7 ms·

I refuse to own an oven that is internet connected. If my oven has enough of a computer to have a firmware that can be updated remotely, it is too dangerous to

I refuse to own an oven that is internet connected. If my oven has enough of a computer to have a firmware that can be updated remotely, it is too dangerous to own.

falcolas 5y ago
This time it bricked. Next time it could just as easily turn on high and not shut off until the power is removed. EDIT for disbelievers: The software update meant for an oven successfully installed on a microwave, and bricked the microwave because it was writing instructions to the wrong addresses. Why believe the software would never accidentally write to the 'heating element relay' bit in an oven?
jaywalk 5y ago
My oven is Internet connected. It can't be turned on remotely unless I press a button on the oven itself, and even then it'll only allow it once. The WiFi functionality is also such total garbage that it'll only stay connected for a few days, and requires physically unplugging and re-plugging the power to the oven to get it to reconnect.
- RobertMiller 5y ago
  > It can't be turned on remotely unless I press a button on the oven itself, and even then it'll only allow it once. That it's possible at all suggests that the oven is only one bad firmware update away from turning itself on when you don't intend it. Conceivably such a limitation could be built into the hardware; e.g. with a button that works like a circuit breaker. Set to break after the oven starts once and requiring the user to manually reset it. But the odds of it actually being implemented in this way, rather than pure software, is virtually nil.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    I agree with you. But it's just the oven, so the risk is just wasting some gas and heating my house up a little until I notice. The cooktop burners can't be operated remotely, so there's no risk of unintended open flames. Also, because of the crappy WiFi it's almost never connected anyway.
    - djbusby 5y ago
      Jajaja! My WiFi oven can't burn my house down cause it's WiFi code is worse than it's heating-element code.
    - InitialLastName 5y ago
      Your modern oven probably has an electronically controlled ignition instead of a pilot light. What would stop the oven from opening the gas valves without igniting, potentially creating a high-risk situation if there are any issues with the seal?
- paranoidrobot 5y ago
  > It can't be turned on remotely unless I press a button on the oven itself, and even then it'll only allow it once. I'm not sure I'd be willing to believe a manufacturer on this. This feature is probably implemented in software, rather than hardware - simply because it's cheaper. The idea of any of these home appliances being internet connected really blows my mind.
- ncr100 5y ago
  How did software engineering get to the point where this kind of low quality update is shipped "too often" for serious circumstances like a physical oven? Like it's hardly notable news anymore for something like this to happen. It's frequent. I worry that agile is largely responsible, and has mutated into a pipeline for garbage, though I don't have any evidence to confirm that suspicion.
  - switchbak 5y ago
    Agile was in use for many years before this craziness started, I think you need another explanation.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    I don't think "Agile" is responsible, but it is a supporting character here for sure. Let me give a little history from my perspective. I got involved in that movement before the word "Agile" existed; I was really interested in the ideas coming from the Extreme Programming folks and had tried them out on a small project in 2000. All of the people I met early on really wanted to do software well; the question was how to do it well and responsively. Unit and acceptance tests were just part of the process [1], and Kent Beck also wrote Test Driven Development By Example [2] around then. So in my view there was strong early interest in quality. But this was all happening during the rise of the internet, which changed people's expectations for software delivery. Previously, releasing every 18 months was seen as reasonable. Suddenly the web was changing people's expectations. (Although not as fast as you'd think; a consultant pal told me in 2004 that Weight Watchers still had an annual release cycle for their website.) Executives and managers were under pressure to deliver faster. As I wrote about elsewhere [3], that created a need for Agile that was filled not by the humanistic culture and quality-oriented practices of my end of the Agile world, but by consultants and certification programs watering down the material until executives could slap some new labels on their same old bullshit and call it Agile. It turns out that bullshit long predates Agile. If you go back to Royce's original 1970 paper on Waterfall [4], one of his big points is that it doesn't work. Why, then, did it become the predominant way to organize software projects? Because it feels good to managers. For most of the project, it gives them a feeling of control and competence. That feeling is false, as it just delays all of the real-world feedback until near the nominal end. But they can perform confidence and competence to their boss, which is vital in managerialist [5] organizations. So I totally agree with you that Agile on average has mutated into a garbage pipeline. And that happened through a whole industry that produced manager-friendly process theater that threw out a quality focus and most of the Agile values, while using the Agile labels. But I think the real responsibility lies in our management culture and values, which both precedes Agile and whose harm extends well beyond it. [1] http://www.extremeprogramming.org/map/loops.html http://www.extremeprogramming.org/map/loops.html [2] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/test-driven-development/0321146530/ https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/test-driven-development... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20170923232057/http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how-we-fell-in/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170923232057/http://agilefocus... [4] https://pragtob.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/why-waterfall-was-a-big-misunderstanding-from-the-beginning-reading-the-original-paper/ https://pragtob.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/why-waterfall-was-a... [5] See, e.g., https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/confronting-managerialism-9781780320748/ https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/confronting-managerialism-9781...
fatnoah 5y ago
I'm starting a kitchen upgrade, and the number of "connected" kitchen appliances is astonishing. I don't need my faucet to have Alexa, I don't want to read news on my refrigerator, and I don't want an app for my oven. I'm not aware of any companies keeping servers running for a product that matches the life expectancy of a kitchen appliance, nor do I want an AWS outage to keep me from making nachos.
- null_object 5y ago
- ggreg84 5y ago
  Buy professional appliances, for restaurants. For some reason, they are often better along many axes: cheaper, easier to clean, more customizable, more powerful, more flexible, etc. I really like the professional induction stoves, with actual physical dials, no touch crap. And the best part, there is a huge used market for professional appliances in really good shape, for even lower price.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    Until the day it starts asking your support contract number…
  - civilized 5y ago
    Can you recommend any particular sellers? My oven stops working with some nonsensical error message when I try to use it above 350F, so I'm in the market for a new one.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      Not OP, and not making any recommendations, but even something mainstream like webstaurantstore.com carries a fair amount of commercial cooking equipment. Enough to give you some ideas, at least.
    - bluGill 5y ago
tpmx 5y ago
Imagine an attack on the electric grid that works by startíng a large number of high-power appliances (ovens, EVs, ACs/heat pumps, etc) at max power at the exact same time.
- adwww 5y ago
  This is actually a big potential for a smart grid - turning on or off demand from things like fridges and ovens in response to the grid frequency changing. If the grid is very slightly over 50hz it means demand exceeds supply and vice versa. By automatically switching off the pump on thousands of fridges for a few seconds, networks would require less generation capacity on standby - saving $$$ and CO2. Of course, like you say, this would leave potential for this to be used in reverse to destabilise an entire grid.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    > If the grid is very slightly over 50hz it means demand exceeds supply and vice versa. Not to be too pedantic, but it's actually the opposite. Frequency drops as demand goes up, which requires more supply to compensate. This is because the generators physically spin more slowly as they are put under more load.
    - adwww 5y ago
      thanks, I knew I should have googled to check... Also occurs to me that it's 60hz in North America, but point roughly remains!
throw7 5y ago
Also devices that require a smartphone to operate e.g. the joule.
- RobertMiller 5y ago
  Imagine trying to sell this premise to somebody 50 years ago. > It's a toaster, just like the one you already have on your counter, except it won't work unless you give the manufacturer a copy of your rolodex. People then would laugh in your face, but today most people don't even seem to blink. The absurd has been normalized.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
paulgerhardt 5y ago
I have a dozen or more devices that can burn down my house (or kill me in other interesting ways) connected to the internet because I am confident in the precautions taken by the engineers who designed them and mitigating the “hacker” threat model is mostly already addressed by precautions already taken to mitigate failing (“rogue”) controller boards present in their non-internet connected counterparts through 30+ years of iteration. Specifically my laser printer has a thermal bypass switch, my smartphone(s) have charge controllers integrated into the batteries, my water heater has a pressure release valve, my oven is literally designed to withstand max heat for an indefinite period of time, my garage door is a death trap in four different ways (but has redundant safeguards for all of those), my kettle has has a thermocouple that trips when it boils dry etc. etc. From a micro-morts perspective, adding “electricity” to an object makes it significantly more dangerous than adding “internet”. Ie going from a hand grinder to an electric grinder. But the utility is worth the trade off.
- gpderetta 5y ago
  The issue is that hardware interlocks might at some point be replaced with software interlocks, if they haven't already. See the Therac-25 incident for a concrete example.
  - paulgerhardt 5y ago
    Once a hardware interlock safeguard requirement is put in place by a regulatory body it’s rarely removed. See British fused sockets for instance. My threat model allows me to be completely cavalier with a dishwasher. I would be considerably more serious with safety concerns were I to put a chemo machine in my garage. My suspicion is that people who haven’t shipped home appliances connected to mains are not aware of how much of the engineering effort goes into making these machines safe relatively to how little it does for adjacent categories and are mis-indexing risk over bigger issues like vendor lock in as with the Sonos upgrade fiasco a few years back.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Compared to 'the internet' electricity is pretty predictable.
switchbak 5y ago
Just wait until these long range, low power mesh networks are the norm. Then they'll be networked and auto updating (and spying!) without your knowledge or consent!
amelius 5y ago
I refuse to live in a country where mass consumer products can enter the market before being okayed by consumer organizations.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Yeah if it doesn't have a hard off internet/bluetooth switch I don't want it. I don't want some hacker-ish kid next door pwning it in 5 years when the manufacturer no longer updates, I don't want to have to load security updates on my toaster. I just want to push the thingy and then the thing happens. All my kitchen appliances are 15 years old, 5 years old when I bought the house.
ravedave5 5y ago
I found an oven that had all the features I wanted... and internet. After verifying it did not require internet I bought it and it will never be connected. Who connects something that could burn your house down to the internet?!

I refuse to own an oven that is internet connected. If my oven has enough of a computer to have a firmware that can be updated remotely, it is too dangerous to own.

falcolas 5y ago

This time it bricked. Next time it could just as easily turn on high and not shut off until the power is removed. EDIT for disbelievers: The software update meant for an oven successfully installed on a microwave, and bricked the microwave because it was writing instructions to the wrong addresses. Why believe the software would never accidentally write to the 'heating element relay' bit in an oven?

jaywalk 5y ago

My oven is Internet connected. It can't be turned on remotely unless I press a button on the oven itself, and even then it'll only allow it once. The WiFi functionality is also such total garbage that it'll only stay connected for a few days, and requires physically unplugging and re-plugging the power to the oven to get it to reconnect.

RobertMiller 5y ago
> It can't be turned on remotely unless I press a button on the oven itself, and even then it'll only allow it once. That it's possible at all suggests that the oven is only one bad firmware update away from turning itself on when you don't intend it. Conceivably such a limitation could be built into the hardware; e.g. with a button that works like a circuit breaker. Set to break after the oven starts once and requiring the user to manually reset it. But the odds of it actually being implemented in this way, rather than pure software, is virtually nil.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  I agree with you. But it's just the oven, so the risk is just wasting some gas and heating my house up a little until I notice. The cooktop burners can't be operated remotely, so there's no risk of unintended open flames. Also, because of the crappy WiFi it's almost never connected anyway.
  - djbusby 5y ago
    Jajaja! My WiFi oven can't burn my house down cause it's WiFi code is worse than it's heating-element code.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    Your modern oven probably has an electronically controlled ignition instead of a pilot light. What would stop the oven from opening the gas valves without igniting, potentially creating a high-risk situation if there are any issues with the seal?
paranoidrobot 5y ago
> It can't be turned on remotely unless I press a button on the oven itself, and even then it'll only allow it once. I'm not sure I'd be willing to believe a manufacturer on this. This feature is probably implemented in software, rather than hardware - simply because it's cheaper. The idea of any of these home appliances being internet connected really blows my mind.
ncr100 5y ago
How did software engineering get to the point where this kind of low quality update is shipped "too often" for serious circumstances like a physical oven? Like it's hardly notable news anymore for something like this to happen. It's frequent. I worry that agile is largely responsible, and has mutated into a pipeline for garbage, though I don't have any evidence to confirm that suspicion.
- switchbak 5y ago
  Agile was in use for many years before this craziness started, I think you need another explanation.
- wpietri 5y ago
  I don't think "Agile" is responsible, but it is a supporting character here for sure. Let me give a little history from my perspective. I got involved in that movement before the word "Agile" existed; I was really interested in the ideas coming from the Extreme Programming folks and had tried them out on a small project in 2000. All of the people I met early on really wanted to do software well; the question was how to do it well and responsively. Unit and acceptance tests were just part of the process [1], and Kent Beck also wrote Test Driven Development By Example [2] around then. So in my view there was strong early interest in quality. But this was all happening during the rise of the internet, which changed people's expectations for software delivery. Previously, releasing every 18 months was seen as reasonable. Suddenly the web was changing people's expectations. (Although not as fast as you'd think; a consultant pal told me in 2004 that Weight Watchers still had an annual release cycle for their website.) Executives and managers were under pressure to deliver faster. As I wrote about elsewhere [3], that created a need for Agile that was filled not by the humanistic culture and quality-oriented practices of my end of the Agile world, but by consultants and certification programs watering down the material until executives could slap some new labels on their same old bullshit and call it Agile. It turns out that bullshit long predates Agile. If you go back to Royce's original 1970 paper on Waterfall [4], one of his big points is that it doesn't work. Why, then, did it become the predominant way to organize software projects? Because it feels good to managers. For most of the project, it gives them a feeling of control and competence. That feeling is false, as it just delays all of the real-world feedback until near the nominal end. But they can perform confidence and competence to their boss, which is vital in managerialist [5] organizations. So I totally agree with you that Agile on average has mutated into a garbage pipeline. And that happened through a whole industry that produced manager-friendly process theater that threw out a quality focus and most of the Agile values, while using the Agile labels. But I think the real responsibility lies in our management culture and values, which both precedes Agile and whose harm extends well beyond it. [1] http://www.extremeprogramming.org/map/loops.html http://www.extremeprogramming.org/map/loops.html [2] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/test-driven-development/0321146530/ https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/test-driven-development... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20170923232057/http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how-we-fell-in/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170923232057/http://agilefocus... [4] https://pragtob.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/why-waterfall-was-a-big-misunderstanding-from-the-beginning-reading-the-original-paper/ https://pragtob.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/why-waterfall-was-a... [5] See, e.g., https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/confronting-managerialism-9781780320748/ https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/confronting-managerialism-9781...

fatnoah 5y ago

I'm starting a kitchen upgrade, and the number of "connected" kitchen appliances is astonishing. I don't need my faucet to have Alexa, I don't want to read news on my refrigerator, and I don't want an app for my oven. I'm not aware of any companies keeping servers running for a product that matches the life expectancy of a kitchen appliance, nor do I want an AWS outage to keep me from making nachos.

null_object 5y ago
ggreg84 5y ago
Buy professional appliances, for restaurants. For some reason, they are often better along many axes: cheaper, easier to clean, more customizable, more powerful, more flexible, etc. I really like the professional induction stoves, with actual physical dials, no touch crap. And the best part, there is a huge used market for professional appliances in really good shape, for even lower price.
- numpad0 5y ago
  Until the day it starts asking your support contract number…
- civilized 5y ago
  Can you recommend any particular sellers? My oven stops working with some nonsensical error message when I try to use it above 350F, so I'm in the market for a new one.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    Not OP, and not making any recommendations, but even something mainstream like webstaurantstore.com carries a fair amount of commercial cooking equipment. Enough to give you some ideas, at least.
  - bluGill 5y ago

tpmx 5y ago

Imagine an attack on the electric grid that works by startíng a large number of high-power appliances (ovens, EVs, ACs/heat pumps, etc) at max power at the exact same time.

adwww 5y ago
This is actually a big potential for a smart grid - turning on or off demand from things like fridges and ovens in response to the grid frequency changing. If the grid is very slightly over 50hz it means demand exceeds supply and vice versa. By automatically switching off the pump on thousands of fridges for a few seconds, networks would require less generation capacity on standby - saving $$$ and CO2. Of course, like you say, this would leave potential for this to be used in reverse to destabilise an entire grid.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  > If the grid is very slightly over 50hz it means demand exceeds supply and vice versa. Not to be too pedantic, but it's actually the opposite. Frequency drops as demand goes up, which requires more supply to compensate. This is because the generators physically spin more slowly as they are put under more load.
  - adwww 5y ago
    thanks, I knew I should have googled to check... Also occurs to me that it's 60hz in North America, but point roughly remains!

throw7 5y ago

Also devices that require a smartphone to operate e.g. the joule.

RobertMiller 5y ago
Imagine trying to sell this premise to somebody 50 years ago. > It's a toaster, just like the one you already have on your counter, except it won't work unless you give the manufacturer a copy of your rolodex. People then would laugh in your face, but today most people don't even seem to blink. The absurd has been normalized.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

paulgerhardt 5y ago

I have a dozen or more devices that can burn down my house (or kill me in other interesting ways) connected to the internet because I am confident in the precautions taken by the engineers who designed them and mitigating the “hacker” threat model is mostly already addressed by precautions already taken to mitigate failing (“rogue”) controller boards present in their non-internet connected counterparts through 30+ years of iteration. Specifically my laser printer has a thermal bypass switch, my smartphone(s) have charge controllers integrated into the batteries, my water heater has a pressure release valve, my oven is literally designed to withstand max heat for an indefinite period of time, my garage door is a death trap in four different ways (but has redundant safeguards for all of those), my kettle has has a thermocouple that trips when it boils dry etc. etc. From a micro-morts perspective, adding “electricity” to an object makes it significantly more dangerous than adding “internet”. Ie going from a hand grinder to an electric grinder. But the utility is worth the trade off.

gpderetta 5y ago
The issue is that hardware interlocks might at some point be replaced with software interlocks, if they haven't already. See the Therac-25 incident for a concrete example.
- paulgerhardt 5y ago
  Once a hardware interlock safeguard requirement is put in place by a regulatory body it’s rarely removed. See British fused sockets for instance. My threat model allows me to be completely cavalier with a dishwasher. I would be considerably more serious with safety concerns were I to put a chemo machine in my garage. My suspicion is that people who haven’t shipped home appliances connected to mains are not aware of how much of the engineering effort goes into making these machines safe relatively to how little it does for adjacent categories and are mis-indexing risk over bigger issues like vendor lock in as with the Sonos upgrade fiasco a few years back.
jacquesm 5y ago
Compared to 'the internet' electricity is pretty predictable.

switchbak 5y ago

Just wait until these long range, low power mesh networks are the norm. Then they'll be networked and auto updating (and spying!) without your knowledge or consent!

amelius 5y ago

I refuse to live in a country where mass consumer products can enter the market before being okayed by consumer organizations.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Yeah if it doesn't have a hard off internet/bluetooth switch I don't want it. I don't want some hacker-ish kid next door pwning it in 5 years when the manufacturer no longer updates, I don't want to have to load security updates on my toaster. I just want to push the thingy and then the thing happens. All my kitchen appliances are 15 years old, 5 years old when I bought the house.

ravedave5 5y ago

I found an oven that had all the features I wanted... and internet. After verifying it did not require internet I bought it and it will never be connected. Who connects something that could burn your house down to the internet?!