because them being much better is within most of our's living memories, and there's no actual reason for things to go this shit, except a supplier-driven market fucking customers over because they can, and race-to-the-bottom mechanics preventing any single vendor from reversing course.
If they can just keep increasing prices unfairly, then it means something is wrong with free market, not with subscriptions.
And yes, there's plenty of wrong with the free market, starting with that it's a hypothetical construct that doesn't exist, and even if it did, it's gameable and would have been gamed by the vendors the same way the real market is.
E.g. you start interaction by asking the fridge - I am a bit tired, what is an easy thing to cook based on what I have in the fridge and I am stopping by the store, is there anything I should buy to have a few more options.
So GPT vision takes image of what is in the fridge and then tries to solve for that question. If user is allergic to something that would be in GPT's prompt.
You would need a smart fridge if you wanted to directly connect the fridge with ChatGPT. Which is what I assumed in the previous comment.
It would be directly connected to GPT and you can either use it as mobile app or with other devices or fridge itself directly.
So for example you are at work, about to leave home, store is on the way and then you ask this question from the app. Fridge takes photo, forwards it with certain prompts to OpenAI APIs and then gives you the response.
Now, if this was an explicit user-GPT interaction, you could prompt the GPT with "hey, I'm Muslim, what can I cook with this stuff?" or "hey, I'm lactose intolerant, what else could I buy?". You do need to trust the OpenAI provider, but not the fridge.
Instead, the fridge automatically talks to GPT. So if you want to avoid "dumb" suggestions you wouldn't be able to follow, you would have to tell your fridge you're Jew or Muslim or lactose intolerant or diabetic. Don't you see an issue with this?
I'm not "tinfoil hat" paranoid, I don't think people are out there to get me. But a certain dose of skepticism when it comes to data usage should be healthy, especially when many companies have been known to mess up this aspect (from Cambridge Analytica to Roomba employers sending pictures of a woman on the toilet to Facebook, and much more). You cannot avoid this 100% unless you go to extreme lengths, but if you can avoid sending data to one more company, why not?
If you don't like certain foods, you can just customise the prompt that fridge sends to OpenAI. You can customise it through a web app or mobile app.
> you would have to tell your fridge you're Jew or Muslim or lactose intolerant or diabetic. Don't you see an issue with this?
What's the problem with storing your food preferences somewhere? People use dieting apps all the time on mobile.
> You cannot avoid this 100% unless you go to extreme lengths, but if you can avoid sending data to one more company, why not?
You are already sending your data in thousands of different ways and exposing yourself at any moment. I'm not saying you should do more of it, but food preferences seems like a very minor drop in the bucket of all that you are already exposing.
Most people store their images in a cloud, which already indicate amazing amount about them. Just using a smartphone is 1000x worse than having food preferences stored somewhere.
I accept that when I Google something Google and maybe other companies know what I searched, because Googling things is useful. I cannot bring an encyclopaedia and a detailed map of the whole world with me all the time, so it's a tradeoff I can accept.
I accept that, on the rare occasions I turn geolocation, someone will know where I am, because if I do turn it on, it's probably because I got lost. Then I turn it off and off we go.
Divulging food preferences for... an AI that suggests me what I should buy doesn't look like it's worth it. And it's not just food preferences. Remember people store medications in their fridge. A fridge so advanced it can recognize any food is probably capable of reading labels and knowing I bought medication for X,Y and Z. Which is definitely something I'm not explicitly telling people (or things) without a reason.
And don't forget the power of correlating data. Correlating food preferences with other data you could easily understand if someone is ill, pregnant, whether they follow a certain religion (think Ramadan, or not eating meat on Friday,...), whether they are living with someone else (buying twice the amount of stuff they usually buy?) and so on.
This is all stuff I try to avoid telling everyone. Yes, my doctor could be hacked and people could know I'm on medication anyway (hypothetically), but why divulge that voluntarily for essentially no reason?
yes it’s an “exciting feature” if your AI fridge can know that you’re pregnant and not recommend recipes that contain certain ingredients. what the other person is alluding to is that the data it has about you specifically will not stay contained between you and your fridge. what if you’re not married and your employer is like dave ramsey and fires women for being pregnant out of wedlock? or you live in a state with much more grim conditions currently around women and miscarriages? what if the meds in your fridge are related to HRT and there are orgs actively buying data to find these people to target them for bullying online (or worse)?
all of your data will inevitably end up in the hands of people that aren’t at all interested in improving your health. they’re interested in extracting value from you and your data or they have ill will towards you.
what starts as “exciting features” leads to your fridge tracking what groceries you purchase and what you consume. then it (or a third party that gets this data) makes determinations about your religion, your lifestyle, if you’re pregnant or not, etc without you knowing.
when every device in your house is collecting and selling off your data as a business model, there’s a significant mental overhead that needs to be expelled to ensure that you are able to keep your life private if you choose to. you may say: “don’t buy the appliances with the feature, then!” once a company can integrate these features effectively and subsidize hardware costs by selling the data, they’ll have other companies competing to offer the same so they can hit those target features and prices. eventually the market is flooded with appliances with these “exciting features” that are just gathering and selling data. in the end, we’ve traded our option to _choose_ privacy for a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist. personally, i don’t believe the public is currently aware enough to understand the consequences.
The thing about data, unlike many common objects (ignoring 3d printers), is that you can easily copy data you control. So the fact that the fridge tells you "as an additional comfort in your pregnancy, I would add X" (if it even says that clearly) does not mean it also don't send data to other people.
Again, this is not a science fiction example. Many companies have successfully sent personal data to other companies or leaked that somehow to the Internet.
Personally this still makes me uncomfortable, even if I know this cannot be 100% avoided in today's world. So if I can avoid volunteering additional data to some company in exchange for voice activated lights, I'm happier. Maybe it's just me, though... but probably not.
We live in this World for a very limited time. If things can be automated, they should so we can choose exactly what we want to do with this time.
the problem is that “the market” doesn’t care what you believe in or what you “opt out” of.
there are devices that have programmed in alternate ways to phone home even if you choose to intentionally not connect it to wifi.
> If things can be automated, they should so we can choose exactly what we want to do with this time.
there’s very likely a CSA in your area that you can pay to deliver you fresh meats, eggs, fruits, and vegetables. some also provide recipes alongside.
it’s a much simpler solution in lieu of shoehorning tech into an appliance that will likely stop receiving bug fixes or security updates in 3-5 years when the company releases a new version.
like most of the tech industry, this is a “solution” looking for a problem.
Do current smart fridges even get security updates at all?
It should not trigger just your imagination, but your paranoia.
So...
do you upgrade your fridge OS? Maybe, maybe not. What happens if you do and an upgrade fails?
does it talk to the Internet? If it has to (by design), then all bets are off. You could try to mirror traffic and take a packet capture, but a fridge OS could easily use HTTPS over a "smart.myfridge.com" domain and you wouldn't know what's going on.
How does it even authenticate to whatever remote server they have? If it uses tokens or client certificates, what happens when they expire?
I'm a sysadmin, I know things fail. Even laptops and phones. But, while I can see valid use cases for laptops and phones, I still fail to see the actual appeal of most "smart home" appliances, outside of security systems. And I don't want to have nightmares about my fridge certificate expiration or not being able to turn your light on because my fiber connection went down.
You could install open sourced things to that fridge. E.g. the fridge could either come with sensors immediately available or just have convenient mounts to place your own cameras.
Maybe the fridge could have a simple linux box, raspberry PI or whatever set up. There could be a market where you can flexibly pick how immediately available solution you want or if you want to put in everything yourself and control, depending on how concerned you are about privacy and how technical you are.
If you want to have full control, you can just do that.
> do you upgrade your fridge OS? Maybe, maybe not. What happens if you do and an upgrade fails?
Most smart home devices in my experience update through a mobile app connected to your WiFi.
> What happens if you do and an upgrade fails
Fridge itself would still work, just the picture taking and ai guidance wouldn't.
> How does it even authenticate to whatever remote server they have? If it uses tokens or client certificates, what happens when they expire?
Through mobile app can update, reset everything.
> And I don't want to have nightmares about my fridge certificate expiration or not being able to turn your light on because my fiber connection went down.
These basic things like light and other base features you make sure can work even if smart software fails.
Even ignoring the potential privacy concerns, you're assuming too much in terms of reliability.
When an AWS region went down a couple of years ago, a lot of smart fridges and lights didn't work properly (https://financialpost.com/technology/personal-tech/pitfalls-...).
I'm not. My phone, laptop and computers all run software that I get to install down to the OS (Linux, /e/OS), and I would never install something like the ChatGPT app on my phone.
> it should be possible to build those smart devices with similar security
It should be possible, but they are not. Don't forget: the "S" in IoT stands for "Security".
In any case, this is not even what I am talking about. What I am talking about is the "attack" being done by corporations into your house. It pains me to hear that people are willing to give so much of their privacy in the name of "convenience" and don't even show any slight concern over the thought of having so much data going to Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and (now) OpenAI.
If you went to someone's home and they told you "by the way, my home is full of microphones and video cameras which are always on and used to power my digital assistant", how would you feel?
Everyone are already walking around with smart phones that are perfectly able to do all of that.
> I'm not. My phone, laptop and computers all run software that I get to install down to the OS (Linux, /e/OS), and I would never install something like the ChatGPT app on my phone.
Fine if you do that.
> What I am talking about is the "attack" being done by corporations into your house. It pains me to hear that people are willing to give so much of their privacy in the name of "convenience" and don't even show any slight concern over the thought of having so much data going to Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and (now) OpenAI.
I personally am not concerned about this, although I understand how people can be. I don't want to go my whole life avoiding things, concerned about what is being done with my data, and then I die. I have long dated option calls really out of money in all those companies (except OpenAI of course), in case one of them gets a massive data advantage and happens to discover singularity from this, so I would benefit from it anyway. Before that happens, they just use it to optimise ads for you, and I prefer optimised ads over random ads. Otherwise I'll do my best to block them, but if they get through, I prefer something I might actually be interested in and that might help me.
I prefer to see inventions and technology. At certain point humans will be outlived by technology anyway, and that's bound to happen. New inventions and tech are what is exciting and why I like living, seeing those things coming together.
Being able to do it is not the same as actually doing it.
The rest of your argument, sorry but I can not respond without feeling angry. It just feels like the rationalizations of a selfish, too-clever-by-half neomaniac.
You could have smart devices similarly only react or go to active mode when you press a button on your watch etc.
> The rest of your argument, sorry but I can not respond without feeling angry. It just feels like the rationalizations of a selfish, too-clever-by-half neomaniac.
Okay, I agree that your words can describe me well, but what do you think the end game for humans or tech is? Why do we exist here? Are we just here to reproduce over and over again with no change? And if there's always change, aren't you curious what will happen in the future?
Change simply means that something becomes something else. It isn't inherently good.
For example, now I walk with both legs, but if a car hits me, I might stay on a wheelchair for some time, which is change, but not a welcome one. Before you say "this is a strawman argument", think about technologies like "cloud seeding", which are supposed to enforce specific weather conditions by spraying certain substances in the air (not clear on the details). This sounds like a cool idea, but is it, when some studies suggest this is dangerous for the environment? Shouldn't we (as humans) think about the effects before embracing change?
So, to me, change can be good or bad (or, often, a combination). If the goal of human life was change, it should probably be "change for good". Which is complicated - what is good and what is bad? Who gets to decide? Can I know in advance? What if something is eventually to be bad, can we get back? But that's how life is, no matter the end goal: complicated.
What do you think the goal is?
I just think that at some point we will find out anyway and why not quicker then? Why let 5 or 10 more generations of humans go on if at some point we might reach an answer or an endpoint of some sort.
Because you and the corporations you support are making the lives of people worse now, and you are trading their wellbeing for your very minimal, personal comfort, and rationalizing it away with Pascal Wager-style of technocracy where "tech" could save you from dying.
"Tech" is a means, not an end. What problems are we solving with this tech, and what problems are we creating with the introduction of new technology? These are the only questions that I have when talking about technology, and I really don't see much sense in trying to turn into an existential question.
> aren't you curious what will happen in the future?
Not really, no. When facing a moral dilemma, I look to the past to see what mistakes can be avoided. I try to live in the present and take things as they are. I might look at the "current instant" to see where things are headed and if there are new opportunities being presented, but "the future" is something so out of reach and so out of control that I really give as little thought as possible.
Or even in a more mundane situation, do you think that someone volunteering on a hospital to entertain sick kids do not find meaning in what they do because they are not effectively helping to cure cancer?
There is another thread where you say you are not religious. I don't want to tell you how to live your life, but if you are bowing down to the Altar of Technology to find meaning for your life, maybe religion is not so bad after all?
But now that we do, I do think we should figure out what is going on here. I don't knownif you can call it religion or whatever, but the point is completing this puzzle and tech is necessary to do that.
You don't care about what is behind all this?
Please, stop falling for the Kurzweil and Singularity crap. It's just the nerd version of the coming of the Messiah, with an extra dose of hubris on top.
I don't know who you are talking about. It's my own thoughts. I'm not falling for at least anyone else's crap. If it's crap, then it's my own crap that I'm falling for.
> I don't care enough to sacrifice my present to pursue some crazy Singularity and I certainly am not interested in sacrificing myself to give so much power to any single corporation, no matter how "good" their promises are.
I think there should then be initiative to include everyone in the World in the top tech companies. E.g. similarly you give everyone in the World a right to buy in to an ownership in limited amount given such a thing should occur. But every individual in the World can only buy one, equal unit.
This is why I buy those call options myself, but I think everyone in the World should have such call options.
I'm trying to problem solve here, because I want to see this tech.
My old washing machine had nobs (dials) you turn. You put the clothes and soap in, close the door and press the button. My preference of type of wash and water temperature were all "saved" by the nob position.
My current washing machine, nob is type of wash, capacitive touch buttons for everything else. Keeping the nob "on" keeps the digital display on and consuming power. And the wash options like temperature, extra rinse etc are all controlled digitally with no memory. Want 60 degrees water? Press the water temperature button 8 times, each with a delay of about 3/4 of a second for it to register before a press works again. It's utterly terrible.
Capacitive touch buttons became cheaper than mechanical buttons. That's why they're suddenly on everything now.
However I agree on the complexity. I deliberately buy appliance with as few optoins as possible. My dishwasher has two cycles: normal or heavy-duty, and one more option for heat or air dry. It has a single button to start/stop. If you just load it and press start, it runs the last cycle chosen.
My washer and dryer (LG) have some more options but if you just load them and press Start they run the "normal" cycle which is what I want 90% of the time. Simple.
Do not want internet-connected appliances with apps and excessive features.
I'll never again have a water line connected to my refrigerator. They eventually leak and in one case did significant damage to the floor before I noticed. For cold water, keep a pitcher in the fridge. For ice, use ice trays. Simple and they always work.
You just made me realise Americans don’t use the word ‘knob’… or do they?
I say this because maybe it goes to show that different people are different. Maybe someone gets use out of the silly camera that shows them the inside of the fridge. It sounds ridiculous to me, but evidently my lights sound ridiculous to you.
My parents are getting older. Their knees appreciate being able to tell Siri to turn off the downstairs lights from upstairs.
It's actually very convenient :) I hated when I forgot to turn some light off and had to get out of bed just to flip it. And you don't need Internet for that, just a local hub with voice recognition (though most off the shelf stuff does everything it can for you to go with Google/Apple systems, which do need to be connected all the time - besides requiring you to be logged in at all times for no benefit to you, obviously just so they can either sell your data or to ensure you're properly locked in and can deny you service if you somehow get out of line).
My heat pump does require Internet, though. Apparently the firmware must self-update continuously and you can probably be denied warranty if you don't let it do so. But at least there are genuine use cases: it can monitor the electricity prices with 1-day in advance, so it can "plan" the best time to power up and down to save electricity (at least they say it does it)... and it can control the temperature better as the temperature outside goes up and down, knowing it beforehand via weather forecasts. But of course, to actually control the machine via the app requires a paid feature :D no thanks.
I can't stand vendor apps. They're always garbage. In fact, the main reason I set up Home Assistant, and the main reason my wife embraced it and uses it daily, is because hooking up our A/C to it made it infinitely more useful than having it operated over the vendor shit app. With HA, either of us can reconfigure all A/Cs and then go and make tea or whatever, in time it took the official vendor app to fully open.
IoT is a disaster, Home Assistant and some tinkering is the only thing that makes it reasonable to have a smart device.
Though personally I think we’re barking up the wrong tree by trying to smarten up every appliance. The objective of having remote control/sensing of all your stuff would be better achieved by having a single robot “butler” that can check on state and interface with everything, but the appliances themselves should be simple and easily controllable. As long as there’s a universal communications standard for all devices to be able to communicate with the “butler” the mechanical interfacing could basically be designed in as accessibility features. That way the software and smart capabilities are all in one package that can be upgraded or modified instead of scattered across a bunch of individual things that are expensive to replace or repair.
I’m basically imagining a drone that runs around the house along a rail track on the ceiling and has a little dongle it can plug into devices to control them like Star Wars droids. Bonus points if the method of control is purely mechanical without needing much computing power in the appliance at all.
The reason this will never happen, of course, is obvious. You’ll never get everyone to retrofit their houses for a robo-rail.
Of course if any big FAANG-company does this expect it to be beaming everything it sees straight up to the cloud. Amazon already tried this with their Ring security drone.
Its only after I bought it (and the free trial expired) that I discovered that an additional subscription is required to use the integrated "cooking recipe" service that guides you through cooking various dishes - insanely cheeky given how much it cost!
To top it off, I'm constantly nagged to connect the thing to WiFi so it can update god-knows-what. Never. Again.
When the replacement thermostat of my fridge broke I replaced it with an ESP32 with a DS18B20 and a relay, now it posts temperature data to a logging server and the temperature range can be adjusted over WiFi when needed. Here again, I guess if it were really smart, that this would mean that the vendor would place the requirement of me sharing all the data with them so that they then give me a subset of data.
I think the European market is different, in general.
>The EU just made it so that any new major appliance must be repaired by the maker for 10 years
I'm not sure how true that is, but I set by VPN Dublin, Ireland and did some shopping to see what brands are avaliable.
Lot of interesting brands I ran across:
BEKO
BOSCH
CANDY
HOOVER
HOTPOINT
INDESIT
LIEBHERR
MIELE
NORDMENDE
NORKO
POWERPOINT
SIEMENS
TCL
WHIRLPOOL
Even without brains, new appliances are shit.
I've had multiple Subzero basic commodity or commercial refrigerators last 15-20 years with only minor parts replacements which are easily found. Of course these are not cheap, but isn't that what everyone here is asking for? Something made well that lasts a long time?
They don't look fancy at all and nobody even knows it's a Subzero because there are no labels on it and no stainless steel front.
$10k-$15k for a refrigerator?
I’ve only ever owned fairly “basic” refrigerators (e.g. LG or GE), that are about 1/10 of that cost, and have never had any problems with them going out or even degrading in quality (e.g. 10+ years). Maybe needed an ice maker repair, but that’s about it.
Do people need to spend that kind of money for a refrigerator that lasts?
Maybe if you’re going to be in your home for 30-40 years, but not many people stay in one place long enough to outlive these “basic” refrigerators. And even then, I’d argue that a $1k-$2k refrigerator can still last that long.
(I’m using “basic” in quotes here because I feel like our refrigerators weren’t even the bottom tier — they’re quite large, and have the features we need. But now seeing other brands that cost as much as some vehicles, to some they may seem basic.)
Subzero might in fact be a decent-quality fridge--I have no idea because I refuse to pay a status tax on appliances.
Designed to impress who? You can't tell a SZ fridge by looking at it, there are usually no labels. I know of a few professional chefs who buy these fridges, does that mean they are just buying them to impress?
But this discussion is more around what average people are looking for (e.g. smart vs. dumb appliances), and not so much about commercial appliances that most people aren’t the target consumer for.
Re: impressing people and the lack of labels, just looking at images of SZ refrigerators, these are clearly distinguishable from consumer grade refrigerators. They clearly have the appearance of belonging in a commercial chef’s kitchen.
Out of curiosity, though, you said you’ve had multiple SZ refrigerators — why did you choose those over, e.g. a $1k-$2 LG/GE/Samsung refrigerator? Did you not think it would last more than a few years?
You said:
> I've had multiple Subzero basic commodity or commercial refrigerators last 15-20 years with only minor parts replacements which are easily found.
I could replace “Subzero” with any of the above brands, and say the same thing. So just trying to figure out what you’re willing to pay 10x for.
Genuinely curious, as I feel I may be missing something.
I avoid LG/Samsung because of the countless articles here an other places were people complain about the quality of appliances, but yet the mass majority of [different] people still buy these crappy appliances with touch screens and glossy finishes.
My point is that these appliances do exist, no feature, long lasting, easily reparable, expensive. People do not want to pay for them as much as HN says they do. For a bunch of smart Engineers I don't understand why this is difficult to grasp. If you want quality, you have to pay for it.
I definitely agree, but I also believe this applies to some products more than others, and I think there are also diminishing returns as you pay more.
For example, I can say I’ve probably owned 3 refrigerators over the past 20 years (two different homes), and probably paid less than $5000 total. The refrigerator in the last home is probably still going strong, and the one in this home will probably last another 5-10 years at least, and definitely longer than we’ll be in this home.
I think we may have had one repair call at the last home, and none yet on this one (though I’ll admit that the ice maker is currently out, and I’ve not taken the time to diagnose it, and may or may not need a repair call).
Would I pay 2x if I knew I was guaranteed not needing a repair call. Maybe, but not definitely. Would I pay 10x though? Definitely not (unless I was gaining other benefits).
But I also believe I did decent research before purchasing all of these, and that probably played more of a role vs. how much I paid.
But again, will agree that a lot of times you do get what you pay for. I’ve been bitten before by trying to save money.
I just also believe that people with money can tend to overpay for things with diminishing returns, and there’s a balance that can be struck between quality and cost. And I’ve also been bitten by overpaying for something that wasn’t worth the premiums cost in the end (e.g. upper end computer parts can definitely have diminishing returns).
You opened the door, and there was SPACE. The refrigerator was taller than I was, and very wide. I think it was subzero, but I could be wrong.
It seemed like you could take the 30 lb turkey from thanksgiving and just set it on a shelf, without giving up much space.
Afterwards looking at other refrigerators, even the ingenious ones, I was struck by how complicated they were. You would still be fighting to find a place for something in the refrigerator, or looking for something you lost.
For computer folks, it was the refrigerator equivalent of an organized rack of servers, instead of a bunch of systems crammed under your desk with wires going whereever.
Another example is Speed Queen for washers and dryers. They are substantially more expensive and look very plain and even old fashioned. But they are built to last a long time and be repairable. They have a large part of the laundromat market because the laundromat owners do value these qualities. But they have very little of the consumer market, because consumers don't.
Consumers also tend to favor nice-sounding features that are in fact unreliable and frustrating, such as ice makers in the refrigerator compartment.
Those appliances are built to handle much more usage, and for a much longer time. E.g. a washer in a laundromat will be used probably 10x compared to a consumer washer over the same amount of time.
Also, a laundromat wants the washer to last as long as possible, probably 20-30 years, but at least 10-15.
There’s no reason for consumers to spend 10x on commercial appliances, when they’re not used as often, and won’t need to endure the misuse/abuse that commercial appliances take.
Also, few residents stay in one place long enough to need an appliance to last more than 15 or so years, and most consumer appliances last that long.
Consumers ain't choosing shit. People are talking here as if most people were drowning in money, and shopping around for low price as a pastime. On the contrary, people are starved for funds, they buy cheap out of necessity, enduring whatever abusive or lazy bullshit the manufaturer pulled off to offer their wares slightly cheaper.
One problem I see is that the higher priced items are not necessarily higher quality these days. A lot of brands are coasting on their reputation while selling cheaply made items at premium price.
I had a similar era whatever of Whirlpool's bargain basement brand was in my apartment in the city. That one did stop cooling reliably, but a $20 relay and 10 minutes fixed that right up. I didn't even bother to call the landlord.
With few exceptions you'll find similar stories from most well known brands up through the mid 00s.
Actually, those features seem to have become so common that they don't seem to command a price premium anymore. My washing machine was the cheapest that ticked all the boxes I wanted (most importantly size), and it still has some kind of wifi thingy. Ditto for my dishwasher.
They both work perfectly well without any connection to anything, and not once have they even tried to get me to connect them.
For the washing machine, a notification that it's done can be useful. I usually do laundry while I'm either working or playing some game, so 9 out of 10 times I won't hear that it's done and forget to take the clothes out. Now I've taken the habit of setting an alarm to check on it after the estimated time is up.
For the dishwasher, I really don't care. The dishes can stay there until I need them.
Is there an open Wi-Fi network nearby?
And it's not like they're TVs, I doubt they'd be able to show me any add on their 7-segment displays. So I'm not sure what would be the benefit of trying to connect to a network and let LG know that I've washed some clothes.
Those will soon also not require you to connect them to your wifi, NB-IoT both chips and plans cost for businesses are already very good.
Thanks to Tuya, the software and infra side for making a garbage-quality IoT device is effectively free now. You may be surprised just how much of those you have around you. Any random device class that suddenly gained optional "control through app/voice assistants" feature is likely Tuya in disguise - magic of white-label IoT.
I honestly wonder how big that market has gotten in the last few years, and I’m including software/services in it.
I know I’m definitely part of that market and also that the most technophile people from my list of friends and acquaintances are mostly working in non-tech industries. For example I was very surprised when visiting an acquaintance that works in the media and the first thing he did when he entered the house was to “talk” with Alexa, we have such a device at home but to this day it still is unboxed, hence uninstalled (received it at an IT event).