CAFE by GE for those who are wondering.

We are renovating our house including all new appliances. I have told my partner to make sure we get non smart appliances. This is why.

Yes I can setup a VLAN for it to be on but that’s not the point.

128 points

You didn’t buy an oven. You bought a node for someone else’s botnet.

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20 points

Whenever someone designs or purchases a smart device, this is what they need to be told. Is it really worth the risk for potential harm?

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8 points

Hanlon’s razor, but its interesting to imagine that some Russian, US, Israeli, Chinese, etc agents infiltrated management at appliance manufacturers and convinced them to make all their devices smart, just so they could build bigger botnets

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89 points

If you didn’t immediately take this back and demand a refund you’re part of the reason enshittification is getting worse

Or American with fuck all in the way of consumer rights, one of the two

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27 points

99% of people couldn’t give less of a fuck. The only way we get out of this death spiral is with smart legislation.

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16 points

Oh no. I don’t be needin’ no internet enabled legislation! Good, old fahsioned, airgapped legislation was good enough before, and it’s good enough today!

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27 points

Yeah I would immediately return honestly, there are plenty other espresso makers that don’t require wifi

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29 points

It’s an oven, old bean

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6 points

This blender doesn’t actually make coffee. ☹️

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3 points

Pfft maybe not the way you use it

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6 points

They didn’t buy it. They bought a house that came with it.

Whose gonna pay the refund?

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2 points

We are renovating our house including (adding) all new appliances.

For context. Might be a bit less obvious to non native speakers, but I can understand how you might miss it

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77 points

they’re using the Wi-fi radiation to cook your meals /s

Thats really, really dumb. I can understand maybe wanting the option of having your oven ping your phone when the timer goes off, but what could it possibly need internet access for in order to turn on the heating element and a fan for a set period of time??

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55 points

It doesn’t need it. That’s exactly the point.

Even though air frying doesn’t need Internet, the manufacturer is restricting that feature as a way to force you to set up the WiFi, so they can then slurp up all your data.

They’re literally holding the feature hostage, as motivation.

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1 point

Is data on when I turn the oven on, and how long I run it for, even worthwhile? Or do you think it’s sniffing out other info from my network?

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6 points

I’ve honestly come to the conclusion that some companies have management that actually believes its worth while to collect the most meaningless telemetry data, even after the ridiculous cost of bandwidth, database storage, hosting, etc. which all become more bonkers the larger the dataset. I’ve seen the cloud bills for actual useful data, I don’t want think about how much they must be paying AWS/Azure/GCP to host such worthless data. There’s no way its at all profitable to do so

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3 points

Is data on when I turn the oven on, and how long I run it for, even worthwhile?

They wouldn’t be holding you hostage for it if it wasn’t.

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2 points

At the bare minimum, they’re going to use that data to figure out, on average, how much use it gets while under the warranty period. They’ll use that to further cut corners on the materials or other design considerations.

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19 points

I had a bakery/kiosk mix of shop, where I baked bread every morning for 13 years or so. There was a customer who questioned my oven, because she actually does not know if it really radiates. And how I can be this sure about it. Its a damn oven! Like one in every household, just a bit bigger. People are really this dumb. Besides, it wouldn’t be legal… oh man still upsets me. Not because of being accused for, but it upset me that people like her have the right to vote.

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18 points

they’re using the Wi-fi radiation to cook your meals

You’re thinking of microwaves.

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31 points

The microwave region extends from 1,000 to 300,000 MHz (or 30 cm to 1 mm wavelength).

Source: https://www.britannica.com/science/electromagnetic-radiation/Microwaves

2.4Ghz, and 5Ghz are microwaves. Your typical microwave oven operates at about 2.45GHz due to resonance frequency of water. 2.4Ghz wifi is literally a typical microwave’s neighbor.

The difference is sheer amount of power and shielding. Not the type of radiation.

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1 point
*

The water resonance thing is a myth, AFAIK. Strong absorption is actually a bad thing for a microwave oven, because then it would only heat the surface. The way they work is effectively bouncing the radiation through a barely-absorbing dielectric thousands of times, to get the effect really even.

The frequency is probably just an easy one to build magnetrons for.

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7 points

That could work if you amped the waves up and trapped them in a confined, isolated space, no?

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10 points

Maybe if you could amp up the wattage by a 1000 fold, sure

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2 points

I’m not sure if that’s possible, but if, not in this size. You would probably need an oven in the size of an entire truck maybe? It probably needs lot of energy for both, isolating and transforming/amping the signal. At that point the power going in to transform the signal could be used more efficiently otherwise to achieve the same goal without Wi-fi (as those small microwaves proves it).

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46 points

That’s a big, honking “no” from me.

It’d be one thing if the “smart” features were there but only supplemented the basic functionality. It’s another entirely for those basic features to require an internet connection.

Out of curiosity, did the product description indicate the internet connection was required? I’m soon to be replacing some appliances and want to know what to look out for (besides all mentions of “wifi” or “smart”).

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2 points

did the product description indicate the internet connection was required?

That’s an important question.

That said, we were recently appliance shopping and none of them said that it was required, but a couple of the negative reviews mentioned it.

We ended up choosing one of the very few that didn’t list wifi or an app as a feature. Hopefully there isn’t a stealth modem hidden in there somewhere. I guess we’ll find out next week when it’s delivered…

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3 points

Thanks for the additional insight.

A coffee maker, I’d just return. But a dishwasher, refrigerator, oven, etc would be a huge hassle I’d want to avoid. I think my best bet, like you said, is to just look for one that has absolutely no mention of w-fi or “smart”.

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43 points

Why the fuck does an oven have a touch screen? That’s a horrible idea. Good luck cleaning your kitchen without accidentally hitting “buttons” on the oven! And heaven forbid food splatter turns on your oven broiler.

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27 points

How about the motherboard dying before the oven does

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8 points

I don’t love touch screens on ovens either, but you just press the lock button and then you can clean to your hearts content.

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6 points
*

I would hope it’s a special, heavy-duty kind at least.

They’re on everything because it legitimately just is a good way to get lots and lots of controls and displays on a limited space.

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2 points
*

I would hope it’s a special, heavy-duty kind at least.

I’ve seen an expensive microwave with a capacitive touch panel right above the door (and the door was the classic oven style, so attached by the bottom edge). If you ever had a phone with crappy moisture detection, you know where this is going.

You put your food in the microwave. Turn it on and let it heat the food up. Open the door, take the food out and close the door again. Congratulations, your microwave has probably just turned itself back on, because it detected the humid hot air rising from the briefly opened door as you touching the screen. And because most of the touch screen is “touchable”, there’s a pretty good chance this gust of humid air can successfully pick a cooking/heating mode and confirm it.

The microwave randomly navigating its own touch screen happened pretty much every time, passing all the menus and turning on was successful about 10% of the time.

In short, I wouldn’t expect a microwave interface to have any thought put into it.

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1 point

Oh my god, that’s horrible.

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3 points

Yeah, the touch screen is awful, but just try finding a decent induction range without one and without spending twice as much for the privilege. (It seems that induction ranges are the most popular for this unfortunate design trend.)There’s not really any choices out there. You can lock the screen, which is great for cleaning. Just don’t do that while you’re using the oven or range because it turns everything off and cancels the bake.

I do love everything else about my induction range though. Cold searing stuff is faster and easier to get right. I can bring a pot of water to a rolling boil in about 4 minutes.

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