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Comment by Moldoteck | Hacker News Reader

I do have some use-cases for a tv to be 'smart'. It's on/off trigger from a smartphone and casting anything you like from YT/Spotify.

It would make sense for a washing machine to be smart/have ai if it could detect clothes types and suggest a washing regime or warn you that selected regime can damage them. It'll also be nice to be able to schedule the washing so for ex. it's done when you get at home from work. For dishwasher - maybe somehow detect stuff that's incompatible with dishwasher and warn you?

I do also see a point in having a smart fridge that would detect products that expire based on some qr codes printed on them, otherwise idk...

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Those aren't real problems for most people, though. I've never damaged a piece of clothing and I only use a few programs. It's obvious what you can put in the dishwasher. And expiry dates don't mean anything. Food is usually fine to eat long after the expiry or best before date. It's easy to see if someone is bad because the color, texture, smell and taste change.

Those examples seem like they would be useful for mentally disabled people. Not trying to be a dick here, but someone with declining cognitive abilities is more likely to put a sock in the dishwasher, to wash delicate clothing at 90 °C or to forget food in the fridge for months.

It reminds me of those items primarily designed for physically disabled people that (used to) be advertised for normal people on infomercials because the market for disabled people wasn't big enough.

welp, since nowadays a lot of clothing is some synth garbage, it's not that critical compared to washing some quality woolens, especially if washing instructions are gone. Expiry dates are still an indicator for food expiration, especially for animal products. Yes, for honey/salt it doesn't make sense. These are nice to have things that i'm sure will eventually be implemented in some way. To me it sounds a bit similar with that dropbox meme - yes, you can do everything 'manually', but some automation will definitely help. And as always, with many products it's actually correct to assume people don't think that much about how to use it, the more intuitive and automated is the process, the more ppl will have it easier

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