Why 'Smart' Products Have Started to Look Like the Dumb Choice | Hacker News Reader

Why 'Smart' Products Have Started to Look Like the Dumb Choice

nytimes.com

11 pointsreaperducer7 comments

I've heard that its cheaper for cars to have touchscreens ("smart") than a panel of buttons. And TVs that spy on you are cheaper because they have the collected information to offset some of that cost.

I've been reflecting on this lately. I bought a window air conditioner which has higher BTU but also has an "app" you can download on your phone. Which I have no interest in. The remote has basic controls and that's...fine.

My old air conditioner would remember its last mode and temperature settings but this one has amnesia and starts up in the same state blank state every time. It also automatically raises the room temperature over night which is dumb.

I haven't bothered downloading the app, because I don't need my air conditioner on the wifi and i can't fathom what would be so great about an app when i basically just need on/off functionality.

I see the same thing happening with cars. I heard that dave (of dave's garage on YT) has a car from 2018 that can no longer start remotely because the car company shut down the servers. It's not even 10 years old!

And good luck finding a TV that isn't "smart" that shows you their own ads, sends screenshots of what you watch, and pauses ads when you press mute. Ridiculous.

My new refrigerator has WiFi, but no screen. They clearly could not come up with any real feature other than "get an alert when the temperature goes too high". Everything else could be done with the built-in seven segment display, if they hadn't intentionally removed or hidden them. In total: sabbath mode and "turbo cool" modes.

I wish I could have paid $100 less to not have an entire computer running a full WiFi stack.

Though shockingly, the owner's manual includes MQTT API documentation. If I really cared to, I could put it on a VLAN and have HomeAssistant talk to it.

Up until that last sentence I put it in the "hell, no" category, but they've actually added MQTT to it and documented it? That's pretty impressive, and way more than 99.99% of all other manufacturers will do. Just out of interest, which fridge is it? I've never heard of one that's HA-compatible.

Just for the record I have no intention of buying one, my existing fridge has a light that goes on when you open the door and off when you close it, that's enough smarts for me, I'd just be curious to see what they've done.

FWIW there's a good chance your fridge does more than that without you realising it if it's a fridge freezer. A lot of fridge freezers now have an anti-frost system that about once a week or so actually heats up the freezer so that any accumulated ice can melt, and then presumably blows out the damp air somehow (not entirely sure how that part works, other than just blowing the air up the the fridge and hoping the air there is dryer than the air in the freezer) and then goes back to regular freezer mode. I deliberately just an old-school fridge-freezer because having this defrost mode reduces the time you can safely leave things in the freezer for.

only started?

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