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Comment by darreninthenet | Hacker News Reader

If you're home or not upstairs asleep I guess it's sufficient

It's a lot more common that you didn't close it properly Just Now (and haven't gotten very far, and are maybe still in earshot) then the door spontaneously opening, especially with the slight negative pressure and magnetic gaskets.

(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...)

Yes? But that still isn't a case for saying avoid it... I didn't say it was earth shattering life changing feature... if it has it, it's "handy". Not something that would make me buy it but useful if it does.

And what do you do if you are not home?

So the fridge just opened itself?

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 did lose a fridge full of food once. On our way out for the weekend, my wife opened the freezer to grab ice to pack the cooler. She left the freezer door slightly ajar and grabbed the cooler and threw it in the car and we left.

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.

Some people have family or close friends who have copies of our keys to deal with just such a scenario (or to water our plants when we're away on a longer holiday).

Friends and neighbours? Turn around? My wife works 15 minutes drive from home?

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