7 ms·

A big problem with software and people who write software (often) is that software doesn't like all the ways that human beings misbehave, change their minds, do

A big problem with software and people who write software (often) is that software doesn't like all the ways that human beings misbehave, change their minds, don't have immutable states, and don't fit into the categories you build for them. So any system that has a duty to serve everyone eventually ends up with an operational component that has almost as much human interaction and problem solving required as the software side of it. Or the software has to be really smart or complex. Tech companies don't like that because that increases a lot of costs. For some companies, they manage to convince their users to behave well enough to fit into the box. Other companies have to reduce their profits, or go kicking and screaming down the path of accepting the cost of business. Example: Public electric company wants to switch people to smart meters to reduce the cost of going to read every meter, more reliable operation, easier billing, turn on/shut off, etc. Reduce the number of legacy billing systems. People turn out to irrationally not want smart meters. Now utility needs to maintain 2 systems, and an exception list of people who don't want the smart meter system, and still have to run trucks and meter readers, and procedures for people with old meters. If something is to be declared a utility, the tech company had better gulp in fear of what's required. But we better as well, if we're thinking of wanting our software to be turned into something that involves those obligations and costs too. There's a reason that Google (well, maybe other tech companies) bring you new things, and the electric company doesn't. It's not all roses.

ErikVandeWater 5y ago
Earnest question - Why does the utility have to honor the request of the owner? Doesn't the utility own the meter and is allowed to make changes to it as it sees fit?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- quickthrowman 5y ago
  The large utility in my state provides the meter, the customer provides the meter socket and everything downstream of the meter. For 400A (really 320A, 80% of 400) and larger services (commercial) the customer supplies everything beyond the transformer (service disconnect and CT cabinet, typically), but the utility will provide meters or CTs depending on how it’s being metered.
varispeed 5y ago
> People turn out to irrationally not want smart meters. Some people may be irrational, but smart meters are a huge privacy concern - the electricity company can figure out your patterns from the power usage and the "shape" of it. This is the reason why I don't want a smart meter. Disclaimer: I actually was involved in building firmware and management software of smart meters.
- jeffgreco 5y ago
  Usage patterns seem extremely important for building out a renewable power grid. Meanwhile, what is the privacy concern with the “shape” of your usage?
  - somethingwitty1 5y ago
    At my house, I have a meter that I get a feed from. So I look at the graphs. From the graphs, you can learn about what is happening in the house. You know when someone is showering, left home for work (arrived home), doing laundry, went to bed/got up, used the microwave and so on. Some of that you could determine by watching the house, but that requires constant surveillance. A smart meter provides all this data with no effort and at mass scale. If I can glean that level of information just by glancing at the graphs, I'm sure someone better equipped could determine even finer grain details of what is going on in the house.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    A change in your usage pattern could be used to ID any number of private things that could then be used against you: - When you’ve gone on vacation and your home is unattended. - When you have an additional tenant, a long-term houseguest, have a new significant other or even have a baby. - Whether or not you’re actually working when you’re working from home. - Homes that use greater than X amount of electricity are at greater risk of Y and so your home owners/rental/car insurance premium goes up. - People who play computer/video games late at night are at higher risk for health issues is your health insurance premium goes up. And I bet there are other, much more subtle things they could figure out once given the opportunity to vacuum up your data: like estimate what temperature you set your AC to and determine whether or not someone in the house was awake at any given moment of any given day.
_trampeltier 5y ago
Not just humans can misbehave, machines can also. I work in industrie automation and there is often the question should we produce just errormessages or should or machines produce a product. If you wanna catch ever error, every low or high temp, every whatever, no machine can even start to produce a product ever.
Arch-TK 5y ago
There are plenty of rational reasons for not wanting a smart meter. Don't let the irrational people detract from the fact that there are many real problems with smart meters. Especially lots of privacy issues. In the UK, I report my own meter readings and the electrical company probably only really ever goes out once every few years when tenancies change. So I actually don't see what money it saves them asides from the money lost from chasing up issues where people are trying to cheat the system. In this example it really makes me wonder if replacing all the meters in the country with non-intercompatible smart meters really saves that much money. So you have to start asking what else is in there for them to do this. Probably money for the data I would have to imagine. Also, given how absolutely atrociously shite the security of these smart meters is (and you'll have to trust me on this, I don't know how public this information is) I wouldn't want that crap anywhere near my house in the eventuality that someone hijacks it to make it look like I'm using more electricity when they're using less (while keeping the overall books balanced so to speak) or some other nefarious purpose. Certainly these meters won't give you 5G cancer, but they're really a horrible idea as they stand and I don't recommend anyone install them, at least not in the UK.
- labcomputer 5y ago
  Sure, but those not-irrational reasons are locale-specific. I've never heard of someone self-reporting the meter reading here in the US. The meter still keeps a local log of how much energy was used, so worrying about being framed for using too much energy still feels a bit irrational to me. OTOH, smart meters allow the utility to charge TOU rates, which helps even out the load on the grid. It benefits the utility, of course, but also customers. For example, it is minimally inconvenient to set my car to charge or my dish washer to run at night instead of day, but I might not bother to do so unless the utility charges me below average rates to do so. I calculate that I am earning several hundred dollars per hour for the time spent taking advantage of TOU rates. As for selling the data... the solution to that is banning such sales, not banning smart meters.
  - Arch-TK 5y ago
    If a smart meter gets hacked it's not unreasonable to imagine the local logs are compromised. This is a bit like all the arguments against voting machines but in a less concerning setting. TOU rates are a thing you can get with pre-programmed meters. They may not benefit the utility company as much as tailored rates but they probably have 90% of the benefit while having 0% of the privacy implications. The companies don't even have to sell the data, they can just mine it for information, such as which rate to automatically put you on once your contract finishes to make the most money out of you etc.
dcow 5y ago
I don't think your argument supports the second conclusion in your penultimate sentence. Seems like a big leap. Power and water “just work” and the utility companies can’t abuse people. As an “end user” I don't get crappier power or worse water because my neighbor is spooked out by smart meters. I highly doubt the savings would be passed on to me anyway. I would 1000 times over rather live in a world where internet utility service providers were required to substantiate service terminations the details of which are governed by civil law not by an abusive EULA written to protect tue company not the user. If it means email costs $1/month so be it. I pay for email on principle anyway.
- supernova87a 5y ago
  Then isn't this an argument that tech companies are not utilities because the things they supply don't "just work" and have no nuance to them? Electricity and water "just work" because you deliver it, you're done. You have no obligations aside from not failing to deliver it, and not exploiting your monopoly market. Tech companies are not utilities because they're not just something you buy like a commodity and have a right to not have complex terms of usage? You want the best of both worlds. Maybe that's not possible.
  - justanotherguy0 5y ago
    Bullshit. Delivering power and water are incredibly complex. Water has to be sourced from God knows where, you have to do planning on building reservoirs. You have to manage run off (hey, your horses can't keep shitting near that stream!). You have to treat the water and manage it's acidity. You have to keep mains running. If a leak springs and the system goes under pressure, the whole supply can become contaminated! So now you have to notify your users that they need to BOIL THEIR WATER! you have to detect leaks in the last mile of delivery so that you can protect the system. You have to keep your pumps from getting flooded. You have to manage subsidy programs and different user classes. You have to integrate with federal and state water authorities. Utilities are complicated. There's no such thing as delivering and not failing to deliver.
    - 5y ago
FridayoLeary 5y ago
In the UK the government imposed a quota to the utility companies for smart meter installations. Hence they are desperate to boost adoption, recently they have drafted Albert Einstein into their all-out advertising campaign. The government is clearly anxious to push this change which is precisely why i'm not rushing.
amelius 5y ago
> There's a reason that Google (well, maybe other tech companies) bring you new things, and the electric company doesn't. It's not all roses. There is a solution: Google writes the software. The utility company runs it. The problem right now is that Google takes too many roles.
asddubs 5y ago
one reason I've heard against smart meters is that it would make it easy for power companies to start charging non commercial users for apparent power rather than real power, as a way to indirectly raise prices.
- jpitz 5y ago
  Why would you need a smart meter?
  - asddubs 5y ago
    because it's remotely updateable, and an analogue meter cannot measure apparent power (when the power returns to the grid the wheel would spin in the other direction)
    - jpitz 5y ago
      Remote updating doesn't provide apparent power measurement, a power measurement chip does - this does require an upgraded meter, yes, but does not necessitate a smart one, although the economics of upgrading a fleet of meters probably dictates that they be smart meters for other reasons.
      - asddubs 5y ago
        yes, but my point is that being remotely updateable means you can switch over to charging for apparent power remotely (which smart meters can already measure)
sneeuwpopsneeuw 5y ago
An Example for your Example. Yes i'm one of those people who tried to keep his old electricity meter the longest time possible. I have 36 solar panels installed on my roof and the old disk meter just rotated backwards when I was not using all that electricity during the day. The new meter, that i could only delay a year or 2, is electronic and does not give me anything when I push energy to the net all day. The government in my country can give you money for that energy but that would be the raw price without any tax and the energy you use later on the day still has tax on it so that does not really help, The tax is also 80 to 90% of the price. So I hope that gives some perspective why people may prever to keep an old system around and not be forced by a big company to change it.
walleeee 5y ago
> manage to convince their users to behave well enough to fit into the box Perhaps this is a fundamental limitation of digital technology, if not all technology Being the vastly more flexible party in any interaction with it, we tend to adapt to its particular set of affordances and constraints This is often useful but opening any one door will close others: deployment at scale carries sociotechnical inertia It also frequently inverts the agentic orientation: we build tools, use them, and before long find ourselves used by them

ErikVandeWater 5y ago

Earnest question - Why does the utility have to honor the request of the owner? Doesn't the utility own the meter and is allowed to make changes to it as it sees fit?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
quickthrowman 5y ago
The large utility in my state provides the meter, the customer provides the meter socket and everything downstream of the meter. For 400A (really 320A, 80% of 400) and larger services (commercial) the customer supplies everything beyond the transformer (service disconnect and CT cabinet, typically), but the utility will provide meters or CTs depending on how it’s being metered.

varispeed 5y ago

> People turn out to irrationally not want smart meters. Some people may be irrational, but smart meters are a huge privacy concern - the electricity company can figure out your patterns from the power usage and the "shape" of it. This is the reason why I don't want a smart meter. Disclaimer: I actually was involved in building firmware and management software of smart meters.

jeffgreco 5y ago
Usage patterns seem extremely important for building out a renewable power grid. Meanwhile, what is the privacy concern with the “shape” of your usage?
- somethingwitty1 5y ago
  At my house, I have a meter that I get a feed from. So I look at the graphs. From the graphs, you can learn about what is happening in the house. You know when someone is showering, left home for work (arrived home), doing laundry, went to bed/got up, used the microwave and so on. Some of that you could determine by watching the house, but that requires constant surveillance. A smart meter provides all this data with no effort and at mass scale. If I can glean that level of information just by glancing at the graphs, I'm sure someone better equipped could determine even finer grain details of what is going on in the house.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  A change in your usage pattern could be used to ID any number of private things that could then be used against you: - When you’ve gone on vacation and your home is unattended. - When you have an additional tenant, a long-term houseguest, have a new significant other or even have a baby. - Whether or not you’re actually working when you’re working from home. - Homes that use greater than X amount of electricity are at greater risk of Y and so your home owners/rental/car insurance premium goes up. - People who play computer/video games late at night are at higher risk for health issues is your health insurance premium goes up. And I bet there are other, much more subtle things they could figure out once given the opportunity to vacuum up your data: like estimate what temperature you set your AC to and determine whether or not someone in the house was awake at any given moment of any given day.

_trampeltier 5y ago

Not just humans can misbehave, machines can also. I work in industrie automation and there is often the question should we produce just errormessages or should or machines produce a product. If you wanna catch ever error, every low or high temp, every whatever, no machine can even start to produce a product ever.

Arch-TK 5y ago

There are plenty of rational reasons for not wanting a smart meter. Don't let the irrational people detract from the fact that there are many real problems with smart meters. Especially lots of privacy issues. In the UK, I report my own meter readings and the electrical company probably only really ever goes out once every few years when tenancies change. So I actually don't see what money it saves them asides from the money lost from chasing up issues where people are trying to cheat the system. In this example it really makes me wonder if replacing all the meters in the country with non-intercompatible smart meters really saves that much money. So you have to start asking what else is in there for them to do this. Probably money for the data I would have to imagine. Also, given how absolutely atrociously shite the security of these smart meters is (and you'll have to trust me on this, I don't know how public this information is) I wouldn't want that crap anywhere near my house in the eventuality that someone hijacks it to make it look like I'm using more electricity when they're using less (while keeping the overall books balanced so to speak) or some other nefarious purpose. Certainly these meters won't give you 5G cancer, but they're really a horrible idea as they stand and I don't recommend anyone install them, at least not in the UK.

labcomputer 5y ago
Sure, but those not-irrational reasons are locale-specific. I've never heard of someone self-reporting the meter reading here in the US. The meter still keeps a local log of how much energy was used, so worrying about being framed for using too much energy still feels a bit irrational to me. OTOH, smart meters allow the utility to charge TOU rates, which helps even out the load on the grid. It benefits the utility, of course, but also customers. For example, it is minimally inconvenient to set my car to charge or my dish washer to run at night instead of day, but I might not bother to do so unless the utility charges me below average rates to do so. I calculate that I am earning several hundred dollars per hour for the time spent taking advantage of TOU rates. As for selling the data... the solution to that is banning such sales, not banning smart meters.
- Arch-TK 5y ago
  If a smart meter gets hacked it's not unreasonable to imagine the local logs are compromised. This is a bit like all the arguments against voting machines but in a less concerning setting. TOU rates are a thing you can get with pre-programmed meters. They may not benefit the utility company as much as tailored rates but they probably have 90% of the benefit while having 0% of the privacy implications. The companies don't even have to sell the data, they can just mine it for information, such as which rate to automatically put you on once your contract finishes to make the most money out of you etc.

dcow 5y ago

I don't think your argument supports the second conclusion in your penultimate sentence. Seems like a big leap. Power and water “just work” and the utility companies can’t abuse people. As an “end user” I don't get crappier power or worse water because my neighbor is spooked out by smart meters. I highly doubt the savings would be passed on to me anyway. I would 1000 times over rather live in a world where internet utility service providers were required to substantiate service terminations the details of which are governed by civil law not by an abusive EULA written to protect tue company not the user. If it means email costs $1/month so be it. I pay for email on principle anyway.

supernova87a 5y ago
Then isn't this an argument that tech companies are not utilities because the things they supply don't "just work" and have no nuance to them? Electricity and water "just work" because you deliver it, you're done. You have no obligations aside from not failing to deliver it, and not exploiting your monopoly market. Tech companies are not utilities because they're not just something you buy like a commodity and have a right to not have complex terms of usage? You want the best of both worlds. Maybe that's not possible.
- justanotherguy0 5y ago
  Bullshit. Delivering power and water are incredibly complex. Water has to be sourced from God knows where, you have to do planning on building reservoirs. You have to manage run off (hey, your horses can't keep shitting near that stream!). You have to treat the water and manage it's acidity. You have to keep mains running. If a leak springs and the system goes under pressure, the whole supply can become contaminated! So now you have to notify your users that they need to BOIL THEIR WATER! you have to detect leaks in the last mile of delivery so that you can protect the system. You have to keep your pumps from getting flooded. You have to manage subsidy programs and different user classes. You have to integrate with federal and state water authorities. Utilities are complicated. There's no such thing as delivering and not failing to deliver.
  - 5y ago

FridayoLeary 5y ago

In the UK the government imposed a quota to the utility companies for smart meter installations. Hence they are desperate to boost adoption, recently they have drafted Albert Einstein into their all-out advertising campaign. The government is clearly anxious to push this change which is precisely why i'm not rushing.

amelius 5y ago

> There's a reason that Google (well, maybe other tech companies) bring you new things, and the electric company doesn't. It's not all roses. There is a solution: Google writes the software. The utility company runs it. The problem right now is that Google takes too many roles.

asddubs 5y ago

one reason I've heard against smart meters is that it would make it easy for power companies to start charging non commercial users for apparent power rather than real power, as a way to indirectly raise prices.

jpitz 5y ago
Why would you need a smart meter?
- asddubs 5y ago
  because it's remotely updateable, and an analogue meter cannot measure apparent power (when the power returns to the grid the wheel would spin in the other direction)
  - jpitz 5y ago
    Remote updating doesn't provide apparent power measurement, a power measurement chip does - this does require an upgraded meter, yes, but does not necessitate a smart one, although the economics of upgrading a fleet of meters probably dictates that they be smart meters for other reasons.
    - asddubs 5y ago
      yes, but my point is that being remotely updateable means you can switch over to charging for apparent power remotely (which smart meters can already measure)

sneeuwpopsneeuw 5y ago

An Example for your Example. Yes i'm one of those people who tried to keep his old electricity meter the longest time possible. I have 36 solar panels installed on my roof and the old disk meter just rotated backwards when I was not using all that electricity during the day. The new meter, that i could only delay a year or 2, is electronic and does not give me anything when I push energy to the net all day. The government in my country can give you money for that energy but that would be the raw price without any tax and the energy you use later on the day still has tax on it so that does not really help, The tax is also 80 to 90% of the price. So I hope that gives some perspective why people may prever to keep an old system around and not be forced by a big company to change it.

walleeee 5y ago

> manage to convince their users to behave well enough to fit into the box Perhaps this is a fundamental limitation of digital technology, if not all technology Being the vastly more flexible party in any interaction with it, we tend to adapt to its particular set of affordances and constraints This is often useful but opening any one door will close others: deployment at scale carries sociotechnical inertia It also frequently inverts the agentic orientation: we build tools, use them, and before long find ourselves used by them