Saw a couple of commercials lately for these refrigerators. The woman is at home cooking and the guy is at the store. He calls her to ask if they need eggs. She’s too busy to look, so the guy pulls up an app, and a friggin camera inside the icebox shows him that they have eggs! Also has some kind of screen built into the door to do who knows what with.
Absolutely blew my mind that any manufacturer would think this was something that people would want. How cheap/expensive is it to build these (IMO) unnecessary capabilities into an appliance? Sure, folk used to ask why you’d need a phone on your camera… What will be the next computer/appliance mash-up?
Not the worst idea but also not worth the extra thousands of dollars that having those features costs. I just bought a new high-end desktop PC for less than what they are charging for this over a similar model without the gadgets.
The couple in the commercials are real life couple Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, so they’re playing exaggerated versions of themselves in the ad for effect.
I think a fridge-cam is idiotic, but I do think that having some sort of RFID system in your pantry (and possibly fridge) could be extremely useful, assuming that eventually products will be RFID-enabled as a matter of course.
I mean, how cool would it be to have your pantry shoot you an email telling you that items X, Y and Z reach the end of their shelf lives in the next two weeks, and that based on the contents of the rest of your pantry and fridge, that you can make dishes P, D and Q with those expiring ingredients. Or that same function without the expiring ingredients, etc… Or being able to look up a recipe and have your pantry tell you that you need an extra can of tomatoes for a recipe, because you only have one on-hand.
Even worse, the security on these devices is skimpy if it exists at all. Plus manufacturers are uninterested in providing updates when holes are found.
Your fridge computer could end up cracked, with people using it to monitor your local network traffic (logins, account numbers, security cameras, etc.), send spam, download Very Bad Things, etc.
Also, some devices get bricked if the computer flakes out. Expected for a DVR, but not for a fridge or vacuum cleaner.
I’d stay away from most of this stuff for now. The FTC is urging companies to get together and forge security standards and such.
I have no idea why “cool” dumb stuff is still “cool”.
Anything that can be pitched in a glitzy ad of beautiful people having fun with something new. Like the car trunk that opens if you wave your foot under it (or the dog runs under it). And it costs almost noghing to design the simple existing tech into the product, which gets retooled every few months anyway and replaced with Model Number MKG56-72LP81, with no mutually exchangeable parts. Or change one screw to one with a head that requires a different driver.
It looks cool in theory, but I don’t know about your refrigerator, but mine would need a “what’s behind the leftover container from when we went out on Monday… what’s under the pizza box I wedged in there… what the hell is in that tupperware?” function.
I was fridge shopping recently and witnessed this monstrosity in person. In demo mode the thing is loud and flashing and the complete opposite of what I want in my kitchen. It actually turned me off on everything else I saw that day and I left without buying anything.
Before I could get out shopping again my fridge resolved its issues as mysteriously as they had appeared and that obnoxious attention whore fridge ultimately saved me a few thousand dollars.
I imagine the next generation of refrigerators will have a bar code reader so as you put items in and take items out, it will keep a running total of what you have, and give you email warnings when you’re running low. Not to mention make recipe suggestions.
Even worse, the security on these devices is skimpy if it exists at all. Plus manufacturers are uninterested in providing updates when holes are found.
Your fridge computer could end up cracked, with people using it to monitor your local network traffic (logins, account numbers, security cameras, etc.), send spam, download Very Bad Things, etc.
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Traffic analysis on an IoT fridge could be a really big security hole. If someone’s able to monitor it, they’ll see that you open the door several times every day between 7:00 and 7:30 to get breakfast, milk for your coffee, etc. When you don’t open the fridge at all some morning, they’ll know you’re probably on vacation, with an unattended hope ripe for burglary.
Oh and this is the same Samsung that’s been making IoT TVs that listen to you.
Sure that sounds crazy expensive to you. And it does to me. But there are plenty of people for whom that’s nothing. People who want a Wolf range that could cost $5,000 or $10,000. Or an Aga range for upwards of $20,000. Or a $50,000 mattress.
Yeah. Just buy a box of eggs. If you get home and it turns out you already had some, just use the eggs. Even if you throw the eggs away, you can repeat that nonsense a hundred times and still have saved money.
That’s exactly the feature that was being demonstrated. The husband was at the store and unsure if eggs were needed while the wife was busy at home (actually in the kitchen but too busy to check the refrigerator).
Similarly, I heard that Tesla cars can pull themselves out of the garage onto the driveway. That’s of limited value, but I also heard that they can communicate with the garage door opener as the you approach home in your Tesla so the garage door opens automatically. And that seems a useful feature and one I hope might be widely available soon.
I don’t remember if it was here on this board or on alt.fan.cecil-adams but when I got my first cell phone that had a camera (it was a flip phone to give you some idea how long ago it was) I wrote a post how I thought it was so utterly ridiculous someone grafted a camera on to a cell phone. What does one even have to do with the other, I said? I still think back to that sometimes and it makes me want to age like a million years all at once and crumble away into dust like a vampire or something. It was a pure “Yells at cloud” moment.