CAFE by GE for those who are wondering.
We are renovating our house including all new appliances. I have told my partner to make sure we get non smart appliances. This is why.
Yes I can setup a VLAN for it to be on but that’s not the point.
Smart appliances are such a ridiculous scam.
I actually find it very nice to get notifications about my toaster oven being preheated or done cooking, or being able to see how much time is left or remotely stop it.
I can totally see a point in some of the features.
The other day my wife and I got 20 minutes from home before I said “oh shit I don’t know if I turned the oven off”. Turns out I did, but we had to drive home to check. I would have loved to pull up an app that told me it was actually off, or even if I was on be able to turn it off from there.
With that said, it’s not worth all the extra bullshit in my opinion.
And what if someone else downloads the app and turns in on?
Then the cookies are going to be burnt
That’s always a possibility especially when every company under the sun is making smart things on a whim for as cheap as possible. I don’t trust any of them as far as I can throw an oven.
I have a few random smart things, but before I connect them to the internet I make sure they have a decent api that I can use, block external access from the router and set up a little interface so that I can VPN into my home and control stuff if I need to. So in order for anything to be compromised my whole network would have to be owned. Which is still possible but I trust that a lot more than letting 20 different apps for each device have access to anything in my home.
Another way to say this is that a hacker needs only access to your private network to gain control of all connected devices.
IMO this is hardly worth it when the benefits are I can check my oven remotely or I can check what the vacuum is doing.
I tend to not buy connected devices if it can be avoided.
Seems to me like they do not know how to make a good oven.
If they will be running a botnet with your net at least it should be a fair pay.
Maybe you can buy a DLC to have additional functionality. Or you need to pay micro transactions with each cooking. No money is wasted.
I bought one of those ge induction ovens to swap out a gas one. The only smart feature I liked was the ability to turn my oven on to preheat from my phone. Guess what feature just doesn’t work no matter the tech support help i get with it.
I worked for a phone manufacturer a few years ago. We’d get callers who were referred to us by shitty IOT vendors who wanted to insist their buggy apps just didn’t work because our phone broke it and not because their crappy IOT “features” were clearly tossed together by lowest bidder contractors they stopped paying 2 years ago. The number of IOT devices I just referred the customer to the Google Play reviews and read them the first 5 reviews that all detail various bugs in the companion app was concerning to say the least
they’re using the Wi-fi radiation to cook your meals /s
Thats really, really dumb. I can understand maybe wanting the option of having your oven ping your phone when the timer goes off, but what could it possibly need internet access for in order to turn on the heating element and a fan for a set period of time??
they’re using the Wi-fi radiation to cook your meals
You’re thinking of microwaves.
The microwave region extends from 1,000 to 300,000 MHz (or 30 cm to 1 mm wavelength).
Source: https://www.britannica.com/science/electromagnetic-radiation/Microwaves
2.4Ghz, and 5Ghz are microwaves. Your typical microwave oven operates at about 2.45GHz due to resonance frequency of water. 2.4Ghz wifi is literally a typical microwave’s neighbor.
The difference is sheer amount of power and shielding. Not the type of radiation.
It may very well be. However, with how matter-of-factly you said it, some people might not think it’s a joke.
The water resonance thing is a myth, AFAIK. Strong absorption is actually a bad thing for a microwave oven, because then it would only heat the surface. The way they work is effectively bouncing the radiation through a barely-absorbing dielectric thousands of times, to get the effect really even.
The frequency is probably just an easy one to build magnetrons for.
The frequency is probably just an easy one to build magnetrons for.
The real reason is that that range is reserved for consumer devices so that it doesn’t interfere with actual ISM sanctioned communications as enforced by the FCC. We just also decided to put wifi in the same range cause they’re stingy releasing frequencies for public use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISM_radio_band#Frequency_allocations
But research was done on it cause of course it has been.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9120/39/1/006
This article deals with the generation of microwaves in the oven and includes the operation of the magnetrons, waveguides and standing waves in resonant cavities. It then considers the absorption of microwaves by foods, discussing the dielectric relaxation of water, penetration depths of electromagnetic waves in matter and, in considering the possible chemical changes during the microwave heating, multi-photon ionization or dissociation.
So you’re likely right that it’s not water resonance, but chassis cavity resonance. I can’t say that I’ve read deeply into it. And thinking about it I remember hearing something about some of the high level stuff that I just read in relation to this article. I probably ran into it in passing and just failed to recall it. But to be frank, I’m okay just calling it voodoo wizardry in of itself. But I have to understand wireless communications stuff for my profession, and it’s well known that it’s basically the same range as wifi 2.4ghz/bluetooth/other consumer standards that sit in the same crowded space.
There’s several ISM bands, though, pretty evenly spaced. The 13.5MHz one is used for passive RF chips like on credit cards, for example. They’re skinny, but for purposes where bandwidth doesn’t matter they can be. For other purposes bandwidth is scarce enough there has to be tight regulation.
Actually high water absorption happens in mm wave bands up in the hundreds of GHz (and THz too, if we could make a decent transmitter). Those fucked up riot control devices that make your skin feel on fire work based on that principle, because the heat will only go deep enough to hit pain receptors. Presumably, they stop working if you get a water mixture of any kind on the window, too.
That could work if you amped the waves up and trapped them in a confined, isolated space, no?
Maybe if you could amp up the wattage by a 1000 fold, sure
We’re not trying to be efficient, we are trying to be innovative!
Listen, the Behemoth probably wouldn’t even survive a shot from the wifiaser.
I for my part would rather like to use the microwave for Hi-Power WiFi (and you can hold a bag of popcorn into the datastream for nutrition too!)
I’m not sure if that’s possible, but if, not in this size. You would probably need an oven in the size of an entire truck maybe? It probably needs lot of energy for both, isolating and transforming/amping the signal. At that point the power going in to transform the signal could be used more efficiently otherwise to achieve the same goal without Wi-fi (as those small microwaves proves it).
I had a bakery/kiosk mix of shop, where I baked bread every morning for 13 years or so. There was a customer who questioned my oven, because she actually does not know if it really radiates. And how I can be this sure about it. Its a damn oven! Like one in every household, just a bit bigger. People are really this dumb. Besides, it wouldn’t be legal… oh man still upsets me. Not because of being accused for, but it upset me that people like her have the right to vote.
It doesn’t need it. That’s exactly the point.
Even though air frying doesn’t need Internet, the manufacturer is restricting that feature as a way to force you to set up the WiFi, so they can then slurp up all your data.
They’re literally holding the feature hostage, as motivation.
Is data on when I turn the oven on, and how long I run it for, even worthwhile? Or do you think it’s sniffing out other info from my network?
At the bare minimum, they’re going to use that data to figure out, on average, how much use it gets while under the warranty period. They’ll use that to further cut corners on the materials or other design considerations.
Is data on when I turn the oven on, and how long I run it for, even worthwhile?
They wouldn’t be holding you hostage for it if it wasn’t.
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
Nah. Corporations aren’t all knowing godlike beings. They are run by stupid people who make mistakes, just like us.
I’ve honestly come to the conclusion that some companies have management that actually believes its worth while to collect the most meaningless telemetry data, even after the ridiculous cost of bandwidth, database storage, hosting, etc. which all become more bonkers the larger the dataset. I’ve seen the cloud bills for actual useful data, I don’t want think about how much they must be paying AWS/Azure/GCP to host such worthless data. There’s no way its at all profitable to do so
That’s a big, honking “no” from me.
It’d be one thing if the “smart” features were there but only supplemented the basic functionality. It’s another entirely for those basic features to require an internet connection.
Out of curiosity, did the product description indicate the internet connection was required? I’m soon to be replacing some appliances and want to know what to look out for (besides all mentions of “wifi” or “smart”).
did the product description indicate the internet connection was required?
That’s an important question.
That said, we were recently appliance shopping and none of them said that it was required, but a couple of the negative reviews mentioned it.
We ended up choosing one of the very few that didn’t list wifi or an app as a feature. Hopefully there isn’t a stealth modem hidden in there somewhere. I guess we’ll find out next week when it’s delivered…
Thanks for the additional insight.
A coffee maker, I’d just return. But a dishwasher, refrigerator, oven, etc would be a huge hassle I’d want to avoid. I think my best bet, like you said, is to just look for one that has absolutely no mention of w-fi or “smart”.
So basically you paid money to store someone else’s oven. How long before we are installing vending machines in our kitchens instead of fridge and stove.
Straight out of Unauthorized Bread from Doctorow
Here’s a link to the story for those interested.
That’s an awesome idea. I’ll have my engineers build it into our next product line.
Stole it from my character in “Shadows of Doubt”
I wonder if they will eventually make a toilet bowl to connect to the Internet. Can’t flush until you connects to the Internet just because…
There are toilets that analyse your waste and send the results to your doctor. They ID you by scanning your anus since everyone’s anus is unique. Maybe one day the results can be sent to your kitchen and your fridge and airfryer can deny you access to unhealthy foods when your toilet tells them to.
And GenAI isn’t part of this. Not enough hype, no VC will fund it.
Jesús fucking christ some guy made the Adult Swim skit into a real product?
This wasn’t supposed to be real
More likely to be bidets.
AI will analyse video of dirty bums and generate the exact pressure and aim required to get them clean.
For that to work some people have to get too much pressure. Your clean ass will have been built on the live lost to excessive bidet pressure.
You’re supposed to use water and your hand to wipe.
Some people are so gross
I use 2-3 squares of toilet paper to wipe and dry. I don’t want to run the electrical wires to hook up a fancy bidet with a hot air blower
Use your hand like a savage?
No thanks
Lol I hope you are right. Or else I will have to make sure the Internet is working before going to washroom.
This is from 10yrs ago. Adult Swim joke skit.
And no one took their idea to the market yet. Shame on those large companies
Any smart feature must be optional.
I have smart lights at home, none is required to get light in the rooms, they are only used for mood lighting.
We have a lot of smart plugs that we use for plant timers. They are way more accurate than the old school notched wheel ones and we can set them to actual sunrise and sunset. They also can just be turned on and used like a switch if the internet goes out
If you didn’t immediately take this back and demand a refund you’re part of the reason enshittification is getting worse
Or American with fuck all in the way of consumer rights, one of the two
Yeah I would immediately return honestly, there are plenty other espresso makers that don’t require wifi
It’s an oven, old bean
This blender doesn’t actually make coffee. ☹️
Pfft maybe not the way you use it
99% of people couldn’t give less of a fuck. The only way we get out of this death spiral is with smart legislation.
Oh no. I don’t be needin’ no internet enabled legislation! Good, old fahsioned, airgapped legislation was good enough before, and it’s good enough today!
They didn’t buy it. They bought a house that came with it.
Whose gonna pay the refund?
We are renovating our house including (adding) all new appliances.
For context. Might be a bit less obvious to non native speakers, but I can understand how you might miss it
It’s so the AI can reminder you to buy chicken nuggets, if you plan on having them every night next week as well.
What does the dismiss button do? Or the back button.
Just based on the messages (that could be miss leading) sounds like some features will not work.
It’s so you can have the New Turkey Mode
Ugh I see CAFE in all caps and all I can think of corporate average fuel economy
