Has anyone worked on fighting back this kind of telemetry/spyware of essential consumer appliances?
I'm thinking something similar to what https://adnauseam.io/ does, but but amplified:
1. Someone reverse engineer what does the device send to which address.
2. Block the particular device to access internet (and make it easy for others too).
3. Constantly send bogus data to the manufacturer so the personal data they get overall loses value or is unusable. Make it easy for a lot of people to do it as well, or even just rent a bot farm.
There's too many legit and good services that end up being turned down due to abuse and DDos, and they don't even bring anything good to the attackers. Why not using these techniques for something actually good to consumers privacy?
In my ever-cynical view, I imagine in most cases manufacturers don't, themselves, especially care about the data from their devices. I see various other motivations:
1) Price increases. It's "smart". Pay us more.
2) Planned obsolescence. You have numerous new points of failure in your product + make repairing vastly more difficult.
3) Monetize collected data by selling it to interested parties. The data quality, or lack thereof, is a secondary concern.
I've worked in a big consumer electronics company and 2. is just a conspiracy theory. Nobody wants their products to be unreliable or difficult to repair. They want them to be cheap to manufacture and unlikely to fail during the warranty period. Everything else stems from that.
Your other two points are broadly correct though. Also data collection is helpful for seeing how customers use products, which genuinely does influence development.
> Nobody wants their products to be unreliable or difficult to repair.
Hard to believe when a printer manufacturer moves a commonly failing part from cartridges to the printer itself, then makes it impossible to repair that specific part without taking apart the whole thing and buying a replacement part for 160 bucks.
> Also data collection is helpful for seeing how customers use products, which genuinely does influence development.
I'll start calling it helpful once it actually improves product quality and usability.
They didn't say it improves the product though, just that it influences development. The incentives of producers are not aligned with consumers' wishes.
Well calling it "planned" adds a conspiratorial element, maybe there's a better word.
The effect comes from many sources. When the engineering science is new, tech tends to be way overbuilt because the creators don't know what tolerances are. There's also the ratio of product cost to disposable income of the users. And to their wish for devices over time.
In any case, the natural tendency of a profit-optimizing system of competition is to throw away values (eg., repairability) that consumers at-purchase dont value. In this case, no biz is going to spend extra to include long-life features at a loss to competitors who don't.
The remedy here is regulation, which is the mechanism which sets a floor on competition: since consumers at-purchase are at an extreme informational disadvantage, the gov. should require all biz to build in long-life features given consumers do want them, long after purchase.
It's not a conspiracy, more of a market failure. The market doesnt produce optimal outcomes in cases where these extreme information asymmetries are built in, ie., by the time the product is around for 10yr to be reivewed, it's retired. There isn't a way of getting that information to the consumer.
Perhaps incentivised is the better word? Improving tolerances and repairability so that products last beyond the common 1-2 year warranty periods costs time and money, and potentially means that customers aren't buying newer versions of those products or paying for first party repairs. I'd imagine that many engineers who actually design/build the products would like to make these things more durable and repairable, but are more often then not told to cut costs to improve margins/work on new feature X or product Y, etc.
If repairability isn’t a design goal, it won’t be easy to repair.
Ease of assembly is often in opposition to ease of repair. Reliability engineering optimizes failure rates during warranty and extended warranty periods. Why would they optimize repairability? It not in their interest.
The defective Apple MacBooks are great example of this effect. Politically powerful design guy prioritizes design over everything else. Keyboard technology is defective and un-repairable. Result: Billion of dollars of warranty claims.
Was that a conspiracy? No. Just the result of poor priorities, resulting in a bad outcome.
I can see you've never designed anything! I can think of plenty of things I'd want to monitor on a fridge if I was a fridge designer.
What temperature do they set the fridge to? Do they ever change it? How often do they deice the freezer? Do they use the ice maker / filtered water thing / whatever? How often? How long do they leave the door open normally? What are the temperature / power consumption profiles over time?
That's before we even get to any of the smart features (I have no clue what they are).
Sure you're right there is plenty to monitor and collect, it's just not very useful for the majority of people I'd imagine, unless you like other people to tell you when to buy something.
>I've worked in a big consumer electronics company and 2. is just a conspiracy theory. Nobody wants their products to be unreliable or difficult to repair.
Nothing cynical there: you are simply correct. There's overwhelming evidence that companies profit from selling user's data, engage in planned obsolescence and deploy numerous tricks to disrupt the second hand market.
I mean, this has been going on for at least 97 years if you include light bulbs:
“The cartel lowered operational costs and worked to standardize the life expectancy of light bulbs at 1,000 hours (down from 2,500 hours), and raised prices without fear of competition, in what has been described as a "classic example of planned obsolescence". The cartel tested their bulbs and fined manufacturers for bulbs that lasted more than 1,000 hours.”
It literally saved customers money to buy the bulbs with lower lifetime because they are so much more efficient. Shortly before incandescents were phased out, I saw markings on packaging like "this bulb uses $10.81 in electricity over its lifetime" on a 40 cent bulb.
They could have standardized on a power efficiency metric, but there's an intrinsic inverse relationship of efficiency versus lifetime for tungsten filaments.
Back in the day companies did not try to eat every tiny bit of consumer surplus, so this cartel was a win-win situation.
Now that we have LEDs, which were marketed to last "forever" when they were introduced, but clearly don't; and running LEDs at lower specific power actually helps efficiency, but they don't.
Phoebus being about efficiency was merely a coincidence.
LEDs have an average life of about 10 years from what I've seen. Yes, their efficiency decreases, but I'm not sure that's such a big thing.
And at this point who really needs "forever"? We're getting to a point where the average person will at most change their lighbulbs 2-3 times in a home (I doubt the vast majority of the population lives in the same place for more than 20-30 years).
Actually:
> Report Highlights. The average length of homeownership is 16 years, with lower-earning and less educated householders more likely to remain in their homes longer.
>And at this point who really needs "forever"? We're getting to a point where the average person will at most change their lighbulbs 2-3 times in a home
Why does that seem fundamentally more reasonable to you then each occupant replacing the walls just once?
I seem to remember that this story is a distortion? Don't recall the details, but that Wikipedia article does say the British government looked into it and concluded there wasn't evidence that the ceiling wasn't justified in technical grounds.
> Monetize collected data by selling it to interested parties.
then they do care about the data, just not the quality of that data. But the fact they are collecting data is definitely of importance or they would not be collecting and selling it.
I’d just want to know who on earth would want such data and what insights could be gained from it. It can be challenging to build models with tons of really good data.
1) Set up a pihole or ad guard or similar and block the requests the device makes. You can probably find someones list or it may already be in the default one.
2) Put all the IOT's devices into a virtual wifi lan that doesn't by default doesn't allow internet access. Then only add in the few places you want them to be able to get to. In general putting IOT devices on a network separate from your real computers is a good idea for isolation anyway since they are likely to have poor security.
For that to happen, the value of the data it extracts would have to be greater than the cost of installing and paying for a cellular modem and the data fees over its lifetime.
I think most of us aren't worth it, as it would take away from the upfront profit of the machine to add features people aren't told about just to get a few years of "Subject opened left door. Temp 39 degrees. Subject used ice maker." or whatever.
I think you're underestimating how cheaply a manufacturer could negotiate a one time fee low bandwidth 5G connection for. If it's setup to only upload in off peak hours it's going to just be free money for wireless carriers. Maybe they'll double dip and buy the data for themselves as well.
I even saw the newer broadcast TV standard was going to have 2 way communication for ad tech.
Not necessary. When not connected for more than a month, a device gets declared insecure and stops its core function or gets annoying until you allow it on the network again. Downloading new firmware is only possible by uploading metrics, and provides all kinds of new 'experiences' of course.
In 2 years, a standard fridge will start blinking its inside lights and show 'error' on the temperature display if you don't let it connect.
If it runs on the their network network and not mine, then any activity will be tied to their IP and the incorrectly correlated with their usage.
So - my privacy stays intact as long as I don't link the device ID with my name or personal details (review that warranty card before sending in, does it have unique ID? watermark/non-visible tag) - hmmm, this sounds like a bonus - I get the "smart" features and don't have to worry...
Pi-Hole with a good collection of block lists is a great option. My samsung TV and a few android devices are the top offenders on my pi-hole admin panel.
I remember there was something similar once for web analytics. The extension would obfuscate stuff by changing values, esp. e-commerce values like price and quantity so that the data becomes quite tainted.
I would hate to see smart stuff taken off the market.
A DDoS could cause the company to drop support faster(Like they already always do), and hurt the people who can no longer use the features on their expensive device.
Besides, if DDoSing got popular with average consumers it would never stop, and they'd go after everything that has any privacy risk(AirTag/Tile comes to mind), no matter how critical it is to some people's lives.
Admittedly a bit of a slippery slope argument, but less so in an age where there is a significant minority that would love to undo all tech from the last 70 years.
Instead we could be fighting for laws requiring that that all smart devices use an open and app-capable OS, or that all features exposed via proprietary connection to their server also be exposed via local API.
We spent several hours a week dealing with, worrying about, and developing mitigation strategies for losing out keys, quite possibly even shortening our lives with stress.
If you aren't one of those people that can just walk by something and passively remember it's location, IoT is great.
Tile doesn't completely replace constant vigilance and planning, and carefully thinking about every step, but it does help.
>1. Someone reverse engineer what does the device send to which address. 2. Block the particular device to access internet (and make it easy for others too). 3. Constantly send bogus data to the manufacturer so the personal data they get overall loses value or is unusable. Make it easy for a lot of people to do it as well, or even just rent a bot farm.
requests probably need to be send with valid serials, in which you can't effectively anonymously flood the telemetry by yourself.
given that there is absolutely no way even a small percentage of Samsung fridge (why even buy one?) users will care about this, all it does is reveal the participant's identities and motivations.
for 3. I wonder if you can go a step further and pummel them with extra data. like insane amounts of (bogus) data. At some point even plain s3 storage costs will become problematic for them.
I’m trying to do this now, but dumb high-quality appliances are hard to come by and much more expensive. I don’t think there’s any dumb TVs at the state of the art.
Dumb TVs are sold as digital signage. They are the state of the art for durability/reliability but they typically have a screen from the "previous" generation, so for example they might not have HDR.
Some kind of legislative protection would be nice too. eg any mechanism that collects or transmits telemetry must be able to operate totally separate from any other feature of the device and have a hardware kill switch.
Why would you want to go out of your way to send bogus data to the manufacturer?
I'm all for being able to choose whether or not to disclose that data, but then we'll also have to accept different choices than ours. There's no point in sabotaging others.
If someone's buying the data they will care sooner or later. After all, if they wanted bogus data, they can generate it themselves instead of buying it.
I went through a serious attempt to remove all of my resumes on the web. Paid a firm, whole nine yards.
Several data brokers still have very, very old copies.. and they still sell them.. and recruiters still buy them.. and still contact me.. and still get met with an email politely telling them off.
But that years old shitty linkedin dataset still gets sold to thousands of people for thousands of dollars a year and nobody bats an eye. The recruiters are too stupid to spot the bad data and the brokers too lazy to care.
Usage patterns? Fridge being opened means someone is home. That data point is meaningless in isolation, but can be valuable if you want to use it to confirm/deny other data points - let's say another data broker is trying to get an accurate ad targeting profile but only has breadcrumbs here and there such as IP addresses, user-agents that by themselves don't mean much, but they can use other data points (such as fridge activity data) to link your otherwise-anonymous IP-based profile if they see that the only times this IP lights up is when the fridge was also used recently.
Whether that's currently done is up for debate - maybe there are other lower-hanging fruits that are easier to do, but if you've exhausted all your other options and still want even more accurate profiles, I don't see why you wouldn't do it.
Unless there's cameras everywhere in the fridge (plus advanced object recognition that knows that that bundled up pack of goat cheese inside a ziplock bag is in fact goat cheese) or people are scanning items as they take them out I don't see how that would work and both things seem kinda unlikely so it's weird they'd start with the easiest part which is hook up the thing to the internet.
We're already being sabotaged, by manufacturers - what else would you call this sometimes hidden, non-disablable connectivity/"telemetry", and the disappearance of dumb options? The only question is if we let them get away with it scot-free.
It should be legally required for these products to allow for people to turn 'smart' features off if they want to. Unfortunately, it probably won't be any time soon.
I'd rather flip this solution on its head: why are our markets for consumer goods /so broken/ that there's no headroom for a startup making quality, 'not-smart' appliances to break in? Consumer home appliances feel like they ought to be a textbook case of innovator's dilemma, with incumbents moving up and to the right in complexity and opening up space at the bottom for new manufacturers.
The smart features of a TV subsidize its price. A "non smart" device manufacturer has to sell at a dramatically non competitive price because they aren't selling user data or flooding advertising into the content shown. Sitting on a shelf, who would buy a TV with less features for double or three times the price?
We don't know, because manufacturers made sure that doesn't happen. There is no equivalent, premium-priced privacy-respecting TVs sold next to "smart" ones. And they definitely don't advertise the user-hostile "smart" features, such as telemetry and forced ads, as prominently as the price.
What we do know is that even the least price-sensitive consumers, that buy the most high-end TVs, aren't given the option:
Buying a product knowing it has ads in it is one thing, but users on Reddit and elsewhere are understandably angry about ads suddenly being patched into their devices—especially in cases when these devices are multi-thousand-dollar 4K Sony televisions - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/google-pilot-program...
To be honest that's what they want you to believe. Last time i opened a smart TV looked like the most expensive thing was the standing foot and the plastic frame. The rest was power supply (which was broken - planned - died just when warranty expired) and a cheap android computer. I think they cannot resist to the idea that if they have Android why not sell some ads.
Oh I really hate this meme because even folks at HN repeat it like a broken record though nobody even cared to back it with a real BOM analysis.
Only source I've seen so far for this ridiculous claim is "an executive of Sony said so in an interview". Yeah, a really neutral source of information, indeed.
55" open cell panel costs less than $100 and this is by far the single most expensive component in a TV.
So a $300 Walmart special Roku TV might needed to be subsidized a little, but doing the same on a fancy LG, Samsung or Sony
would be purely out of greed.
I think you're underestimating just how much money there is to be made after the sale. Vizio now makes more money on ads and data harvesting than on hardware sales.
Netflix / Disney pre-installed on the smart TV are probably the features that allow the manufacturer to reduce the price thanks to subsidize from those subscription vendors.
Does Netflix (still) subsidize TV vendors to include their app? Or is it the case that TV vendors would not be able to sell their products if they didn't come with built-in Netflix?
I read some representative from Nvidia Shield explaining that they were forced to add a Netflix button to their remote in 2019 because Netflix would no longer allow their app to be installed on devices without a dedicated button.
For TVs, absolutely, that's a hard value proposition to beat. But you can't tell me that there's anything like as much profit delta between 'dumb' and smart...refrigerators.
There's a hot tub brand who include LTE radios in their hot tubs to ensure that they always have an analytics channel irrespective of what the user configures. Why on earth? It means they can target advertising for consumables and services. Same goes for fridges which need replacement filters, fresheners, whatever, you've just got to dupe the user into giving you internet connectivity, or accept the cost of putting a cellphone radio in your product.
That is amazing and bananas in equal measure, and I seriously hope it's true (in a sort of black mirror-esque way) -- it's just the perfect parody.
And the perfect example! If I was choosing between two otherwise-equivalent hot tubs I would /definitely/ pay more for one without the ability to call home. Are there enough people who would also be willing to pay more, and pay enough more to make up the difference in lost advertising revenue? I guess...not?
I've never seen any ads in my smart devices and I have a hard time seeing how the user data could be worth so much that dumb device startups can't even enter the market. Do you have any source with numbers on this?
I mean, I can understand the value of user data from Facebook but a stove or a fridge? What exactly are they selling?
Edit: realized now we're talking about TVs but still, is that data really worth that much?
Amazon's tablet is like $20 cheaper if you buy it with integrated ads. A TV will have a hard time showing so many ads through the day that it'll halve the price.
I just checked a (Swedish) price comparison site and the cheapest 65" 4K TV currently available was literally less than half the price of the cheapest Not Smart TV.
Also with Smart TVs I had a choice of over 200 different models, while with Not Smart TVs I had a choice of 2.
If they also leave out the dsp, and settle on a standard form factor with no plastic clips and with standard mounts for all internal stuff. I'd buy in a heartbeat.
The core principal of the innovators dilemma is that as you move "up and to the right" prices increase leaving a space for cheaper competitors. I spoke to a person working at a small company doing a fancy piece of kitchen equipment about this once. According to him anyway doing an app was actually easier and cheaper to manufacture since A) it was less moving parts and less complexity and B) finding people who know how to program a really nice app is cheaper and easier than finding people who knew how to design nice physical controls with buttons and knobs.
There is, just on the ultra high end and ultra low end. The mid-range has decided to leverage 'smart' features to compete on cost or shift buyers over.
Probably solely costs. A handful of companies own all the appliance brands, able to create components for pennies and they sure aren't sharing them with you and I.
Appliance companies seem to be barely making margins anymore, so it's not like they're robbing you blind, more that a startup would need to create a simple device that is also twice the price of everyone else.
Would you pay extra for not-smart appliances? Because I sure would -- and have, at every opportunity I get. It's frustrating that there's not a market for uncomplicated, well-built, totally-lacking-in-smart-features appliances. If I have to replace e.g. a dead microwave, I would pay considerably /more/ for one that won't call home or auto-install firmware updates or tweet at my wife when I re-heat a mug of tea.
You'd hope that there's be enough of a delta in that "pay more", and enough folks who would do so, to make a market. Shame it seems like there isn't.
No I get it completely, I would. And probably a lot of readers here would. Though admittedly I'd wait to see if the brand existed in a year, so I could get parts. But the problem seems to keep coming up that people like us just don't represent enough market share for it to be worth everyone's time.
See also: US made hand tools. Everyone seems to yearn for the old Craftsman days, but not enough people want to pay that premium. While Harbor Freight seems ever expanding...
Yep, hand power tools are another perfect case. We're just vigorously agreeing with one another now, but I would really like to see the economics behind e.g. smart washing machines. I mean, it's not like Samsung just likes violating their customers' privacy for the hell of it -- there must be (considerable?) profit in it somewhere. It's just distressing that there increasingly doesn't seem to be a market /at all/ for non-smart appliances.
I'll probably never buy a television again, since it seems you can't buy a decent non-smart panel without crossing into the enterprise (and adding an order of magnitude in price). And I'm not alone! How is there not a single manufacturer making a single modern non-smart LCD TV? Hell, call it the "HNTV" and expect to sell no more than...20,000? At 200€ in margin that's a 4m€ product line, surely worth throwing off given that the R&D is just removing hardware from an existing model?
- People expect appliances to live for years if not decades, and many are not willing to trust a new brand for a multi-hundred-dollar expense
- Producing and especially shipping and storing huge and/or heavy appliances is expensive AF, which means you need a lot of upfront capital for inventory and warehouses
- Getting onto Amazon is easy, but almost no one buys a fridge on Amazon - which means you have to establish a relationship with brick-and-mortar retail, and that is difficult: the retailers expect free demonstration units for each location or subsidy for advertising, as well as have ridiculously long payment schedules (depending on whose rumors you listen to, some chains want up to 1 year of time from product delivery to payment due date!).
Basically, it boils down to the question on how and where to get money to disrupt an industry that has enormous cash requirements, low margins and an extremely niche target demographic. Your best bet is a benevolent billionaire willing to put up cash for decades.
It's "so broken" from a perspective of a privacy advocate or a tech oriented user. For casual users of these devices, a TV that doesn't support Prime Video/Netflix/HBOGO out of the box is "broken".
What you need is a white goods equivalent of Behringer, mass-producing "reproduction" 1970s Tricity Countess cookers and Indesit L8 washing machines and such.
That ship has sailed with TVs now but you can still buy high-end non-smart kitchen appliances from most manufacturers, Samsung included. Smart kitchen appliances are outrageously expensive (the Samsung smart fridge range is ~30% more expensive than their highest priced alternative based on a quick Google) so it's not like you're being forced to buy one of these.
A company offering a range of dumb household devices with a modern design but the sturdy quality of many of the machinery from my granny's days? The stuff that lasts a lifetime. I would pay good money for that.
legislation is coming in Sept 2024 (RED directive) mandating a lot of security for IoT home appliance. If your device doesn't have (secure) OTA update, secure-boot, among other things it won't get CE certification. In Europe vendors are scrambling because the law is there but standards are still half-baked (ETSI/EN 303 645 etc). In the US the situation is the opposite: standards are solid but the law is still not clearly defined.
There is a lot to be said about throwing whole classes of users under the bus (elderly, people with disabilities) when asking them to manage technology mostly because how these things are going to be implemented (e.g. the security vs usability dilemma).
I'm a little annoyed at the requirement for secure boot on these platforms. As the device owner I want to get security updates, but I also want to be able to run my own software if I so choose. I don't think physical security is a problem that ready to be solved In legislation like this unless we're talking about a smart safe
I welcome new legislation in this area but it seems to me that lobbyists are once again screwing over the general consumer by adding anti-features into these legislations. Luckily IOT-vendors are absolutely abysmal at protecting their devices so I doubt we'll see too many devices locked down that weren't already.
> Luckily IOT-vendors are absolutely abysmal at protecting their devices so I doubt we'll see too many devices locked down that weren't already.
it is either compliance or no CE stamp (if a product does not meet safety requirements they have to remove connectivity or take it off the shelves). And either they are already scrambling because the cost of this has already sunk in, ... or they are in for a surprise pretty soon because becoming compliant isn't a one-off activity but means restructuring their entire processes (e.g. test automation to maintain that compliance)
As consumers, we ought to demand that. I like IoT, however if this is how the manufacturers gonna play it, I would rather have old stove and fridges with no internet access. Let's vote with our money.
> Do you really want that level of government control over everything?
Absolutely not. But I also don't want that level of company control over everything. I think "government punishing companies" is a much better alternative to "companies punishing people".
> Or, a soldering iron.
In this case, the wireless card could be just detached physically. But what happens when e.g. device requires network access to work, but also has some malicious feature? What if the malicious feature is baked in the hardware, e.g. DRM? Do we just pull out an electron microscope and a disassembler?
Free market doesn’t work well in presence of information asymmetry and behaviors exploiting it.
Since we cannot fundamentally eliminate exploitative behavior just yet, seeing as the world is full of suffering and people grow up with all sorts of psychological trauma and cannot help trying to secure themselves at the expense of others, the biggest antagonist of the market that we can tackle is information asymmetry.
In some countries, you can bet that every mention of a regulation intended to tackle a specific instance of information asymmetry abuse (often enabled by advances in technology) will be accompanied by concerns about “government control over everything” and that “the market should fix it”. Unfortunately, that agenda mostly helps the exploitative behavior.
If we don’t do our best to keep the market working by compensating for information asymmetry, command economy will eat it.
> we cannot fundamentally eliminate exploitative behavior just yet
Under what conditions will we ever be able to fundamentally eliminate exploitative behavior? This really sounds like an argument against capitalism in general.
I don’t think it’s impossible. Ensuring prosperity, eliminating mental issues and insecurities (inherited via childhood trauma and spread by inflicting trauma upon peers) should go a long way. May or may not require a post-scarcity world though.
> This really sounds like an argument against capitalism in general.
Are you saying that exploitative behavior is exclusive to capitalism? If so, would you elaborate how do other economic systems avoid exploitative behavior - i.e. what makes capitalism so much worse?
I'm not an economist, I really know little about other economic systems. I'm certainly not advocating for any specific economic system, I just took note of your conclusion. Your advocacy for a controlled market demonstrates a far better understanding of the topic than I have.
Note that I am not the person you originally replied to.
My point is that exploitation is inherent property of a huge power difference. It doesn't matter if the system is capitalism, socialism, or whateverotherkindism.
Reminds me of a quote from a very talented mathematician:
Imagine the case of two neighbors, each of whom at the outset owns the same amount of land, but one of whom is more powerful than the other. The powerful one demands a piece of the other’s land. The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, “OK, let’s compromise. Give me half of what I asked.” The weak one has little choice but to give in. Some time later the powerful neighbor demands another piece of land, again there is a compromise, and so forth. By forcing a long series of compromises on the weaker man, the powerful one eventually gets all of his land.
> My point is that exploitation is inherent property of a huge power difference.
What power difference? I have the money, the refrigerator company wants that money. I have half a dozen refrigerator companies trying to convince me that their product is the one worth my money. What power does any single refrigerator company have over me?
> What power does any single refrigerator company have over me?
It doesn't have to be a single company per se - all the companies could hold power over you at the same time.
E.g. if most huge refrigerator companies agree (explicitly or implicitly) to all include "smart" features that violate the customers' privacy, then the refrigerator companies hold power over you - you can't buy a refrigerator without "smart" features, as there aren't any on the market. You can ask for a "dumb" refrigerator, but ultimately you aren't the one making the refrigerators, so you don't make the decisions. Perhaps some other company will join in, and try to fill in the niche of "dumb" refrigerators, but they will either not have the resources/connections of the already-established companies, or their efforts will be undermined by the already-established companies in order to keep their power, or they might even succeed but have their refrigerators so expensive that privacy-seeking people have to pay premium in order to get it.
the market is smart (or dumb, depending on point of view). it won't price in externalities unless forced to. that's why we need regulations and enforcement in a free market environment - to make sure (raise probability) the price is fair to everyone, not just to manufacturers or just to consumers. it isn't possible to have a free market without regulation (anarcho-capitalists believe otherwise until the first time they get shafted.)
At what point should governments start pricing in exeternalities? Is the price of air pollution and global warming yet priced into the cost of gasoline?
Just wait until device manufacturers start integrating always-on LTE modems with their own SIM cards and billing so they can pull device analytics, sell you new advertising, and sell your usage patterns to 3rd parties whether or not you ever connect the things to your home wifi.
At which point you'll have to disassemble the damned thing and physically rip out the LTE modem, possibly resulting in the device bricking itself when it can't phone home after a while.
I bet if you're a device manufacturer right now and go to t-mobile enterprise sales and tell them you want 200MB of data per month per IMEI and you're going to have 50,000 units, you'll get a very attractive monthly price per unit.
Mark my words, it'll be commonplace in another 8-10 years.
This is already a thing in many cars (many cars a few years ago, but almost every car now). Both to show ads in the vehicle and to harvest your location data. As well as to sell subscriptions for things like remote start from an app, wifi hotspot in the car, parental controls/monitoring, etc.
You can disassemble the interior a bit (usually not too difficult) and disconnect the antenna from the comms module. Depending on the structure of the wiring harness your car uses, it may not be possible to easily do that without also removing GPS/radio functionality. Some models are now integrating WiFi/Bluetooth into the same system.
Alternatively, depending on which manufacturer your car is from, you can "acquire" the manufacturer diagnostic/service software and disable the cellular connection.
I will give a shoutout to Honda for being pretty good about this. The Civic didn't have a cellular connection at least as of the 10th gen (up to 2021). Not sure if the new '22 Civic does. Also, their infotainment systems run Android and you can root/jailbreak it - on the Civic, Accord, HR-V, and others. Again, this may change in current model years so double check before you buy. And (excepting a few years around 2016-2018) Honda also still has physical buttons/knobs for all the important controls, instead of putting everything into a touchscreen like 90% of companies do these days.
BMW has had a cellular connection in their cars for many years, but you can disable the SIM card by programming the TCB through ISTA, even on the current G chassis cars. Not sure if that completely disables Tx. Also not sure how their just released iDrive 8 system handles it though.
Alternatively you could unplug the TCB on the BMWs. That requires dropping the headliner on recent ones (annoying but not hard), and on the really recent ones I don't think you can unplug cellular only (you'll also lose GPS & some other things, potentially including WiFi/BT/NFC, I'm not sure). And it'll show a warning on the dash all the time if you unplug it.
> Both to show ads in the vehicle and to harvest your location data.
The discourse 5-10 years ago was that this was the price you pay for free (as in beer) consumer services. In reality, no such principles exist, and everything is instead a numbers game. Do enough people complain? Does it factor into their purchase decisions?
Unfortunately, average people seem to not value their attention, even as everyone else is fighting tooth and nail for a share of it.
There are legal requirements for enhanced emergency calling in European cars. Cars must have the ability to alert emergency responders with location data. Don’t expect to be able to disable internet in cars going forward.
The Chinese government at least is not in disguise about their surveillance plans whereas we see it sneaked in into more and more appliances of daily use.
Eh? The EU directives are all above board and documented, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.
That said, they do need to be monitored at all time; abusing that location data for different usage is only one piece of legislation away. Which is why it's probably best to not gather this information in the first place.
To invoke Godwin's Law, iirc you are no longer required to fill in your religion anywhere, because the nazi's used records like that to track down Jewish people and others they were after.
This is why these privacy laws are so important, and why the right to be forgotten should be sacred; you should be able to disappear if the governments turn against you.
The right to never be known, in the sense in which I think you must mean it here, is fairly simple to obtain. Stay off the internet and stay off cell networks.
Oh, you mean you want to be able to have your devices send requests to other people's devices and have them respond, but at the same time, you want there to be no record that your device ever did this? Good luck with that.
You read or interpret this wrong. The EU government might be acting in good intention and I acknowledge that. Yet consumer electronics has the means to collect data for profiling like crazy. EU government data privacy acts are weak measures compared to liberal company laws with their seats outside the EU jurisdiction. Freemium will nudge far to many people to give away their data.
An GDPR relevancy outside the EU is just a paper promise.
It is mandatory to have it installed for new cars, but it looks like it can be disabled if the owner prefers to be left alone while dying, instead of calling an ambulance :D
The device is built and tested according to some well-defined specifics; it is not connected to the network, and it is not capable of recording more than 3 positions and send them if an accident occurs, as well as establishing a phone call. Anything else is a violation perpetrated the manufacturer, as well as faking the specific tests that are formulated to check if the device is compliant: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32...
Abuses can always happen, and we should put reasonable checks in place to avoid them. Is the current regulation good enough to minimize the risk of having them? I hope so.
It would still need to respect EU privacy regulations (as any other instrument, of course), which include consent. Nobody is forcing you to be tracked.
I have a new car and no, it can't be disabled. You can only disable tracking by the car company but not emergency calling.
Via IMEI tracking the cell providers have your location data, willingly or not. If you want to travel anonymously you'd better have an oldtimer. I know of lawyers who only visit clients with an old car.
As reported, installation of such device is mandatory (first link), but it does not need to be active. This is why some car manufacturers disable it upon request (see the third link). I mean, BMW and Porche disable that if requested.
Devices that allow tracking when no accident occurred, violate the current regulation. This is stressed multiple times.
"not connected to the mobile phone networks until a serious accident happens"
-- https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/5963
There is even a technical test to check if the device is compliant with the privacy regulations: "Procedure for verifying the lack of traceability of an eCall in-vehicle system", where the "Failure to establish the connection can be attributed to the 112-based eCall in-vehicle system not being registered on the network"
-- https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32...
Registering the SIM on the network before an accident occurred could be considered a violation indeed.
Unfortunately, something being legislated does mean nothing. In Germany, there has been Covid location tracking via an app (Luca App) for venues. Despite legislation explicitely forbidding that, police tried and gained access to this data.
My previous car sometimes came up with a warning that eCall currently is not available. I'd attribute that to bad reception which means that connection at least has been tried.
I know, there are plenty of cases (and this is why we should defend our rights and support associations like https://noyb.eu/ in my opinion), but I would object that having an app, running on an always-connected smartphone, which register and share data, poses a potential higher risk than an embedded device with a much smaller task that is tested and validated before being sold on the market. There is almost no data record in this case, thus a leak would have a minimal impact, while a backdoored/tampered/non-compliant hardware would still be problematic, but less likely (hopefully).
Your previous car could have had a non-compliant implementation, but it could be that the system run a passive network scanning from time to time, without trying any connection, just because it would be way faster to connect to a network and send a message if there is an up-to-date list of the compatible available operators. Having a better understanding about the specifics of the various implementation would be interesting. The devil is in the details :)
To connect to cellular (2G/3G/4G/5G), you have to listen for a beacon from a base station. If you don't hear a beacon strong enough, you aren't even allowed to try to connect (as it involves transmitting a connection request).
> Devices that allow tracking when no accident occurred, violate the current regulation. This is stressed multiple times. "not connected to the mobile phone networks until a serious accident happens" -- https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/5963
Note that the linked document applies only to eCall In Vehicle System. Nothing prevent manufacturer to install a second system, using the same or separate modem, and track user's location and actions continuously. If the law requires you to install a GPS receiver and a modem, it would be uncapitalistic not to try to gain some profits from the data.
Sure, so? Is that mandatory? No. Would it require explicit user permission? Yes, as any other device or service in EU. The user or the manufacturer always have the ability to put extra devices which do whatever, if they respect the current regulations. This has nothing to do with having eCall installed by default.
It's all in the quality of the comment. The site guidelines try to help with pointers like this: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
The main things to do are (1) edit out swipes (e.g. "might be hard to understand for $group"), and (2) add enough information to make for a substantive comment.
Seriously as a European I do not know enough about HD+ radio but DAB radio can transmit pictures which until now is mostly used to transfer album covers.
In due time we will see this abused to hammer ads down our throats.
> In due time we will see this abused to hammer ads down our throats.
When the service was first implemented, that was a possibility. Now, the most we're likely to take advantage of it is to show you a display ad that matches with the current "over the air" ad that you're hearing. Advertisers aren't interested in selling on top of someone else's advertising, and programming doesn't want their displays messed with outside of commercial breaks.
Plus.. it's a pretty low value service and honestly not worth selling. Advertisers all want demographic driven sales now, so those channels aren't all that useful to us.
RadioDNS opens the door somewhat to this, because it can direct your radio to start a stream instead of listening "over the air." However, there, we're happy to be able to replace the over the air ads with programmatic digital ads and that sales channel really doesn't care about "additional display opportunities" either.
Be happy that radio is slow to implement standards, and usually too far behind the punch to get the expected return out of them. So.. just album art for the foreseeable future.
It's time to start developing the NoScript/UBlock of the future, which will hopefully be able to block all the ads running in cars, fridges, shops, floating drones, sidewalks etc.
Or for the entrepreneurs and investors to actually invest in low-tech products again; most kitchen appliances only need some solid state chips to control displays and programs and the like.
The advertising element of 'smart' devices subsidizes their price. You're competing against devices that are both more convenient and cheaper, and whose drawbacks are not immediately apparent to the general consumer, both because there's no requirement to state plainly the implications of the 'smart' technology on privacy and data sharing, and because such drawbacks are more abstract.
What people are interested in is cheap TVs and the tradeoff they are making is they buy a smart TV that has a lower price because it's subsidized with advertising revenue.
Maybe people want internet connected TVs to attach to streaming services, but I doubt anyone really wants what we are calling "Smart" TVs
It's better than a TV imho. If one really wants to make it as similar to a TV as possible, they can ceiling mount a short throw projector and paint the target wall with special non-reflective paint. It'll appear as if the picture is coming right from the wall.
Until they start coming with cell modems, or they broker deals with ISPs to be able to access any router leased by them, or they connect to any open SSID the second it sees it, or they broker deals with other device manufacturers to hotspot off them
Goddamnit. I already had to listen to a bunch of ads while I pumped gas today. At one point, they were giving health advice. Fuck you. Health advice from a gas station, where there's nothing inside the store but shit that will kill you? And you're pumping gas, sniffing fumes that will kill you, then will be burned and will kill you some more. Fuck. And yes, I did try pressing all the known mute buttons.
“Jamming” normally means interfering with a radio signal by broadcasting on that same frequency at a higher power. As opposed to something passive like a faraday cage to stop signal getting in to a given area.
Honda is one of the most conservative car companies. Among other things they took way longer to start introducing turbochargers into their mainstream lineup. It has its benefits.
I never fully understood why my dad only really bought Honda vehicles as a kid. Nowadays I do. Less cruft, more robustness. They just keep on running. My dad's '91 Accord has 320,000+ miles on it now, and it's still trucking along.
My friend's 2018 Nissan Rogue displays logos of some nearby restaurants / gas stations / stores on the navigation map. The brands that are shown change every once in a while.
Some cars show nearby points of interest as a feature; this isn't that.
Yes. I have a ~5yro Ford Fiesta with navigation built in and I massively prefer it to using a phone app.
Its standalone (mapping is on an sd card) so I know it will still work if I'm in a remote area with poor network coverage. It also has physical, tactile buttons (no touchscreen) that my muscle memory can learn, and which don't suddenly reposition themselves at the whims of some app ux designer. It can automatically download traffic updates via bluetooth on my phone, but its otherwise "self hosted" on my car.
Basically, it just works the way I expect and doesn't try to distract me. Which is all that I need.
I would use my built on mapping for those reasons if I had any, but just as an aside, OSMAnd+ is an offline heavy duty free FOSS navigation and maps app. It's not quite as user friendly as google maps unfortunately, but the offline, downloadable navigation maps have saved my ass a few times.
That's cool. Definitely a win for having all maps pre-loaded, augmented by traffic updates. Also surprising that the map data are on an SD card, given car companies' penchant for technologically-outmoded and proprietary systems that force you to go to the dealer for simple updates.
I know. But my car has mapping for the whole of the uk, wheras afaik google maps only lets me download routes or city-sized areas. And I'd have to remember to plan ahead and download over wifi.
True, but instructions based on intersection features are better than both. Apple maps does this with instructions like "go past this light then at the next one turn right"
>it may not be possible to easily do that without also removing GPS/radio functionality. Some models are now integrating WiFi/Bluetooth into the same system.
I don’t really need any of those with my phone in the car.
Afaik, on pretty much every modern car the single main antenna unit (usually the shark fin on the roof) handles cellular and GPS (Rx only) and radio (AM/FM, and often also weather/traffic, Rx only).
So you'll lose the other things if you put it in a Faraday cage.
A cage is a bad way to do it anyway. It's easier to disconnect the cable between the antenna & the telematics module (which has the SIM and control electronics in it). Or disconnect the power to the telematics module. Etc. Depending on the wiring harness style and design of the car's electronics, that may also let you disconnect just the cellular antenna while leaving the GPS/radio antennas connected.
In the future we might see those components getting integrated together... But you can always physically destroy/remove the antenna.
If you have an automatic toll transponder (ez-pasz, etc.), those things are read very frequently even when you're not going through a toll meter. There's info on this online.
TPMS sensors also transmit a serial number. I wouldn't put it past the NSA to have sensors embedded in certain roads to track that.
And of course, dragnet automatic license plate scanning / tracking is already ubiquitous and there's really not anything you can do about it. Use a bicycle instead, I guess...
I mean, what if it only beeps when it's being read and the reader doesn't mind you knowing about it? Not that it's necessarily happening but I don't see how that would be impossible.
Its all very interesting as an idea. But in reality when things go fully tracked you'll be fined for not having location data for every trip. It will impact insurance. Your registration. Even basic road usage. People have this idea right now that public roads will always stay free. This is not guaranteed.
Even the coming road taxes are all about constant tracking. How far / which road did you drive? They'll demand the answer. And you put a faraday cage to stop this? Suspicious. The default assumption is going to be fraud. Criminal behavior.
All the EVs will soon enough have some variety of tracking sooner or later. So thats basically all new vehicles. The alternatives will also, whatever they are. Hydrogen?
Sitting next to an internal combustion engine in a mostly-metal box is already pretty noisy as RF environments go. It's much easier to find and disable the antenna than to try to shield it off.
Isn't a very similar EU regulation already well beyond the proposal stage at this point and is currently getting implemented? If that's actually the case, I don't see how it wouldn't make it to the US once the systems needed are already available. Unless the alcohol interlock system/drowsiness detection isn't a type of killswitch, though from what I understand that's pretty much what's being proposed in the US.
> Summary
All new vehicles sold from May 2022 must be fitted with advanced safety features, including:
monitors that detect when a driver has become drowsy or distracted
emergency stop signal to help prevent rear-end collisions
rear-view camera or parking sensors
alcohol interlock system to prevent drunk driving.
These systems will help reduce serious accidents on Europe’s roads.
This initiative sets out the test procedures and technical requirements for approving vehicles fitted with advanced safety features.
Sure, they have been declining overall[0]. But here in Germany, we still have 2.3M traffic accidents, 321K injuries and 2654 fatalities[1]. While I'd agree that 2.6K fatalities per year for 83M population doesn't reach the level of crisis (but 321K injuries, even if many will be minor ones, to me sound crisis-adjacent at least), still a lot of these accidents and injuries and deaths could be avoided with tech we have today.
That said, the "drowsiness" cameras in particular seem problematic, while the rear-view cameras for reversing/parking seem not problematic[2].
[0] The 2022 numbers compared to 2021 saw quite an increase, in Germany at least[1], tho. I'd guess it might have a lot to do with people "going outside" again a lot more, including fewer people still being in full-time home office and thus needing to commute again.
[2] Anecdote: my mom recently narrowly avoided running into/running over a kid crawling on the street when she was reversing out of a parking spot, thanks to the rear-camera and sensors which immediately sounded alarms; she'd not have had a chance to see the kid in time without that according to her. While she was going very slow and chances are it wouldn't have been a life-threatening injury, it would have been some injury regardless with a lot more stress and trauma for everybody involved, the kid, her, the kid's parents.
Deaths on the roads have been declining because of the years of focus on safety improvements. Those numbers show that these efforts are working.
We should certainly keep an eye on the features and have productive dialogue about it. But denying safety concerns seems to be a fairly egregious twisting of the facts.
Please define which ranges of dates you are talking about. The first time politician worried about road safety enough to pass a law was in 1903. Are you claiming that number were declining before 1903? Or are you referring to larger scale efforts, like national road safety acts in the USA? That would be 1966 (which is the exact date the current downward trend began, FWIW). Or do you have another time range in mind for "before politicians did anything about road safety."
But road safety has only increased in terms of accidents per km driven. There's just too many cars on the road now.
I think we should push for full self driving asap though.
Taking the driver out of the equation means no longer stuffing cars wth systems intended to second-guess the driver and their abilities. No more need to check for mobile phone use because the occupants are free to do what they want. No more need for speed cameras or distance between cars. More efficiency due to people not constantly overtaking because they're in a hurry.
Right now it's becoming this insane situation where a driver is not trusted at all and second-guessed at every corner.
I don't own a car anymore and I hope I will never need one again. I don't want to drive like this, constantly being looked over my shoulder. It's not worth that hassle.
Yes but you no longer have the burden of control and responsibility. That's a huge difference.
Personally I hate driving so I'd be really happy if I could just read a book, surf the web or watch a movie while travelling. For me driving is pure wasted time.
I know some people actually enjoy driving :) But for me it feels this way.
I think you should specify "safe from digital tracking" because cars are everything but safe, they cause thousands of injuries and hundreds of deaths each year in my country for example. And I'm not even counting the deaths and sicknesses due to car pollution.
I profoundly dislike cars and hope for a future where car ownership will be a thing of the past and there will be only self driving cabs / buses / cargo bikes, hopefully all electric, ideally hydrogen powered.
The european regulation discusses using cameras too! IIRC the manufacturers have a certain detection percentage threshold to achieve and they have commented that they will require stuff like visual muscle twitching detection, eye tracking, head tilt evaluation and even heartbeat sensors etc.
I wonder why people accept it. Does it appeal to the narcissism, i.e., people like to be monitored at all times because it makes them feel important?
I think it's pretty much like boiling a frog. The trend will continue, and people will have less and less privacy. At this point the marginal benefit of privacy in a car doesn't matter to most people, as saddening as that is.
I agree that they aren't outright remote kill switches. But a tamper-proof on/off switch, that will presumably be almost impossible to trivially bypass, coupled with remote updates... It's getting close.
Especially since those systems will need to be easy to update OTA. And even if there are no malicious OTA capabilities (though the EU has already shown interest in LEO being able to remotely disable a car a few years ago) , they are using pretty subjective measures that might affect your driving experience or render your car unusable after a single update. What if the drowsiness detection does not work well on your skin color or on your heartbeat, or on your eye shape?
I guess It's just a bit creepy to me that your own car can police you autonomously with little recourse.
The next time CCTVs and bodycams are used to catch a criminal, perhaps you can volunteer to be the one telling the victims family about liberty and government over-reach.
In any case, we already have existing tech that is serving as a technological deterrent for drunk driving. The legislation doesn't explicitly say so, but I am imagining an expansion of this program. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_interlock_device
yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. let's start slowly, only requiring a camera in the living room. then some time later, let's seek out incidents that had occurred in bathrooms, run them in the news every week to prime the masses, then they'll ask us themselves to mandate cameras in all bathrooms as well.
all detractors will be branded as pedophiles, of course
I mentioned in this [1] comment that so far Vint Cerf is the only
person who has touched on what may become the most important digital
rights battle of the century - the right not to be connected.
I think we're going to need a law to regulate this at some point. I'm normally a fan of voting with your wallet, but it's getting increasingly impossible to find non-"smart" devices: TVs are the most common offender, but even Roomba's budget option comes with WiFi nowadays.
Right to Disconnect? I want my Right to Disconnect.
This has nothing to do with "kids these days", and everything to do with redefining ownership.
When these backhaul comms go in this hardware, that "purchase" doesn't convey ownership. I would describe it as a rental in ownership's clothing.
It's not about 'learn the new tech' - it's 'learn when the company decides you don't need a feature or just decides to no longer support it' and remotely disables
Because we're talking about freedoms and hardware ownership here.
I know there is lots of middle ground between coreboot, what windows does, what an iPhone does, and what a Samsung fridge does but my point is that it's really hard to judge wether you're just becoming an old man talking about the kids these days.
If you can't understand why I'm poking fun at the Apple fan Bois, here's exactly why:
Primarily being Devil's advocate here, but where exactly was one granted the right to disconnect? All of these tools require you to accept a EULA to use them in the first place (to varying enforceability [1]), so you are opting in to their terms when you start using the device. If you want to opt out or disconnect, stop using it. Likewise, if they change terms, you have to be notified and can stop using it at that time. I don't think the system is great or fair, and it's definitely tipped in favor of the corporations, but the I also don't think it's fair to get mad at a refrigerator for working in a way you don't like after you made the informed decision to buy it. I don't want a wifi refrigerator, so I won't buy one, then I don't want to worry about what data it's collecting about me.
Then your bet would've been lost. My father has been building custom alarm systems in the early 90s, before going fulltime IT. It was hard to get half a step ahead of him in tech news, even for a minute ;)
When exactly did this smart device thing turn bad? Maybe it's been bad all along? I refused to use a smartphone until 2014 or so. My first Android got Cyanogen within about a month. When I shopped for my first Roomba (recently RIP), I specifically avoided the WiFi models.
Nowadays the "smart" devices are almost unavoidable, so on my LAN, each one gets its own set of firewall rules (usually to block them from the Internet completely). If it can't work that way - it gets returned. I've also set up a host-based blocklist for ads/trackers, for the entire LAN.
It should not be this hard to protect your privacy, but the current trend is to make this impossible even for the power users. Right to Disconnect should be a thing.
> Just wait until device manufacturers start integrating always-on LTE modems with their own SIM cards ...
Just wait until someone deliberately buys such a "smart" appliance, tears the SIM card out (or does some free-style rewiring of the PCB), and starts prodding around what they can reach on the other side. They might even be so kind as to take a look at the analytics/remote-control protocol, maybe pull some credentials out of the SoC and provide a free fuzz testing service to the manufacturer.
I was saying this for a while - the rights to private property are going the way of dodo.
If the manufacturer can observe the device remotely, can control the device, can add or remove functionality, decide to stop selling you spare parts so you have to buy a new one, or brick it at any time - meanwhile you cant get the device to do what you want, or even to stop showing you ads?
You are not an owner, you are just sucker paying the bill. John deer agrees, in their submission to the court the argued that the farmer is not the owner of the tractor they bought.
This is worse than taxes, at least there you get a vote
It turns out I kinda have that already. My 1919 house has plastered walls, some of which have a wire mesh underlay. It blocks wifi signals between rooms beautifully.
The fact that people would even consider living in Faraday cages to keep their refrigerator from spying makes me think our society went seriously wrong somewhere.
Right in his critique, but he had nothing worthwhile on how to address it. Hence his resulting attempt of 1. Send bombs to technologists 2. ????? 3. Mass social uprising.
On this particular topic, basic software Freedom would be sufficient. But apparently enough people don't even care to make purchasing decisions based on anti-features. Or at the minimum, say hiring a technician to fix your brand new fridge as described in OP.
So, as seems to be the trend, most people are effectively content letting technology take away their agency. A small number of us can swim in the stream of navigating it so we don't get ruled over by it, but once you're doing all that work just to tread water it becomes awfully tempting to use your understanding to subjugate others.
Afaik The holes in the faraday cage must be smaller than the wavelength you seek to block. If a faraday cage were to block WiFi it would also block your cellphone.
We're already approaching that point. Most modern cars phone home, and my partner's CPAP machine also has a modem that reports usage info back home, including to their insurance provider.
I recall a comment here recently about someone whose insurance would only pay for the CPAP if the usage statistics showed enough usage. The problem was that the person kept unknowingly taking off the mask while sleeping. Talk about a stressful situation!
That was probably me. Compliance has been even more difficult lately with my seasonal allergies. The silly thing is that the physician who prescribed it doesn't check in on me other than one checkup a few months in to having it, so it's really only used as a fiscal compliance tool.
Lots of manufacturers probably do it, but I'll name and shame anyway... it's a ResMed AirSense 10.
The CPAP is extremely useful if used correctly (rather than just enforce compliance). It allows a clinician to monitor remotely for all sorts of issues and follow up with the patient.
There are a whole bunch of issues that can occur that a patient may not be aware of because they are asleep. Generally I wish we'd all use some kind of sleep monitoring system or at least we started routine screening for sleep disorders
My CPAP just has an SD card which I can remove and bring to the therapist.
The benefit of this is that I don't have to rely only on the therapist, I can also read the card myself with tools like OSCAR: https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/
I would really hate having one that reports via 4G to the therapist only.
I wouldn't be surprised if that most the biggest reason for so much pushing for 5g - they probably want to get some standard with good deployment/coverage that can handle massive amount of devices per cell before they start to doing it at scale.
3g definetly was bad for the, maybe lte is not scaling well enough for having each bulb in the house connected to the network without wifi ;D
Interesting thought experiment: if these become as common-place as "smart" TVs... you'll be left without a fridge. Are there any laws governing that some sort of refrigeration has to be available? I mean... seems like "the market doesn't provide fridges to part of the population" should count as a major market failure and should be regulated to avoid it?
Doesn't mean they'll go for it. There are many situations where no company is willing to offer service. See for example mobile internet in sparsely populated areas. So the question would then be: do we consider fresh food more important than internet? :D
> Mark my words, it'll be commonplace in another 8-10 years.
Oh, I think it will be sooner than that, and beyond that, it won't even be your appliance. You'll be renting it for only $49.95/month, and for only $4.99/month more you can have the RecipePlus(tm) subscription and see what all your friends are cooking, comes with ExtraCare repair and monitoring service too! Even more discounts when you rent the entire kitchen appliance suite.
> At which point you'll have to disassemble the damned thing and physically rip out the LTE modem, possibly resulting in the device bricking itself when it can't phone home after a while.
I wish the guy best luck with his unplug solution. I recently did something comparable and was first lucky to discover when unplugging antennas from the board the device seemingly went on unaffected just to find out that it behaved erratic: Input was terribly lagging up to the point of being unusable to interoperate with. Reluctantly and in defeat I had to re-attach the antenna. I doubt it was designed to behave like this on purpose, but the CPU being tripped for operating out of regular parameters.
However intentionally bricking the device when it can't phone home is a very likely future.
I’m fairly sure, at least in Europe, there will be legislation that prevents this without explicit positive content from the consumer. I suspect GDPR already covers it in fact.
My expectation is the online tracking/advertising is about to hit an incredible hard legislative period. The change that is coming is big, and the fallout it going to seriously badly hit some business models and corporations.
However, you are completely right, they will try anything and everything to continue.
>I’m fairly sure, at least in Europe, there will be legislation that prevents this without explicit positive content from the consumer. I suspect GDPR already covers it in fact.
Judging by the new CSAM legislation being pushed by EU bureaucrats, your fridge won't report to its maker but to EU commission and maybe to your own government.
But it is, at least on paper, to combat child sexual exploitation by preventively searching for any related content in communications. That's the stated goal, that's what it does. It has serious ramifications ( broken encryption is broken), can be abused for other things, etc. but that's the purpose.
So a fridge with very limited embedded storage doesn't really match.
> I’m fairly sure, at least in Europe, there will be legislation that prevents this without explicit positive content from the consumer. I suspect GDPR already covers it in fact.
I can't seem to find the relevant part of GDPR that would even attempt to cover that - beyond any tracking data sent back to the manufacturer.
IANAL but I think anything that can be potentially personally identifiable, with tracking associated, would be. If you have “registered” your appliance (for that extended warranty), you have given them your details which are then associated with the device.
Say you are Samsung, you have a fridge with a camera on it that keeps track of what’s in the fridge “for the user”, so they can see inside their fridge even when not at home. Now add in some image recognition, automatically tracking exactly what’s in the fridge, how often it’s used, when it’s running low. Now you have some of the most valuable consumer data possible to sell to data brokers. That is defiantly covered by GDPR.
Only in so far that they have to notify you what data is collected, for what imaginary purpose and who is managing it.
It's not personal information according to GDPR, unless combined with something else that is.
I don't think GDPR is as relevant here either, but installing a transmitter in a car that you can't turn off would be irradiating someone against their will.
France doesn't even have WiFi in schools for this reason. Hard to imagine they would allow something like this in a vehicle.
Vehicles have built-in hotspots and LTE modems in Europe for years now. Pretty much any german luxury brand car these days will come with builtin LTE modem for navigation traffic and other similar systems.
Also, use of your home internet modem to transmit a ISP-only open wifi is also legal according to many EU laws.
they'll probably try to get people to positively opt in to a ToS and GDPR set of terms during the online purchase process, which we know people will aggressively click "yes/i accept/agree" in order to continue, if the price, product and marketing are sufficiently compelling.
Authorities are already cracking down on the use of dark patterns for tricking people into opting into tacking without explicit informed consent. So yes, they will try that, then they will be found out and fined. Then they will be forced to put a big warning screen on front of the fridge just like all those pop ups we now have on the web.
People will still buy it and click through, because they want their junk, no matter what it does with their data.
I can't count how many times my friends and family said "I don't care" when I tried to educate them on how their devices or software spy on them.
People who really care about privacy enough not to buy stuff that spies on them are rare, and becoming rarer every year as more and more kids grow up in a world where being spied upon is normal.
I bet that a sufficiently motivated ui designer could design a system that matched all the requirements of having people explicitly consent, such as scrolling all the way to the bottom of a ToS and typing "yes sell my data" into a box, but also get people to just do it in order to complete an order checkout process workflow.
> I bet if you're a device manufacturer right now and go to t-mobile enterprise sales and tell them you want 200MB of data per month per IMEI and you're going to have 50,000 units, you'll get a very attractive monthly price per unit.
Any ball park idea what this price might be? $10/year/device? Less?
I think the thing we need to watch out for is using LoraWan in devices. It's basically a free low bandwidth network. Amazon has already included a gateway in some of their devices.
I heard about a known electronic cigarette brand that plans to do this with their devices. The future where all our habits will end up being tracked is close.
It's not even close it's already here.
Any your smartphone could be located in a city with 20-50m accuracy(5G/LTE) including your indoor height location. Plus add to this your frequent locations, your calls and internet activities, spendings(if it shares with your cellular operator) - and here you are.
And we have a smartphone in every pocket.
This market is big and each of the producers including fridges wants to bite off a piece of the pie.
UI Hell: The place I'm renting has an IKEA / Whirlpool ceramic top stove. All digital. And I HATE it.
You can't find the touch-buttons in the dark, say when you want to make coffee in the wee morn, so you're forced to turn on lights. When you finally find a button, it takes forever to turn it to max. You have to fiddle around to turn it back down again, first click the button for the corresponding plate you want, then click a separate button to actually power it down. Again, it takes forever.
It's also impossible to train tactile memory for it, becuase the buttons are too close and too hard to discern on the dark-on-dark top, so if you try doing it blind, you'll just end up fiddling forever to find the damn thing.
If you spill something over the touch area, it'll start beeping and complaining before it turns itself off. Meanwhile the corresponding pot might have already boiled over, and you can't react in time, because the touch panel is covered in boiling liquid.
Also, honestly, I think it's actually harder to keep the ceramic top clean than a regular top. Reason: It smudges real easy, and you're never sure how much pressure or abrasives you can use without making scratches. On the old tops, you just didn't have to worry. It could withstand a sledgehammer amount of abuse before scratching or chipping.
And don't even get me started on the microwave installed here... I brought my own two-knob micro despite there already being one installed here. That should give you a clue.
The thing that really bothers me is that the amount of beeping is totally not linked to the urgency of the thing. For instance,
My microwave beeps for a solid 10 seconds every minute after a run. In this condition, it is perfectly safe no matter what.
My oven beeps exactly 1 time when preheated, similar to how FedEx and UPS notify upon package delivery. In this condition, it could burn my house down if left unattended. There are no subsequent beeps.
Even if oven fires aren't likely, it's definitely weird that my microwave will beep every minute until you open the door just in case you forget you need to eat to live, and my oven will happily run for hours (days?) and doesn't seem to remind you about how you might be accidentally incinerating something, it seems like a beep every hour (with a button to mute it) wouldn't be unappreciated.
Although I guess if it's not a safety thing, the cost of the extra design might be more than I'd expect to save on my electric bill from the once a year or less I leave it on overnight by mistake.
Exactly, my microwave plays this cute little song for about 3 seconds that stopped being cute after the second time hearing it. But if you don't open the door within ~30 seconds or so, it plays its song again. It does this for a long while before giving up. Customer support, when asked if there was a way to disable it that was missed, said it's a "safety feature" and therefore cannot be disabled.
You’re pre-heating your oven, so it’s empty. There are no realistic circumstances where an empty oven could burn your house down simply by being on at a preset temperature.
This is a big assumption. A lot of people, myself included, store pots and pans in the oven when it's not in use. I frequently forget to remove them before preheating.
In my case the pan that I keep in there is made of cast iron, so there really isn't anything that can go wrong. But I would bet good money that there are people out there who keep wooden handled pots and pans in the oven. Is it a bad idea? Absolutely. But it's a realistic scenario.
My microwave oven makes not 1, not 2, not 3, ... but 6 beeps when it's done. I hated the thing. No way to disable it. So I ended up opening the damn thing, find the tiny speaker and unsolder its wires ([1], [2])
My Instant Pot does the same thing, but I only use it in the evening, so not so much of a big deal as the microwave oven.
I believe the instant pot does have some way to turn off the sounds with config. I managed to turn the beeps off with some magic combination of button presses.
Bad audio design. Beeps should be reserved for errors.
Success should be indicated by a happy chime.
But most of all, it is being cheap and using a piezeoelectric buzzer driven on/off instead of a speaker driven by a small routine that would produce a pleasant sound.
Microwave ovens used to sound a bell when they were done, back when timers were mechanical.
Yep, it's Samsung. We purchased a more expensive machine, expecting it would be better quality and last longer... it's been a terrible purchase though, we've had nothing but trouble with it. Won't be buying Samsung again.
As many have mentioned, microwaves are the ones I get the least. What is the urgency for opening the damn thing when it is done!?
For dishwashers, we now have one that just opens by itself when it is done (to dry) - no beeping or anything. Maybe a bit hyperbolic, but it was quite a life changer!
And the funny thing is how some people will be insistent they like the beeping! (usually the same ones with the memory span of a goldfish but I digres...)
Of course, the best way is to make it configurable, but surely.
> So it annoys you if it beeps at those times, but not when it RUNS at those times? I'm confused...
Utility room is a long way from the bedroom, and the utility room door fits well.
As long as you don't select a high-speed spin cycle the washing machine is more or less inaudible from the bedroom.
The beeper, however, isn't inaudible, especially at night.
Great design choice to make the beeper the loudest part of the device ... and then make it unmuteable. Yes, we did once ask the Siemens repair guy during a service visit.
I have some friends that need white noise to sleep, and the sound of appliances gives them some of the same feel. Until it beeps. Then they clench their teeth and aggressively finds the nearest pillow to press down over their ears.
Mine has a lock button for some reason, and of course it is the closest button to the hot area. Meaning if I slide a pan a bit too far to the front it'll cover & trigger the lock button because it's capacitive and now I can't use or even turn off the stove for a while unless I press on the now boiling hot lock button.
I had an ikea induction hob with a similar UI, moved house and now I have a full size gas rangemaster with 5 rings.
I really miss the induction hob. Cleaning the rangemaster is a complete nightmare, it’s full of places where dirt can accumulate, there’s even holes down the back and gaps in the side where food falls down that are unrecoverable. The gas rings sometimes don’t light up and gas leaks out while you’re cooking and don’t realise, it’s much more dangerous for children and I’ve left it on without realising a few times now.
The buttons on the induction hob sucked, yes, but the user experience was so much better, literally wipe clean and done, safe and powerful. Maybe if I had a cleaner I’d prefer the rangemaster…
I've only used gas stoves in Romania. I rather enjoyed it, and it heats up stuff much faster than regular electric stovetops. (Barring the induction tops ofc; I haven't owned one of those yet.) I guess it depends on the design, because I didn't find it hard to clean at all. Sadly I don't remember the brand. As for Norway, where I'm from, gas stoves are only a very rare exception as by far most homes use electric appliances, save for campers. As for most things, the UI really counts. With that said, I think it's harder to f up a really established design paradigm, such as those with old fashioned electric stovetops.
Completely agree here that the entire experience was better despite the buttons. If I could choose, I would have an induction burner with front mounted dials for controls.
My parents just got one of these POSes. What a UI fiasco.
And my mom is afraid to let anything drip on it, because they told her she needs special cleaner or it'll ruin the finish. And my parents are not gullible people.
Look forward to more of this shit, too: CA just outlawed gas appliances in new houses. But in an area stricken by permanent drought, do they do something sensible like requiring greywater recovery systems in new construction? NOPE.
I'm not sure the example you provide really applies to the situation. Roll cages are mandatory in race cars, so effectively the contrary to "isn't used by professionals" . Also, they can be used in normal road cars. Granted, they're inconvenient but still provide added safety.
An example that comes to mind is Continuously Variable Transmissions (CVT). Most types of motorsports avoid CVTs for reasons of weight, unreliability and decreased repairability. However, for normal road cars, CVTs are very widespread and they do the job just fine (until they don't, but that's another story!)
Reminds me of this quote from the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
>The only profitable division of the company is its Complaints Department, which, according to the series, takes up the major landmasses on three planets. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines its marketing division as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," and an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
I had a similar problem. A quick hack; try to put some small 3d stickers on it. At least on mine, they don’t register as input and leave enough space to use the button.
Is this the only way they can make sure they break down frequently enough to force you to buy a new device every few years rather than building something that would normally last a generation. Also I guess they might save a couple of pounds in controls. I found a good local appliance repair guy recently (could probably do it myself, but I'm not good at that sort of thing). I intend to try and repair anything from now on rather than buy new.
Today: long-press the on/off button to turn the stove top on, press another button to select plate, adjust power by hitting the plus button ten times to get it to the max setting. Then wait a moment.
That's the worst damn user interface you can think of for using a physical machine that begs for tactile controls.
I stayed at a place last week just like this, but the max was 9, not 10. If you get to 9 and press '+' again, it resets to 5! From there, pressing '-' goes down to 4, not back to 9, so press '+' another 4 times to get to max.
So when you say, "I'm going to put the kettle on," you're referring to putting the kettle on the counter, not the stove? Or do Brits not use that expression for using a kettle.
Erm... not quite in the same sense IMHO, we're still putting the kettle on to boil. When I flick the switch, the kettle is 'on'. It's even in the 'on' position :)
I'm not sure the etymology of "put the kettle on" has been strictly about a stove-top for a very long time. To me it's a method-independent phrase, and a reference to setting the kettle to boil, not its physical placement.
When cast-iron stoves were common and possibly the primary source of heat for many homes, I am pretty sure that for most of the cold parts of the year, they would be fired-up and kept hot most of the day and night for warmth.
So - it wasn't a big production to boil water, you would just put it on the already hot stove.
(And also - I did not know this until recently but kettle can mean just a large cauldron/pot - although typically it would also have a wire handle and a lip/spout for easy pouring. Hmmm they were also used to hang above campfires, so my stove theory might go even further back...)
Ah, that makes sense! I guess I was assuming that "on" was in reference to it's placement _on_ the stove. But turning the circuit _on_ makes sense too.
To each their own I guess. Have fun waiting over 10 seconds each time you turn the stove on and off, much less fiddling about trying to find the damn button. Personally I much prefer the knob. No waiting. Just turn the knob to max in less than a second. It boils. Done. As for washing, respectfully, I don't agree. There is a TON more washing needed on the ceramic top. Yes, it's "easier" when you have to do it, but you have to do it way more often for it to look half as good.
Have you tried selecting a ring and then holding the "reduce power" button for a moment? I've found on some units this is a faster way to get to full power. And I had one where holding the up and down buttons together skips the selected ring straight to zero.
I have a combination microwave/conventional oven with capacitive buttons as well as a dial for temperature. You can only use the buttons to adjust the timing for the microwave in 10-second increments, leaving the dial completely unused in that modality.
Same. Samsung as a brand is dead to me. It is their right to update previously purchased TVs to show adverts. It is my right to consider their brand toxic swill.
I added WiFi to my fridge and it's pretty great. It will tell me when the door is left ajar or when the temperature goes too high or low in either the fridge or freezer compartment.
However I made it myself with an ESP8266 and some Dallas sensors. So it only works for me. Not for anyone else.
I use the WeMos D1 Mini. It's a small board with fewer pins than a NodeMCU or Lolin D32 board but more than sufficient for stuff like this. The ESP32 is more powerful but to be honest for a simple bunch of wifi sensors it's overkill. Though one thing that is nice is that the ESP32 has a dual-core CPU meaning the WiFi can run on the second core. It's more responsive as a result but again, for this kind of stuff it doesn't really matter. You can find WeMos (or knockoffs which work fine) for 2$ everywhere.
The ESP32 also has bluetooth which the 8266 doesn't. But WiFi and BT can't be used at the same time, you can turn them both on but they have to share the 'airtime' meaning more airtime for BT is more packet loss for wifi. If I need both I will usually just use 2 for this reason :)
For programming I used https://ESPHome.io which is perfect for Home Assistant and you can program it right from the Home Assistant interface, just by declaring a few variables. I even have a $2 OLED display hooked up to it (SSD1306 1-color typical aliexpress thingy), works perfectly.
It's highly recommended, let me know if you have more questions.
And yeah like the other person said, power supply for these boards is irrelevant, any USB supply will do. They're not fussy because they don't use a lot of power unlike a pi.
This is basically why I paid 100 EUR to have the 23 years old cheap Whirlpool stove that came with our apartment fixed. It has 4 plates and 4 turning knobs, and when I turn one of them, the corresponding plate gets hot.
When I was maybe 20 years old and naive as hell, I thought it was funny that the older neighbors were really enthusiastic about their older fully analog, non-computerized Toyota Land Cruiser. They did all their own repairs on it. Now I understand.
Sadly with a fridge or a washing machine the efficiency is quite different. Buying a 20+ old washing machine will cost you a lot in electricity and wasted water.
Buying a new washing machine / dishwasher requires delicate skills - there are basically two things that drive the price down: simplicity, and low quality. You have to look for simple and well-build machines, and this usually means days of comparing prices and reviews. It also requires instinct. To make matters worse, over-engineered "smart" machines often have very good reviews because they offer a reasonable experience for the first few years, and most people are blinded by "cool" smart features.
A general rule of thumb: avoid machines with a large display.
I bought a new washing machine from Sharp that was supposed to be eco-friendly, with microplastic filters, low energy usage, quick drying... whatnot. Most of my clothes are damaged from too wide holes in the tub. During spinning stage wet fabric get pulled into the tiny holes it breaks. Took us months to understand how our clothes get damaged. https://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/images/articles/holes%20in%20...
How do you hope to solve this problem in general? It applies to every product with an opaque supply chain, which is pretty much every product.
The only reviews that matter are the long-term ones, which are rare, and by the time a long time has passed, the original model is no longer made (or worse, a cheaper process is used to make something under the same name).
The only approach I can see is to trust in a brand. But companies making commodified products like household appliances seem happy to have burned all their brand good will in exchange for short term profits, meaning I no longer trust any of them.
Well, you can buy industrial appliances. They are more expensive, because they are sturdier and not subsidized by ads and data harvesting. But they are not "smart", and will last for a long long time.
>You have to look for simple and well-build machines
I ended up buying an entry level 8 kg Miele - just washes with no smart features & extremely well built. FYI: the 7 kg entry level models now come with a plastic wash tub, you need to buy the 8 kg model for the traditional metal wash tub.
I stopped using the default "eco" program and switched to the faster "auto" program on my dishwasher since watching this video on how these programs actually work:
I am secretly convinced they have "eco" programs just to get the A+++ rating on energy efficiency, but that you're not really meant to use those modes.
That's not a secret, that's exactly why they do it.
I feel like I read that in the manual that comes with my dishwasher. It was worded a bit differently, but it essentially said to use auto mode to get cleaner dishes, not eco which saves money but doesn't clean as well.
That's going to depend on your dishwasher. Our dishwasher does a prewash even in eco mode. But the water won't get as hot (to save power) and it takes longer. On the other hand, the 30 minute mode only does the one main wash. Check your manual.
One reason is that it compensates lower temperature with longer wash time and uses airflow instead of heating to dry. Both are measures to reduce the environmental impact.
The same is true for energy efficient washing machines by the way, they often do not reach the temperature a program states and compensate with longer washing times. This may be problematic for hygienic reasons at times but has a noticeable impact on energy use.
I'm pretty sure your dishwasher has a fast program, I know mine does. Default is 3.5h, the fast program will only take 90 minutes, but of course use a fair amount more electricity since it has to heat the water to a higher temperature.
Which raises the question of whether using hot water from the water heater (at least as a starting point) would provide a net savings. It's not as if the dishwasher hoards very much water for a load.
_maybe_ but it's not a guarantee. You still need a heating element in the dishwasher as there's no guarantee that the hot water is actually at the correct temperature. If the supply is a hot water tank, the tank might not be full, and in an on demand system you might have cold water in the pipes.
> It's not as if the dishwasher hoards very much water for a load.
Apologies if I misread this but dishwashers absolutely _do_ hoard and reuse water. My dishwasher claims to use about 12l of water for a full wash, which really isn't much at all.
No problem. My point was that they don't hoard MUCH water; the small amount they do hoard saves water over continuous flow.
And also that using already-hot water gets it closer to the desired temperature at least, meaning less work for the heating element. If you're using a conventional water heater that's just pointlessly keeping your water hot all day, I figure you might as well use it. But of course, there's still a net loss of hot water that must be replaced using energy, so at best.... (you know what's coming)...
It's worth checking the manual - my IKEA dishwasher's fast program uses less energy and water, and 1/5 of the time (but is only good for lighter loads).
It takes longer because of environmental reasons and just because water is cheap doesn't mean we should waste it. We currently have a huge water shortage in Sweden.
The average dishwasher uses about the amount of water you'd use for 1-2 minutes of shower time. Newer models use around 9 liters per cycle, older ones and non-eco modes often 15 liters, and really old ones often 25 liters. A typical shower outputs 5-10 liters per minute.
The water savings with eco-programs compared to "normal" programs is in the range of 10 seconds to 1 minute worth of shower time, if I remember correctly. If you want to conserve water use, there are a lot better ways to do so than running a dishwasher in eco mode. (Washing dishes by hand uses more water on average than even an old dishwasher).
Then, the terminology of "waste" is a bit problematic I think. The dishwater will usually output the spent water into some kind of sewer system in most places, and at some point this water usually gets cleaned and put back into circulation pretty much straight away. If not, it usually reaches nature again eventually. It's not like it became so toxic it needs to be stored safely for millennia.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be mindful, of course, especially when there are current (regional) shortages.
Energy consumption (mainly to heat water) is a different matter. Energy consumption is the real environmental cost, not water consumption, as water is basically renewable, but energy is often produced from non-renewable sources and has secondary effects such as carbon emissions, which in turn effect climate change and in turn regional water availability. But even then again, reducing shower time by a minute, or water temperature, will have a greater impact on energy consumption than running a dishwasher in eco mode (on average).
You are probably looking at the wrong map. There is currently a shortage of water for small wells in parts of Sweden. On the other hand there is more water than usual for municipal water in most of Sweden. Plus some places like Stockholm use lake water which is always plentiful. This is bad news for people with their own wells but go for people who pay for their water.
I don't doubt you're right about the lake water. However, this morning they again warned about low groundwater levels on the local Stockholm news and that we might see an irrigation ban (as has become common practice last few years). They also urged people to use less water so it definitely seems to be a problem in Stockholm as well, even with the lake water.
Given how much water is needed to extract metals from the ground to create new appliances, the total amount of wasted water is subject to debate. It may be better overall to just keep using the old thing till it breaks.
> With the looming water crisis ahead, every drop of savings is a plus.
Agreed.
What's worrying though is the amount of water wasted in the delivery network. Really annoying when people trying to save a litre here or there and then millions are just going straight in to the ground.
https://www.thameswater.co.uk/about-us/performance/leakage-p...
> Every day we supply 2.6 billion litres of water, but not all of that gets to our customers. At the moment, we leak almost 24% of the water we supply.
The gist of the story is, because of the unmaintained leaky pipes of a decorative water installation, the city of Marburg wasted 20 million liters per year. A comedy show on state television is making fun of them.
> Arcelik/Beko group uses 1000LT fresh water per year. The rest is recycled in the plant. This is less than monthly consumption of a single household.
That is far less than I expected. But does it account for the water use in their supply chain? I think that should also be counted.
That said, fridges and washing machines use enormous amounts of power and water, so savings there count for a lot. Far more than in many other household appliances.
> Same with dishwashers. With the looming water crisis ahead, every drop of savings is a plus.
There's a lot to be said with focusing on the right outcomes. We should do everything we can to reduce unnecessary waste and inputs. But, we also need to embrace water reclamation, water recycling. We currently reclaim ~86% of the water in my country. It's not great - but it's a good place to start.
It might even be worth fixing it, depending on the build quality and the actual consumption. Use a kill-a-watt or something similar to figure out what the device actually costs. Be prepared for surprises, both in the positive and the negative direction! Do this before something breaks.
> Buying a 20+ old washing machine will cost you a lot in electricity and wasted water.
Does the cost of the electricity and water an old machine uses equal or exceed the cost of the electricity and water involved in having to make a brand new appliance instead of using an already-made one?
At some point, yes. Washing machines use a lot of power and water, and any savings on those will eventually earn themselves back.
Where exactly that point is, I don't know. I'm generally in favour of repairing old devices, but from what I understand, washing machines have a limited lifespan, and a lot has been improved about their efficiency in the past 20 years.
I don't know, I'm not convinced that the savings achieved by newer laundry machines outweigh the savings of using older machines when the environmental/energy/etc costs of running modern factories to create these new machines are factored into the equation. If you compare old laundry machine A to newer laundry machine B, sure, you'd see the savings. But if you factor in the fact that to make B you also need to have an operational factory, then I'm not sure the costs are in the newer machine's favor.
It's interesting how indoctrinated we've become to think of "energy and water" as waste instead of as a feature of an advanced, high-technology high-energy civilisation.
If we had good sources of energy (nuclear, or solar+batteries) we wouldn't even need to worry about that. Water as well, water simply cannot get "wasted", you just need to clean it, which requires energy.
The fact is, these "modern" "green" appliances are simply worse, sure they use less energy but waste much more time (because colder water -> longer wash cycle). You can get more (useful) energy, but you can never get more time.
How feasible is it to buy a new refrigerator, and connect the nice efficient hardware to a thermostat and motor relay from an old fridge model? Those components are available inexpensively from repair shops.
Living on tank, you have free water unless you run out, when it is hideously expensive to truck it in.
But as long as you have your consumption under control, you are your own water company and you may choose not to bother with appliances that focus on water efficiency.
The place I rent has a fancy button microwave installed. It's built-in and all the knobs makes it look really cool and scientific. I never use it though, because I brought my own Samsung microwave. It's got two knobs. One for the amount of time you need to fry things, and one for the power you wanna fry it on.
That's it. That's literally all you need.
The most difficult thing about it, is that it doesn't have a start button. It just starts automatically a second after you've set the timer.
This small "smart" feature is actually a problem for visitors who doesn't know the machine, because they'll try to jam in the two knobs in order to "start" the thing. But otherwise I love it, and I use it all the time over the fancy schmansy pre-installed one. Because when I use the fancy one, I'm afraid that if I push the wrong button I'll start a nuclear war...
Yeah, I've got an old school turn to start timer style microwave. One dial for wattage, and a mechanical dial for the timer. It's also tiny. Why are microwaves so big now? What are people cooking in a half cubic meter of microwave space?
It's for melting butter and warming up leftovers.
Every microwave I've owned has also had a convection and grill/crisp function making them far more versitle than a simple microwave oven. That is probably what you are looking at.
Single-use gadgets can be blessings for the disabled and differently abled. The author of this article is sneering at the disabled for having different tool needs than herself.
My 80-something grandmother uses a garlic press and several sizes of vegetable holders for slicing veggies. I guess she's just so uncool.
I'd say single-use kitchen items are worth it if you use them every week. If you use them only once a year and the function can also be performed by something else, it's just clutter.
We've got several knives and several pans, because different versions of the same thing are useful for slightly different purposes. We've got separate pans for pancakes and that works very well for us, because they're lighter and you can actually flip them.
Current IH stoves aren't much more complicated nor need your wi-fi password, if that was your point.
The only significant addition I see in somewhat recent models is auto-turning off, and I'm pretty sure it will help save the house from burning down at some point, so I'm all for it.
> The only significant addition I see in somewhat recent models is auto-turning off, and I'm pretty sure it will help save the house from burning down at some point, so I'm all for it.
Many recent stoves (induction or regular) have figured that, when interacting with them, no one will have wet hands nor need to adjust them repeatedly, they could go ahead and save a few pennies by using shared tactile controls.
My stove need me to press a button corresponding to the plate I want to change, then press a common +/- button to turn it up or down. If my finger is wet, it will have a hard time registering and reach a timeout, whereupon I have to again select the plate. This is hands down the worst UX for an appliance I've had in my life.
The worst UX I experienced was the gas stove at an appartment where you'd turn the knob all the way to get some sparks, while it blasts gas from the stove, to then turn it down to the level you want.
The fun part was when you try to light it up but for whatever reasons it doesn't catch, so you're filling the room with propane and the second it might actually light up you're toast. Then if you turned it down too much it would die out, but you'd have to look below the pan to realize there's no flame anymore.
Oh, and the toxicity of course.
My IH plate also has common + and - buttons, but compared to the above I'm pretty happy with it. It also has a timer, and I'm ok giving up having 4 knobs for buttons that actually work and can be cleaned in one swoop, and having a single place where I can see the status of all the heating elements.
""
Better oven ergonomics leads to less cooking fatigue, which leads to less accidents and therefore less downtime. Sometimes it actually pays off to have a higher maintenance workload, especially since most of it is planned downtime, or features that don't have fixed urgently. And sometimes this idea of radical simplicity only shifts maintenance workload from one component to another. One example that gets a lot of pushback in US cooking is gas connections.
""
I’m having a similar debate about a diesel car. A battery-electric replacement would have lower environmental opex but at a huge environmental capex compared to just keeping my already-manufactured diesel.
That argument only holds if you stop driving your diesel altogether, as otherwise it's environmental cost will keep growing with no bounds while an acquired battery-electric would be busy amortizing it's one-time(-ish) cost.
What OP said was about repairing stuff to avoid smart appliances. From an environmental perspective using old stuff is often much worse than getting new (fridge, car, ...).
This is only true if the power to run the electric car is environmentally less damaging than the diesel's emissions. With Germany's obsession with using diesel vehicles to mine brown coal to burn for power, I'm not convinced it is.
I think this is going to be very country specific. The UK for example has barely used any coal (relatively) for the main grid with a considerable amount of coal-free days in the past couple of years. (currently coal provides 0.0% of the UK's fossil fuel electricity production and nearly 14% is renewable[0] though it was up to nearly 3% in February[1]) So while there is still a majority of the electricity coming from fossil sources (namely gas) it is on the decline and I'd certainly posit that a somewhat modern power station can generate electricity more efficiently than a car's diesel engine can... (happy to be proven wrong on this as I can't find any direct studies)
It’s not an easy calculation though. The environmental cost of manufacturing the vehicle really is very high. The total environmental cost of ownership depends on how much you drive it. For some level of use, it will be better for the environment to keep an old diesel than to build a new electric.
The solution to this one is the one I am planning. Remove the terribly polluting diesel engine and replace the heavy engine/clutch (dual mass flywheel in this case) and fuel system and replace with only a nominally heavier BEV system. what you gain from the engine and fuel tank (if you assume a full 60 litre tank) from a majorly lighter electric motor, you then lose on the weight of the batteries. With open source modules like the open-inverter project, you can have the benefit of keeping control of your vehicle and it not becoming an iPad on wheels while also prolonging of the useful life and keeping most of the invested production environmental costs. My example vehicle is nearing 20 years old (it's a late 2003 model) and it still drives great and only generally needs typical consumable/wear and tear items to get through annual inspections. It's generally powertrain elements that are starting to be of concern, but an electric conversion would simplify that no end, and actually bring more of the maintenance into my own personal knowledge domain (Power Electrics, Electronics and software/firmware) and by re-using salvaged EV powertrains, not actually having a further impact on the environmental CAPEX. Granted the DIY-EV route isn't for everyone but it definitely is for some people
1) what was the issue with not connecting it to WiFi in the first place?
2) surely the fact that it has WiFi was known at purchase time? Despite what the internet would lead you to believe, there is still a lot of fridges without WiFi and "smart" features out there, why not buy one of those rather than mess with this?
Edit: point 2 was addressed in the article, sorry I missed it
> what was the issue with not connecting it to WiFi in the first place?
Like many other 'smart' appliances, it creates it's own AP so allow you to set it up. So anyone within range could attach it to their network, and then do whatever they like with it.
> surely the fact that it has WiFi was known at purchase time?
It came with the place they're living in. Someone else made that decision.
> Like many other 'smart' appliances, it creates it's own AP so allow you to set it up. So anyone within range could attach it to their network, and then do whatever they like with it.
Considering the security risk of smart devices generally working like this, I feel like the industry ought to standardize on something more sensible. Maybe some kind of NFC pairing?
Depending on the router manufacturer you may not be able to disable WPS pin and keep WPS push button (this is the case of the router that was supplied by my ISP as it comes with a rather dumbed down UI, not sure if I could disable it via editing a settings backup file and applying that back to the router as I use my own equipment, but most consumers will just use the router issued to them from their ISP). WPS enter pin has a max number of possibilities of 11k pins (it checks the pin in 2 half’s and the last digit is a check digit, so 10k possibilities for the first half and 999 possibilities for the 2nd half), and some routers don’t rate limit the connection requests.
Some router manufacturers fixed the issue by removing WPS pin, others “fixed” it by rate limiting WPS pin connection attempts, but that will just delay the attack.
So we are left with WPS Push button (if that’s available because as stated above, consumer routers may only allow disabling WPS completely rather than just disable WPS pin). But thats a bit of a pain for items like Shellys that are designed to be put behind fixtures.
But yeah, in the case of a fridge and most other consumer grade equipment putting a push button somewhere for WPS Push Button should be easy to factor in.
WPS PIN method is severely broken and insecure, absolutely typical of most stuff put out by the Wi-Fi Alliance. As far as I know, WPS push button method is fine.
I haven't ever needed or wanted to try to use the NFC method, I would disable it on any equipment I installed until I had a need for it. And even then I would do some research to see how badly the Wi-Fi Alliance fucked it up before making a judgement about whether I would feel comfortable enabling it.
Is the AP active literally all the time until you set it up? Usually in these devices it only activates once you select an option in the menu, or shortly after first start - but yeah, if it's on 24/7 until configured, then I agree that's a problem.
I do have a Samsung TV, and no matter what I do, I can't turn off the Wifi/Bluetooth radios in it - and several of my neighbours keep trying to connect to it.
The Google Chromecasts continually broadcast their AP when not fully set up.
A neighbour has a bluetooth/wifi speaker that pushed some kind of "Do you want to set up your X brand speaker now?" prompt to my phone.
There's a few other smart devices near me that are also broadcasting open APs that never seem to go away.
Were I making the purchasing decision, wifi wouldn't factor in. If the fridge that turns out to be the best option happened to have wifi, then I'd trust myself to work out how to jail it, whether hardware "off"-ing it as per this guy, or blackholing it's connection, or just not connecting it at all (with the knowledge that some devices are rumoured to connect to any accessible open wifi).
It's generally going to be easier to disable the signal circuits on the appliances than to jam them. Either wrap them in foil, disconnect the circuits, or wait for some brave soul to figure out what to break for it to stop working.
That being said, jamming is relatively easy, just saturate the channel you want to jam with noise. That will also probably kill your cellular connection though.
Controversially I would like to have fridge and stove that could send me telemetry over Wi-Fi. I currently have RuuviTag in my fridge to monitor temperature and moisture, but I can't put one in my oven for obvious reasons (and it couldn't monitor stove anyway).
Obviously neither should have any actual controls over Wi-Fi, but getting a notification about open fridge door, being able to check if stove or oven is on while away from home, or getting report when something (is about to) breaks would be neat.
I bought all new appliances last year, and none of them were smart. I don't even remember seeing any smart ones at the shop. Granted, this was an appliance store in a town of about 8000 people... but it seems to me they're more gimmicks for people with too much money than a part of most peoples every day life.
Considering that every tv available through most distributors is now a smart-tv, and the general proliferation of IoT, I'd see it becoming entirely commonplace unless consumers have an alternative among the competition.
I have a couple of IoT VLANs that devices gets sorted into by my level of percieved trust. Things like AppleTV and Sonos goes into the trusted one, things like Printers, various chinese IoT like Aquara sensors, Eufy cameras and more are put into the untrusted one. Trusted devices have static DHCP assigned IPs, as well as printers (for AirPrint and mDNS)
Everything in the untrusted VLAN is blocked by MAC address in the firewall in the outbound direction.
I keep a (surprisingly small) spreadsheet of all my firewall rules, so migrating to a new firewall is a matter of spending 30 minutes setting up the 50 or so lines from the spreadsheet, of which most are rules for allowing inter VLAN traffic, i.e. allow AirPlay reverse connections from AirPlay capabale devices.
I should add that i run Eufy cameras in Homekit mode, so they only need access to talk to a HomeKit bridge/hub (AppleTV/HomePod), and only need internet access for firmware updates.
I don't update unless there's a security fix (haha), i have a problem, or a feature i need is released, at which point i simply disable the outbound firewall rule temporarily and "force" an update through whatever controlplane the device has (typically an app).
For security fixes, i usually find out through other channels (here or reddit) about some new 0-day, and i will check for updates after that.
Considering that the devices are not allowed on the internet, and on a very limited network, the risk of a random "drive by shooting" is rather low.
It's either that, or place them in a faraday cage :)
And at some point in the "not too distant future", everything will be running on 5G/6G, and at that point i guess it doesn't matter anymore. I'll revert to the tried and true methods of applying painters tape over cameras/sensors.
Seriously though, i'm also extremely picky with what kinds of IoT stuff i buy. My toothbrush doesn't need WiFi, and neither does a whole bunch of other stuff. I can vote with my wallet, and hope the EU consumer protection takes care of the rest.
Rather than disconnecting these type of appliances completely I’d rather disconnect them from the cloud and connect locally, for example using Home Assistant. I have captured an OTA update for my Miele appliance but so far haven’t gotten around to poking around. Has anyone tried something similar?
This is something that stresses me a lot. I care about fighting against these non-features but most people around don't care and have the mentality of "I have nothing to hide"
I've lost count the amount of times I thought about "I should just do an open-source version of <some home appliance I need and is full of spy/crapware>"
So why are we getting it anyway? We are getting it because it is essential to the smart cities agenda. It is planned that everything be micromanaged by a technocratic elite.
Think of China's social credit score on steroids. Have you used up your allocation of credits? Your fridge/heating/etc can be switched off.
Have you been a bad citizen, posting dissenting comments online? Then you can't travel, will have your bank account frozen/constrained.
A digital pass and smart technology everywhere are required. Then technocrats can have fine-grained control of everything.
This will be done in the name of the environment - in the name of 'saving the earth' most of us will choose digital enslavement and will even force it on others.
^ That's the plan in a nutshell - which is aimed to be in place for 2030.
I'm disappointed that all these smart home appliances connect exclusively via WiFi. None of them connect via Ethernet even though they are stationary and often connecting a cable to them could be easy. The WiFi connection is usually unreliable, supports only 2.4 GHz and requires multiple steps to establish.
I mean, who the hell has a Cat-5e drop behind their fridge, though?
I imagine a product manager took exactly 100ms to calculate that the answer to that question is "functionally no one" and so there went the $X ethernet connector from the build, for patently obvious reasons.
Hell, I'd love to know Sonos's ethernet adoption rate, since they certainly have that data. I'd bet it's fairly high since Sonos is a bit up-market and sometimes professionally installed, or installed by enthusiasts, but I'm willing to guess it's < 5%, and realistically, < 1%, even if we only obviously limit the sample size to "Sonos devices that are eth capable."
Just last year I moved to a new home and was installing ethernet around the house. I could've easily made an extra port or two in the kitchen.
I generally like receiving a notification when the dishwasher is finished with the dishes, but with the current WiFi setup it's always broken and I don't have the energy to fix it. So I would've used it if it were working over Ethernet and I'm not using it now when it can only work over WiFi.
Out of home automation devices Philips Hue works only over Ethernet, though there you have the advantage that you can place the hub anywhere you like.
You can say that about anything though. Most people aren't writing code or building binaries, so you might as well take the ability of the end user to write code or run any unsigned unauthorized executables on their PCs. Also most people aren't running old ass executables, so screw backwards compatibility too. I'm sure it will make operating systems a lot less complex if you do down that path, but most people here would revolt if that was done by any OS vendor.
Every time I read something like this I couldn't feel happier with my late 30s Frigidaire I reinsulated and restored. There's actually a thriving market for restoring and repairing old dumb appliances, at least in the US, although it's relatively underground.
My Samsung washing machine has Wi-Fi. It's quite useful to know when laundry is ready... but it also allows me to say what I'm laundering, and it'll configure the machine for me. However, it doesn't allow me to turn it on ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I imagine that forcing me to be physically near it and press a button to turn it on is a safety mechanism, but it sucks. Especially because it isn't clear whether this is something that can be configured or by design. I've tried everything to change this, but failed to find a way to remotely power it (I'd rather always use my smartphone to configure & turn it on).
My mom's Samsung fridge tells me whenever it opens and closes. I had to disable notifications. It implies collection of analytics from inside peoples' homes when attached to WiFi.
Can't you more simply not give the fridge your wifi password? Just keep it off of a network, seems much easier than opening it up and voiding a warranty.
Looks like he just unplugged the WiFi modem/module. But the software that looks for a WiFi connection is still thee and operating, which is no big deal on a fridge, but on a TV it really extends the startup time as the TV won't be fully on until its has searched for WiFi connections, even if it fails to find one.
I feel like our best bet is "Right to Repair" legislation. Claw back ownership to mean real ownership, not veiled rental.
RTR should include access to the software running these products, this way people could modify things, brick their appliances if they really want to, turn off "call home" features, etc.
but products can be notorious in the ways they try to make you setup the wifi.
Worse sometimes if you don't setup WiFi they will connect to unprotected networks if the find some and try to use them instead, opening them up to even more attack surface (or networks of wide spread hotspot providers in your country).
I.e. you get annoyed and can't be sure if it doesn't connect to "something" if you don't go that far.
Because of security. You do not know how exploitable the setup is. There were instances when these appliances connected to open Wifis and called home. Imagine same but attacker doing a drive by with open Wifi.
If it will try to connect to any open wifi, I can definitely see why'd you want to disable the wifi at a hardware level, since at that either you let it connect to the internet in its own, insecure way, or use your secured wifi network - in both cases it'll phone home.
You’d be amazed how the smallest amount of information can be used to invade your privacy.
I don’t know how fridges with WiFi works. But considering the rumors about connecting to open Wi-Fi connections automatically, let’s start from there.
1) What if a so-called smart fridge keeps a list of items you have stored in your fridge? Maybe there are temperature settings for different zones. Maybe a default is listed as “eggs”.
Ok, now you know that, presumably, your target really likes eggs. So much that he Selects that temperature by default.
Now you know what to look for to make potential physical contact with your target.
1) where is nearest store with eggs?
2) how often does he open and close the fridge? Maybe the data stored keeps that data. From there, you can guess how often your target may run out of eggs if he buys them a dozen at a time and opens the fridge every morning for breakfast.
3) you have three stored within cycling / driving range. You go to one of them to wait for your target.
Next scenario:
You connect to the fridges open Wi-Fi connection automatically. Oh, jackpot! This fridge has a camera in its screen! Now you have access to watch your target through the fridge camera.
Next scenario:
Maybe the fridge keeps a list of other Wi-Fi sourced it tried to access earlier. You can scan those and maybe try to guess passwords to break into those networks.
It’s another possible vector to infiltrate other devices on the network. Like smart bulbs, smart switches, security cameras, smart scales, and what have you. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which the fridge is the weakest link.
A smart fridge can also be botnetisied like any of these.
Well there are few options. I am not a black hat and my imagination is not as vivid but I think if somebody makes my fridge turn off is bad enough. More sophisticated attackers might use it as a vector to get in to your home network. Not sure.
You'd just buy a dumb fridge in the first place, no? I mean I know with TV it's nearly impossible to buy dumb now but with fridges it's (at least in the UK) still "default is dumb"...
Mh, so far there are in the market "not-smart fridges and freezers", AFAIK no law so far impose buying a connected one so... If someone sell crap I see not much reasons to buy...
Open source Linux based smart appliances would be good. I don't dislike the idea of smart appliances, but if its mine I want full control over what it does.
However the manufcaturers prefer to avoid the risk of a user physically breaking the device from software and the manufacturer having to repair because of legal warantee.
If you don't some of your neighbors might. I installed an app to control my AC remotely and when i pressed the button to add all units in range it automatically added one more than there were in my apartment. I had complete control over the AC unit of some unsuspecting neighbour - I could see its status and control everything from my phone anywhere in the world. I suspect it's not that bad for fridges, but you still might be able to do some harm there as well.
Could be worse - I live in an apartament complex and everyone’s home control is on it’s own network but with the same password.
We cannot change it - even as apartament owners.
So, if a neighbors party gets too loud you can go an aggressive way and just turn off their lights and lower curtains… or go passive aggressive way and bring their AC waay down so they begin to suffer but may not realise why :D
The whole system runs on some sort of an outdated linux servers, so one day I plan to hack my own home’s access network to get a root finally.
I love WiFi on my home appliances. Washing machine sends notifications when it's finished or when it's running out of detergent, air purifier notifies when it's time to change the filter, A/C lets me turn it on remotely when I feel too hot, etc. I don't really get people who opt out of these convenience features.
Vendors have no incentive to provide any security updates after original purchase. Even assuming the original code was solid and had no known security flaws (this isn't the case, hardware vendors wrote godawful code full of holes), anything in the future makes it an easily exploitable vector into my home network.
These apps often require ridiculous invasions of privacy - refusing to work if you don't give them full access to location, running in the background, etc. - and work poorly at best.
In 30+ years of using computers, I thought that printer companies were my go-to standard for truly hideous software, but appliances are pushing the bar even lower. If my company interviewed a candidate from one of them who didn't proactively state that they formally protested the shipping of their software, I would in most cases refuse to hire them.
The UK PSTI legislation currently going through Parliament includes penalties of up to 4% of worldwide revenue if manufacturers don't live up to their product security obligations. That should be a reasonable incentive.
> These apps often require ridiculous invasions of privacy - refusing to work if you don't give them full access to location, running in the background[...]
The "full access to location" to that is likely because of Android's broken security model, which made asking for location the only way various apps had to bind to some physical device. It's apparently being fixed[1].
As for running in the background: Isn't that because it needs to poll for and receive the notification?
You can do notifications without polling in the background.
Even Facebook Messenger doesn't require the "run in the background" permission, and yet all sorts of cheapest Chinese bidder IoT and Appliance garbage apps check for it and refuse to run if you don't grant it - such as the app for Thinkware dashcams.
In my view the level of home network security should be based on actual risk level, eg focusing on automated attacks rather than targeted attacks, and based on an evaluation of what data you may actually lose and could you back it up offline. Aiming for some kind of perceived 100% security will just make you give up a lot of convenience to mitigate risks that probably never realize or that don't actually matter that much.
I bought a Samsung TV, was pretty satisfied with it. One day it updated itself and now it has forced some kind of Samsung TV service onto itself that is very visibly promoted whenever I go to switch to a different hooked-up appliance. It annoys me to no end.
I jailbroke my LG TV. So I have shell access but also have a decent smart TV, and
I removed all the ads. Also have ad free Youtube. I like it a lot more now.
Hah I literally googled it and used this exploit in the browser. Someone else did the hard work for me. For the ads there’s some python scripts that aren’t working but it’s not super difficult to figure out.
I just used https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io not sure it’ll work on the OLED TVs, I got a $200 50’ on clearance and didn’t want all the crud. I’m thinking of adding some cron jobs to it that disable it during certain hours so my kids can’t watch tv all the time and fun stuff like that.
Dumb question w.r.t washing machine: don't you have to dose detergent in with each load, or do newer machines have some sort of large reservoir? If the former, how would it know if you're running low on detergent?
This model has a large reservoir where you can pour the entire bottle and it'll autodose based on some settings. It's a nice convenience that you can just put the clothes in and hit start to wash with defaults.
I have a washing machine with WiFi (brand Candy). Connected their Android app, everything worked fine. Tried to connect their iOS app, while connected to Android app (so two users can use it). Connecting two devices has broken WiFi so much that it is not working anymore for neither app and only available interface is very limited knob. At least.
Appliance manufacturers are worse than car OEMs in this sense. Making stuff which nobody asked for while screwing it up.
I disagree with "stuff which nobody asked for" because I have asked for smart features in appliances and generally choose products that have them. However, I do agree that many times especially the smaller and cheaper manufacturers screw things up. Bigger brands seem to often have more reliable products and apps that generally work as intended. I've been pretty happy with apps from e.g. IKEA, Xiaomi, Bosch, Philips. They could all be better but they are serving their purpose.
I love people complaining about stuff that they did not pay for. That thread is full of it. You can just buy a fridge without those options you know? A dumb fridge, dumb whatever - they are out there.
This stuff makes me roll my eyes. The wifi fridge isn't going to hurt you. Personally I think it sounds cool to have your Google calendar on your fridge.
Yeah, I thought the same about smart tvs, then I have been showered in ads, despite me never logging on any service, those adds were terrifyingly accurate.
Have turned off wifi from my device and never turned it on again.
I'd like one that would have cameras inside and would know what's inside of it, when they expire and even have an option to order the same products if they're starting to go low! Without me having to do any extra work like scanning each product or entering any data!
This approach is used commercially. Our office is in a co-working space and we have a smart fridge in the kitchen. I should point out we also have a normal shared fridge, but this is like a fancy vending machine. You unlock with an app, take what you want and all the items have an RFID tag, so the system knows what you took and charges you. I assume the workspace managers also get stock alerts.
The other end of this is hotel minibars which detect what you take, I guess also using RFID. I know Marriott use these (Berlin for example) to stop people swapping out wine for water or juice. Fun fact, this happened to a friend of mine in managed isolation. The hotel had taken all the booze from the rooms, since alcohol was rationed. You had to order it from room service and they'd leave it outside your door. They swapped it for free, but they weren't surprised. It seems like it happened a lot, but being told at check-in that you can't touch the fridge without risking it charging you seems like penny pinching when you're charging 150+ EUR per night.
That's pretty cool, but from what I understand products usually don't come with RFID, thus you'd have to be the one to stick them onto the carton of milk and all the stuff. I'd like one that, I guess, uses computer vision to see what is what and use that data to track everything.
"since this got boosted if anyone happens to know about service manuals for appliances, lmk. i’m textin a buddy about this and now we just wanna kill it instead my backup plan (forever dhcp lease + block IP from pf.conf). even the manuals i can find online from samsung don’t mention the smart features, it seems to be more of a “don’t burn down your house idiot” thing "
It seems their plan was to block it at a network level if they couldn't do this.
After I cut over to a new wifi router I left my old one partially configured with no internet connection and mirroring everything to one of the LAN ports that goes to an un-numbered (no IP address, no IP egress) port on my main server where I can maniacally sniff their futile unrequited traffic at my leisure.
The idea is to some day make a per-gadget catalog of all the hostnames and addresses these things want to reach, but hopefully someone beat me to it already and you folks can let me know where to find it.
Might work on this model but more and more appliances refuse to work at all until they’re connected to WiFi. Additionally, “Amazon Sidewalk” allows appliances to connect to your neighbors Wi-Fi automatically if your own isn’t working for it.
According to Samsung's site, assuming this is the same model of fridge (Family Hub Refrigerator?), it is technically possible to skip the WiFi setup, but some people are pointing out there are rumors that it will try to connect to open wifi to still phone home to samsung.
Completely unrelated, but I’ve heard of mastodon a lot but never used it. Now I get it though - the UI is really nice and reminiscent of the internet I used to know. I thought I opened an app somehow on accident… snappy ui, no ads, perfectly scaled to my device’s screen, etc.
Another benefit to the Fediverse is that many clients exists to the same backend, and they all have access to the same API / features. No "official" or "third-party" clients or apps, which has proven to encourage developers to make apps for many platforms (JS, android, iOS, TUIs, GNOME, KDE, etc)
I think this is just a normal PWA,though. In fact, I think this is a rather website-like PWA at that, with the obvious links at the top.
This is the system Google intends PWAs to be, just quick, snappy, easily accessible websites that behave like they belong on your device. Sadly, most "apps" seem to copy the bloated, heavy, mostly JS-based approach we find in native apps, which is besides the point. Take the Twitter web-app, for example, that's a bloated mess that needs some serious optimisation. The alternative front-end, Nitter.net, does a lot better in almost every aspect. It's fast, accessible, and does just about everything except writing tweets and putting together a wall of followed accounts for you.
I like mastodon but I still prefer a native app over the web UI because it just feels that little bit too "web" for me. The main advantage obviously isn't the UI but the decentralized nature of the platform; a clean UI just helps them be a better alternative for the closed ecosystem of traditional social media.
Once everything in the home is connected, governments can pass laws that essentially force appliance manufactures to limit use of appliances. In the name of climate change or w/e.
Everyone is limited to 1 dishwasher session during drought season. Fridges run a few degrees warmer during heat waves to conserve energy.
Or it gets factored into your personal and family ESG score which can be used to discriminate.
Your dig at communism doesn't make sense: This dystopia you describe is being actively built by capitalist companies operating within a market economy and encouraged by democratically elected governments.
The commies never gave up. They marched through the institutions and created de facto commissars within the corporate structure which are generally a part of HR. The commissars are called DEI and ESG now.
I'm thinking something similar to what https://adnauseam.io/ does, but but amplified:
1. Someone reverse engineer what does the device send to which address. 2. Block the particular device to access internet (and make it easy for others too). 3. Constantly send bogus data to the manufacturer so the personal data they get overall loses value or is unusable. Make it easy for a lot of people to do it as well, or even just rent a bot farm.
There's too many legit and good services that end up being turned down due to abuse and DDos, and they don't even bring anything good to the attackers. Why not using these techniques for something actually good to consumers privacy?