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Comment by tacomagick | Hacker News Reader

Why is the fridge's cooling system is one with the smart features? They should be kept completely separate

I like how escalators gracefully degrade to stairs, and electric toothbrushes to regular toothbrushes. That a smart fridge can't act as a dumb fridge is absolutely ridiculous.

Escalator manufacturers actually don't recommend having people use stationary escalators as stairs, as they're potentially in a problem state and may experience additional failure and become very unsafe.

If you have an option of regular stairs or stalled escalators, use the stairs.

Ngl, I’d like to see a broken escalator failing more than being stairs. I don’t know if manufacturers tell that as an abundance of caution or if they even say that, but a broken escalator becoming a danger seems highly unlikely to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE2Lv-t9BHk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krXj69fJjgA

If the brakes aren't operating properly the stairs could start moving uncontrollably.

Wow that’s terrifying

Don't get me wrong, these kinds of things are very rare, and are extremely unlikely even with a stalled one. I'm not trying to suggest every stalled escalator is a death trap waiting to happen. If there's really no other option I'd probably feel fine using them as stairs. There's a lot of safety planning that goes into escalators.

But the thing is, you don't know what it's state is, and it's clearly not in the "everything is OK" state. At least if it's running you can guess the operator is intending for you to use it.

To add to it… I can’t find the video of it right now, but a while back I saw people taking a stopped escalator, and the escalator failing into an open hole essentially. Since then I’ve started following said recommendations on not using stopped escalators.

“Sorry for the convenience!”

https://youtu.be/vrIw2i4WtA4?is=AWJK7ywVgImbVcTD

or at the very least go back to safe default when the computer part fails which is (should be) design 101. designing failsafe systems was one of the first thing we learned in engineering class (that was a while ago but still)...

Right lol. How is there no default fallback?

It's cheaper to not implement one.

Most expensive if statement

The "smart" side has access to the temperature sensor for whatever reason. Then somebody notices that they could remove a component and save three cents per unit if they drive the compressor in software.

Driving the compressor with software is not intrinsically a problem, but critical functions have to be isolated to a minimal safe kernel that will always run, like the kernel space/user space distinction. Smart features can read and send messages to the minimal kernel, but should not themselves be in the critical loop. Boggles the mind that this is not standard practice.

Optimization? The new Rivian merged a bunch of ECUs together, cutting lots of wires, but how the fallout of a failed ECU is much larger.

some numb skull product engineer at Samsung thought remotely controlling the temperature of freezer/fridge was a "must have" or "quick win". Or maybe engineer was feature-maxxing to pump the yearly eval.

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