Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Goodbye non-KISS appliances

willbush.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 499 posts

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#181

Post by arter4 »

q1w2 wrote: post #174
arter4 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but how often do you experience power outages or other things that lead to weird temperature changes? I think in the last 15 years it only happened to me once. And how often does a fridge door open on its own? Most people don't need other people (or things) to remind them that they should tie their shoes before getting out. If you don't need that, I assume you know you should close the fridge door.

> how often does a fridge door open on its own? No, it's for when the kids leave the door open or just don't close it properly - which is VERY frequent. The door alarm goes off once per week here, at least.

Yeah but kids can do all kinds of stuff. If your kids start drawing on the wall, do you have an alarm for that? Or for when they break a glass?

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#182

Post by mewpmewp2 »

arter4 wrote: post #168
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be at work, and store is on the way to work. Also what you described is quite many steps, and the images have to be taken at certain angles to capture everything. It would be directly connected to GPT and you can either use it as mobile app or with other devices or fridge itself directly. So for example you are at work, about to leave home, store is on the way and then you ask this question from the app. Frid…

So you're saying a fridge takes a photo (of itself, essentially... a selfie?), forwards it with certain prompts to a GPT and then gives you the response. But as I said earlier I might not like certain foods, or I may actively avoid certain foods for medical or religious reasons. Now, if this was an explicit user-GPT interaction, you could prompt the GPT with "hey, I'm Muslim, what can I cook with this stuff?" or "hey…

In fridge it takes images from different angles, and different floors to make sure it is possible to identify all the items that exist in that fridge.

If you don't like certain foods, you can just customise the prompt that fridge sends to OpenAI. You can customise it through a web app or mobile app.

> you would have to tell your fridge you're Jew or Muslim or lactose intolerant or diabetic. Don't you see an issue with this?

What's the problem with storing your food preferences somewhere? People use dieting apps all the time on mobile.

> You cannot avoid this 100% unless you go to extreme lengths, but if you can avoid sending data to one more company, why not?

You are already sending your data in thousands of different ways and exposing yourself at any moment. I'm not saying you should do more of it, but food preferences seems like a very minor drop in the bucket of all that you are already exposing.

Most people store their images in a cloud, which already indicate amazing amount about them. Just using a smartphone is 1000x worse than having food preferences stored somewhere.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#183

Post by torginus »

computator wrote: post #33

> the combustion engine and hybrid cars are surprisingly reliable The OP brings up an interesting contradiction: appliances have become less reliable but cars have become more reliable. Cars have become worse in some of the same areas as appliances, like the use of touch screens instead of physical controls, but cars have nevertheless become more mechanically reliable. What would explain this opposite trend?

Cars haven't become more reliable, that's for certain - if you are European, you've encountered your fair set of travesties. Manufacturers, in the pursuit of stringent Euro emission standards, nonsensical regulations, more horsepower, and reduced material and manufacturing costs have put out such a set of scrap-worthy engines. They typically have low displacement, few cylinders, small turbos, exhaust recirculation.

Ford's EcoBoost and Peugeot's Puretech engines come to mind in particular, with the latter being so bad, that they tend to fail well before 100k km, and there's an active investigation going on about it by European Commission.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#184

Post by mewpmewp2 »

rglullis wrote: post #167
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course, but for example you already have your phone, laptops and computers with many things built in them. If you are ok with those, then it should be possible to build those smart devices with similar security and potential for attack.

> If you are ok with those I'm not. My phone, laptop and computers all run software that I get to install down to the OS (Linux, /e/OS), and I would never install something like the ChatGPT app on my phone. > it should be possible to build those smart devices with similar security It should be possible, but they are not. Don't forget: the "S" in IoT stands for "Security". In any case, this is not even what I am talki…

> by the way, my home is full of microphones and video cameras which are always on and used to power my digital assistant

Everyone are already walking around with smart phones that are perfectly able to do all of that.

> I'm not. My phone, laptop and computers all run software that I get to install down to the OS (Linux, /e/OS), and I would never install something like the ChatGPT app on my phone.

Fine if you do that.

> What I am talking about is the "attack" being done by corporations into your house. It pains me to hear that people are willing to give so much of their privacy in the name of "convenience" and don't even show any slight concern over the thought of having so much data going to Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and (now) OpenAI.

I personally am not concerned about this, although I understand how people can be. I don't want to go my whole life avoiding things, concerned about what is being done with my data, and then I die. I have long dated option calls really out of money in all those companies (except OpenAI of course), in case one of them gets a massive data advantage and happens to discover singularity from this, so I would benefit from it anyway. Before that happens, they just use it to optimise ads for you, and I prefer optimised ads over random ads. Otherwise I'll do my best to block them, but if they get through, I prefer something I might actually be interested in and that might help me.

I prefer to see inventions and technology. At certain point humans will be outlived by technology anyway, and that's bound to happen. New inventions and tech are what is exciting and why I like living, seeing those things coming together.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#185

Post by PeterisP »

leoedin wrote: post #138
goriloser wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if EU fridges are smaller because people buy food more frequently, but in smaller quantities. Because the grocery shops are closer.

Does food in the US not go off? The limiting factor for me isn't the size of my fridge, but the fact that after a week all my vegetables are looking sad and my milk's starting to smell. I probably wish my fridge was bigger a handful of days a year - and that's because I'm having a party and need to squeeze in more wine and beer. Quite a lot of my fridge is taken up with random jars that I'll probably never eat. A big…

Having lived on both sides of the pond, you'd tend to buy different kinds of products, in USA the grocery variety pushes you towards less fresh/spoiling products and more towards various processed products which will up a fridge for weeks.

And also actually food in US does somehow seem to last for longer, as probably the manufacturers anticipate this need and optimize for that (as there's no free lunch, likely at the expense of other factors); I'd never ever buy a half-gallon of milk in a single container in EU because it would start to go bad by the time I get to the end of it, but in USA that was fine.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#187

Post by darreninthenet »

eichin wrote: post #136
darreninthenet wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're home or not upstairs asleep I guess it's sufficient

It's a lot more common that you didn't close it properly Just Now (and haven't gotten very far, and are maybe still in earshot) then the door spontaneously opening, especially with the slight negative pressure and magnetic gaskets. (of course, where they're really useful is as office fridges, when the perpetrator wanders off oblivious but someone else gets driven mad by the just-barely-audible-beeping and hunts it do…

Yes? But that still isn't a case for saying avoid it... I didn't say it was earth shattering life changing feature... if it has it, it's "handy". Not something that would make me buy it but useful if it does.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#188

Post by mewpmewp2 »

arter4 wrote: post #165
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course, but for example you already have your phone, laptops and computers with many things built in them. If you are ok with those, then it should be possible to build those smart devices with similar security and potential for attack.

Yes but while you can install Linux on your own, or even build your own computer if you're interested, you don't get to build a fridge or its operating system, and you most likely don't even have a valid way to see how it's configured (you may be able to hack it somehow, but it would probably void any warranty). So... do you upgrade your fridge OS? Maybe, maybe not. What happens if you do and an upgrade fails? does i…

> Yes but while you can install Linux on your own, or even build your own computer if you're interested, you don't get to build a fridge or its operating system, and you most likely don't even have a valid way to see how it's configured (you may be able to hack it somehow, but it would probably void any warranty).

You could install open sourced things to that fridge. E.g. the fridge could either come with sensors immediately available or just have convenient mounts to place your own cameras.

Maybe the fridge could have a simple linux box, raspberry PI or whatever set up. There could be a market where you can flexibly pick how immediately available solution you want or if you want to put in everything yourself and control, depending on how concerned you are about privacy and how technical you are.

If you want to have full control, you can just do that.

> do you upgrade your fridge OS? Maybe, maybe not. What happens if you do and an upgrade fails?

Most smart home devices in my experience update through a mobile app connected to your WiFi.

> What happens if you do and an upgrade fails

Fridge itself would still work, just the picture taking and ai guidance wouldn't.

> How does it even authenticate to whatever remote server they have? If it uses tokens or client certificates, what happens when they expire?

Through mobile app can update, reset everything.

> And I don't want to have nightmares about my fridge certificate expiration or not being able to turn your light on because my fiber connection went down.

These basic things like light and other base features you make sure can work even if smart software fails.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#189

Post by darreninthenet »

coldtea wrote: post #173
darreninthenet wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really have no idea how to reply to this without sounding like an ass so apologies in advance. Well yeah duh if the door was shut properly every time fridges wouldn't need door or temperature alarms at all (most have an audible one already). But it's called an alarm for a reason, sometimes shit goes wrong and it's handy to know before all the food has been at room temperature all day. We had a freezer door pop open…

I too really have no idea how to reply to this without sounding like an ass so apologies in advance. Well, our parents, and for the younger, our grandparents too, and us, have managed to do fine for like 60+ years of using fridges without an fridge door alarm. Fun fact: for an alarm for when you are away for days, and you want to know if the fridge power went off and back on in between, you can freeze a jar of water…

They did fine for many years without mobile phones, cars, aircraft and computers... your point is irrelevant. It's just a handy extra to have I really don't see why people find my phone pinging me if the door is left open so offensive :-D

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#190

Post by sys_64738 »

Widgets like fridges need to be minimalist as the manufacturers are all incompetent. Less tech means less things to break. No French doors and no ice makers. Always problems right there. The only thing you guarantee with a fridge is more hassle as the complexity of its design increases. These things are NOT built for reliability but are designed as the original subscription model: regular repairs.
Post reply on HN