Comment by IanCal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by IanCal | Hacker News Reader

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A healthy relationship with technology isn't the same as not using technology.

> It doesnt seem like any of this would really be useful as you'd have to enter all the useful data manually(calendar).

You have to enter calendar data somewhere, right now I often have the same info or different subset split between my calendar, work ones, my wifes one and the one on the wall. Even the paper version requires having entered the data - more so than the tech based ones because an invitation sent by email now needs to be manually copied over. Or have I misunderstood?

> You dont need real time information because you know how long it takes since you've done it 1000s of times and it beeps. All these things are just managed in our heads subconsciously.

This seems odd to me. First just a couple of things

> You dont need real time information because you know how long it takes

1. It takes different amounts of time depending on the load and settings

2. Knowing how long it takes and when to take it out is something the person who put it on knows, but there are different people in this house who can all do either task

3. It's in a place where the beeping is often not heard

But more interestingly is that we're comparing two different approaches. One is

* A note written in a place that washing needs to be taken out if it's not been done.

You describe this as an unhealthy relationship with technology.

Your better solution is

* Work out when a machine will finish its task, remember this

* Wait for the machine to shout at you

* If you don't hear it shouting then keep checking the time to see if it's finished its task

* Make sure you track all of this in your head on top of anything else

This is more healthy? Than a note on the wall that says "change the washing"?

Imagine you started with the typical thing being that you have a note on the wall that says "washing is done" when it's done and the machine itself is silent. I come along and tell you I've got a much better, healthier way of interacting with it - wait for it to make an annoying noise!

I dont wait for the noise. I dont wait for the washing machine to finish. I put it on and then at some point later in the day I hang it out. No one is struggling to know if the washing machine is on you can hear it.

Spending $1000s on this setup and running it 24/7 is a waste in every regard except hobby enjoyment.

A bit OT but if your house is so big that you can't even hear the laundry buzzer it seems like the size of the house itself is a stressor.

I just have doors and my house is built well.

> A bit OT but if your house is so big that you can't even hear the laundry buzzer it seems like the size of the house itself is a stressor.

Huh? I could admit it's a bit of a "good problem to have" but why would it be a stressor?

That's the ethos of the entire tiny home movement. Large houses consume a lot of time and mental energy just to maintain them and to walk from one side to the other. I noticed it a lot moving from a 3 story 2,500 sq ft home in Seattle to a similarly sized apartment in Berlin that's all on one floor. My kids do miss sliding down the stairs though.

You can set an alarm on your phone when it starts like millions of people do instead of spending $2000 overengineering a solution to this "problem".

The fact that people are complaining about the cognitive load and beeping sound when running a washing machine is utterly baffling to me. This goes beyond sheltered "first-world problems". There is something insidious about this about micro-optimising for non-issues, something dystopian.

I'm not arguing to spend lots of money, I'm saying that this is not an unhealthy tech setup. It's quite clear from this writeup that they either enjoy it or were thinking about selling it, or both, and money does not seem to be a particular concern for them. They even explicitly say it's too much for typical consumers, so they're not trying to sell you on the idea of spending this.

> You can set an alarm on your phone

I don't see "manually setup another bit of technology make an annoying noise" as a nicer or more healthy integration of technology in my life compared to a note written on the wall.

> The fact that people are complaining about the cognitive load and beeping sound when running a washing machine is utterly baffling to me

Perhaps you're reading it in some tone that suggests these are huge issues for people to deal with. I am reading them as just niceties in life. I have tried for some time to practice responding to being baffled with assuming I've not understood something, I think you might be baffled here because you have misinterpreted what people have been saying or not understood their personal issues or how easy it can be to setup some of these things.

Same as the timer on my oven is useful, but I don't need one - I could do it entirely manually right?

I have things setup to notify me if we haven't setup the dishwasher and/or the door has been left open when we head to bed. I'm not in dire need of this and my life was not falling apart at the load of remembering to do it, but it took me less time to add an automation for that than it did to either go and check the dishwasher a few times or clean up bowls in the morning for breakfast by hand. It's caught things a few times, and it's another thing I don't need to keep in my head. I'm not sure why deliberately choosing to increase cognitive load is somehow a good thing, and these things all do build up. I could remember all my appointments and schedules and tasks I need to complete, but calendars and reminders and todo-lists are useful.

> You can set an alarm on your phone

Not all washing machines have static wash times, some (like ours) adjust the time based on what you actually put into it. Not to mention there are like 5-6 different programs we use, who has time to remember kind of how long time each program takes? And it doesn't display how long it'll take until it measured the load, which takes 2-3 minutes.

So instead; chuck in the clothes and cleaning product, put the program, go do other stuff and await for Home Assistant to tell us when it's done. Over-engineered? Nah, just comfortable modern living.

I would like to suggest a third alternative which is to set an alarm for the maximum time it will take. The HA option is more fun though for sure.

But why? Why add a manual, less accurate step instead of just using HA and solving it once? Steaming takes 20 minutes, a quick wash is ~1h, a boil wash more like 4h.

Why do I want only my phone to have a notification? Why do I want it to override other settings and go off at a set time rather than when I choose to interact (as a notification would)?

You can absolutely solve this in other ways, but adding an automation into HA for notifying me about forgetting to setup the dishwasher took a few minutes max and I only had to do it once.

I'm not saying don't use HA - you do you. I get the alure of home automation and I'm glad you're finding it useful. All I'm saying is that the argument that 'the phone timer might be wrong therefore use HA' is a false dichotomy. You know what kind of wash you've selected and you know how long it takes roughly - you wrote it in your comment :-) It takes a few seconds to set a timer for that plus 10% for variability.

> ... adding an automation into HA ... took a few minutes max

... plus the hours it takes to setup and maintain HA and the machine its running on and the wireless hub and the dishwasher... etc. I bet you won't save back the total time spent across the whole lifetime of the system. That's not the only measure of success and that's fine.

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