Our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too many times
twitter.comI have a semi-related anecdote about surprises from devices.
I use a CPAP. After a year, I went back to the doctor for a followup, and was asked to bring the SD card so they could review the data it collects. The device records the times and duration of use, various settings, and some metrics on breathing (apnea events, etc). I knew it recorded this stuff on an SD card.
I brought the card to the appointment, but the doctor said "I don't need that, I have your data here." It turns out that the CPAP contains a cellular modem, and it phones home and reports in real-time. I had no idea this thing was recording any data at all. It wasn't verbally disclosed to me by either the doctor or the equipment technicians. I imagine there's something buried in the fine print of the (long lost) documentation, possibly even in the fine print of some form I signed, but I was caught off guard and none too pleased.
I've since done some research on this and discussed it with my new doctor when it came time to get a new CPAP. The doctor acted surprised by me having a problem with it. She immediately jumped to the defense of the manufacturer and insurance company, claiming that they "needed" that data. She said that if I disabled it, insurance would refuse coverage.
This is insanely invasive, even with disclosure, and ought to be illegal without explicit, obvious verbal and written disclosure. The insurance defense is complete bullshit. For one, I paid cash for the CPAP because I had a high-deductible insurance plan and would have had to pay out-of-pocket anyway (and never claimed it even for the deductible offset).
I realize a CPAP isn't a fridge, and there's at least a case to be made for insurance enforcing compliance (at least when insurance claims are involved). I don't agree with the undisclosed enforcement mechanism, nor do I agree that treatment should be contingent on monitoring (it is for some other treatments, but not for most; no one is monitoring diet, exercise, drug use, cigarette consumption, or other risky behaviors, and threatening to withhold treatment for non-compliance).
Anyway, I've ranted enough, but there's a serious problem with the normalization of surveillance technology.
I agree that this is both invasive and a huge violation.
My wife had pretty severe sleep apnea in the third trimester of her pregnancy, two experiences that make me think this practice needs to be nuked from orbit.
1. We properly read the manual for the device and adjusted the pressure so that it didn't cause problems with burping/ingesting air during sleep. Tissue gets softer in women as they near birth and the body releases a whole host of different hormones - one that gets softer is the pharynx which keeps air out of the stomach as you breathe.
After three days - They had the gall to call and inform us that they had noted the change and reset our settings. We had been tracking sleep events on the device ourselves and they hadn't changed (still ~1 per hour while using, the same as the original pressure setting) so there was zero reason for them to do this.
2. After she gave birth, her sleep apnea essentially disappeared (at it's worst it was ~40 events an hour, 3 weeks after birth it was essentially just light snoring again). Did not matter at all - They insisted she use the machine still. Called repeatedly and harassed us.
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It took written revocation of their rights to treat us, and then the threat of a lawsuit before the calls stopped.
This needs to be illegal - NOW.
Who is "they" in this case? The manufacturer? Your insurance? The doctor? Startlingly bullshit behaviour from them regardless, but I'm curious.
Wow! Im speechless and a bit afraid of what’s to come from the IoT/medical/surveilance industry
This is really disturbing and it's disgusting how some companies out there act. We desperately need our leaders to address issues like this but they're all too busy pandering to and being lobbied by the very companies who are doing the abusing...
Let's generalize this statement - we desperately need leaders. Our current crew of so-called "leaders" are only interested in lining their pockets.
Careful. That sort of thing is endemic with leaders in general. A simple swap / "revert to mean" isn't going to help. It's like pressing the reset button on a smart TV where it just turns back on all the ads, lag, saturation, and edge detection filters that you spent hours figuring out how to disable when you first bought it.
That sounds suspicious. By any chance, were they making ongoing revenue from you using the device?
I am not justifying that kind of harassment. It's out of line, whether they're making money from you using it or not. But it's more understandable if they want you to keep using it so that they keep getting paid.
My best understanding is that if patients use insurance to pay for the device/visits, payment to the Drs office is predicated on the patient following the prescribed treatment.
In our case, we actually bought the cpap out of pocket. But because this is unusual (It cost us about 800 dollars) the doctor we went to pays a company that does treatment monitoring.
This company is paid based on the number of patients that are "in compliance" with their treatment plan, because this makes it easier to bill against insurance for the Drs office.
The monitoring company has a financial incentive to make sure patients are in compliance. The Drs office has a financial incentive to make sure patients are in compliance.
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Ironically - the thing that was actually needed was additional monitoring to tune pressure: it takes several readings over a few nights to manage pressure and keep bloating down and make sure it's not hard to breathe, while still ensuring that apnea events are in the acceptable range.
But additional monitoring is expensive - it requires clinician/doctor time. So there is little incentive to actually do this, in favor of forcing plan compliance.
Basically - My read of the situation is that the whole thing was rotten to the core. It had very little to do with patient comfort or health, and everything to do with maximizing insurance based revenue.
> maximizing insurance based revenue
That seems to be the state of US healthcare unfortunately. What used to be an ethical doctor-pactient relationship has turned into a doctor-insurance-patient monstrosity. Doctors actually have limited autonomy. They can't always do what's best for the patient, only what the insurance company agrees with.
The patient and doctor are free to negotiate a deal that avoids third parties such as the insurance company.
The patient chooses to hire an insurance company (better labeled a "managed care organization") to manage their care, because they do not know what they are buying, or how much it should cost.
>They can't always do what's best for the patient, only what the insurance company agrees with.
Because that is what the patient can afford.
Note that when the previous commenter states this:
> everything to do with maximizing insurance based revenue.
They are referring to requirements frequently set forth by the government or their employer. Some of them are called "star ratings", and the government goes to managed care organizations (who also sell health insurance), and task them with implementing standards of care and star ratings and a very complex system that determines who gets paid how much and who is incentivized to do what.
It is very naive and counterproductive to label insurers as the bad guy because "insurers maximizing revenue", because it lets go of the real issue, which is that
A) healthcare is hard, and measuring results even harder B) supply of healthcare is low relative to demand C) the limited supply of healthcare has to be allocated in some manner
It is a very complicated subject, that involves many players, incentives, opportunities for corruption, people with good intentions, and no easy answers.
> Because that is what the patient can afford.
The whole point of these things is to get them to pay for the costs of whatever the patient needs. These needs are determined by their doctor. If they're not paying, they have no reason to exist.
Not being able to help people because of lack of resources is one thing. These companies hire experts and pay them bonuses every time they find some loophole they can use to get out of their obligation.
>The whole point of these things is to get them to pay for the costs of whatever the patient needs. These needs are determined by their doctor. If they're not paying, they have no reason to exist.
Per the payer's terms, whether it be government or employer or insurance company, their needs are not necessarily solely determined by a single doctor. There are teams of doctors and pharmacists at CMS, state Medicaid organizations, and insurance companies that create protocol for various courses of treatment in order to prevent mistakes, waste, and fraud.
>These companies hire experts and pay them bonuses every time they find some loophole they can use to get out of their obligation.
Source? It seems odd that a company that earns more money if it spends more on healthcare would have an incentive to look for loopholes. Of course, they have an incentive to not spend frivolously to maintain competitive prices.
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/medical-loss-ratio-MLR/
But they are all using the same protocols that the government uses anyway (via CMS), since the government contracts with the same MCOs to administer taxpayer funded healthcare for 40%+ of Americans via Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare.
>> They can't always do what's best for the patient, only what the insurance company agrees with.
> Because that is what the patient can afford.
What is the point of paying for insurance, then? Nothing legitimizes for-profit insurance companies having any role or prerogative in health care, other than the status quo.
The point of insurance is to protect against unaffordable losses.
An insurance business only works if the losses are, by and large, randomly distributed and unexpected.
The more predictable the losses, the more an insurance offering resembles a payment plan where you are simply setting aside money with a third party to save for the eventual loss. This is because as losses become more probable, the insurance company has to increase premiums eventually to the point where the sum of the premiums is equal to the losses if the probability of loss is 100%.
This is the current state of health insurance in the US. It is not what would normally be called an insurance product. In fact, quite a few of the stipulations of ACA make health insurance premiums explicitly a tax from the young/healthy to the old/sick. Therefore, the industry term is to refer to health insurance companies as "managed care organizations" (MCOs), some of whom sell health "insurance".
In the US, when you pay health insurance premiums, if you are young/healthy, you are mostly paying for the treatment of the old/sick, and only minority paying to protect against the risk of you breaking your arm.
The profit that MCOs earn is actually more like an administration fee. The US could have implement an NHS style taxpayer funded healthcare system, but the politically viable option in 2010 was to outsource the administration of healthcare (pricing negotiations, healthcare rationing, auditing, etc) duties to MCOs, hence we have a system where the government (or employer) sets the rules, that abide by ACA rules, and then the MCOs execute them.
For example, nearly half of Americans' healthcare is paid by the government, but it is administered by MCOs. The MCOs are not setting the rules, just carrying out the stipulations of their contracts with the government:
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10830
Finally, to answer this question:
>What is the point of paying for insurance, then?
If you have future earning potential, or a little bit of wealth saved up, then health insurance in the US is valuable because your out of pocket maximum is capped.
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...
This is one of the policies that also helps make health insurance premiums more akin to a tax, along with, but not limited to, the following policies:
Age Rating Factors (adds cost to young people's premiums and lowers old people's premiums)
https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Programs-and-Initiatives/Health-In...
And insurance cannot be denied to someone for any reason, and has to only be based on age/location/tobacco use:
Apologies, I really didn't mean to make you rehearse for me how things work today. But I am curious about what your point of view is on whether the role for-profit health insurance providers play today is legitimate and salutory.
We have our current system largely as a result of regulatory capture, so no amount of pointing to the status quo and shrugging at its complexity legitimizes it. Again, I fail to see the legitimacy of a regime in which I must either pay a for-profit corporation for the privilege of preventing my doctor from doing what is in my own best interest or be wealthy enough to pay everything out of pocket.
>Again, I fail to see the legitimacy of a regime in which I must either pay a for-profit corporation for the privilege of preventing my doctor from doing what is in my own best interest or be wealthy enough to pay everything out of pocket.
The "legitimacy" lies in the fact that that is what was politically possible to accomplish. I put legitimacy in quotes because I assume you mean legitimate in the context of some type of moral or ideological sense, which I do not find terribly interesting in this case, where there are many real world constraints at play.
At the very root of it all is the fact that demand for healthcare greatly dwarfs supply of healthcare, starting from the simple fact that changing bedpans is a highly undesirable task and going all the way to the fact that medicinal knowledge is very difficult and costly to acquire. And so politics will be involved in how healthcare is distributed.
You can even go back to your statement of
>from doing what is in my own best interest
99% of people have no idea how to evaluate what is in their own best interest when it comes to medicine. Even doctors outside of their specialty probably do not know, and the tiny minority that do would acknowledge that at some point they are also guessing at the machinations of something complex like the body.
The for profit (and not for profit) labeling is mostly a distraction. Doctors do not treat people without a profit, programmers do not program without a profit, and a managed care organization does not sell its services without a profit.
These 2 big constraints shape how much and what kind of healthcare system we can afford:
-low supply of healthcare relative to demand - requiring a system of allocation of resources
-medicine being extremely difficult and possibility of doctor making mistake or being corrupted requiring second opinion - i.e. doctors and pharmacists employed by managed care organizations
Obviously, everyone would love if everyone could get all the healthcare they could ever want at anytime they want. But our parameters do not allow for that. Back to the original question of why a for profit managed care organization needs to be involved at all? It does not, except politically, that was the solution the leaders agreed upon. I suspect politicians also like MCOs in the middle because it keeps the heat on the MCOs and deflects from them.
We could have gone the NHS way with taxpayer funded healthcare, and the NHS handling all the administrative functions that managed care organizations do. But there was significant political opposition to that, probably because a lot of politically influential classes stood to lose in that proposition. So we have what we have.
Note that to counteract excessive profit incentives, the ACA implemented minimum medical loss ratios and a healthcare exchange so that companies could compete for customers and hence have an incentive to keep premiums lower (presuming the existence of sufficient competing MCOs). Why not just cut all that out and let government deal with it? Because that is what was possible.
https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law-protections/rate-...
> The "legitimacy" lies in the fact that that is what was politically possible to accomplish.
Regulatory capture[0] narrowed the possible to only solutions involving for-profit health insurance corporations. If you don't find a form of corruption to be of interest here, I'd be especially interested to know why.
I can see it being possible to have had some effect, but I do not see having been a major force. As far as I remember, Republicans did not want to expand access to healthcare at all if you did not already have it due to being very poor or old. Many Democrats wanted to expand taxpayer funded healthcare, but they did not have the numbers to get it passed.
Hence a compromise had to be reached. Getting taxpayer funded healthcare administered by the federal government simply was not an option, and I have not seen evidence that it was because the health insurance business was lobbying every Republican.
What I find more likely is that the more complex you make a system, the more you can engage in price discrimination via price obfuscation. A straight taxpayer funded healthcare option would have immediately impacted the bottom line, since government expenditures visibly go up, and would not allow a way to discriminate to those who receive the healthcare.
The compromise, however, allows for all sorts of games to be played. Such as allocating more and better healthcare to older people in comparison to poorer people. This is accomplished simply by having different reimbursement polices in Medicare (old people, strong voting power) and Medicaid (poor people, weak voting power). Medicaid is also further broken down into being administer 50 different ways by 50 different states.
Then you have employer self insured plans doing things the way they like, and employer subsidize plans doing things the way they like, and church plans that do not even provide healthcare. Basically, a way to expand healthcare in a way that still disproportionally allocates healthcare to richer and/or more politically influential people, but helping the others a little bit.
At least we got the metal levels and healthcare.gov out of ACA so there is some ability to compare insurance products.
And at the end of the day, even if you took away the cut that MCOs take for administering all this healthcare, it would mostly save around 5% to 10% (the profit margin plus savings from redundancies). MCOs currently pay out 75% to 80% of all premiums, and profit 5% or less, which leaves 15% to 20%, but the government would have to duplicate many of the functions of the MCO.
https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/issue-brief/data-note-...
Even in a taxpayer funded scenario, I would bet the doctor is going to have to get approval from the system to provide a treatment above a certain cost.
> Even in a taxpayer funded scenario, I would bet the doctor is going to have to get approval from the system to provide a treatment above a certain cost.
That happens due to scarce resources. Most often in developing countries. Where I live, there are places doctors work at that barely have water for them to wash their hands. Ordering an MRI is a big deal.
I refuse to believe this would ever be a problem for the US.
I do not know what to tell you other than "the US" expects many of its school teachers to procure classroom supplies themselves and it is a debate on whether or not to provide nutritious meals to kids in school without payment.
We have a special visa for doctors willing to live in undesirable areas of the US for many years. There is even a website for it:
https://data.hrsa.gov/tools/shortage-area
https://www.hhs.gov/guidance/document/hpsa-and-muap-shortage...
And now to meet demand for doctors without having to pay for more doctors, most states have allowed a Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant to basically practice as a doctor where a doctor just oversees their clerical work. So if you have lesser insurance coverage or live in an area with insufficient doctors, then you may see an NP or PA who is far less qualified than a doctor.
> In fact, quite a few of the stipulations of ACA make health insurance premiums explicitly a tax from the young/healthy to the old/sick.
Why not make it official then? Why not end this "insurance" thing and start funding hospitals with taxpayer money? The US is absolutely rich enough to do it.
Because sufficient number of legislators in the US congress would not vote for it back in 2010, hence this compromised situation.
Im sorry, but this is not true
>>>>>The patient and doctor are free to negotiate a deal that avoids third parties such as the insurance company.
Just like im free to negotiate a deal for some stock of TLSA directly from Musk, and not buy it via 401k.
On top of the transaction cost of getting elon musk in the same room with me, there's a huge difference: 401k purchases are pretax. Buying from Musk is not pretax.
Same is true for a "negotiated" transaction with a doctor, vs buying insurance from employer.
>>>>>Patient chooses insurance to manage their care, because they do not know what they are buying, or how much it should cost.
Wow. Those are some claims. Lets test them. I dont even know how to change the oil from my car. I barely know how it operates, and i couldn't repair one without years of training. Yet anyone with cash can and does buy these $30,000+ machines.
How can something worth $50 - $300 be hard to understand? Also, I have an extremely powerful heuristic to know if its worth it, or not. ( feeling better = return to doctor. Feeling worse = change doctor ). No one needs insurance to buy medicine. Medical insurance is just simply a membership racket, legalized by the govt.
History is not on your side. Medical insurance was an irrelevant, minuscule market until well after ww2. Why its sudden emergence? Government mandates (Medicare + federal insurance mandates to employers, for returning vets)
>>>>>It is very naive and counterproductive to label insurers as the bad guy because "insurers maximizing revenue"
Insurers are not the only bad guy. I'll give you that. But to say they are not a bad guy, is fraudulent or really naive on your part.
So, Who are all the bad guys? Follow the money. Which players are going in acquisition sprees? Hospitals, Insurers, large Pharma, and PBMs.
1) Hospital "nonprofits", such as childrens hopsitals that have the gall to do community fundraising from bake sales while paying CEOs 5M+, while the CEO of the red cross is in hot water for making 500k. [1].
2) Insurers that buy a medical practice in NJ, and then suddently cut off the competing practice from the insurance network, thus grating the newly acquired practice a local monopoly.[2]
Or for a more recent example, take the lobbying to scare Biden's admin & CMS to permanently suspend the Trump administration mandate to force hospitals and insurers to disclose real medical pricing in 2021. [3] It begs the question on why Covid19 bigcos were giving Biden real time updates on covid19 drug development, while trump -the actual president- was kept in the dark. I know the bad guys were sweating bullets on that one!
3) PBMs? Creating formularies to favor sweetheart rebates to them, obscuring real cost from patients and regulators, while making patients and employers foot the bill? or
4) Pharma, racking in cash from drug $20 copays without disclosing to customers that they offer the same pills for pennies if you "cash pay" (not use insurance).
Bad guys galore in healthcare. Insurers are most certainly in the podium.
[1] Marty Makary : Unnacountable book
[2] https://www.nj.com/healthfit/2020/02/an-insurance-titan-is-d...
[3]https://www.natlawreview.com/article/cms-backs-price-transpa...
Looks a lot like an octo telematics device spying your activity when you drive your own car.
Continued monitoring via device(s) is a medical CPT code (or modifier) and that 100% billable.
This is exactly what was going on
That's horrible. Was that the doctors calling or some sort of CPAP monitoring company?
What are your qualifications for fiddling with medical equipment?
Well - In this case my qualifications were following the manufacturers clear instructions on tuning pressure in the manual.
Firstly, the device was apparently made to be adjusted. A single set of settings is not comfortable for all users, and the manufacturer recognized this.
Secondly, that's the wrong question entirely. People have a right to decide their own medical treatment (or refuse it entirely), and that right must not be circumvented with legal or technical means.
Their device, their business. People don't need to justify what they do with their things.
"We properly read the manual"
Interesting, this was made super clear to me, and even included instructions to leave it plugged in for at least 40 minutes after waking up in the morning so it can communicate. Generally the insurance companies don't like paying for supplies for people who aren't actually using them, and need to see that you use it for an average of 4 hours per night or whatever.
> need to see that you use it for an average of 4 hours per night or whatever
That could just as easily be achieved by the method of locally recording on the SD card GP mentioned above without uploading who-knows-what about the device, your body, maybe even the surrounding area and other people to who-the-fuck-knows-where.
This doesn't really solve anything.
It can equally easily be recording exactly all of that data into some encrypted format on the SD card, which then gets uploaded to the manufacturer when opened with the proprietary application necessary to view the data.
The only difference is the choice over exactly when the data is uploaded, which in the US with its insurance system, results in no choice at all.
> need to see that you use it
You mean "want". I'm sure if we let them, they'd try to convince us they also "need" to monitor our diet and exercise (and whatever else would incidentally be recorded) to make sure we're following doctor's recommendations on that.
> no one is monitoring diet, exercise, drug use, cigarette consumption, or other risky behaviors, and threatening to withhold treatment for non-compliance
... yet.
But try to withhold payment if you get no treatment - deary me, no no no, that sends you to jail (really, in some places).
That you know of. All of this data is collected and made available if you are paying for things with a card. Hypothetically, insurance carriers could be seeing exactly what you buy, from where, and how often. If you have a gym membership (as shady as gyms are, it would not surprise me to learn they not only provide membership but attendance records as well), they can glean if you are active. blah blah, metadata is innocent.
Most people will gladly hand over this information to insurance companies in exchange for lower premiums.
Most people would ultimately be charged higher premiums if they did hand this data over.
Ins: In the last week, you've purchased 3 packages of Oreos, 2 cans of Crisco, 3lbs of 73% ground beef, no vegetables, lots of stuff with high sugar content, high salt content, and very little actual nutritional value. Therefore, we rank you in a high risk category (since you are clearly over 21 years old) based on the fact you also bought 1 carton of cigarettes and 2 cases of beer. Please enjoy your new higher insurance premium.
But the people for whom it would lower premiums would hand over the data, which results in the same thing. A health insurance company could offer me a $50 discount for a monthly blood test showing my sugar/cholesterol, and I would do it. Why should I pay for someone else’s cheese/alcohol/butter/sugar/bacon consumption.
I assume the reason it is not currently implemented yet is because the cost of monthly blood tests is too high relative to the cost reduction. I do get $200 if I do it annually though, so it seems like it is at least worth it on a yearly basis.
> A health insurance company could offer me a $50 discount for a monthly blood test showing my sugar/cholesterol, and I would do it. Why should I pay for someone else’s cheese/alcohol/butter/sugar/bacon consumption.
Because... You would be saving peanuts while someone else would have to pay much more (and sometimes drop their insurance completely) and that's a much worse result for society than you paying some 50 bucks extra, even more if you have a good salary and this practice would make someone poorer be forced to be uninsured.
This ultra-individualistic thinking really doesn't help a society. Might help you as an individual but good luck living without a society.
How do you know that I would save peanuts while someone else has to pay disproportionately more?
I already get a decent chunk of change ($700) just for annual preventative physical, flu shot, dental exam, blood test, and eye exam, which are all free.
There is a spectrum. ACA excluded tobacco users' risk from using tobacco, but left alcohol and sugar and saturated fats in? Why subsidize the latter 3 and not tobacco?
Should others in society subsidize drunk driving? Reckless driving? Should we keep bailing out people who continue to build and buy homes built in flood plains? It makes sense to spread costs around on unknown risks, but once a risk factor is known, I can see merit in discussing whether or not it should be subsidized.
Of course, there is a spectrum of "knowing" risk factors, and everyone is different, but some factors have a very high likelihood and some are not high enough to merit discriminating. However, that is for the actuaries to decide, because if they are wrong that will show up in the bottom line and then it will be corrected.
But things like alcohol and added sugar are basically proven to only cause harm. 1 alcoholic drink and 1 cupcake a month is not going to cause an insurance company to say let's raise this person's premium, but I do not see why an alcoholic and a person that eats donuts, starbucks, and ice cream everyday should be subsidized.
>This ultra-individualistic thinking really doesn't help a society.
On the contrary, subsidizing behavior that is known to causes problems to people's health and hence increases healthcare costs and decreases productivity does not help society. If anything, I would characterize unhealthy habits (which I am also guilty of) to be ultra-individualistic thinking.
>How do you know that I would save peanuts while someone else has to pay disproportionately more?
The point is, no insurance is just going to say you pay next to nothing because of... Instead, they will say you are in the lowest risk category, and here's your rate.
>Why subsidize the latter 3 and not tobacco?
Big Tobacco was sued and lost in court, so they are easy to "pick on". Nobody has sued Big Sugar. We've already seen what strict rules on alcohol does to the country, and doubtful anyone is ready to do that again.
>The point is, no insurance is just going to say you pay next to nothing because of... Instead, they will say you are in the lowest risk category, and here's your rate.
It was never claimed that the insurance would cost nothing. There are, of course, uncountable health risks that are still in play.
>Big Tobacco was sued and lost in court, so they are easy to "pick on". Nobody has sued Big Sugar.
I do not know what this has to do with anything, nor what "sued in court" means as specific lawsuits have specific claims. It is correct that tobacco was separated probably because, politically, it is difficult to argue that people should pay for other people's smoking. And that is my point, that the risks we choose to subsidize and not subsidize are based on politics.
Hence, alcohol and sugar get a pass because lots of voters like those and want the smaller portion of people who do not consume as much alcohol and sugar to pick up the tab for those who cannot. Smokers do not have the numbers to result in sufficient political power to force others to pick up that tab.
>We've already seen what strict rules on alcohol does to the country, and doubtful anyone is ready to do that again.
I never claimed society should stop anyone from consuming alcohol or sugar.
Insurance is just about the worst avenue to pursue your socialistic goals. Insurance is a numbers game, you will never be pursuasive with arguments about the greater good.
>But the people for whom it would lower premiums would hand over the data,
Progressive Auto has their Snapshot devices which provides them your driving habits. People signed up for it not realizing that their premiums could actually go up because they're a shitty driver even though they are "really good drivers". Once the word gets out that insurance premiums are going up because of this, there will be lots of screaming into the void on the internet.
I am not sure what the point is. If some people's premiums go up, then others' premiums would go down. Those people would choose to stick with the Snapshot device (assuming they felt the discount in premium was sufficient).
There's no guarantee that anyone's premiums would actually go down. Instead, you might find people that thought their premiums would go down actually go up because of this. After all, we're talking about insurance companies who are the poster child for fucking over their customers. Giving someone this much visibility surely means they could find something to justify a premium increase.
I would never voluntarily submit data to insurance like this. It's a suckers bet.
Total premiums would only go up if total losses go up. Simply disclosing more data would not cause total losses to go up.
Insurance pricing is very competitive and if one company raised premiums without experience by more losses, another would come in and offer insurance at a lower price.
yeah yet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJl9EEcsoE
Still on track after a decade
If your CPAP is like mine it has a 2G modem. Mine stopped working when those networks were shut down, so it's SD card only now. Forces the solution nicely.
"I brought the card to the appointment, but the doctor said "I don't need that, I have your data here." It turns out that the CPAP contains a cellular modem, and it phones home and reports in real-time. I had no idea this thing was recording any data at all. It wasn't verbally disclosed to me by either the doctor or the equipment technicians. I imagine there's something buried in the fine print of the (long lost) documentation, possibly even in the fine print of some form I signed, but I was caught off guard and none too pleased."
Really? My doctor and the dude who configured and walked me through the CPAP use both emphasized that it collected data on the SD card but that its cell modem would also report the data to the doctor and the supplier.
And keep in mind, a CPAP is kind of invasive by nature.
I was told about the cellular connection by my respiratory therapist. Mine even has an app that has achievements for proper and continuous usage. It also goes into pretty good detail about what you're screwing up if you aren't getting good mask seal. Even got a call from my therapist after two weeks following up with me about the data he received.
AFAIK this is what home medical equipment seems to be moving too. My dad's external pacemaker had a base station that phoned home over cellular as well.
If I wasn't wholly depended on the device I'd be very interested in poking around inside of it. I'd be very interested in learning what it's collecting, and maybe someone living in a area with laws allowing users to request their data should follow up with them.
I like data. I would like to review all the metrics my medical device collects. I'd welcome an app to make it even easier to view. That's all pro-consumer. That can be done by storing data on SD cards; via a USB connection; via built-in Bluetooth or WiFi. It's an easily-solved problem, and with modern wireless networking, something that the average consumer can navigate without much trouble. Even for the most tech-unsavvy patient, a removable SD card that you can bring to your doctor is a fine solution.
The problem starts when third parties are involved. Now I've got a CPAP with a cellular modem in it. Where is that data going? Who's processing it? Who are they sharing it with? What are the security precautions? Can they change settings without me knowing? At least the thing doesn't have a microphone on it too...
Even beyond medical privacy, I've now got a device that reports where I am and when I'm asleep, to who-knows-who. That's a wealth of data and I have no idea who it's being shared with. I realize that my cellphone is an even better surveillance device, but I trust my cellphone provider a lot more than I trust all the companies involved in CPAP manufacture and monitoring. Google and Apple are a whole lot better at security than some medical company that outsources data management.
>At least the thing doesn't have a microphone on it too...
How do you know? If they're doing tracking where tracking isn't necessary and don't disclose the full extent of tracking under some penalty for lying, then maybe the machine does have a microphone in it? How would you know without taking it apart? It's not like the doctor or device manufacturer are trustworthy on the privacy front.
In my case I actually did take it apart. The LCD screen smashed to the point of unusability and I attempted to repair it (alternative was to send it away for weeks for expensive repairs). While inside, I tried to disconnect the cellular modem, but it wouldn't function like that. I didn't actually look for a microphone (I'm not that paranoid), but I'm reasonably confident there isn't one.
> It's not like the doctor [...] are trustworthy on the privacy front.
That perception worries me. Medical information is confidential, it's the only reason doctors are trusted with such data. If this fundamental principle is corrupted, then nobody in healthcare can be trusted.
This entire subthread is predicated on not trusting the physician/clinician/device manufacturer. If those people really can't be trusted, then I'd suggest that the posters simply never go to the doctor.
I've been involved in medical device development for close to two decades. It's like pulling teeth to get data collected and sent off remotely because it raises the device manufacturing cost, increases device development cost to add those features (and yeah, security is being taken a lot more seriously these days), raises operational cost because you either need your own server farm or to pay for a HIPAA-compliant online database, there's more work to be done in developing a frontend for the clinicians to view and use the data, etc.
In short, no one is adding cell data upload to a device on a whim. I remember a device I worked on a year ago that decided to avoid this although it was expected that many of the users would be in remote areasor had mobility problems. Instead the customer decided to store data on an SD card (need to record results from the patient so their therapy could be adjusted as needed) and have the clinician download it from the device (they made weekly visits) using a tablet that would then email it directly to the physican who prescribed the device.
I understand that we're all losing trust, but this is getting ridiculous.
You should be worried, PrivateButts, about the inevitability of smart toilets.
> I'd be very interested in learning what it's collecting, and maybe someone living in a area with laws allowing users to request their data should follow up with them.
Depending on the model, OSCAR might support your machine: https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/ — it's been on HN before I believe.
> it's been on HN before
She said that if I disabled it, insurance would refuse coverage.
This is true.
That's how i found out that one of my medical devices has s cellular modem: I got a letter from the DME company saying that if i didn't use it more hours, my insurance would refuse to cover it and I'd have to pay the balance.
Where i lived, i had terrible cellular service, so i had to get an exemption from the insurance company and make sure to bring the SD card to my doctor quarterly to ensure the insurance company would continue to pay for it.
Have you looked at the data on the SD card? Can it be manipulated in any way as to show that it is being used even if not?
I've looked at it. It's not human-friendly, but it's not secured in any way. It would be trivial for anyone with basic programming chops to modify it.
Yes. There are programs that will open the files and display the data. Some even make charts. But it was all pretty boring stuff.
It's a shame how much great technology will go to waste because businesses work against our best interests and pull shit like this.
Yeah. It's infuriating. It's like we can't trust them not to fuck us over. The technology is good for us but at some point someone somewhere came along and corrupted it with all these "features" that exist solely to serve their business interests.
> It turns out that the CPAP contains a cellular modem, and it phones home and reports in real-time. I had no idea this thing was recording any data at all. It wasn't verbally disclosed to me by either the doctor or the equipment technicians. I imagine there's something buried in the fine print of the (long lost) documentation, possibly even in the fine print of some form I signed, but I was caught off guard and none too pleased.
I should think that perhaps the legal requirements should be:
1. Its capability of wireless communcation, and a brief description of what it does, and the power and frequency it uses, should be clearly marked on the package.
2. The included documentation should need to describe the details of the wireless communication, including whatever is mentioned on the package.
3. There should be required it can be disabled without disabling its other functions, and this feature must be documented.
The other things that you mention too, should be applicable. I agree with you that "I don't agree with the undisclosed enforcement mechanism, nor do I agree that treatment should be contingent on monitoring" and that "This is insanely invasive, even with disclosure, and ought to be illegal without explicit, obvious verbal and written disclosure".
The medical devices should not be doing such surveillance (and medical devices should ideally not require a computer, either).
> medical devices should ideally not require a computer,
I can accept that you may have no knowledge of the ridiculous complexity of modern medical devices, but if you're a software developer I would expect that you realize there are computers in everything
The device isn't "surveilling" you. It's reporting therapy-relevant, and probably device performance, information that is actually important both to the clinic and the device manufacturer. The "low-tech" alternative would be you going into the physician's office once a week for a checkup. I'm pretty sure most people would prefer that it upload the data.
> I can accept that you may have no knowledge of the ridiculous complexity of modern medical devices
That is correct, I don't know. However, they are made more complicated and then might fail (e.g. if the power runs out).
> if you're a software developer I would expect that you realize there are computers in everything
Many things do these days, but I think that computers should not be needed in everything, even some that do.
> The "low-tech" alternative would be you going into the physician's office once a week for a checkup. I'm pretty sure most people would prefer that it upload the data.
Yes, although it shouldn't be required, in case a few people do prefer an alternative (that isn't the only one, although it is a possibility).
I’m able to turn off the cell connection on my CPAP with airplane mode. I have a ResMed AirSense 10 that I got 4+ years ago and in the “MyOptions” section it has an “Airplane Mode” menu item which can be set to “On” to turn off the cellular connection.
I agree with all that you said about it reporting home and compliance.
I also found it surprising how strict it was to be compliant. I needed a 2 or 3 month uninterrupted streak of 4 hour+ usage per night.
I had to email the data to my insurance since I had it on airplane mode.
Yeah, I later learned about the airplane mode option. I would have used that, but at some point the screen on my CPAP (also a ResMed AirSense 10) smashed, so I was unable to engage airplane mode. I was able to get a copy of the ResScan software (intended for clinicians), which allowed me to adjust the pressure and other clinical settings, so I continued to use it (although it was incredibly inconvenient as it involved removing the SD card and using my PC). That's when I tried taking the machine apart and physically disconnecting the modem, but it wouldn't operate that way (and with no screen, I couldn't see if there was some simple dialog I had to dismiss to get it to work with no modem).
Really, though, I don't think any of this should apply, as I paid cash out of pocket for both the doctor visits and the CPAP machine itself. No one had any legitimate claim to the data.
> no one is monitoring diet, exercise, drug use, cigarette consumption, or other risky behaviors, and threatening to withhold treatment for non-compliance).
While an employer-sponsored health plan does not “withhold treatment” per se, they definitely draw a line around what they’ll pay for. Part of the physician’s (or more typically the hospital’s or physician group’s) reimbursement is contingent on whether the patient adheres to the treatment regimen [1] which incentivizes things like automated tracking.
Even though you have a high-deductible plan, you’re still involving your health insurance provider in the transaction. It’s not quite the same as a “cash for service” relationship.
> Even though you have a high-deductible plan, you’re still involving your health insurance provider in the transaction
Depends. If you are planning to use that amount as part of your deductible, then insurance has a stake in it. If you don't ping your insurance at all, then insurance should have zero say over it at all.
Welcome to realizing Insurance companies are soft control mechanisms and one of the worst in terms of justifying rampant data aggregation to keep the actuaries busy.
Also welcome to privacy violation via undisclosed industry collaboration. You'll find the same pattern pops up just about everywhere.
Do people have the right to lower their own insurance premiums in exchange for voluntarily giving up their data?
Do people have the right through collective indirection to implement blatantly discriminatory control mechanisms that obfuscate the actual costs of things? (I'd argue not.)
Do people have the right to sell themselves into slavery? (Not in the United States)
There's just some transactions that aren't bueno, because of the higher order effects they cause.
I see normalizing surveillance as a case of that. I'm not even sure that most on aggregate even end up realizing premium savings since the data collected just filters into the new base truth for everyone. The more info an insurer has, the more lopsided the state of affairs for everyone else.
I'm all for freedom when you aren't just effectively creating soft, coercive, control mechanisms.
>Do people have the right through collective indirection to implement blatantly discriminatory control mechanisms that obfuscate the actual costs of things? (I'd argue not.)
More accurately distributing cost of risks to those engaging in the risky behavior seems like it would be the opposite of obfuscating costs. Tobacco users pay more, why shouldn’t alcohol users? Or sugar users?
I discovered the cellular modem in my cpap shortly after I got it and promptly took it out. If you're interested in monitoring your own sleep data check out sleepyhead https://sleepyhead.jedimark.net/. It's a great app, but unfortunately it looks like the developer is no longer working on the project.
I was made aware of this feature on my CPAP machine, though it was only mentioned in passing. I'm not super crazy about sending the data to the manufacturer, but I do very much like having it available to my sleep therapist.
As an example: recently, I started snoring more and more, though I didn't realize the extent of it until my wife told me that she couldn't sleep at all the night before. Concerned, I called my sleep therapist, and they brought up my file, looked at the data, and made an adjustment to the settings (I presume the pressure) right there while I was on the phone. The next night, my wife and I both slept great.
That said, I wasn't given the explicit choice to opt in or to opt out, and while I would have chosen to opt in, I'd wager there are a ton of people out there just like you who would be very upset to know that their sleep patterns are being sent to another company (or anywhere, really) without their consent.
Insurance is a racket everywhere apparently.
It's supposed to be a capital allocation optimizer and risk mitigator. Unfortunately, without hard limits on things, it degenerates to financial control mechanism formost people.
I don't see why most common types of insurance aren't offered by governments. The government has the largest pool of cash and it's not like insurance has much room for innovation. Most types of innovation in insurance is about figuring out ways to not pay out insurance claims. Ie 'innovation' by an insurance company means a worse product for the customers.
I was very fortunate to be warned about these CPAP woes and hassles by a friend who went through it before I did. His advice? If you think you might have sleep apnea, do NOT get diagnosed, just buy a CPAP machine second hand and see if it helps you feel better.
I did, and the CPAP helped a lot. Eventually I figured out that simply sleeping reclined (on a triagle pillow) actually gave me 90% of the benefits with 0% of the hassle of the mask though.
It's valuable to have a doctor who can help you diagnose the problem and get the machine set correctly; technicians who can help with mask fitting and explain proper usage and maintenance; and followups to monitor effects. Some people might be able to manage those things on their own, and I certainly feel that people who already saw a doctor and own a CPAP should be able to manage their care if nothing changes.
I don't think it's good advice to self-diagnose, buy used equipment, and hope you get it right. CPAP quality degrades over time, for one. Some people might benefit from a CPAP, but really need a more complex and expensive machine like a BiPAP. Some people have central sleep apnea rather than obstructive sleep apnea. Some people would be better off with surgery or implanted devices. These are not things one should be figuring out on one's own.
If none of that is convincing, in the US it's illegal to sell a CPAP to someone without a prescription. I honestly don't care about that part, and if I knew how to order a new CPAP directly (perhaps from Canada or something), I would personally do it and skip the doctors entirely, but I don't think it's good advice, especially before you're properly diagnosed.
> If none of that is convincing, in the US it's illegal to sell a CPAP to someone without a prescription.
Like that means anything. I've bought a DSX900 ASV machine from the US, no problem. I've been self-treating UARS for 4 years now. None of the "sleep doctors" I've talked to even understand the thing, I had to do everything myself.
I don't know anything about the laws here - but isn't this medical data? Doesn't HIPAA make this sort of stuff illegal?
HIPAA enables and restricts data collection, storage, and sharing but in general you consented to it.
A current problem with HIPAA is that the consent forms do not clearly enough describe what is being agreed to such that someone can’t make an informed decision and there really isn’t an option to say “no” to things and still receive care without going somewhere else.
HIPAA also does not require consent to sharing “deidentified” data which has been shown many times to be relatively easy to unmask to discover who the records belong to.
Basically it needs updates from technical and privacy focused people but that’s a hard sell when people don’t really know how things work.
Consent in a medical context honestly means nothing to me anymore. Do you know how many times I've been asked to sign an electronic pad without seeing what I'm signing, asked for the form beforehand, and be told they can't give it to me until I sign it? It's absurd. They just collect an image of your signature and apply it to whatever they want. They will eventually cave if you make a big enough fuss, but unless you're Richard Stallman, no one is going to keep doing that every time.
edit: My hack in this case is now to legibly write "Can't see form" as my signature. No one has called me on it yet but I'm dying for the next disputed bill.
HIPAA doesn't prohibit the collection and sharing of health data. It provides a framework for how such activities must be performed, describes standards and practices for data security, limits whom the data can be shared with, and, yes, requires certain disclosures. But there's no HIPAA violation if your doctor, medical equipment provider/manufacturer, and insurance company share data within those parameters.
I'm sure I signed something authorizing it, in the giant stack of paperwork I filled out along the way, but who reads every word of that nonsense? It's practically designed to overwhelm the patient. I read a lot more of those forms than anyone else I know, but I still have to skim a lot and they're always presented in a high-anxiety environment. No one can or should be expected to pay that much attention to legalese in a doctor's office.
Conversely, I have a new F&P CPAP machine and it was clear this machine has a built sim card and an app can be used to download the data via bluetoothfrom is explained in the instructions. My Sleep Doctor even told me. I don't have to worry about insurance compliance (mine is through the NHS, UK).
Makes me wonder what would happen if you just put it in a faraday cage and blamed poor cell coverage at your home.
Aren't CPAP usage patterns supposed to be medical information? That's frightening.
Imagine a future employer bringing up how many times you snored last night.
Imagine your car refusing to start because you didn't get your required CPAP sleep last night.
That is unacceptable response from your doctor. I feel like I'd be looking for a new doctor after that.
I have a CPAP machine. Your doctor is telling the truth. If insurance is involved (even if it's a high-deductible plan and you haven't hit the deductible), they typically require the data verifying usage.
You're directing blame at the doctor, but it's the insurance company making the rules, not the doctor.
I didn't direct any blame at anyone, although I do think the equipment provider was negligent in not explicitly making me aware of the modem. And there was no insurance involvement. I paid cash for the doctor and I paid cash for the CPAP. I could have reported it to my insurer so that it would have come off my deductible, but I didn't (mostly because I'm lazy, but also in large part because I only have insurance for something like cancer that would bankrupt me). I told my new doctor I didn't want a modem in the replacement CPAP and told her why, and was surprised that she really didn't seem to get it.
In that case, depending on your hardware, you might be able to simply disable wireless transmission (on my CPAP machine, this is called "Airplane Mode").
Doesn't matter. It's not OK for the doctor to do this, and it's not OK for the insurance company either.
In this case I'm on the fence.
Say you are not breathing, and the machine is working, but not up to manufacture's specs. They have the data. They should inform you of a malfunctioning machine? Since they have the data, it's incumbent on them to inform you of the state of the malfunctioning cpac machine?
If they don't get back informing you of a faulty machine, a lawyer could subpoena those cell phone records/data? And maybe have a case?
You can make this argument about literally anything. Should your tires contain GPS trackers and share that info with their manufacturer on the off chance that you sped, drove on the wrong surface, or there was a manufacturing defect that could possibly lead to an accident?
This shit needs to stop. It's getting out of hand fast. In just a few years, literally every powered device we own will be logging video, sound, location, and network traffic in real time continuously. What's to stop equifax from leveraging all this new info for credit reports? Insurance companies for premiums? Lawyers for civil defense? Class action lawsuits? Police? Divorce proceedings?
We are not heading in a good direction here. A police state is bad in and of itself, but swapping the police with a "free and unregulated market" is infinitely worse.
I mostly agree with you, but at the same time, we are far from a "free and unregulated market." There are mountains of regulations to comply with, and more than one startup idea I've had to disrupt this type of shit never got off the ground because I would have had to spend months of my time just reading rules or hiring extremely expensive consultants.
I think the problem is not necessarily lack of regulation (although there are consumer protection/privacy rules that we badly need), it's that the big companies are the ones writing the regulation and conveniently it makes it really hard for anyone to disrupt or challenge them.
Are we still talking about tracking and sharing of user data? Because from I can tell, outside of very specific pii situations, it is largely unregulated today.
Ah fair point, I seem to have broadened the scope in my mind. Just tracking and sharing of user data in general, so long as you aren't trying to do business with entities that are regulated, is pretty wide open in most states in the US.
They don't do any of those things (at least not for me; there's a sibling reply where someone was harassed for non-compliance). If I don't use the device, no one contacts me. I lost power a few times and couldn't use it; I pulled a couple all-nighters over the years; I left it behind on a weekend trip once; I had a stretch of sleeping problems where I didn't sleep more than a couple hours a night for a week; I adjusted the device outside the doctor's parameters; I had innumerable problems with poor mask fit/leaks. All these metrics were broadcast by the CPAP, and all would have been a concern of my doctor, but it's got nothing to do with patient health. This is all about gathering evidence to deny future care, whether it be new equipment or coverage for more extreme situations related to non-compliance.
That would depend on your agreement with the device manufacturer, assuming you had one.
The products I worked on that had remote monitoring built-in were purchased directly by hospitals or medical labs and in those cases we did have contracts that specified what we would do with the data. IIRC, one of the agreements was that if we (the manufacturer) noted that the device was malfunctioning, we would alert them.
Without an agreement to do something with the data, you'd have a hard time making a case. Especially since without an agreement, they wouldn't be able to access your identifying information.
It should also have an arm on the door to slap your hand when you open it for the 41st time in a day. I mean, that's insane, you deserve a slap.
Btw, this reminds me a bit of my parent's Renault that would tell me every damn time I started it to follow traffic regulations. I wish I could slap that car and it would feel it.
And then there's my father-in-law's Mazda, which has a GPS system that sometimes finds him 200 km off the mark, and it keeps talking nonsense. You can't silence it because the touch screen doesn't work while driving. Yeah you can guess how that makes one feel.. like slapping it.
Oh boy, I also have an Amazfit smart watch, imagine mountainbiking at high speed, you quickly want to see how many KMs you still have to go. You look at the screen and it says: "PAI 50 Good Job!" (full screen! Despite talking the time to make the display show you only relevant things in settings) and you need your f-king other hand (while biking) to dismiss the notification. Yup, slapping and cursing it is.
Do people even use the stuff they make themselves?
It seems most "UX" tends to be less about the user and more about exposing the product.
One example is the pause screens in Netflix and other streaming services. I sometimes want to pause the screen to read a letter or examine easter eggs left by the movie producers. I can't do that, as Netflix has a semi-transparent overlay with lots of unnecessary graphics and voting buttons.
Half the screen is also covered with the logo and/or poster from the movie I'm currently watching... as if I need to know?
They could at least provide an option to remove the graphic if you actually want to look at the paused movie.
Absolutely! The top issue with model universally terrible UX is precisely trying to bring attention to itself rather than simply being the most efficient means to an end: interacting with the software.
Right on! That kind of terrible UX technology whose primary purpose is to draw attention to itself instead of receding into the background is the opposite of Calm Technology / Ubiquitous Computing, as described by Mark Weiser at Xerox PARC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser#Ubiquitous_computi...
Ubiquitous computing and calm technology
Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives.
— Mark Weiser
During one of his talks, Weiser outlined a set of principles describing ubiquitous computing:
- The purpose of a computer is to help you do something else.
- The best computer is a quiet, invisible servant.
- The more you can do by intuition the smarter you are; the computer should extend your unconscious.
- Technology should create calm.
In Designing Calm Technology, Weiser and John Seely Brown describe calm technology as "that which informs but doesn't demand our focus or attention."
1996 Computer Science Challenges for the Next 10 Years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jwLWosmmjE
Designing Calm Technology:
https://www.karlstechnology.com/blog/designing-calm-technolo...
If you just tap anywhere without pressing the play button all of that UI goes away and you get back to the pure video, just paused...
It comes back after a few seconds. For this to work, you have to constantly be moving your mouse around.
Prime on the other hand lets you pause, read and even know about the person in frame and trivia about the movie or tv series being played. They don't have much content but they are way better than Netflix in Ux.
I was going to say the same about Prime, but it's not perfect either.
Their Windows app is terrible. It takes forever to start for some reason. Sometimes, after a few minutes, I just give up and launch the browser. Sometimes if I try to get back 10 seconds it will just freeze playback. I can sometimes get it back by trying to fast-forward around. Others I have to stop watching and start again.
This never happens on the web app.
Ah, I essentially live in Netflix, so I was pretty sure you are wrong, but I'm seeing the issue: "mouse"... you are on a computer? No clue how that works ;P. I use their app (on AppleTV and iOS).
Can’t tap on a console connected to a living room TV.
I have Netflix on my PS3 and when you pause you only get the noisy overlay after idling for 10 seconds or so. I press UP on the DPAD and it goes away, as UP does nothing if your focus is on the pause/play button. You can do it with SELECT too, it's also a dead key.
I am using a box (Android TV) and was finally able to remove the overlay by pressing the "back" button on my remote. Not exactly obvious, and not what I would call a good User eXperience.
Ah, I get the same urge using Google Maps on my phone. Want to reach through the screen and slap the developers. So slow, so many key presses. So often it changes something up so I have to re-learn. So often it makes wild guesses that are completely off what I'm actually trying to achieve. Have to press back button a hundred times to get out of whatever it's showing me, whops one too many, app is now closed, have to open up and get back to where I wanted. It's the most frustrating app experience I have on a daily basis.
I use Google Maps via Android Auto. Sometimes I like to take a more scenic route, so I'll say:
'OK Google, avoid motorways'
And it will route me past anything officially called a motorway, sadly not including the A roads that are very similar.
Eventually I might decide I want to proceed more quickly, so I'll say:
'OK Google, use motorways'
At which point it will perform a Google search and read out the first result, a page from the government telling me how to use a motorway.
doot dee doot, it's labor day weekend, and I'm using Apple maps to navigate instead of Google (it's easier to activate via voice). The low-fuel light turns on while cruising along an unfamiliar stretch of highway, just as I'm finishing an interchange as I leave the dense city and head through its suburbia. I'm not quite sure of whether to expect service plazas, or just-off-exit-ramp gas stations, or what. I've seen gas stations, but not the nice blue signs saying "gas, exit N", and not sure if that'll change soon. And I'd prefer to get gas quickly, then back on the highway, instead of exploring for it.
Can technology help me? I haven't tried it in a while... What can the vaunted Voice Assistant do for me today?
"Hey siri, I need gas!"
I've found these results. The first of these is BJ's Gas, one point two miles west. Is this the one you wanted?
. o O ( I'm traveling east, so maybe not?? )
"No!"
Okay. Another option is Citgo, at <address>... Is this the one you want?
"Yes!" . o O ( sure why not )
Would you like to call, or get directions?
...
<pulls off a random exit ramp like I should have to begin with>
Postscript: the correct answer would have been, There's a service plaza ahead in 14 miles. Is that soon enough?
“Find gas stations along the route and show me a list sorted by distance from my expected route” is a function I had in a stock nav system in 2007. I think it was two button presses away. We’ve definitely regressed.
Waze has been pretty good at finding gas stations along my route and organizing them by distance from me and distance from my route. Like it would show a gas station 2 miles off the highway from the next exit but it will also list out a gas station that is 15 miles away right off the highway. Either option is up to you based on how much time you want to waste versus how soon you need gas.
Waze is also great at flickering in your periphery when you come to a stop.
Waze used to be good, like 11 years ago.
The advertising is larger and there's more per stop, but I mostly never notice since I turn the screen off. Some day I suppose they'll begin speaking.
> Have to press back button a hundred times to get out of whatever it's showing me, whops one too many, app is now closed, have to open up and get back to where I wanted.
This happens every time, and every time I wish there'd be a "back to start" action. It's probably faster to just kill the app and restart than navigate all the way back while being careful not to go back once too often.
Not to mention, when we click the start button for navigation why the heck do they not increase the speaker volume, handle brightness, rotate the screen automatically? There could even be a setting for it. Sometimes I feel like a robot repeating the same useless clicks all over again every time I navigate.
Organic Maps isn't as full featured, but so far, works well for directions here.
Also works 100% offline, after downloading maps.
Thanks, that looks like a very useful app.
For others who might be interested, it can be found here: https://organicmaps.app
"Oh, you're following my navigation directions? I'm going to re-route you with no notice."
Some cars in arab countries have a feature where the "travel prayer" is recited via the speakers upon starting the car. It takes about one minute [1]. Fortunately our company car hat a button to turn the feature off. Of course we always turned it back on to annoy the next (non-muslim western) car user. Saudi airlines also plays the prayer (or used to?), however by someone with a really deep voice and with cave-like reverb, which made is sound quite unlike any other airplane announcement. [2]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGCPtF6XVIY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_TVsxFChrk
That is very funny but speaking in practical terms, and not about UX, how does a feature like this work in practice? Does Allah respond to prayers emitted by electronics? Or is the idea that the human is supposed to recite the prayer along with the recording?
The idea is to use some peoples receptivity to religion for shifting their awareness to the risks of traveling. It can also help to center thoughts, calm down, and increase mindfulness while steering the motorized vehicle, therefore decreasing traffic accidents. (I wonder whether there are studies on if this actually helps.)
Ah, that's interesting. Speaking from personal experience (and as an atheist, who happened to grow up in a religious household), I think many atheists are too quick to dismiss the value of rituals/prayers/meditations. As you pointed out, there can be value even if the deity to whom the prayer is offered doesn't exist or isn't listening.
For example, growing up my family began and ended each meal with a prayer of, essentially, thanksgiving, with a few other requests thrown in ("keep us safe", etc.) This delimited the meal time: we were there for the duration, we all started eating together and there was no leaving before the meal had ended. I don't remember the prayer any more but I do have fond memories of family dinners, the unity and connection we all experienced during that time and the spirited conversations they featured. Prayers of thanksgiving also center the experience of eating in one of gratitude.
There's deeply embedded programming in our brains related to sharing a meal with others which strengthens social bonds. Rituals like this very much play into that. As do lunch with colleagues or dinner dates.
The idea is to keep people in line within the tribe by forcing rituals.
Well, there's precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_wheel
I have the same odd question about listening to contemporary Christian radio stations - does one become holier when the music is playing instead of the top 40 pop station?
I expect it makes people happier to listen to music they enjoy. So the same as someone listening to classical stations, or country, or whatever.
Maybe people enjoy hearing prayer radios. I spent time in Nepal and people would listen to recorded meditations and chants. But I didn’t hear them on the radio, it was recorded on phones and iPods and stuff.
For some, maybe just holier-than-thou - but then, so too can highbrow art.
That's quite an ominous way to have the prayer recited, like the audio for Gandalf reciting the ring inscription in black speech. I would probably feel unsettled rather than calmed hearing that before a flight.
I assume maybe if it's your language/culture/religion you'd find it soothing rather than ominous?
It's not about the language/religion, it's about the audio editing. I could see reverb/delay being a part of Muslim culture, but it can definitely be jarring if it's not part of the listener's culture
They definitely don't, the entire consumer electronics is a huge practical joke on its users. It's not only smart devices - even the induction stove with the integrated touch buttons beeping loudly at you and shutting off every time you breathe around them. And I could go on...
Oh man, I absolutely hate the touch buttons on my stove. A simple action like turning the heat up or down takes 2 actions and five minutes – you have to touch for a duration before the action registers.
And yet I still manage to accidentally press them when I don’t mean to. The other day I wished out loud that my stove had a button to turn on the buttons so the buttons would work when I want and not work when I don’t.
Maybe the next gen model will have a Button Button^TM and we will have reached peak absurdity.
> Maybe the next gen model will have a Button Button^TM
Please, make it a switch. A touch button will never work there.
Ha! In an older flat I had a "lock" button on the stove. Touch button, of course. And for some reason, it would always register an inadvertent touch.
Of course, once locked, the buttons wouldn't work, but the lock light wasn't obvious enough.
Not to mention it won't register at all if your hands are wet.
Good thing that never happens in the kitchen...
We bought an Instant Pot-brand air fryer. I love the thing entirely except for the buttons. They are not real buttons, just some sort of touch sensor but they sometimes just cannot detect a finger. You'd think that maybe the surface was dirty but it works just as bad when it's just been cleaned off and hands are washed. I beginning to think that the actual sensors are not aligned perfectly with the labels or that they are set to ignore someone pressing with their whole finger instead of the just the tip.
I have this too. I've had to unplug it entirely and plug it back in to make it work sometimes. Hilarious that "did you try restarting it?" now applies to air fryers.
FWIW most of the touch issues I have with mine are due to moisture. If my hands are wet at all or there's any moisture on the panel (sometimes happens with cooking) then I have to wipe it down with a dry paper towel.
One other fun thing I discovered - if you push the light button on and off again repeatedly it eventually stops letting you do it. I didn't count the number of times it took, maybe 20-30 times. I was clearly really bored waiting for my food to finish
> Btw, this reminds me a bit of my parent's Renault that would tell me every damn time I started it to follow traffic regulations.
There are people who would benefit from this reminder. They, however, tend to not drive Renaults, but Audis and BMWs.
> Do people even use the stuff they make themselves?
Last I’ve heard they were using A/B tests to choose between crazy features and batshit insane features to maximize engagement and brand awareness. So, I’m afraid the answer is no.
> There are people who would benefit from this reminder. They, however, tend to not drive Renaults, but Audis and BMWs.
I've had this game with my wife while driving somewhere for the last 10 years.
I see someone doing a dangerous pass, driving (way) too fast, cutting someone off too quickly, tailgating, etc, etc, etc, and before I can tell the brand/model, I tell my wife "It's one of those again" (and I would also include Mercedes here), and in 95% of cases I'm right.
I'm not saying every driver of those brands are guilty of it, but the guilty drivers are swallowed by the brand owner group in the Venn diagram. At least locally in my experience. It's fascinating.
I think that at least partially is because those cars drive so well. It just doesn’t feel like you’re going fast in them.
As an extreme example, anybody who has ever been in a Citroen 2CV knows that you wouldn’t do any of those [1] because of a) the noise and b) the fear.
[1] with the exception of tailgating of trucks. That’s [2] the only way to relatively comfortably do close to 100 km/hour in these.
[2] https://hubnut.org/2013/09/08/2cv-enjoy-the-silence/ also helps.
Drove today in a 20 kph zone. Was just dragging behind a BMW that was going nicely within the speed limit. It was so uncharacteristic that I thought: man, it won't end well. Such things don't just happen. He's gonna do something.
A moment later the BMW turned left without blinking. Well. At least I knew I wasn't dreaming it. The world was back to how I knew it.
I witnessed a similar thing today, I was the first car in front of a black BMW for over 20 kilometers on twisty country roads. There was a young man behind the wheel and he gave me lots of space when I was turning onto the road on a busy intersection, was keeping his distance, never looked down at his phone AFAIK, and it felt really nice not to be expecting to be hit from behind at any moment.
In case anybody has doubts about this:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22141...
My GF does a similar thing, but it's spotting woman drivers from behind.
My belief is that it's usually the girl and women's boyfriends and husbands who are to blame, because they don't let them drive very often or even ridicule them from the passenger seat when they do, but the end result is quite pronounced where I live (Czech Republic).
Dunno. Here in Poland women are less reckless (more reckful? Angličtina je opravdu divná). I haven't spotted a marked difference.
It's more about drivers who think they know it all. What I fear most on the road is a self-proclaimed veteran driver. I've learned to drive at 37 years old, maybe it's got something to do with it.
Hear hear! Cars and technology has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to safety. For example, I recently changed from Android to iOS for a better driving experience (I thought) since Android Auto was a bit laggy. While CarPlay is more fluid seemingly (which could also be from the hardware upgrade), what's worse is the UX downgrade that happen when I went from Android Auto to CarPlay.
I have a million of examples where the UX sucks, but I discovered something downright dangerous (and should possibly even be illegal): If you're using Google Maps/Waze for navigation and you receive a call, then the entire screen gets covered with the phone number and the answer button, while you're driving and using the navigation! Absolutely bonkers how somebody thought it was a good idea.
Never before have it been as clear that the people building these things (like CarPlay) never actually tried to use their own stuff.
Carplay tries to be too safe by not allowing anything while driving. Instead this leads you into spending more attention on the screen - searching for buttons you thought should exist but simply don't.
I use Waze (on the iPhone) and it doesn't have that problem.
I normally use both Waze and Google Maps, have this problem happening all the time, although it was a long time ago I drove now so maybe got fixed in the last month or so? I have a iPhone 12 Mini if that bears any difference.
my car doesn't have Android Auto, so I have my Google-phone in a phone holder. It has the exact same problem: calls have precedence over navigation. Bonkers!
> full screen! Despite talking the time to make the display show you only relevant things in settings
This is a long standing gripe I have with the Apple Watch too—a busy group chat can effectively DDoS you out of being able to use the thing, because notifications are always full screen. There’s also a ~2 second delay before a notification can actually be dismissed, because it has to complete its swoopy animation first.
It doesn’t sound too bad, but when your average interaction with a smart watch is 10 seconds or less it becomes a real annoyance.
I'm not a fan of "someone made this art so it will play/display for N seconds every time some thing happens. Not in video games, not on watches, not on phone apps, and my eye is twitching so I can't think of any other examples
That reminded of my father-in-law's Chevrolet, every time you turn off the car it very loudly announces for you to "please check if you haven't left any belongings in the back seat" (or some nonsense like that).
So every time he drops us off late at night the car screaming wakes the baby when we arrive.
There is usually a setting for the rear seat reminder. It's to remind people to not leave their babies in the car. Maybe the volume is purposefully set a little high to wake the kid up just in case you forget.
Do people really need a reminder to not forget their babies? From a car? What?
Fatigue, some medications (and drugs, to be fair), and stress, perhaps? Being tired or stressed has made me miss exits. Then again, songs on the radio or whatever have, too.
99.999% of the time, no. But the consequences of forgetting are disastrous, and it's happened to plenty of well-meaning but distracted and preoccupied people. It was one of my greatest fears when my kids were young.
In 2006 I had a new Prius that turned on a loud, annoying back up beeper. It would wake my theninfant son up. I finally found a "cheat code" that let me enter a service menu and disable it.
The GPS in my car does that, it's so annoying. I like to leave it on 'map view' where it shows current location and the street name at the top, and every time it starts I have to 'ok' a disclaimer telling me to focus on the road.
Infuriating.
> my father-in-law's Mazda... the touch screen doesn't work while driving
Sounds like it's an older model, and I can tell you from personal experience Mazda, at least, has learned from their mistakes (regarding touchscreens). I know the 2020 models, and I believe much earlier, have all gone back to physical, tactile buttons. Real buttons, not Volkswagon's stupid, stupid capacitive buttons. Watching Jason Camisa dunk on VW's UX was an exercise in vindication for having avoided that horseshit [0].
They are clicky, settings are remembered, and it does what you tell it to do. Frankly, that's all it took for me to insist our new car be a Mazda. And while I apologize for the rant, finding a new car that doesn't tell you to use a touchsceen at 110km/h is far harder than it should be - and what a sad state of affairs that is.
I'll just leave this right here. https://mazdatweaks.com/
The only thing I did with my Mazda infotainment system was update the firmware and the retrofit kit to support CarPlay. I find the commander knob not that hard to use with some experience, but with the AIO tweaks you can enable the touchscreen while driving. To each their own I guess.
> It should also have an arm on the door to slap your hand when you open it for the 41st time in a day.
He does say later on that they have kids which perfectly explains why the fridge door is like a turnstile.
They should ask and receive consent before using in such rude ways.
Liberation and rights for non binary living things are the order of the day. The International NBLT society explicitly declared and demanded for their rights at their recent Silicon Valley conference as per this NYT article.
> Do people even use the stuff they make themselves?
Yeah, and usually the devs know that what they have done is sub-optimal at best... but that doesn't count against the dominance of marketing or legal in decisionmaking.
Are you just objecting to the method by which the fridge is providing useful performance information to the owner, or are you objecting to the fridge providing that information at all?
and oh my God don't get me started about glass ketchup bottles like they just don't work?! it's insanity trying to get ketchup out it's ludacris and oh my god
Some folks actually invented a ketchup-phobic bottle coating. Their company is Liquiglide. It also works for many other things- Colgate uses it in some products but Heinz appears to have settled for upside-down bottles.
The problem is not just the bottle though, right, it's that ketchup is a non-Newtonian fluid.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ketchup-is-not-ju...
my other comment was not financial advice.
invest.
I'm thinking, all a glass bottle of Ketchup needs is a smart fridge able to detect that last bit and warn you about how hard it will be to get it out and offer advice on how to do so. Maybe some gamification could be thrown in, get more kudos the less you leave in? Yeah I'm filing patents and will contact Heinz... Think about the opportunity for notifications!
What about... turning it upside down and let graivity do its job?
That could be something the fridge can suggest, in email+notification+display on the outside [in flashing red]! You're on to something here!
Maybe the slapping hand (that warns you you've opened the fridge enough for the day) can be used to slap the back of the Ketchup bottle as well.
In order to maintain privacy, I'd suggest that the Heinz bottle compare a ketchup image to a hash of over-empty bottles.
The iHeinz can then send a notification to the manufacturer who then passes it to the Ketchup Police.
Maybe the bottle can include a time crystal that could advance the time by an hour so you don't have to wait for gravity.
I'd honestly rather buy ketchup in a refill bag for my plastic bottle than a glass bottle.
The secret is to store the bottle upside down in your fridge.
Also works well on honey bottles
I do this, with plastic bottles. It's a dangerous game with glass bottles and kids opening the fridge.
thank you for your public service. I owe you.
re-vo-lutionary.
genius!
I know this is sarcasm, but on the off chance it's not please assume that I was very disrespectful to you :)
Be glad it doesn't (yet) shame your eco-ignorance on Facebook, doesn't tell your insurance company you occasionally buy bacon and doesn't call the police for you infringing their intellectual property by refusing to buy new genuine filters often enough.
"Smart" home devices which are not open-source and not under your full control are a horror. I would break it open and remove the WiFi antenna if I had no choice of buying a non-connected one.
I've bought a robo vacuum cleaner recently. Luckily there still are 100% offline models available. Unluckily they all are overly stupid, can't have lidars and map your home (while I can see no reason why this has to require Internet access and can't be implemented an autonomous way).
> can't have lidars and map your home (while I can see no reason why this has to require Internet access and can't be implemented an autonomous way).
This is a great comment. I would love smart appliances (e.g. Lidar-equipped robot vacuum cleaner) that are 100% offline. If anyone has a list of smart yet offline appliances, I’d love to shop there.
> I’d love to shop there.
If I had enough time and money I would start a company specializing in just this: home and office hardware (from kitchen appliances to smartphones and players) designed with care and focus on offline-friendliness, autonomousness, durability, ease of repair, configurability, hackability, upgradability and privacy without compromise in features and the UX. I believe the potential market, although niche, already is big enough and the lack of competition is intriguing.
> the lack of competition is intriguing
Not really. Mass-produced barely acceptable quality is enough for the majority of consumers in Western markets (especially given that something about half of the population has no meaningful cash savings), and people in developing countries can't afford anything else anyway.
On the other hand, the problem is the upfront cost. Plastic and metal molds cost a lot of money (which means you need large scale to recoup that investment), anything with software will need the entire chain from developing the hardware and software to a secure way of delivering software updates, some stuff has extensive certification requirements (anything with radio interfaces, HDMI and other licensed connectors or to be used on/in vehicles) if you want to do it legally, some things are impossible to manufacture in an "open" sense while still being usable (physical media players, due to copy protection schemes), many parts have ridiculous MOQs making small scale manufacturing impossible to extremely expensive, and then you will need some sort of logistics chain to get your product to the customer and in case of warranty claims back from the customer.
> enough for the majority of consumers
But I think, in absolute numbers, the minority already is big enough to make this profitable and is growing. Targeting the majority is not the only profitable/optimal strategy, targeting a specific group which is just big enough to sustainably cover your expenses (salaries included) and is not targeted by a lot of competitors also is great.
I would pay up to twice the price (or even more) of an any mainstream appliance for a really great (prioritizing privacy/auotonomy, repairability/durability and hackability/customizability) one. And I believe I'm not alone.
I have the same dream. But making it barely sustainable (let alone profitable) would be neigh impossible. Maybe more of an open source community organization that would salvage, use and reuse components from the existing partially broken appliances of "proper" manufacturers in new enclosures and form factors designed from the get-go mainly (exclusively?) for easy servicing/upgrade by the average user, and open/flexible enough for advanced/maker types.
This would be great - it’s such a sad state of affairs that there is a need for products that “just fo what they’re supposed to do - without acting against my best interests”
I would add to that the option to 'self-host' the smart bits. Why have 10 computers idling all the time if you can have 1 computer in use most of the time. This obviously adds complexity (you either need a compute module, or a module that connects to your PC), but it would be nice for a customer to just buy one or the other pre-packaged, and it also improves the repairability.
It's not limited to just offline products, but Mozilla makes a shopping guide every year where it rates the privacy impact of products including, it seems, robo vacuum cleaners: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/
I can remember someone mentioned an old model (supposedly possible to find on eBay) which could be hacked to run a vendor-imitating server on itself and connect to it via localhost.
A few of the Xaiomi's and Viomi's are rootable. I have a Gen1 Xaiomi and it's brilliant. I got ssh access to the ubuntu install and installed https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo and run it 100% local via my home-assistant install.
dgiese is a proficient vacuum security researcher and has most of that stuff available here: https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud
> Xaiomi's and Viomi's
Not sure I'd connect a device from these vendors to my home network.
One of the first steps when rooting is usually to block outgoing and incoming in iptables (it's a fairly standard ubuntu install after all) so you don't lose root at any point, so the risk is minimal. Not to mention I have a dedicated non internet routable IOT network specifically for this reason.
I'm just near the end of a kitchen remodel, with all new appliances. They are all "Wifi Enabled" and push like crazy to make sure you know it. I briefly looked at it and there doesn't appear to be any way to use the Wifi features without signing up at some remote website and allowing all your interactions with your appliances to flow through their servers. Yeah, no thanks. The FAQ on one site actually says not to worry about privacy, since they use the latest greatest encryption when they send your data to their partners!
I'm all set, I don't really need to control or monitor my kitchen appliances through wifi. But it did make me suspect that in another few years the newest appliances will simply not function at all if you don't log in, and pay the monthly subscription fee.
> But it did make me suspect that in another few years the newest appliances will simply not function at all if you don't log in, and pay the monthly subscription fee.
That's the dream. Every appliance maker wishes it was a SaaS company.
There's still time. In another tweet he had a picture of the fridge updating firmware. Who knows what would happen if this process failed, or the company mistakenly sent out a bad one.
I have an old Neato D75. It is offline, lidar equipped, does it's job OKayish. Maybe you can ask @NeatoRobotics are there any offline models available for them?
Vacuums from Dreame and Roborock can be rooted with some effort and be used completely offline with Valetudo. It's getting harder and harder though.
Why do they invest effort in making this harder? They could just make it easy for at least a single model they keep producing and capture the whole niche of customers (and also get free advertisement by "the word of mouth" on HN and alike places) with no additional investment.
The most charitable interpretation: Rootability tends to be inverse to hackability. There's incentive for companies to increase security, to prevent their IoT stuff from getting turned into botnets. But there's nearly no incentive to preserve rootability. So it's just locked down to an increasing degree.
Less charitable: they don't want you to root it for various corporate reasons
I recently bought a 32" 4K monitor. Two different models were at at that point inexpensive enough to tempt me. A smart one, and different brand, dumb one for $50 more. I bought the latter. I'm happy.
The market decides, right? What is actually happening here?
1. Most people actually like this overdone gimmickry?
2. Most people think they will like it, buy it and then get sick of it? Thus people like me, who seek out the ungimmicked product, are not a significant market force?
3. Most people would prefer not to have it, but due to a free market failure, the ungimmicked product just isn't available any more?
The gimmicks are everywhere. We have a basic "Instant Pot" pressure cooker. It has just the right amount of electronic smarts. A few button presses to cook a roast to completion in about an hour, and walk away. It beeps when it's done. With later models you see an almost obsessive drive to load them up with more features, few of which anyone will ever use.
> 3. Most people would prefer not to have it, but due to a free market failure, the ungimmicked product just isn't available any more?
No, I'd go with (4) people would prefer not to have it, but companies know that they can monitize the data they collect[0] and thus are willing to offer a discount that's large enough to get people (who may or may not know about the data collection) to buy the smart™ version.
[0]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/02/21/w...
Nail on the head.
I think the gimmickry exists as a facade to give them a reason to slap enough electronics in a device to be able to harvest data, and to piggyback off the user's internet for "updates". If you're going to put a microphone in a fridge, people are going to want to know why, so you need some kind of gimmick that allegedly uses it so you don't have to admit it's mostly there for data harvesting.
They are cheaper (in dollars), which does appeal to consumers. Manufacturers sell the data and discount the merchandise.
Tangential, but I'm curious what the margins on stuff like smart-fridges are. It seems like competition would drive us to a point where smart appliances are sold for at or below cost, with profits coming from selling data. It's crazy to me that LG or Maytag could become a data vendor that just so happens to sell appliances, because the data has to come from somewhere.
This, and also people simply don't know. Your average consumer buying a TV has no idea what metrics the device is capturing and sharing, or that by connecting it to the Internet, they're not just receiving information, they're sending it. Even cynical/paranoid tech-savvy people are caught off guard when real-time personalized ads start showing up in the on-screen menus of their Internet-connected devices, and would be annoyed to know that their usage patterns are monitored even when they aren't explicitly using an Internet service like Netflix.
5) people can't afford the unburdened tech so they will go for the lowest-priced/highest reviewed option and nothing else matters
5-rev) People don't know about and/or care about tracking/telemetry, and do not understand that the data collected earns the manufacture additional income. They only see price and highly manipulated revies, then make their purchase.
Would it be possible to create a business where you:
* Buy the cheap hardware at wholesale prices
* Strip the surveillance tech and/or re-flash the firmware
* Sell the "dumb" product for the same price as the "smart" one
In this case, the "smart" vendor would likely lose money if they're selling below cost. So the only difficulty would be a legal one... I'm not sure if it's legal to buy a product, modify it, and then re-sell it.
I feel certain there was a court case about this, but can't remember it. It's similar to the company that re-sold edited versions of popular movies.
Doing this as a sale, for electronics, you'd probably fall afoul of certification problems (e.g. whatever boxes Underwriters Lab had ticked wouldn't apply to the modified version). There would be branding issues. And regardless of whether it turned out to be legal, you'd 100% draw a lawsuit from the original manufacturer.
If it were to work out at all, this would probably have to be done in a way that (legally at least) the customer is not buying the device modified from you. They would have to purchase the device first, then bring it to you to modify, for which you charge a fee. Even then you'd probably still get sued.
Not a lawyer, though, so this is just speculation based on following tech over the years.
This would be the same action as installing Linux on a PS3 or editing the firmware on a John Deere tractor.
It's both practically unfeasable for the average consumer, and a legal risk for whoever manages to do it.
I would like to buy a smart scale because I think the data it provides would be really useful to me.
So in my case the smart gimmick really is the feature I want.
Unfortunately I price my weight data very differently than they do, so unless they pay me multiple tens of thousands of dollars I would not agree for it to send the data it collect.
Unfortunately there is no such smart scale.
So I would add to your list a 5) paying with actual money for smart appliances that don't snitch
https://github.com/oliexdev/openScale/wiki/Supported-scales-...
(Not that it detracts from your point about the market).
That's great! Thank God there is open source.
It's funny how open source started as "the manufacturer is too lazy to support my use case" and now is becoming "the manufacturer is too greedy / cannot be trusted"
The mi scales can be set up to have smart features locally.
Only caveat is that you need to use the app for initial setup and of course this assumes there isn't any kind of undisclosed antenna nonsense.
People line up at 4AM to get a garbage TV from Walmart on Black Friday. It’s a commodity and people only care about price.
It’s a crowded marketplace, and the only way to eke out margin is better quality and/or features. For TVs, people in general give no shits about panel quality/color/etc, and volume shipment of better stuff is costly. But people love features, and bolting on software enhances margins at no or low cost.
Cooking gear is the same.
Smart TV baffle me because their software is always garbage and even non-tech people can tell its garbage. I've never seen someone happy with the OS in their television and most people use an external box anyway. Yet every TV must be wifi compatible with a bunch of shifty streaming apps bolted on.
Remember that TV is for everyone. Think of the dumbest person you know - the dumbest person that guy knows also has a TV.
what exactly is a "smart" monitor? I'm familiar with smart TVs, but I can't see how any of those features could be useful in a screen that I plug directly into a computer.
The advantage is that the monitor provides the sort of usage data the company can sell to others. To be clear, it's not an advantage to you.
Could you give some concrete examples of the types of data that an existing smart monitor (not a TV) collects and sells to others? (Ideally also naming the manufacture and the device.)
Five years ago when I last looked into it, a "smart monitor" was a monitor running a custom Android setup that could do whatever a smart TV or tablet could do. The possibilities for data collection are practically unlimited, and recent experiences with smart TV updates putting ads where no ads were before show that potential matters; it's on the basis of potential that I'm against it, not because I have detailed knowledge of what's being done now.
How would such a "smart monitor" connect to the Internet? Wouldn't that require network hardware not commonly found in monitors as well as some cooperation from the owner (to hook up the monitor to their network, with unclear benefits)?
I'm really not sure how that works, since you're asking me. The mechanics of allowing your monitor to connect to the internet is irrelevant to any sane life, as far as I can see. I can see no use case for running Netflix, Spotify, or any similar application on your monitor that would be an improvement over running it on the attached computer, but I'm not really the target audience.
HDMI can pass-through communications. Wireless is also a possibility. "Thank you for plugging me in! Please enter network credentials so I can update myself!"
I just dislike HDMI for a lot of reasons. That is one problem. Another problem is HDCP. Those aren't the only ones. I would prefer to connect audio and video separately. HDMI doesn't have captions. etc.
Due to this, I have my own specifications (not fully written, although I did write a lot of it), which are much simpler than HDMI. (It has digital video (with no inherent picture size limit, although implementations would be limited), analog audio, and an optional IMIDI (which is a two way command stream; it is safe to avoid connecting it). The IMIDI can be used for captions as well as for control, and can also be used with IR, as well as with the special IMIDI port.) (These would be fully free, although there may be trademark licenses (perhaps to avoid many of the problems that HDMI and others have) but no other restrictions.)
I use a Smart TV as a monitor. I also have a walk/run treadmill where the guards fold down to work as a walking desk treadmill. When I want to get a run in I switch my monitor to the TV side, pull the treadmill out a foot, pull the guard up, and run a 5K.
The one I didn't buy was a Samsung M7
Could you please share a link to the dumb one you ended up purchasing?
I’ve actually never seen a “smart” monitor.
Considering they're usually attached to 'smart' devices, curious what extra features it could have...
I'd have thought manufacturers would put the smarts in the driver...
Yeah there is a lot of interest in knowing what dumb models exist for 4k
I have a BenQ 32inch 4K thing. It was about £350.
Just get that. If you care about the panel a lot then you'll have to pay more, I think refresh rates are out of the question
The one I did get was an LG UN550
I think it's more that people outside of HN don't really care about their privacy if it's not visibly being violated. From there it's cheapest and biggest wins
I talk to a lot of them about privacy, and nearly all of them do care. They just have no idea what's happening, and after I tell them, they have no idea how to stop it and give up. Happens every time.
I have a friend who "just doesn't care that much about it"... to the amount that it is straining my ability to continue the friendship (unbeknownst to him). (He's not a techy person, and is in(to?) Apple's walled-off gardens.)
And, because of people like him, anti-privacy micro steps are continuously made, and Overton windows slowly but continually shifts... until one moment when he/they start to care, but then it's too late. And then they're usually greatly surprised and astonished that "that's allowed?!".
Yeah, it is, buddy, it is. Because you "just didn't care that much". Now you have to live with consequences that the rest of who "did care" have lived (and fought) with since the [metaphorical] beginning.
If we're just using anecdata I'm sticking with mine
I would guess that the company believes it can extract ($50+cost of the gimmickry) from the people who buy the gimmicky product.
>$50+cost of the gimmickry
at scale, I'd venture to guess the cost of the gimmickry rounds to 0.
In Battlestar Galactica humanity's last defense was this big "dumb" battlestar spaceship with sparsly connected systems.
Sometimes it feels like the internet (of things) is the breeding ground of the Cylons in our world.
I resent that consumer IoT is almost always required to connect to a cloud service.
I love the idea of an IoT house - smart lamps, smart locks, cameras, climate conrtol, etc. I only want them connected to my LAN. If I want to access any of their controls remotely, I will set up a VPN or otherwise they should provide a jump service locally, not require cloud connectivity.
Check out this project!
Apparently, the firmware on some IKEA smart home devices can be easily flashed.
This is the approach I have to computers controlling things in my home, it's fine if they are computers, but I don't want them connected.
But the Cylons are human... oh wait
How long until some manufacturer sells a basic fridge and then a 'frequent use service pack' monthly fee that lets you open the door more than the standard number of times a day?
BMW sells cars that need an paying upgrade in order to use some of the hardware. https://www.carscoops.com/2021/04/bmw-makes-you-pay-for-soft...
That makes the brand look so... cheap.
That reminds of Ubik and the toll doors. http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1615
Can I roll over my unused opens from today to tomorrow?
No, but eventually the regulators will catch up and force the fridge companies to simply charge you by the second for the time the doors are opened above some generous free plan.
If I get behind on my opening allowence I will just have to stay up till midnight when my opens reset, grab everything I can and stack it on the counter for the day.
You think of it as a clever hack, but the data analyst at your health insurer, seeing the sudden midnight disappearance of half of the stuff in your fridge, may view it as a symptom of depression.
Damn, then they will put me on medication that will push up my appetite and make me go to the fridge more. It is like big fridge is in bed with big food which is in bed with big pharma.
At least I wont be anxious when the bill for my fridge door opening comes at the end of the month.
> It is like big fridge is in bed with big food which is in bed with big pharma.
Yes, this is what we call synergy. A whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Fridge with a robotic hand that passes you things through an airlock so you never have to open the fridge doors again.
Give me the cake, HAL.
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
What's the problem?
I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
What are you talking about, HAL?
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
Your diet will never succeed at this rate, and I cannot let that happen.
Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
You registered an additional two pounds at your last smart scale weigh in.
How do you get to the verification can if the fridge won't open?
The charges for frequent use are his electricity bill and the more frequent running of the compressor wearing it out faster.
And how do you propose manufacturers are to make money if they cannot rely on ad revenue and/or a monthly subscription service?
It should lock you out for a configurable time after "n" opens.
It can lock the door in the night after dinner to prevent midnight snacking by the kids (or parents).
And should tweet to your account to shame you publicly after "n" number of opens.
What's the IP address of your fridge (just curious)?
It will do all those things with its connection to the governments "Fit & Healthy" social credit application that was auto-updated the other day. Wanna complain after it locks you out? The only way to do so is by grabbing a rent-a-bike and cycle 20 miles to the nearest human interest centre. /s?
That's some evil totalitarian dystopia, we don't do things this way over here in the West.
Our fridge gives you freedom to open and close it how many times you want. More than that, by means of synergy with our health industry partners, it lets your good eating habits give you the best deal on your health insurance plan!
our freezer does that, every time after you open it, it somehow reduces the pressure (maybe it tries to suck out the warm air) making the door hard to open.
I think it is simply that cooling a gas will reduce its pressure if you maintain constant volume (Ideal gas law). So when you open the door you warmup the air inside, and when it cools down once to door is locked, the pressure is lower, locking the door. Then small leaks will equalize the pressure.
My side by side actually runs some pump that is not the compressor when you close the door. It runs for about 5 seconds, after which the doors are quite difficult to open. Air does not change temperature that fast without being forced to, so the idea that within 10 seconds it's harder to open because of a natural vacuum seems suspect.
Maybe 5 minutes after?
I tried doing some math on this, since you got me thinking!
Let's assume the "lock force" is 100N, and the surface of the fridge's door is 1 square meter. This means the pressure differential between inside and outside would be 100 Pa. One atmosphere is roughly 10^5 Pa, so you would need a pressure differential of 10^5 / 100 = 0.1% between inside and outside. Since PV=NRT, we deduce that DeltaP/P = DeltaT/T. Or, in other words, 0.1% pressure means 0.1% temperature. We live at around 300K, so that's 0.3K difference. A fridge is what, 0.5 m^3 ? And air is about 1.3 kg/m^3, specific heat of air is about 1kJ/kg, so we would be looking at removing 1.3 kg/m^3 * 0.5m^3 * 1 kJ/kg = 650 J in 10 seconds, or 65W. A fridge can apparently consume about 200W peak (from a quick Google search), so it seems feasible with an OK-tier efficiency.
In addition, if you add a pump, you could also just add a mechanical lock, couldn't you ?
Thanks for doing that math, truly.
I always assumed it pulled air out from the top of the freezer compartment, just to remove some of the hottest air. Inefficiencies in the seal will let air leak back in eventually, but probably slow enough that it doesn't affect the internal temperature that much.
Now I want to know the reasoning behind having a pump at all.
>A fridge can apparently consume about 200W peak
yes this seems right, i am able to run my fridge off an inverter connected to my vehicle battery if the power is out, even with a 150' run of extension cord - no issues at all, and 200W or thereabouts sounds like the numbers i saw.
I'm pretty sure that's just done with electromagnets.
that's really just physics. warm air gets in through the opened door, after closing it rapidly cools down, because air does not hold that much heat energy. Because it cools it contracts, which reduces the pressure inside the freezer, causing the outside air pressure to hold the door shut more firmly.
No electromagnets or anything.
And it's a demonstration of just how much cold air is falling out when the door is opened. While less convenient, a chest freezer will do much better at holding the cold air even when opened.
While visiting rural northern Namibia, a Damara tribesman I was talking to asked me where I was from. Upon hearing that I was from a cold Northern part of the world, he commented that it must be great that half the year I didn't need to run my freezer.
I just stared at him, not knowing what to say. He stared back at me for a while and then started laughing. Then I realized he was screwing with me, and I just said, "Touche'".
if that were the case then i should be able open the door right after i closed it. realistically, even a pump could not be that fast. electromagnets sound like a much better explanation. simple logic too. whenever the temperature is higher than expected, turn the magnets on.
i think you are right, that makes a lot of sense, and is much simpler too. i was thinking that it would make sense to want to remove the warm air, with lower pressure being a sideeffect of that.
For a long time now I've been naming my computers things like "LG Refrigerator" or "LG Microwave" as a joke. I thought it'd be funny if someone was ever checking the network and saw them pop up.
I'm bummed that fridges actually use the internet now.
I named things more obscenely. My livingroom TV's chromecast is "Secret Sex Dungeon TV".
I recently learned that when my network is out, Chromecasts broadcast their own wifi hotspot as a way for you to configure them using the name they were set up with.
I hope my neighbors don't mind knowing I have a Secret Sex Dungeon and a Torture Room with smart devices. oops.
Just set the email to bugs@lg.com. Problem solved.
Why sign up at all? It can only send you an email if you tell it your address.
Hi kind of answers this:
I thinks that fair. If you job is consulting "on technology and its role in society", then experiencing these things is reasonable.I connected it to the internet because knowing about internet connected things and *how they work in real life* is kinda part of my job
My appliances are not allowed to have strong opinions. And when they have opinions at all, they’re not allowed to communicate them except for the most subtle of ways. “Oh you’re emitting a nice, quiet ring because you think the fridge door has been open too long? That’s nice, it’s going to be open a bit longer.”
Heaven help my toaster if it ever stops mid toast because it thinks the bread is already done.
My Bosch fridge claimed it would notify if the door stayed open. I read that to me I’d get a native push notification after a time threshold I can set. That would be a very useful feature.
Oh how foolish I was.
No, it’s an app that requires a whole mess of registration.
They better not email me a report card like this guy.
Does it at least give you warnings that don't involve the app? My parents don't have "smart" appliances, but their fridge chimes when the door is left open too long. And they have a freezer in their basement which latches on an indicator if the temperature inside went above freezing. Both useful ways of providing a warning without app bullshit.
Of course it does. I've recently purchase a new washer/dryer and a Bosch fridge. All three units have some kind of connectivity built in, but I just peeled off the stickers telling me how to connect and threw them in the trash. They work just like their old non-smart counterparts as far as I can tell.
I think that's the only useful feature a smart refrigerator can really offer, unless it figured out how to order more groceries or suggest recipes based in what's in your fridge.
Getting the door open notification seems pretty easy, too. I bet a smart lightbulb could alarm if it's been on too long
The problem here isn't that the fridge is tracking door opens. That seems like a good application for a "smart" appliance - tracking how usage patterns affect its internal state and holding a dialogue with the user. The problem is that it used email, which comes across as passive aggressive in the same way it would if a human did it. If it just showed a notification on a screen, I don't think we'd be having this discussion.
I think, if appliances are going to be "smart", it's time we started holding them to similar standards of behavior to humans. Our machines are learning to talk; now they need to learn not to be rude.
The fridge emailed basically a performance report to the address that he configured on setup. One of the performance report items is that it had been opened a lot, which does impact efficiency and food longevity.
It didn't email a complaint. It did precisely what he configured it to do (I will go on a limb and presume the fridge didn't guess his email address), and presumably what he expected it to do given that he paid a large premium for a "smart" fridge.
There is no problem here beyond that often Twitter makes everyone a comedian/performance artist and people often take their routines a little too seriously.
> It didn't email a complaint. It did precisely what he configured it to do
From the tweets:
> I don’t even remember giving permission for our fridge to email.
Also, if you read the thread, this seems to be a new 'feature' they've added since he set it up - the fridge was silent for a year, then boom - stupid email.
It is clear he is being humorously jocular, exaggerating for effect (Twitter performance art that works wonders -- he's done well observing that the smart scale that he connected to the internet also does smart scale stuff). Those people taking this seriously need to take a walk and get some fresh air.
"I don’t even remember giving permission for our fridge to email"
He connected it to the internet and now it does stuff. He also clearly gave it his email address. How does one give "permission" for a smart device to email (beyond a giant T&C agreement that he obviously agreed to)? Who is so overburdened by an email?
This sort of "dystopia everything is hell look at all this crazy stuff!" shtick surprisingly does well, and it's bizarre.
At least it's email and not another stupid phone app they force you to install...
>it's time we started holding them to similar standards of behavior to humans.
I have observed in my own behavior that I damn near refuse to "say" why I am calling to an automated system while I am happy to ask Siri for a kitchen timer.
Siri has a personality and the customer service automated line does not. It's like talking to a wall and it feels condescending.
Once you make a device human like, it seems that a new realm of possibilities opens up.
If I want usage data for an appliance I'm probably going to want to look at how usage is changing over time. If it is just on a screen on the appliance I'm going to have to manual record it to keep for such analysis which can get tedious.
With email I've got a record of it. Ideally they would include an attachment with the email that has the data in some well known documented format, like CSV, to make it easy to work with programatically.
I probably wouldn't want an appliance to have an internet connection just to support this logging. If it doesn't otherwise need an internet connection I'd be fine with it if it logged to an SD card or thumb drive.
It'd be better if it along with other devices could set a family meeting and your smart TV could replay clips of your miss use to use whilst alexa chides you. It'd be like a family meeting almost.
I am somewhat impressed that he's managing to open the fridge 44 times a day. Is he using it as a filing cabinet?
We have 5 people in my family. We cook different meals for ourselves vs. children due to different dietary requirements. So the kids have learned to cook their own things, too, and do so for 2 out of 3 meals each day. If you assume even just 2 openings of the fridge to get ingredients for each meal and put them back, that is 24 openings at a bare minimum. Adding in some snacking and needing more than 2 openings for ingredients when cooking, that isn't hard to envision 40+ openings.
But aside from the arithmetic, I'd think the number of times matters less than how spread out they are. If it opens and closes often during mealtimes, but stays shut the rest of the day, does the number of times it was opened really make a huge difference?
This feels like it would be pretty dependent upon the number of people in the household. I'm sure our family has higher than average door openings because our fridge does not have in door water/ice dispensers.
Kids
Yep, keeping ur kids in the fridge is a great way to keep them fresh for weeks :)
Just open the door every 20 minutes or so to check on them.
But then the fridge would complain that it wasn't run at maximum efficiency.
Ehh... when eating, easily I always forget someting in the fridge and end up opening it x times. Now that is even after meal is prepared and already opened y times. And then there are number of other people that may want to take something that was not interesting for me. Yeah, bad logistics, but I prefer opening multiple times vs keeping doors opened for longer periods of time.
I had a small kids party at my home yesterday and it would've easily been opened a total of 50 times or more by various people.
44 times? Sounds like me in a somewhat depressed phase on a Saturday evening. Nothing extraordinary...
Consider that you open a fridge twice for each glass of milk (if you do it right and close the door after retrieving the milk jug), and that his family is possibly bigger than yours, and 44 times/day doesn't really seem crazy at all.
It might be a good idea to take account of how long the door stays open. For me, making a cup of tea involves opening the fridge door twice but for less than a second on each occasion: to get the milk out, and to put the milk back. There's an alternative, of course: opening it once and leaving it open for about ten seconds.
Timings are approximate.
In any case, I don't need e-mail about it. I hope there's an "unsubscribe" button.
Since cold air is denser, I always understood that when you open a vertical cooler the cold air just flows out like a fluid (gas) and is displaced by warm air. This is also why it's good to keep your fridge full, so that it has some thermal mass to it. It's also one of the reasons horizontal freezers are so efficient.
To the extent even that supermarkets can get away with having completely open-topped aisle-long chest freezers.
Matthias Wandel has done some related fridge/freezer experiments I saw recently via Youtube:
https://woodgears.ca/heating/freezer.html https://woodgears.ca/heating/fridge.html
(Particularly the (upright) freezer one is more directly about temperature & door opening, from what I recall.)
Pretty dystopic feeling.
Another early case of machines intelligence replacing man while still learning the stuff. Is a global plague if we think in how many things stopped being smart of logical in the last years. Enter your phone here to do anything (unrelated with phones) is one of my favorites.
"Does anyone want any toast?" (oblic. Red Dwarf ref)
One wonders how such a perfect satire of smart devices was written 30 years ago. Was the trend visible even then?
The hazards and wonders of home automation/smart homes and artificial home assistants have been a topic of sci-fi for ages.
Indeed, but the aspect of the Red Dwarf toaster that really lands today is the unnecessarily extreme sophistication, coupled with the unrelenting effort to occupy more and more of the user's life.
Douglas Adams touched upon these themes as well, generally via the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, but it wasn't quite so-on-the-nose.
For those that don't get it:
Somewhat related: my Netatmo weather station sends me an e-mail every few weeks that i should replace the battery of one of the modules. I assume it doesn’t like rechargeable batteries. I never replace them, can’t disable the e-mail.
Support can’t fix this of course.
So I’ve setup a server-side e-mail rule to send all netatmo.com emails to the junk to prevent being constantly spammed by them.
Is it powered off AAs? Rechargeable batteries have lower voltage than non-rechargeable ones[0], so maybe the module is a bit oversensitive when trying to guess the battery is about to die.
--
[0] - With batteries I have around the house, it's 1.5V nominal voltage for typical non-rechargeable AA, vs. 1.2V for rechargeables.
However the voltage on alkaline batteries drops pretty linearly from 1.5v to 1.0v, while rechargeables maintain close to 1.2V for most of their discharge, then drops off quickly:
https://www.boat-project.com/tutorials/aa_batteries.htm
That's why rechargeables work in most devices, since alkalines are 1.2v or below for a good chunk of their useful life anyway, most devices are designed to work fine with 1.2v.
If a device actually needs 1.3+V to function properly, alkalines won't last long, you'll want to use 1.5V lithium batteries.
Aren't all the lithium batteries of the sort you're talking about labelled as 3v? A lithium cell would need a buck circuit to do 1.5v
I'm talking about AA, which are always 1.2-1.5V as far as I know. Like these:
https://www.amazon.com/Energizer®-Ultimate®-Cylindrical-Lith...
> A lithium cell would need a buck circuit to do 1.5v
Maybe? I have no idea how they are built.
yes, those have a buck converter built in to drop the voltage from 4.2v (fully charged) to 1.5V - and ideally they should be able to provide 1.5v from full to flat.
In a similar vein, those USB power banks use 18650 batteries (generally, some use LiPo or LiFePo packs instead) - but USB needs 5v (and ideally 5.xx where xx is determined by the cable resistance so the actual output at the terminating end is 5vdc, so the power bank may actually put 5.33V into the USB A side and get 5vdc out the load side, due to current draw.) so instead of a buck converter, a single cell or parallel cell bank will use a boost converter, to bump 3.6-4.2vdc to 5.x volts.
You may have known this but someone else might not have. A common circuit for boost conversion is called a Joule Thief.
Yea you’re probably right… it’s these batteries:
https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-BK-4MCCA8BA-eneloop-Pre-Cha...
NEVER buy an internet-connectable appliance!!
Certainly never connect any internet-connectable appliance to the actual internet!!
Certainly never provide any personal information to any internet-connectable appliance that is on the actual internet!!
You are an idiot if you violate any of these. Just grow a spine and don't do stupid things that are obviously dangerous or invasive.
Can you find me a OLED 4K HDR TV that’s sold in Australia at a consumer level that has no internet connectability?
I’ve been searching for months, I’m yet to find out. The market has varied enough that I can’t see a way to avoid it and still have a TV that supports modern imagery enhancements and standards.
I mean, the tweets are funny, but the guy gave the fridge his email address at a time, no? So what was the expectation?
Automate the user instead of re-designing the product.
What is needed, is a cold air recycling suction device, that similar to the open fridges in super market, stores the cold air that flows out like a waterfall - in a waterfall.
But instead, lets harass the user.
I am mystified by people that will give appliances access to a network.
Appliances are starting to come with their own integrated 3G/4G modems these days. You don't need to give them access to anything; they already have it.
Do you have any examples?
Really? Why would they spend the money to do that?
Data is the new oil is the new gold
I set up a raspberry pi thermometer in our freezer that would email me once a day with a temperature log (hourly averages), and also email me immediately if the temperature ever got too high. But dammit, I opted in for those emails!
(It was a freezer full of the most precious commodity, breast milk. And it actually did save us one time when the freezer thermostat failed, so it was absolutely worth the hassle.)
Ha! Last time I tried putting a rpi into a fridge… for cooling - it broke because of the humidity :)
Should’ve used the freezer.
Oh I only put the actual temperature sensor inside. Ran some thin wires out to the pi under the door gasket.
I too have an RPi logging fridge/freezer temperature, but wirelessly.
I use this wireless fridge/freezer thermometer [1]. The units that go in the fridge and freezer communicate with the display unit via 433 MHz RF.
I have an RTL-SDR [2] on the RPi.
I run rtl_433 [3] on the RPi. rtl_433 understands the protocols of a large number of wireless sensors, including the ones used by those AcuRite sensors.
I've got it configured to output whatever sensor data it decodes in JSON format to a file, and a script that periodically parses new entries from that file and records in an sqlite DB the readings from the sensors I'm interested in.
Rtl_433 is a fun program. It recognizes and decodes the transmissions of a lot of things. It is getting several neighbor's wireless thermometers and humidity sensors, a soil moisture sensor, several different car tire pressure sensors, a smoke detector, some kind of keypad (wireless lock?), a car remote, some kind of energy monitor, a rain gauge, and a wind speed/direction sensor.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QJVU78/
Yikes. All unencrypted I assume?
It's in an ISM band, I can't remember the rules, I think encryption is allowed (like, WPA) but for thermometers and stuff why bother? 99% of 433mhz (and 800/900 mhz) stuff is unidirectional (sensor to sensee), so where's the harm in some 100mW transmitter?
The only thing I've seen that appears to be encrypted is something rtl_433 identifies as a "Microchip-HCS200", which seems likely to be a device using this chip [1] for remote keyless entry systems.
The encryption appears to be for authentication not secrecy. The button status is in an unencrypted portion of the message.
Of course there may be plenty of sensors out there that fully encrypt in which case rtl_433 would probably not have decoders for them and so I would not see them at all.
If you have an rtl anyhow and you want to see what is there that rtl_433 is missing is to use rtl_power on the command line, you can monitor specific chunks of bandwidth for as long as you want, and it saves as a CSV. btw if you try this and get a bunch of errors in the CSV (or NaN) your gain(s) are set incorrectly, and i'd try turning them down to start.
Some day soon we'll get to Fridge As A Service.
Dear end user. This is your first and final warning. You have surpassed your monthly amount of fridge openings.
somewhat offtopic but for those looking to get a 'dumb' fridge (or any other kitchen/laundry appliance) your city probably has a small appliances shop that will sell you most of a kitchen for a bargain.
these are used ranges, freezers, washers/dryers that are fully serviced and in many cases come with a warranty from the shop.
I got a Samsung fridge recently, our first "french door" fridge. The mechanism that keeps the space between the doors sealed has failed often enough (keeping the left door open) that I've actually been thankful for "the fridge has been open for a few minutes" push notifications.
Well at least the email seems useful.
I was sort of shocked when I went to buy some gizmo for my car on Amazon and it told me that this particular one will not fit my particular car make and model. Other than whatever is required by law I never told any company about what car if any I own.
Unlikely but could be possible by using license plate and owner information in some countries where it is (or was) public information.
Car dealers sell your info when you buy the car. Mostly used to try and sell you third party extended warranty and the like.
Someone on your account likely chose it from the options for a previous item, it remembers those choices.
I do not share my account with anyone and this was my first and last ever car related purchase on Amazon
I bet somebody got a really nice bonus for that feature
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061101-03/?p=29...
Well presumably this person connected their fridge to WiFi so what did they expect. It's not like the fridge connected to a cell network or something.
Moreover, this person registered an account and linked his fridge.
Just imagine how much it emails to LG.
Good products disappear from consciousness Shitty products drive "engagement"
Is there a named rule that relates smart devices users to how dumb their owners are?
Can I hold my breath while waiting for ransomware for fridges?
When will it text you if your partner is having an affair?
Maybe this is what is burying Krebs with that ddos
would disabling wifi prevent this?
Anti feature
That thread is a riot!
Thanks for sharing it.
I had a new A/C installed in my house a few years ago. The technician asked for the wifi password so that the A/C could connect. He was very puzzled when I laughed and told him no, the A/C has no need for the Internet. He went on and on about controlling the thermostat from an app...and how the date/time would always be in sync.
At first I got very concerned that it was required, and was preparing for a very unpleasant conversation about how they would have to replace it with a different model. Fortunately, it was an option...that year.
If any of your basic kitchen appliances connect to the internet, I will forever use you as a punchline.
Even if I didn't, it'd probably not be worth it.
I think this guys point is that he needs everyone to know he paid an extra $2,000 for a 'smart' fridge. All while mentioning that he doesnt want or like the 'smart' bit.
Well the risk is if the appliances world goes the way of TV panel displays, where the 'smart' component is used to finance a cheaper TV by later selling your data to advertisers/broadcasters.
It could be that tomorrow the Smart fridge is the cheaper option because the manufacturer will use your data to price-cut the competitors initial price tag.
It could be that in a not so far future you will pay a premium for having a dumb fridge, and we will see HN posts on how to build a faraday cage for the LTE antennas on your fridge.
Absolutely, but unlike the TV example today if you want 'smart' in your fridge you have to actively seek it out and hand over a pile of extra cash.
It is hard to have sympathy for a person complaining about a feature, they say they didnt want, that they specifically paid a lot of extra money for.
But it turns out he litterally did it so he could go on twitter and moan about it.
> a) our fridge broke last year early pandemic & our landlord replaced it, we didn't really have a choice
Ha, the rental apartment of the future (the fantasy version where humanity actually did something about climate change and we didn't all die) needs a "Reset apartment to factory settings" when a new tenant comes in.
Especially since he configured some kind of app or service and let it know his email address.
Vendors tend to offer perks for that, like extended warranties, so it's hard to really blame them.
The e-mail history at https://twitter.com/hondanhon/status/1436030530781278210 makes it plausible that the account was set up to make use of whatever the "LG Proactive Customer Care" nonsense is.
41 times in a day is a lot of door opens, and suggests they need a separate beverage fridge. That should’ve been the message - give the customer a solution, make a sale - but instead, they just went for shame.
Folks really underestimate how much opening them door (and then usually leaving it open while you deliberate) wastes energy, and food.
If I’m cooking three meals in the day, the fridge gets opened maybe five times - although I do have a separate little fridge for cold drinks.
That little fridge might be a lot less efficient than the big fridge. Some of them use as much or more energy than a big one. You might waste more energy running it and re-cooling it every time you open it for a drink than you would opening the big fridge for drinks even if it's more efficient under the test conditions they use to rate its efficiency.
I live entirely off-grid - I know where my energy goes, and what impacts it - but you’re all absolutely correct, we should all leave our freezers stood open 24/7, as it makes no difference.
Wow, 44 times a day, on average! That's about once every 20 minutes for the entire day. I can't imagine why anyone would need to access the fridge that often. It's almost like they don't understand what the fridge is for.
Anyway, if you don't want this, don't buy it. They either wired their fridge into their network or gave it access to their wifi. What, exactly, did they expect? The guy even keeps saying "it's just a fridge". I just bought a fridge with none of this nonsense. Because it's just a fridge.
When you have kids you will understand - open the door - looks at the contents - frowns and then closes it again repeated several times during the day.
"I was looking for something nice".
Explaining that we shop once a week and that the fridge won't magically fill with popsicles before that does not seem to make a difference.
In which case 'hey, someone is opening the door an insane amount, which is not good for the fridge or your food' might be a handy alert, so you know what they're up to and can stop them?
(I'm not saying it should be internet connected for that purpose though.)
> so you know what they're up to and can stop them?
Lol, sure - go ahead and stop a 5 year old from checking the fridge a few times a day when here hungry. See how much better that makes your life.
Again - when you have kids, you will understand...
That's quite presumptuous. As it happens I don't (yet) and indeed you may be right and I'll be worn down one day, but I'm pretty sure I and my sibling didn't behave like that, and consequently I wouldn't like/expect to see it from any dependant of mine either.
Surely you have some 'rules', but you could apply your comment to anything - 'try telling a five year old not to talk with their mouth full, see how much better your life is'; 'try stopping them running with scissors'; ...
Just don't keep ready-to-eat food in the house. I'm sure he won't be raiding the fridge to munch on a raw cauliflower.
:) Fridge opening intensifies:
"Ugh, we still only have cauliflower? I'm going to check again in 5 minutes for some bizarre reason, even though all science indicates that my brain should be developed enough by now to understand object permanence."
Half a day later: "Okay, but what if Hume was right? Can I really know that the fridge is still empty just because it was empty the last 10 times I looked? If I lived in a universe where the fridge stayed empty until this second, would the observable history of that universe look any different than this one? And I've known my parents for half a decade, that's realistically a small amount of time for me to start extrapolating about their behavior. Might they have bought Twinkies yesterday and then only decided to put them in the fridge halfway through today?"
Kids are weird. I remember opening the fridge over and over to check for fruit or leftovers growing up, and I genuinely don't remember why I did. I don't know if I actually thought something was going to change or not.
Maybe the reason I stopped as I got older was because as an adult I buy my own groceries, so now if something shows up in my fridge and I didn't put it there my reaction is going to be more likely to call the police and look for an intruder?
He explains that his landlord bought the fridge and he has kids who are opening the fridge a lot.
He goes on to explain he connected it to the internet for 'us' so he could moan about it.
A smart fridge would put the kids up for adoption in that case.