This is definitely on the horizon and future generations won’t even be aware of a time when you didn’t pay a subscription for every aspect of life. (TikTok screencap)
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I try to leave and my bracelet mandated by the Terms of Service immediately administers an electric shock.
Yes. Haha. Funny joke.
…at least until it’s no longer just a joke.
Don’t give them ideas.
Came here to post that. More context: Short story by Cory Doctorow about apartments having mandatory proprietary toasters that only toast bread baked by the company , which then goes out of business, which makes the authorization handshake fail, which makes all the toasters useless, and then plot and stuff happens. It’s a good read.
Damn it, can’t get to my verification cans!
For those who have no idea what stoy is talking about, I present this glimpse into the future:
Eye tracking integration means that each second of diverted attention adds another ad to the queue
Actually (put on fedora) a “smart” fridge is not necessarily bad.
No what absolutely sucks is lock-in and enshittification.
If you were to imagine a FLOSS OSHW fridge that used e.g. OpenFoodFacts and data from your purchases, e.g. OCRing your grocery list receipt or online purchases and genuinely helped with stock, recipes, diet, etc why not.
The WHOLE point is control, it’s not the technology.
Yeah. People hate “smart” stuff and IOT and i sometime do too, but owning a bit of automation tech makes me realise the shitty thing about these tech is we’re being forced to use it for even the basic shit and in THEIR term, which mean they can brick your stuff if they want to.
I have two aircond that comes with IOT that i can connect for extra feature, but that’s entirely optional stuff, i can operate it like a normal aircond. We need stronger consumer protection and more personal control.
“smart” stuff […] these tech
That’s why picking the right tech matters. My heuristic is that if you need a proprietary app, it’s NOT going to be on your term, hard pass.
If you do need some connectivity, it’s also probably bad.
If you do not need connectivity and it’s interoperable via standards then and only then maybe it can be good.
I get they can’t support an old device forever, but then a local API should be available by law.
Home Assistant ftw
It’s come so far! It used to just be for tech nerds and privacy extremists. But it’s so easy to use now, everyone who wants to enjoy the IoT world again without losing personal control can do it!
It’s cooking absolutely but we need a whole class of contributors that only work with support and uiux that really enjoy helping people because there’s always that one little thing that’s vague in the docs and obvious to everyone else
Exactly, we don’t need to ditch computers and smartphones and go “back to nature” like some people say. We need control.
Counterpoint - we do not need appliances capable of running operating systems with userlands. A pre-programmed microcontroler should be more than enough for most appliances
An ESP32 based microcontroller can also send the temperature over ZigBee, smart devices and microcontrollers are not mutually exclusive
I hate that any new tech nowadays is caveated by this perversion of right to ownership.
It’s gotten to the point that I either actively seek older tech, or just go for even more expensive niche tech by small private tech players like Framework. But then my worry becomes, are these small private tech companies actually principled or are they just waiting on their exit strategy to be bought out?
Theoretically, I suppose that you could reflash your fridge. It’s unlikely that it’s running a dedicated embedded system nowadays. It has to be either android or Linux (or maybe Windows if they’re idiots, which is always a possibility).
you could reflash your fridge
Well yes, but honestly that’s swimming upstream. I always discourage reverse engineering or hacking unless you do it for learning and entertainment purposes. If you love the challenge it’s amazing. If you want to use the tool they you are giving away money to corporations you do not trust and you put a lot of weight on your shoulders to maintain all that over time.
Smart fridges don’t even improve storing food.
I won’t buy a smart fridge until they can play Tetris with the food inside.
But without a smart fridge, how am I supposed to play Doom in my kitchen?
We’ve seen how this goes: Eventually if you need a new fridge, you won’t have a choice.
Get a cold basement, or get some rare vintage fridge, or stop using anything that needs refrigeration is my plan.
And everyone needs a new fridge every 3-5 years now because they’re all pieces of shit.
Unless there begins to exist a new business based around lobotomizing smart devices.
Manufacturers will add “security features”, then sue the new lobotomizer business for tampering with DRM
And so the lobotomizers cite right-to-repair laws
What are those? It takes years to make the smallest iota of progress with right to repair.
In the US, maybe
Of course. Europe is smarter than that.
Unfortunately, even fixing a smart fridge without the manufacturer’s consent is a crime punishable with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and possibly prison time.
It’s just like smart TVs.
And cars.
Indeedy.
Smart tvs aren’t as bad of a concept as smart fridges. A smart TV is better at being a TV than it otherwise would be, purely because it is smart. A fridge doesn’t have that. There is no way that a fridge can be better at being a fridge by being smart.
The one smart feature I could see useful on a fridge would be for it to send me some sort of notification if the door is left open. Perhaps it could also send a notification if the temperature inside gets too warm (or too cold) - which assuming the door is shut would probably mean the fridge is broken.
With that said, I’m perfectly happy with a dumb box that gets cold inside and has a simple electro-mechanical switch to turn the light on when the door is opened.
Or…
Beep if the door is open.
Regulate the temperature automatically.
No AI.
I disagree. The one of the few smart thing i don’t want in my house is a smart tv, because it’s really just a subpar computer being build into a TV, and higher spec cost too much. I don’t want to change a TV every 3 to 5 years because the computer part degraded and make using the TV impossible. I can use my PC for that.
A smart TV is better at being a TV than it otherwise would be
I think that depends on what you want from your TV. If you just want it to have a video input to stream stuff from somewhere else, smart TVs are typically worse because they take more time to boot up.
More time to boot up than a fridge which is booted up all the time?
Also, they spy on you, can be bricked by the manufacturer, can therefore be used to extort money from you after buying it (depending on your country’s laws) and lock you into one ecosystem. The profit margin off of that is so high that “smart” TVs are always much cheaper than normal TVs, even with development costs and higher hardware costs. So you are the product.
And if you actually want to stream Netsucks or smth, plugging in your Laptop where you’re already logged in is much more convenient than using a native app on the TV. And ofc you don’t have to use some broken, outdated YouTube unshittifier that Google keeps breaking on there, you can just use piped/invidious in your Laptops/Mini-PCs browser. Also, not having any apps on a fucking TV means not requiring Network access, so no spying, updating etc. anyway.
Your comment represents the disconnect with most consumers and maybe it’s why you can’t see the reason most people don’t fight back against smart tvs.
First, just because a smart TV “can” be bricked by a manufacturer does not mean they all deliberately do so or use that as a means to extort you. If my tv bricked because of an update, and wasn’t remedied for free by the manufacturer, guess which maker I’m not buying from for my next tv? Not to mention the lawsuits.
Next, I’m struggling to figure how connecting a laptop to a tv is more convenient than a built in app. I have done every type of TV setup but no extra devices has always been a lot simpler than more devices.
I completely understand your concerns of privacy and a YouTube app that can’t block ads, but let’s not pretend that it’s all bad news.
It’s bricked as soon as a company is bought up, and the new company has no interest in continuing support or wants customers to buy a new or their product. The lawsuits are non existent, because due to forced arbitration clauses present in almost all contracts today, you cannot sue. The most prominent, recent example being Disney not allowing a customer to sue them for a death in their park, because the dead person has used a free trial of Disney+ and therefore agreed to forced arbitration. Video by Louis Rossmann. (Generally, Louis covers a lot of such cases and maintains a wiki where the cases and companies are collected.) Also, there’s no way to just buy from another manufacturer and be happy, because it’s all of them. And the shareholders, which are the only ones that are relevant for what a company does, do not care if they damage the reputation and run the company into the ground long-term, as long as the numbers went up quickly (from forcing subscriptions, ads and/or tracking onto customers, or discontinuing a product in favor of another one. With a normal TV, you now have an outdated but working product, as neither HDMI, cable TV nor satellite will randomly change or need updates. Something connecting to the internet and requiring permanent security updates for apps and OS does. So either you will suddenly lose most functionality, the manufacturer (or rather, new owner) sees this as a good way to justify just bricking it or the new owners will first implement forced arbitration if not present already (which you have to accept, otherwise you can’t use the product), force said subs/ads/tracking, then rugpull and close the manufacturer. Good luck suing against suing against a company that does not exist anymore, and disallows you to sue.
Paid a few million for a company, got that worth in trained workers, customers to scam and already collected data, and got many more millions from implementing said stuff. Bottomline: “Earned” many, many millions. Bonus: There’s a good chance the consumer buys a new TV from you, because they don’t know who fucked them.All of those things are real cases, more or less common, documented in thousands of videos of Louis.
Most people I’ve met have streaming services set up on their laptop already. From start to finish, plugging in your Laptop and typing soap2day.pe or netflix.com is much easier than connecting to wifi or ethernet, installing the app on the TV, and logging in. Just to disover that streaming service XY is not available on the TV due to an old OS, license issues, compatibility issues (as eg. Netflix has special requirements, such as x86_64 and not ARM and RISCV for >720p and playing in general, iirc). On your laptop (or whatever), everything’s already set up.
That is, if you have a laptop or similar of course.Next, I’m struggling to figure how connecting a laptop to a tv is more convenient than a built in app. I have done every type of TV setup but no extra devices has always been a lot simpler than more devices.
It is infinitely more convenient for me.
Having to navigate through an obtuse UI just to open an app, then search with an on-screen keyboard by moving the cursor with a D-pad on the remote is just awful. Besides, a lot of smart TVs don’t allow you to sideload which forces you into either ads or subscriptions for a lot of things.
I have my desktop sitting next to the TV, already plugged in, so when I want to watch something I just turn the TV on, search for whatever I need on definitely legal website, download it in a definitely legal way, open mpv with subs and start watching.
There’s also a longevity mismatch. The streaming device goes obsolete much faster than the display. At worst, you’ve got a bunch of buttons snd icons for dead services or “your device is no longer supported” tutning your home theatre into a dead mall.
It’s sort of like when they used to make low-end TVs with VCRs and DVD players built in. Nobody was doing that on top of the line sets because you wanted to keep it for 10 years, and the DVD player would give out much sooner.
I think one brand tried to make a modular component to allow for smart upgrades, but without industry standards, it was a predestined dead end. Thry should have just out a slot in the cabinet sized to fit a Roku/Fire stick and let customers swap them every few years.
Smart TV is just a dumb TV with an OS. Just factory reset it, refuse to give it WiFi, and it’ll basically function like a dumb TV. The longer boot time only happens after it loses power, otherwise it’s in a sleep mode.
Nope. A TV’s sole job is to shit photons into my eyes. I have different appliances to tell it which photons those should be.
A true smart fridge would be great.
An actual smart fridge would do things like scan everything you put in it, so you’d know that you had leftover lasagne from 4 days ago that was about to go bad. It would know its full contents, and where they were (like that you had some kimchi on the 4th shelf in the back), and when they were going to expire. And it would do it without you having to change how you used the fridge, like stopping to carefully scan everything you put in or took out. AFAIK some smart fridges do some of that, but not all.
It’s all about marketing. “This smart fridge uses quantum AI technology to do neural scans of the contents of your fridge, allowing it to adjust the temperature and humidity perfectly for your food, making it crisp and moist!”
I mean, smart fridge COULD be scanning its contents and adjusting the cooling intensity based on that. My dumb fridge always freezes vegetables because even when set to lowest setting the cooling is too much.
But corpos would rathed stuff ads everywhere instead of making actually usefull upgrades.
Yes, and use the contents it has scanned to sell to advertisers.
If the lowest setting freezes your food, turn it up.
I mean, smart fridge COULD be scanning its contents and adjusting the cooling intensity based on that.
Looks around at where product design is usually heading
I mean, a smart fridge COULD be scanning it’s contents and adjust the displayed ads and sold data about you based on that.
Lettuce is the only food that can be simultaneously crisp and moist
What about onions?
You keep moist onions in your refrigerator?
That fridge competes with a dumb fridge from a budget brand that costs 200 to 300 bucks. You can even get self-defrosting ones at that price point.
Unlike TVs, which need to display content, fridges can work just fine when they’re just a heat pump, a thermostat, a light bulb, and an insulated box (and optionally also a fan and a heating element). The biggest technical difference between a cheap fridge today and one from the 50s is in materials and using an LED bulb.
They could be in theory. But they are designed to bring a lot of terrible interface choices into the mix, so a basic screen where you just pick the input source and delegate the “smart” parts to something you control can end up being more comfortable.
Nah, fridges are simple enough that I guarantee it’s trivial to rip all the smart bits out and still have a functioning fridge. Or just buy and old one, my grandparents still have their fridge from like 1970s and it still works.
I guarantee it’s trivial to rip all the smart bits out and still have a functioning fridge
Unfortunately, it is not. The “smart bits” are doing the job of a control board in a dumb fridge. If the tablet shits the bed, you won’t get cooling until you factory reset it and get the tablet working again.
I’ve never had a fridge with a control board, it’s usually just a compressor connected via a two-connection control thingy which prevents it from starting too often, and a relay that’s controlled by a thermostat. If they managed to replace that with a control board… Why?
Just about every fridge sold (meant for residential use, in the US) in (at least) the last 10 years has a control board in it. The only exceptions are the really cheap and small top-mount fridges, and even then it is only the ones with physical knobs that might not have a control board. Anything with buttons or a display has a control board. Many appliances with knobs also have control boards (sorry to everyone buying laundry based on “it has knobs, I trust it more”).
As for why - because they can. What are you gonna do, not own a fridge? Keep paying someone to fix an old one (or learn to fix it yourself)? Very few people will do that. Most people will bend over and pay.
Wow, fuck that. Thankfully fixing the electrics of an old fridge is really easy (as there are so few components and they are very simple); and I’ve never had issues with refrigerant leaking.
Sure it works, it also uses more electricity than the rest of the electrical devices in the house combined.
We’ve figured out how to do fridges a long time ago, there’s really not much to it: a well insulated box, radiators inside and outside, a pump, a metering device, and a thermostat. Sure, all components have been optimized a bit, but the power usage only went down by like half in the past 50 years, it’s not as bad as you’re describing.
About 3,5 times more energy used in 1972 than 2002. That’s quite a bit in my opinion.
Hm, that’s indeed more than I was expecting.
Do you really want a row of your food disappeared when you arrange it neatly?
It depends on how long the food had been in the fridge…
Don’t you do that every time you fill it?
I can play Tetris with food inside of me.
Why the heck are people buying these things in the first place?
Ape brain go “ooh new thing better than old thing!”
“I have money, please give me your most expensive/ best fridge” but in some cases the most expensive is not the best.
These are nowhere near the most expensive fridges. They are on the higher side of the average range.
In my experience, the people buying these fridges are low income, low tech knowledge people that got approved for (likely too much) credit.
If you’re wealthy enough to waste a lot of money on a fridge you aren’t buying one of these abominations. Its going to be a built in like sub-zero.
I honestly believe these fridges are not being bought in large quantities and are part of the tech bubble.
Family calendar, watch shit while cooking, read recipes.
I don’t even like exterior water or ice dispensers.
Cool story.
My phone had all of that, and I can place it in a convenient location to watch while I cook. My fridge is beside or behind me as I cook.
I don’t give two fucks about your preferred form factor. I answered a question on why people like them. Go screech elsewhere that your preferred solution is different.
You need to touch some grass buddy. Stop watching shit on your fridge and go outside.
Company pays a kickback to condo building
Condo building puts one of these in every unit
Your lease is nullified if you interfere with the ad loadsBlack electricians tape. Lots of it.
Mine has no ads, no sub. 🤷♂️
I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t let you get bread and butter. You and Frank planning to update your pi-hole.
Angle grinder goes brrr
They already have the key functions of their smart fridges tied to the tablet shoved in the door. I’ve seen multiple instances of Samsung Family Hub fridges stop cooling and the fix was a factory reset of the tablet as it was unresponsive. Absolutely fucking deplorable imo. But also means if you make an “aggressive alteration”, the fridge probably gets bricked and you are left with an expensive and smelly cabinet.
2050?? Lmao. More like 2026…
I was in my local Lowes hardware and one of the Samsung fridges on display kept actively trying to connect to my Samsung phone. I must have gotten 5 or 6 notifications from the fridge letting me know I could connect.
