5 ms·

Interesting to see this here as the more expensive version of this microwave with convection baking nearly burned down my house on Thanksgiving. It was a hecti

by wincy 3y ago

Interesting to see this here as the more expensive version of this microwave with convection baking nearly burned down my house on Thanksgiving. It was a hectic morning and we were getting ready, and I had my kid put something into the microwave/oven. She put in the metal rack and the food on top. We’d done this dozens of times before. I then used Alexa from another room and said “Alexa, bake at 400° Fahrenheit for twenty minutes”. Later I looked at the logs and Alexa had caught the words “____ at 400° Fahrenheit for twenty minutes” and took this to mean microwave. I’m not sure who specifies temperatures when microwaving, but that’s how it interpreted these very specific instructions. I’d gotten in the habit of being extremely specific because a few times it had tried to microwave when I’d specified bake, and naively thought this specificity would avoid such an issue. Long story short I was having a nice shower when I smelled smoke, I basically got to live out the Disneyworld Carousel of Progress future scene when the oven went crazy. The metal cook pan embedded itself into the glass somehow and it smelled absolutely awful. We had to throw out the entire thing. I actually told this story to an Amazon Alexa lead Engineer at a conference in 2021. He said he’d look into it and the microwave disappeared off the market soon after, so I don’t know maybe it was decided it was too dangerous of a product.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
djtango 3y ago
...why doesn't Alexa confirm the actions it's going to take. "Starting the microwave for 20 minutes..."
- pc86 3y ago
  I haven't used any Alexa product in probably 10 months or so but I always remember it repeating whatever command it was doing.
  - iLoveOncall 3y ago
    You can put it in reduced interactions mode or something like that which will make it speak less, but without testing this specific case it's impossible to know if it would have repeated or not.
xattt 3y ago
Did the command set it to combo microwave? I had an over-the-range combination range and have my share of complaints. I almost never used the the convection function, so there would be a dependable layer of grease build-up. For the convention or combination functions to work effectively, it needed time to come up to temperature, which meant “pre-heating” the element (and burning off the layer of grease). The ownership experience was constant maintenance of the element, as well as management of compatible materials for cookware. It met an untimely death when condensation from a microwave bottle sterilizer left overnight shorted out a door interlock and blew the internal fuse. In my dazed state of having a baby, it was less of a hassle to replace it with a microwave-only unit than it was to hunt down a fuse.
lozenge 3y ago
I like how you didn't report it to Amazon originally. How low are our expectations these days? "I almost started a fire, I guess I was just holding it wrong".
- wincy 3y ago
  I reported it immediately via some very difficult to navigate form that barely worked in the Alexa app. I never heard back or got any feedback. It was buried under menus and once I got to the form it was doing something weird where it was like chugging and crashed twice on my iPhone but I finally submitted. Then heard nothing and got no indication I’d actually done anything. It definitely gave me the impression they didn’t care.
jdiez17 3y ago
That sounds really scary. FWIW, cooking appliances are not allowed to be started remotely in Europe, presumably for this same reason.
scrum-treats 3y ago
Safe to say, yours was not the only high-severity complaint. And this microwave is not the only high-risk device. When you change ASR and Alexa functionality, don't forget to test more than Music and Video, else you might burn someone's house down. What is QA anyways...
housemusicfan 3y ago
> I then used Alexa from another room and said “Alexa, bake at 400° Fahrenheit for twenty minutes”. Later I looked at the logs I like how at no point did you realize the complete and unnecessary idiocy of remote controlling potentially dangerous appliances. You have to walk up to it to put the food inside. Is pushing a few buttons afterward that difficult? Ok, so you sent your kid, you trust him or her to put the food inside but not operate the controls? What if your kid forgot to remove the cardboard wrapper? Why is this IoT nonsense needed? WHY? For the love of God someone please explain to me why this was invented and what non-problem it solves. You're not even supposed to leave a toaster unattended let alone a microwave oven. Anyone that thinks "blind people, did you read the article?" should know that braille keypads and egg timer style analogue knobs on microwaves existed 40 years ago. Things that can burn your house down should not be connected to the internet. There should be laws on the books for this. If you're so busy and so important that this presents an actionable problem then maybe you need a live-in housekeeper/butler. I know what you're thinking, oh you must be some Orcas Island Luddite who thinks we should go back to the stone ages. "I can preheat my Wi-Fi connected oven on the drive home!" So you trust the kid you didn't trust enough to operate the temperature controls, to not have hidden his toys inside. All so you can shave 10 minutes off your frozen pizza. We live in an era of amazing technology that is increasingly applied in the dumbest ways possible.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Eh they made a series of choices clearly planned for and intended and likely marketed by the creators of the devices. You're maybe right that it shouldn't exist, but given that it does the fault isn't with the user. But the voice controls being an accessibility boon is part of the current context here. I think they're exactly right to place the failure with amazon.
  - batiudrami 3y ago
    In my industry (rail, which admittedly is more keen on system safety than most) this would absolutely be the responsibility of the designer not the user. Poor safety in design, simple as that.
jrflowers 3y ago
> I then used Alexa from another room… … > maybe it was decided it was too dangerous of a product. That’s almost certainly what happened. If you give people the ability to do something insane like turning on their microwave without being in the same room as it, somebody is going to be foolish enough to actually attempt that — regardless of how pointlessly dangerous that is or how infinitesimal the amount of time or convenience that the ability to do so might create.

by wincy 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

djtango 3y ago

...why doesn't Alexa confirm the actions it's going to take. "Starting the microwave for 20 minutes..."

pc86 3y ago
I haven't used any Alexa product in probably 10 months or so but I always remember it repeating whatever command it was doing.
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  You can put it in reduced interactions mode or something like that which will make it speak less, but without testing this specific case it's impossible to know if it would have repeated or not.

xattt 3y ago

Did the command set it to combo microwave? I had an over-the-range combination range and have my share of complaints. I almost never used the the convection function, so there would be a dependable layer of grease build-up. For the convention or combination functions to work effectively, it needed time to come up to temperature, which meant “pre-heating” the element (and burning off the layer of grease). The ownership experience was constant maintenance of the element, as well as management of compatible materials for cookware. It met an untimely death when condensation from a microwave bottle sterilizer left overnight shorted out a door interlock and blew the internal fuse. In my dazed state of having a baby, it was less of a hassle to replace it with a microwave-only unit than it was to hunt down a fuse.

lozenge 3y ago

I like how you didn't report it to Amazon originally. How low are our expectations these days? "I almost started a fire, I guess I was just holding it wrong".

wincy 3y ago
I reported it immediately via some very difficult to navigate form that barely worked in the Alexa app. I never heard back or got any feedback. It was buried under menus and once I got to the form it was doing something weird where it was like chugging and crashed twice on my iPhone but I finally submitted. Then heard nothing and got no indication I’d actually done anything. It definitely gave me the impression they didn’t care.

jdiez17 3y ago

That sounds really scary. FWIW, cooking appliances are not allowed to be started remotely in Europe, presumably for this same reason.

scrum-treats 3y ago

Safe to say, yours was not the only high-severity complaint. And this microwave is not the only high-risk device. When you change ASR and Alexa functionality, don't forget to test more than Music and Video, else you might burn someone's house down. What is QA anyways...

housemusicfan 3y ago

> I then used Alexa from another room and said “Alexa, bake at 400° Fahrenheit for twenty minutes”. Later I looked at the logs I like how at no point did you realize the complete and unnecessary idiocy of remote controlling potentially dangerous appliances. You have to walk up to it to put the food inside. Is pushing a few buttons afterward that difficult? Ok, so you sent your kid, you trust him or her to put the food inside but not operate the controls? What if your kid forgot to remove the cardboard wrapper? Why is this IoT nonsense needed? WHY? For the love of God someone please explain to me why this was invented and what non-problem it solves. You're not even supposed to leave a toaster unattended let alone a microwave oven. Anyone that thinks "blind people, did you read the article?" should know that braille keypads and egg timer style analogue knobs on microwaves existed 40 years ago. Things that can burn your house down should not be connected to the internet. There should be laws on the books for this. If you're so busy and so important that this presents an actionable problem then maybe you need a live-in housekeeper/butler. I know what you're thinking, oh you must be some Orcas Island Luddite who thinks we should go back to the stone ages. "I can preheat my Wi-Fi connected oven on the drive home!" So you trust the kid you didn't trust enough to operate the temperature controls, to not have hidden his toys inside. All so you can shave 10 minutes off your frozen pizza. We live in an era of amazing technology that is increasingly applied in the dumbest ways possible.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
Eh they made a series of choices clearly planned for and intended and likely marketed by the creators of the devices. You're maybe right that it shouldn't exist, but given that it does the fault isn't with the user. But the voice controls being an accessibility boon is part of the current context here. I think they're exactly right to place the failure with amazon.
- batiudrami 3y ago
  In my industry (rail, which admittedly is more keen on system safety than most) this would absolutely be the responsibility of the designer not the user. Poor safety in design, simple as that.

jrflowers 3y ago

> I then used Alexa from another room… … > maybe it was decided it was too dangerous of a product. That’s almost certainly what happened. If you give people the ability to do something insane like turning on their microwave without being in the same room as it, somebody is going to be foolish enough to actually attempt that — regardless of how pointlessly dangerous that is or how infinitesimal the amount of time or convenience that the ability to do so might create.