Shopping for fridge with sister in law.

"Yeah that one is nice but it doesn't have an app"

"Why do you need an app for your fridge"

"I don't know, but this other fridge has an app, so I think if it doesn't have an app it's not that good"

"But it's very energy-efficient, silent and spacious. The one with the app is the same size, has a worse energy rating, is noisier and is more expensive as well"

"Yeah I know but if there's no extra features that's kind of boring"

"You are everything that's wrong with modern consumers"

Also, the only thing the app does:

* Show temperature of fridge/freezer (but not adjust it for some reason)

* Show contents of fridge, from a list you completely have to curate and maintain yourself —so it's on par with a basic Note/ToDo app and in no way related to the fridge.

That's perfectly valid. That's why I've stopped using toilet paper - I can't find TP that has an app. And as everyone knows, if it doesn't have an app - it's no good!

Thank god it's not your wife

I have 2 main problems with this "smart" device nonsense.

Firstly we're going to have major security holes everywhere as soon as MyCoolFridgeCo. stop producing security updates, and suddenly the fridge is an unsecured backdoor right into your network for years to come.

Secondly we're going to have *way* more perfectly good fridges going to landfill when the crappy electronics for the app in them break way before the actual fridge does. Talk about an environmental disaster right when we should be doing the opposite.

I prefer to choose my own refrigerator. What the generation before me will choose is up to him.

@hardCoding

My wife was there and asked (trolled) the (confused) store clerk whether there were any fridges with an i2c bus she could solder her new rpi zero-w to.

Since she learned how to solder, our house is covered in raspberry sauce.

Which is almost as useless as a proprietary app, but at least it's educational.

@hardCoding

Her most successful project: Our central heating system has a well documented bus, so she made a web panel for the heat pump & water boiler. Which is actually kind of useful.

Her least successful project: A raspberry & motor which fell on my head when I opened the bedroom curtains. Unless the project was to set a trap to hurt me.

Oy. All my appliances are 25+ years old, I don't want to think about the wiz-bang nonsense I'm going to deal with when my fridge/stove/water header/etc goes out.

I love tech, but I want my stove as dumb as possible.

@bittersweet if you turn the temperature below zero, does the app freeze?

@bittersweet aww cherish that. It would be so cool if my wife was as excited about tech as I was.

You just don't get it, everything needs an app. How else are they gonna profile my shopping and eating behaviours. Smh boomer

My main issue - after maintenance / security / environment / ... - with apps in fridges is...

The waste of natural resources.

Adding an monitor / chips / etc. for stuff that will probably never be of serious interest and that will just end being wasted and ending as (most likely) unrecyclable waste.

The major problem I have with the whole "let's make everything smart" movement is the gigantic waste of resources of solving something that doesn't have to be solved.

Compare the electrical components, necessary materials, app development resources verses a simple magnet and a chalk board. Or recycled paper.

We're literally inventing and flooding the market with unnecessary shit while on the other hand being completely pissed about the environmental issues and their consequences.

This is how dumb humanity is.

@Awlex

I wouldn't mind smarter appliances if it was standards-based, fully optional, open and well documented.

And actually contributed something useful, beyond just a gimmick, of course.

Sadly, in the world of home automation — those products are rare, don't appeal to people like my sister in law, and tend to have a Gentoo-Linux-like UX.

But I like the ZigBee protocol for example, it's pretty neat and vendor-independent. I've integrated it into various places in my home:

Controlling lights based on time and my location, controlling ventilation ducts, turning an array of displays on when I enter a room, making sure rainwater collection & irrigation stays balanced, switching floor heating, and buffering hot water when there's a solar panel excess.

@iSwimInTheC

Careful what you wish for. She learned Python, and all she talks about is how Python is better than all other languages.

Like, I miss my alarm at 7AM because my phone has crashed, and when I grumpily wake up complaining at 9AM she mutters "that's what you get with a Java based phone. If they used Python..."

It makes zero sense... and I think she's only doing it to troll me, because I've been bothering her with nerd talk about programming languages for years.

Now I can rant it like that: "iOt"

@bittersweet no, you misunderstand what the app really does.

what the app really does is sells the fridge

@Midnight-shcode

And collect email addresses, to sell other products in the future.

@AlmondSauce also the "iot" devices are usually filled with security issues

Good idea for unnecessary invention , I will start developing apps for flushing toilet from the app. ( Instead of manually)

@johnmelodyme I mean .. thats actually not a bad idea if you got one of those toilets where you might need to flush in between to not clog them and if you're the kind of person to spend their time on the toilet with you phone (I never quite understood that) and if this app can be called conviniently.

@bittersweet shes in the larval phase of becoming jigsaw.

Shes harmless now, but one day you'll wake up to her face on an old school television while cuffed to a radiator in a bathroom.

"Do you want to play a game?"

But at least the tool she leaves you to dismember yourself in order to escape, will have a web interface built with a raspberry.

If they went that one step further with an embedded barcode scanner or camera with food recognition so you could update the list as you put things in or run out etc, then mayyybeee I’d consider it. It would never be connected to my internet though… so many IOT security issues.

As much as I love tech, In certain context give me old school analogue shit

@badcopnodonuts

Yeah the issue with "internet of things" is that it should be "interoperable LAN of things".

But there's more money to be made in SaaS subscriptions & datamining, so of course vendors want you to use their proprietary cloud service & app.

@AlmondSauce not to mention hooking up sensors in every electronic device in the house up to the internet is a privacy nightmare

She is.

@patdaniel A) They are the same generation, they are siblings. B) This is not a matter of taste or generational gap, it's a matter of idiocy. (Excuse me, OP.)

In most appliances for me the lack of smart shit is a feature not an issue

@IntrusionCM well said 👍