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I really question more the risk reward trade off of these devices. What is having an internet connected coffee maker buying me? Is the minutes save per month wo

I really question more the risk reward trade off of these devices. What is having an internet connected coffee maker buying me? Is the minutes save per month worth the security risk it’s exposing me? This coupled with the knowledge these are mostly discount devices made with the least amount of on going support intended, you pretty much know you’re setup for a disaster. Additionally, I was finding most of these devices were actually increasing the time it took to do something rather than enabling some impossible interaction. I’m short on IoT except for industrial usage, where you are displacing an inspector or a manual data collection. That said those spaces are just as bad as the home devices.

29083011397778 6y ago
> I really question more the risk reward trade off of these devices. What is having an internet connected coffee maker buying me? Presumably they're similar to smart TVs: some consumers may want them, but nearly all OEMs would rather sell a smart one than a dumb one
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Gresham's Law arrives in the kitchen?
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  Smart TVs are different - people want netflix/hulu/disney+ built into their TV a long with a bunch of other interfaces to play video with their remote. TV for lots of non tech savy people comes over the internet now. A lot of powered appliances either heat something up or spin a fan or pump. They don't need information from the internet and any slight advantage is outweighed by their complexity and cost. I think you are right that manufacturers want to break free from being commodities. I think it is only a matter of time before people realize that they aren't gaining anything from complicating things that used to be simple.
  - GordonS 6y ago
    The value from smart TVs is very clear, even if the privacy concerns are only clear to a few. But a coffee machine, toaster or whatever... just... why?! Even as a life-long techie, and putting aside privacy concerns, there isn't a single compelling reason to want my coffee machine to be connected to the Internet, or even my local network.
  - clairity 6y ago
    while you make some other good points, between > "Smart TVs are different..." and > " think it is only a matter of time before people realize that they aren't gaining anything from complicating things that used to be simple." you're making the same mistake of overgeneralizing, assuming that every (other) smart appliance can't have usefulness outside of its core, dumb functionality, based on one example of that being true. hopefully we can agree that some smartened appliances benefit the consumer, though not all (as in the case of a coffee maker), even if manufacturers are incentivized to break out of the commodity box by smartifying all the things, consequences and functionality be damned.
    - CyberDildonics 6y ago
      > assuming that every (other) smart appliance can't have usefulness outside of its core, dumb functionality, I'm not assuming that at all and it has nothing to do with smart TVs. Smart TVs are a place where having a computer inside is something people want. I'm saying other appliances are different, not because there can't be a benefit, but because the benefits are much smaller and complexity to usefulness ratio is much smaller. Also operating most appliances remotely or with a more elaborate interface doesn't give much benefit. Thermostats might be somewhere in the middle since there is a lot of room for improvement, not just in setting up a schedule or setting them remotely, but in the information they give back to you (how many btus are you leaking out of your house over time, etc.)
diogenescynic 6y ago
If you are actually into coffee, you likely would not buy these devices. I consider them a novelty, but there are plenty of consumers who will end up with them as gifts. You can make way better coffee much cheaper or just buy a Moccamaster and be done with it forever. If you're into espresso, that's an entirely different rabbit hole (and much more expensive).
- codegladiator 6y ago
  > end up with them as gifts. So much potential to become a real trojan
gameshot911 6y ago
>Is the minutes save per month worth the security risk it’s exposing me? Yes. The reality is they while this is a cool experimental hack, no one in reality is going to bother hacking other people's coffee makers.
- eugeniub 6y ago
  I promise you some bored teenager will do just that.
  - appleiigs 6y ago
    Thats where i’d start to learn hacking. Wifi, webcams and coffeepots are the gateway drug to more hardcore hacking
- mcguire 6y ago
  Or (with enough market penetration) to mine cryptocurrency. Or as an element of a DDoS attack. Or a ransomware attack.
- IncRnd 6y ago
  Ransomware: https://blog.avast.com/avast-hacked-a-smart-coffee-maker https://blog.avast.com/avast-hacked-a-smart-coffee-maker A Ransomware-bridge between networks: https://www.hackread.com/how-a-coffee-machine-infected-factory-computers-with-ransomware/ https://www.hackread.com/how-a-coffee-machine-infected-facto...
liability 6y ago
I don't think these devices save time at all. In the time it takes me to navigate the through the touch-screen UIs of these fancy toys I can microwave a cup of instant coffee and start drinking it before the fancy machine starts brewing anything. The results are indistinguishable.
- markrages 6y ago
  You can't distinguish between freshly-brewed coffee and microwaved instant coffee?
  - liability 6y ago
    Nope. Nor can I tell the difference in a blind taste test between white and red wine. Probably most wine snobs can't either, and probably most coffee snobs couldn't really tell the difference in a blind test.
    - mcguire 6y ago
      Not really a snob either way, but I'll take that bet for coffee. Probably for wine, too.
    - DonaldFisk 6y ago
      You're referring to the Brochet experiment? That wasn't a blind test: the white wine was dyed red with a flavourless dye, so there was an element of deception involved.
      - liability 6y ago
        I did with my family using blindfolds and we all failed. Either seems to demonstrate that perception of wine has a strong visual component.
        FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
        You can't tell the difference between a chardonnay and a burgundy?
kempbellt 6y ago
> What is having an internet connected coffee maker buying me? One "cool" point with your friends. "Check this out dudes! Alexa! Brew coffee" And when Alexa responds with, "Please add water", you lose two cool points and end up in a deficit. If you need to remote start your coffee pot, you need to get your life a little more together. If you need remote notifications that coffee is done, the same applies. It's not hard to plan around "Coffee takes about 15 minutes to brew, so I start it before I hop in the shower".
- markrages 6y ago
  RFC 2324
  - kempbellt 6y ago
    I forgot about this. Thanks for the reminder, and the laugh.
    - mcguire 6y ago
      In some environments (specifically, an academic department I used to know), knowing whether the coffeemaker was brewing, ready, or empty would be important, with potentially career damaging consequences.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    RFC 2324 - Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0) https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324
  - grishka 6y ago
    Too bad none of those IoT coffee makers implement this.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'd really appreciate if my electric kettle could send me a notification when it's done, because waiting for it to boil is three to five minutes I could be spending e.g. listening to the music with my headphones on. Same applies to other household appliances: the dishwasher, the oven, the washing machine. All I want is to have a set of icons in my computer's tray that change color when a given device is done. This would let me stop scheduling life around the machines, or having to keep the doors to the home office open and headphones off to hear the various beeps. Instead, I could set them to do the work, and go back to doing my stuff fully focused. In a sane world where tech companies practice anything resembling solid engineering, this would not require the devices to have an Internet connection. Working over LAN with standardized (and already existing) protocols is all that's required. In this world, I don't have any of the conveniences described above, because I'm not crazy or gullible enough to buy an IoT appliance.
tetha 6y ago
> Is the minutes save per month worth the security risk it’s exposing me? Agree with that. Especially if a hard problem stumps me, it's very refreshing to actually focus on making coffee for a few minutes. It clears the head to so something simple and different for a few minutes.
- citizenkeen 6y ago
  I'm still gobsmacked I can make coffee the night before and set a timer on my machine to make it in the morning. That's future magic. The rest of the day, I want that routine. It's an excuse to go downstairs and play with my kid for five minutes.
  - FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
    You should know there is a coffee machine that can be set by a timer, that take raw beans, roasts them to a set level of darkness, grinds them and makes a pot of coffee. I was given a broken one a while back, should probably get it working and hunt down a source of raw beans.
    - hamburglar 6y ago
      Cuisinart also makes one that takes roasted beans and does everything else. And having dated a girl who owned one and lived in a studio apartment, I can tell you that it also serves as the world's rudest alarm clock.
ponker 6y ago
I thought to myself, “Did I leave the oven on?” I checked my phone, I had, and I turned it off without needing to go back home. The fact that most IoT is shit doesn’t make IoT a stupid concept.
- Igelau 6y ago
  > I turned it off Rather you sent a command in hopes that it would turn off, and hopefully it reports back correctly. An IoT oven sounds like the worst possible home attack surface. Especially if it's a gas appliance.
  - ponker 6y ago
    It’s not an IoT oven, it’s IoT power monitoring and switching. If you turn on the power to the oven that doesn’t turn it on.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Even just monitoring with no ability to switch would be helpful.
- jankiehodgpodge 6y ago
  That functionality also allows someone to turn your oven on while you're on holiday, but worth the risk in my opinion.
Igelau 6y ago
I've never used one of these fully automatic coffee makers that didn't make terrible, weak coffee. Making good coffee isn't expensive and it isn't rocket science. It doesn't even have to be that fresh to still be good. But there are two corners you absolutely can't cut: if you skimp on the quantity of coffee, you waste all you've used; if you skimp on time, you waste all you've spent. Though I've been drinking black coffee since my teens and never found it bitter when made right. The cream-and-sugar majority might disagree.

29083011397778 6y ago

> I really question more the risk reward trade off of these devices. What is having an internet connected coffee maker buying me? Presumably they're similar to smart TVs: some consumers may want them, but nearly all OEMs would rather sell a smart one than a dumb one

082349872349872 6y ago
Gresham's Law arrives in the kitchen?
CyberDildonics 6y ago
Smart TVs are different - people want netflix/hulu/disney+ built into their TV a long with a bunch of other interfaces to play video with their remote. TV for lots of non tech savy people comes over the internet now. A lot of powered appliances either heat something up or spin a fan or pump. They don't need information from the internet and any slight advantage is outweighed by their complexity and cost. I think you are right that manufacturers want to break free from being commodities. I think it is only a matter of time before people realize that they aren't gaining anything from complicating things that used to be simple.
- GordonS 6y ago
  The value from smart TVs is very clear, even if the privacy concerns are only clear to a few. But a coffee machine, toaster or whatever... just... why?! Even as a life-long techie, and putting aside privacy concerns, there isn't a single compelling reason to want my coffee machine to be connected to the Internet, or even my local network.
- clairity 6y ago
  while you make some other good points, between > "Smart TVs are different..." and > " think it is only a matter of time before people realize that they aren't gaining anything from complicating things that used to be simple." you're making the same mistake of overgeneralizing, assuming that every (other) smart appliance can't have usefulness outside of its core, dumb functionality, based on one example of that being true. hopefully we can agree that some smartened appliances benefit the consumer, though not all (as in the case of a coffee maker), even if manufacturers are incentivized to break out of the commodity box by smartifying all the things, consequences and functionality be damned.
  - CyberDildonics 6y ago
    > assuming that every (other) smart appliance can't have usefulness outside of its core, dumb functionality, I'm not assuming that at all and it has nothing to do with smart TVs. Smart TVs are a place where having a computer inside is something people want. I'm saying other appliances are different, not because there can't be a benefit, but because the benefits are much smaller and complexity to usefulness ratio is much smaller. Also operating most appliances remotely or with a more elaborate interface doesn't give much benefit. Thermostats might be somewhere in the middle since there is a lot of room for improvement, not just in setting up a schedule or setting them remotely, but in the information they give back to you (how many btus are you leaking out of your house over time, etc.)

diogenescynic 6y ago

If you are actually into coffee, you likely would not buy these devices. I consider them a novelty, but there are plenty of consumers who will end up with them as gifts. You can make way better coffee much cheaper or just buy a Moccamaster and be done with it forever. If you're into espresso, that's an entirely different rabbit hole (and much more expensive).

codegladiator 6y ago
> end up with them as gifts. So much potential to become a real trojan

gameshot911 6y ago

>Is the minutes save per month worth the security risk it’s exposing me? Yes. The reality is they while this is a cool experimental hack, no one in reality is going to bother hacking other people's coffee makers.

eugeniub 6y ago
I promise you some bored teenager will do just that.
- appleiigs 6y ago
  Thats where i’d start to learn hacking. Wifi, webcams and coffeepots are the gateway drug to more hardcore hacking
mcguire 6y ago
Or (with enough market penetration) to mine cryptocurrency. Or as an element of a DDoS attack. Or a ransomware attack.
IncRnd 6y ago
Ransomware: https://blog.avast.com/avast-hacked-a-smart-coffee-maker https://blog.avast.com/avast-hacked-a-smart-coffee-maker A Ransomware-bridge between networks: https://www.hackread.com/how-a-coffee-machine-infected-factory-computers-with-ransomware/ https://www.hackread.com/how-a-coffee-machine-infected-facto...

liability 6y ago

I don't think these devices save time at all. In the time it takes me to navigate the through the touch-screen UIs of these fancy toys I can microwave a cup of instant coffee and start drinking it before the fancy machine starts brewing anything. The results are indistinguishable.

markrages 6y ago
You can't distinguish between freshly-brewed coffee and microwaved instant coffee?
- liability 6y ago
  Nope. Nor can I tell the difference in a blind taste test between white and red wine. Probably most wine snobs can't either, and probably most coffee snobs couldn't really tell the difference in a blind test.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    Not really a snob either way, but I'll take that bet for coffee. Probably for wine, too.
  - DonaldFisk 6y ago
    You're referring to the Brochet experiment? That wasn't a blind test: the white wine was dyed red with a flavourless dye, so there was an element of deception involved.
    - liability 6y ago
      I did with my family using blindfolds and we all failed. Either seems to demonstrate that perception of wine has a strong visual component.
      - FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
        You can't tell the difference between a chardonnay and a burgundy?

kempbellt 6y ago

> What is having an internet connected coffee maker buying me? One "cool" point with your friends. "Check this out dudes! Alexa! Brew coffee" And when Alexa responds with, "Please add water", you lose two cool points and end up in a deficit. If you need to remote start your coffee pot, you need to get your life a little more together. If you need remote notifications that coffee is done, the same applies. It's not hard to plan around "Coffee takes about 15 minutes to brew, so I start it before I hop in the shower".

markrages 6y ago
RFC 2324
- kempbellt 6y ago
  I forgot about this. Thanks for the reminder, and the laugh.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    In some environments (specifically, an academic department I used to know), knowing whether the coffeemaker was brewing, ready, or empty would be important, with potentially career damaging consequences.
- edoceo 6y ago
  RFC 2324 - Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0) https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324
- grishka 6y ago
  Too bad none of those IoT coffee makers implement this.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'd really appreciate if my electric kettle could send me a notification when it's done, because waiting for it to boil is three to five minutes I could be spending e.g. listening to the music with my headphones on. Same applies to other household appliances: the dishwasher, the oven, the washing machine. All I want is to have a set of icons in my computer's tray that change color when a given device is done. This would let me stop scheduling life around the machines, or having to keep the doors to the home office open and headphones off to hear the various beeps. Instead, I could set them to do the work, and go back to doing my stuff fully focused. In a sane world where tech companies practice anything resembling solid engineering, this would not require the devices to have an Internet connection. Working over LAN with standardized (and already existing) protocols is all that's required. In this world, I don't have any of the conveniences described above, because I'm not crazy or gullible enough to buy an IoT appliance.

tetha 6y ago

> Is the minutes save per month worth the security risk it’s exposing me? Agree with that. Especially if a hard problem stumps me, it's very refreshing to actually focus on making coffee for a few minutes. It clears the head to so something simple and different for a few minutes.

citizenkeen 6y ago
I'm still gobsmacked I can make coffee the night before and set a timer on my machine to make it in the morning. That's future magic. The rest of the day, I want that routine. It's an excuse to go downstairs and play with my kid for five minutes.
- FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
  You should know there is a coffee machine that can be set by a timer, that take raw beans, roasts them to a set level of darkness, grinds them and makes a pot of coffee. I was given a broken one a while back, should probably get it working and hunt down a source of raw beans.
  - hamburglar 6y ago
    Cuisinart also makes one that takes roasted beans and does everything else. And having dated a girl who owned one and lived in a studio apartment, I can tell you that it also serves as the world's rudest alarm clock.

ponker 6y ago

I thought to myself, “Did I leave the oven on?” I checked my phone, I had, and I turned it off without needing to go back home. The fact that most IoT is shit doesn’t make IoT a stupid concept.

Igelau 6y ago
> I turned it off Rather you sent a command in hopes that it would turn off, and hopefully it reports back correctly. An IoT oven sounds like the worst possible home attack surface. Especially if it's a gas appliance.
- ponker 6y ago
  It’s not an IoT oven, it’s IoT power monitoring and switching. If you turn on the power to the oven that doesn’t turn it on.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Even just monitoring with no ability to switch would be helpful.
jankiehodgpodge 6y ago
That functionality also allows someone to turn your oven on while you're on holiday, but worth the risk in my opinion.

Igelau 6y ago

I've never used one of these fully automatic coffee makers that didn't make terrible, weak coffee. Making good coffee isn't expensive and it isn't rocket science. It doesn't even have to be that fresh to still be good. But there are two corners you absolutely can't cut: if you skimp on the quantity of coffee, you waste all you've used; if you skimp on time, you waste all you've spent. Though I've been drinking black coffee since my teens and never found it bitter when made right. The cream-and-sugar majority might disagree.