4 ms·

my microwave oven has two knobs: how hot and how long. I paid an extra £50 to get a model of fridge without WiFi. sadly my washing machine is already at the fre

by exe34 1y ago

my microwave oven has two knobs: how hot and how long. I paid an extra £50 to get a model of fridge without WiFi. sadly my washing machine is already at the free-spinning encoder stage - I don't hate it with a passion, but more of a low-enthusiasm. I dread replacing anything that breaks in the next few years.

zbendefy 1y ago
Why not get the wifi enabled fridge and just not hook it up to your router? Genuinely asking because I plan to do this once I have to get new appliances, is there something missing that way?
- ssl-3 1y ago
  Why not buy the fridge that doesn't have wifi smarts to begin with? If I want to monitor my fridge's temperature, I can buy a widget that does that for a dozen or so dollars and have that sensor talk to the home automation system of my choice. And when the fridge dies or otherwise gets replaced, I can move the sensor to the new fridge. (And when a new sensor comes out that I like better, I can spend another McDonald's Value Meal worth of money to use that instead.) Besides: We here on HN should all have a certain amount of distrust for devices that self-report problems. This distrust is part of the reason why ZFS doesn't trust hard drives to self-report issues and does its own checksums instead. --- But that's a general rant. To answer your question more-directly, if somewhat-tangentially: One of the popular open-source-oriented YouTube dudes (Jeff Geerling?) recently bought a dishwasher that had functional modes that could not be accessed without a wifi connection to The Clown. And that's... that's not good: In order to be able to use the functions that the thing natively includes, one must always allow it to call home to mother.
- quitit 1y ago
  My folks have one of these: it bitches at you for internet. Also the device is generally designed with internet in mind, so certain local-only functions don’t work properly without internet.
- exe34 1y ago
  at some point they'll put limits until you connect. it might go from just not working to limiting the temperature or whatever.

by exe34 1y ago

zbendefy 1y ago

Why not get the wifi enabled fridge and just not hook it up to your router? Genuinely asking because I plan to do this once I have to get new appliances, is there something missing that way?

ssl-3 1y ago
Why not buy the fridge that doesn't have wifi smarts to begin with? If I want to monitor my fridge's temperature, I can buy a widget that does that for a dozen or so dollars and have that sensor talk to the home automation system of my choice. And when the fridge dies or otherwise gets replaced, I can move the sensor to the new fridge. (And when a new sensor comes out that I like better, I can spend another McDonald's Value Meal worth of money to use that instead.) Besides: We here on HN should all have a certain amount of distrust for devices that self-report problems. This distrust is part of the reason why ZFS doesn't trust hard drives to self-report issues and does its own checksums instead. --- But that's a general rant. To answer your question more-directly, if somewhat-tangentially: One of the popular open-source-oriented YouTube dudes (Jeff Geerling?) recently bought a dishwasher that had functional modes that could not be accessed without a wifi connection to The Clown. And that's... that's not good: In order to be able to use the functions that the thing natively includes, one must always allow it to call home to mother.
quitit 1y ago
My folks have one of these: it bitches at you for internet. Also the device is generally designed with internet in mind, so certain local-only functions don’t work properly without internet.
exe34 1y ago
at some point they'll put limits until you connect. it might go from just not working to limiting the temperature or whatever.