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> never had a problem with a refrigerator These turn of phrases make me wonder what we are really expecting from software. I can’t imagine you never slapped t

by hrktb 6y ago

> never had a problem with a refrigerator These turn of phrases make me wonder what we are really expecting from software. I can’t imagine you never slapped the door of your fridge and it didn’t properly close. You gave it a nudge when you realized it, and it was fine, but it must have happened. And your whole food supply would be rotten if you didn’t notice in time. Or do we monitor energy consumption close enough to realize it’s eating much more than what should be expected, the same way people complain about chrome eating too much memory ? It can also get pretty noisy but I’d assume most people just think it’s normal. And we put the blame on ourselves for a lot of issues (didn’t put the bottle at the right place, didn’t put the right amount of force to close, didn’t set the right temperature, forget to leave space around the fridge for ventilation etc.). But few users blame themselves for not having understood the software and worked around its weakness, we just call it broken. That benavior is normal, but I’d take a lot of “my applicances just work” with a grain of salt.

ballenf 6y ago
> I can’t imagine you never slapped the door of your fridge and it didn’t properly close. You gave it a nudge when you realized it, and it was fine, but it must have happened. And your whole food supply would be rotten if you didn’t notice in time. But if the fridge was software it would randomly turn off and ruin all your food. The light would sometimes stay on, except when you open the door. It would require you to decline an update before you could get the milk out for breakfast. During an update the fridge and freezer components would switch places and then give tips about efficient ways you could manually move everything. If you bought a new fridge, part of it would locked shut until you paid more money, but the one in the store was already unlocked. And god forbid you lose your 2FA device used to setup the fridge -- it will destroy everything inside (including irreplaceable heirloom tomatoes) upon reset. It will then update to a subscription model where custom temperature settings will require a monthly fee or you'll be limited in the number of items you can store in the fridge or number of times you can open the door per day.
- thewebcount 6y ago
  We saw a failure case like this with a microwave in the workplace kitchen. It somehow got into a mode where it only turned on when the door opened. Needless to say we threw it out shortly after that was discovered. We didn't bother debugging it, but my guess is it was a hardware problem because the interlock should have obviously made it work the opposite of how it was and you'd hope that a software glitch couldn't get it into a mode like that!
  - tomc1985 6y ago
    Oh crap. That could blind a person. I thought microwaves had to have a hardware interlock for that reason
    - dublin 6y ago
      Since this is critical health and safety stuff that can lead to serious injury, everyone I've ever seen uses hardware interlocks - generally, the door-closed switch is in series with the microwave power supply, so it's impossible for it to make microwaves with the door open. Only an idiot would put a safety interlock under software control, when a simple switch will do.
- hrktb 6y ago
  A lot of these look like pricing and marketing issues to me. Fridges have been with us long enough in a ‘pay everything upfront’ setting that we‘d battle to the bitter end if we had to do micro-payments or aggressive planned obsolescence. To your point, I lived in long stay apartments where you put coins to have the fridge and air conditioning work because they didn’t bother having pay as you leave metered use. That’s super rare (I hope ? I’d expect the same in some predatory situations towards low income people), but it’s to say that alternative exists. Otherwise fridges randomly turning off is just a matter of time and/or build quality. Sooner or later it happens (or it stops turning on, which is arguably better, but you wouldn’t say it’s great)

by hrktb 6y ago

ballenf 6y ago

> I can’t imagine you never slapped the door of your fridge and it didn’t properly close. You gave it a nudge when you realized it, and it was fine, but it must have happened. And your whole food supply would be rotten if you didn’t notice in time. But if the fridge was software it would randomly turn off and ruin all your food. The light would sometimes stay on, except when you open the door. It would require you to decline an update before you could get the milk out for breakfast. During an update the fridge and freezer components would switch places and then give tips about efficient ways you could manually move everything. If you bought a new fridge, part of it would locked shut until you paid more money, but the one in the store was already unlocked. And god forbid you lose your 2FA device used to setup the fridge -- it will destroy everything inside (including irreplaceable heirloom tomatoes) upon reset. It will then update to a subscription model where custom temperature settings will require a monthly fee or you'll be limited in the number of items you can store in the fridge or number of times you can open the door per day.

thewebcount 6y ago
We saw a failure case like this with a microwave in the workplace kitchen. It somehow got into a mode where it only turned on when the door opened. Needless to say we threw it out shortly after that was discovered. We didn't bother debugging it, but my guess is it was a hardware problem because the interlock should have obviously made it work the opposite of how it was and you'd hope that a software glitch couldn't get it into a mode like that!
- tomc1985 6y ago
  Oh crap. That could blind a person. I thought microwaves had to have a hardware interlock for that reason
  - dublin 6y ago
    Since this is critical health and safety stuff that can lead to serious injury, everyone I've ever seen uses hardware interlocks - generally, the door-closed switch is in series with the microwave power supply, so it's impossible for it to make microwaves with the door open. Only an idiot would put a safety interlock under software control, when a simple switch will do.
hrktb 6y ago
A lot of these look like pricing and marketing issues to me. Fridges have been with us long enough in a ‘pay everything upfront’ setting that we‘d battle to the bitter end if we had to do micro-payments or aggressive planned obsolescence. To your point, I lived in long stay apartments where you put coins to have the fridge and air conditioning work because they didn’t bother having pay as you leave metered use. That’s super rare (I hope ? I’d expect the same in some predatory situations towards low income people), but it’s to say that alternative exists. Otherwise fridges randomly turning off is just a matter of time and/or build quality. Sooner or later it happens (or it stops turning on, which is arguably better, but you wouldn’t say it’s great)