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Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

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Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#61

Post by KozmoNau7 »

mamon wrote: post #51
imgabe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is control of your daily activities transferred away by a smart kettle? Is it not going to boil the water when I want to boil the water? If it doesn't, I'll throw it away and get a regular kettle. That's pretty much the only daily activity my kettle is involved in and no amount of Internet connection is going to remove my control of it.

But what if smart kettles would became so popular that regular kettles would not be produced anymore? How would you replace it then? Or, more importantly: how about "smart" lightbulbs, door locks, refridgerators? Those are much harder to replace.

How would they? What value does being "smart" add to a kettle or fridge?

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#62

Post by dvtv75 »

imgabe wrote: post #45
jstanley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A "smart", unnecessarily Internet-connected kettle or lightbulb or juicer isn't going to usher the second coming of fascism to the Western world. Each individual one isn't, but in aggregate they start transferring more and more control over your daily activities to faceless corporations thousands of miles away. That is dystopian.

In what way is control of your daily activities transferred away by a smart kettle? Is it not going to boil the water when I want to boil the water? If it doesn't, I'll throw it away and get a regular kettle. That's pretty much the only daily activity my kettle is involved in and no amount of Internet connection is going to remove my control of it.

To me, it's not really the control of activities that will be transferred away, it's the information that people can glean from (for example) the usage logs which can be used to build a significant profile about your movements.

For example, the kettle boiled this amount of water this many times a day. The kettle isn't boiled between 6am and 6pm so we can deduce that nobody is home during those hours, but the autoboil function initiates at 5.30am on weekdays so we know the owner gets up early. On some Fridays it's later, so they either work more hours or they're off socializing. The quantities boiled suggest that only one person is drinking a hot drink most days. More water is boiled on Saturday mornings, suggesting that someone else spends the night on Friday. External access from the smartphone app comes from $provider but two different phones, suggesting that the drinker has access to two phones.

Now add in a name, phone number, and credit card usage data obtained from a third party, and suddenly you have something that someone will want. If it proves valuable enough, other manufacturers make a similar product, and suddenly a "dumb" kettle becomes much harder to get.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#63

Post by dvtv75 »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #61
mamon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if smart kettles would became so popular that regular kettles would not be produced anymore? How would you replace it then? Or, more importantly: how about "smart" lightbulbs, door locks, refridgerators? Those are much harder to replace.

How would they? What value does being "smart" add to a kettle or fridge?

Imagine this: you're on your way home, it's a cold and wet winter night, you're dashing from the bus stop to your home and you want a hot cup when you get home. Just trigger the kettle to fill and boil enough for you with the app on your phone, and you'll be warm that much faster when you get in the door.

Maybe there's an autocoffee model, which makes your coffee to your preferences, and you get it to pre-boil while you're heading for home. Using the GPS on your phone with your average walking speed, it calculates when you'll be home so your coffee (or tea or hot chocolate) are just cooling to the perfect temperature when you walk in the door.

You may think it won't happen, but how many would use an autokettle? I wouldn't, as I don't often drink hot drinks, but my mother might because she won't have to hobble around. A blind person might, too, for a similar reason. People who prefer consistent drinks would - I have one particular friend who hates Starbucks but drinks there anyway, because it's always exactly the same.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#64

Post by romwell »

TheRealEdAbbey wrote: post #33
toss1 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yup, I just want a thermostat that I can remotely access -directly- and not through someone else's server. Just keep track of my IP addr myself, and yes if the ISP swaps it out for another I'll have to update it when I get there again... blah, blah, blah, yes' it'd be fine with me. Yet I cannot fine one. Every single 'smart' thermostat has some corporate service I have to negotiate through for access, and of course i…

The problem is there isn't really much of a market for something like that. Sure, you can have detailed documentation on such a product that explains how it's functioning, why it might drop out when your ip changes, etc., but who is going to understand that? People like you and me, yes, but we're a pretty small market. In order for there to be a reasonable audience for a product, you have to target the least knowledg…

If what you said were true, there'd be no routers which claimed to support DD-WRT out of the box as a marketing point.

The market for people who want to control their thermostat directly is exactly the same. And the best part? The manufacturer can support that AND have their 3rd-party cloud shebang going on, these are not mutually exclusive.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#65

Post by KozmoNau7 »

dvtv75 wrote: post #63
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they? What value does being "smart" add to a kettle or fridge?

Imagine this: you're on your way home, it's a cold and wet winter night, you're dashing from the bus stop to your home and you want a hot cup when you get home. Just trigger the kettle to fill and boil enough for you with the app on your phone, and you'll be warm that much faster when you get in the door. Maybe there's an autocoffee model, which makes your coffee to your preferences, and you get it to pre-boil while…

It's a neat idea, but these things need to be secure and most of all reliable and dependable, before any of that happens.

Which means a very very long timeframe.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#66

Post by lfxyz »

rout39574 wrote: post #52
imgabe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is control of your daily activities transferred away by a smart kettle? Is it not going to boil the water when I want to boil the water? If it doesn't, I'll throw it away and get a regular kettle. That's pretty much the only daily activity my kettle is involved in and no amount of Internet connection is going to remove my control of it.

Consider that many appliances might be equipped with such data feeds. Consider that it might be time consuming or impossible to find a device without them. If your kettle is deemed an interesting part of the national power infrastructure, it might even become legally mandated. I've read stories that suggest the UK power authorities watch carefully when... Dancing with the stars? finishes, because 15 seconds later, 20…

>I've read stories that suggest the UK power authorities watch carefully when... Dancing with the stars? finishes, because 15 seconds later, 20% of the nation puts the kettle on.

The classic example is Eastenders (a soap set in London where everyone is miserable) and was more recently an issue with the Great British Bake Off, but the effect has apparently declined in recent years due to BBC iPlayer/catchup services/Netflix. [0]

[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/03/no-more-electrici...

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#67

Post by scalaris373 »

WalterBright wrote: post #49
dhimes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you just turn the damn thing up when you get home?

I agree. It takes about 10 min to warm up the house, no problem. Remote access is so I can turn it down remotely because I forgot to when I left :-)

That depends on the kind of heating you have on the house. Air vent heating takes 10 minutes. Radiators take some 40 minutes. Underfloor heating takes about 90 minutes.

Remote control does make sense for some, not all cases.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#68

Post by scalaris373 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32
jstanley wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relatively easy to build one yourself. I did it, it works great. I used 2 ESP8266's - one in the temperature sensing and control box in my office, and one controlling a relay inside the boiler. When it's too hot the relay is opened to switch the boiler off, when it's too cold the relay is closed to switch the boiler on.

The question is, do you trust your own handiwork to the extent you're not worried it'll malfunction and burn your house down, or freeze your pipes during winter? Personally, I'm reluctant to have electronics I built myself connected to mains and running unsupervised for longer periods of time.

That's a very interesting point, I built my own system, but I don't trust my own handiwork enough, so I went the middle route: I got a Siemens RDF302 thermostat (which is a dumb thermostat with a Modbus RTU interface for remote control) and then I use a raspberry pi to change the setpoint temperature according to a remote signal or schedule. The actual decision to turn on/off the boiler however, is still left to a "real" thermostat made by a professional company, and a malfunction of the automated system is likely to result in a failure to change the setpoint, not in infinite heating.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#69

Post by bewo001 »

dvtv75 wrote: post #62
imgabe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is control of your daily activities transferred away by a smart kettle? Is it not going to boil the water when I want to boil the water? If it doesn't, I'll throw it away and get a regular kettle. That's pretty much the only daily activity my kettle is involved in and no amount of Internet connection is going to remove my control of it.

To me, it's not really the control of activities that will be transferred away, it's the information that people can glean from (for example) the usage logs which can be used to build a significant profile about your movements. For example, the kettle boiled this amount of water this many times a day. The kettle isn't boiled between 6am and 6pm so we can deduce that nobody is home during those hours, but the autoboil…

Boiling regularly on weekday mornings and late on weekends? Likely someone with regular employment and able to pay bills. Boiling times consistent with working shifts? Hm, likely working class.. Boiling times irregular and most of the time late in the morning? Looks unemployed, don't sell anything on credit..

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#70

Post by imgabe »

mamon wrote: post #51
imgabe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is control of your daily activities transferred away by a smart kettle? Is it not going to boil the water when I want to boil the water? If it doesn't, I'll throw it away and get a regular kettle. That's pretty much the only daily activity my kettle is involved in and no amount of Internet connection is going to remove my control of it.

But what if smart kettles would became so popular that regular kettles would not be produced anymore? How would you replace it then? Or, more importantly: how about "smart" lightbulbs, door locks, refridgerators? Those are much harder to replace.

Thrift stores. A metal pot. A tin can. Literally any heat-conducting container placed on a stove can be a kettle. This is a technology that likely predates the written word. I don't see it going away anytime soon. We have never needed the Internet to boil water. That isn't going to change.
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