New oven and they lock the air fryer functionality behind wifi.
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.
You didn't buy an oven. You bought a node for someone else's botnet.
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?
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
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
99% of people couldn't give less of a fuck. The only way we get out of this death spiral is with smart legislation.
Oh no. I don't be needin' no internet enabled legislation! Good, old fahsioned, airgapped legislation was good enough before, and it's good enough today!
They didn't buy it. They bought a house that came with it.
Whose gonna pay the refund?
We are renovating our house including (adding) all new appliances.
For context. Might be a bit less obvious to non native speakers, but I can understand how you might miss it
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??
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.
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.
they’re using the Wi-fi radiation to cook your meals
You're thinking of microwaves.
The microwave region extends from 1,000 to 300,000 MHz (or 30 cm to 1 mm wavelength).
Source: https://www.britannica.com/science/electromagnetic-radiation/Microwaves
2.4Ghz, and 5Ghz are microwaves. Your typical microwave oven operates at about 2.45GHz due to resonance frequency of water. 2.4Ghz wifi is literally a typical microwave's neighbor.
The difference is sheer amount of power and shielding. Not the type of radiation.
That's a big, honking "no" from me.
It'd be one thing if the "smart" features were there but only supplemented the basic functionality. It's another entirely for those basic features to require an internet connection.
Out of curiosity, did the product description indicate the internet connection was required? I'm soon to be replacing some appliances and want to know what to look out for (besides all mentions of "wifi" or "smart").
did the product description indicate the internet connection was required?
That's an important question.
That said, we were recently appliance shopping and none of them said that it was required, but a couple of the negative reviews mentioned it.
We ended up choosing one of the very few that didn't list wifi or an app as a feature. Hopefully there isn't a stealth modem hidden in there somewhere. I guess we'll find out next week when it's delivered...
Thanks for the additional insight.
A coffee maker, I'd just return. But a dishwasher, refrigerator, oven, etc would be a huge hassle I'd want to avoid. I think my best bet, like you said, is to just look for one that has absolutely no mention of w-fi or "smart".
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.
How about the motherboard dying before the oven does
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.
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.
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.
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.
Smart appliances are such a ridiculous scam.
I can totally see a point in some of the features.
The other day my wife and I got 20 minutes from home before I said "oh shit I don't know if I turned the oven off". Turns out I did, but we had to drive home to check. I would have loved to pull up an app that told me it was actually off, or even if I was on be able to turn it off from there.
With that said, it's not worth all the extra bullshit in my opinion.
I actually find it very nice to get notifications about my toaster oven being preheated or done cooking, or being able to see how much time is left or remotely stop it.
So basically you paid money to store someone else's oven. How long before we are installing vending machines in our kitchens instead of fridge and stove.
Straight out of Unauthorized Bread from Doctorow
Here's a link to the story for those interested.
That's an awesome idea. I'll have my engineers build it into our next product line.
Stole it from my character in "Shadows of Doubt"
But they told me I can just not connect it to the internet and it'll be just like any dumb device.
Eventually these things will come with modems built in so you can't even do that.
My APAP machine has a sim card and unless I am careful to not disable airplane mode every time I start it up, it will send all of my health data to company that I have signed no agreement with.
I explicitly declined to agree to the privacy policy of the company that sold it to me.
If I find my data in a breach, lawyers will be involved.
Hopefully you don't live in the US where your insurance company can buy that data and use it to deny you coverage or raise your rates.
They already do it with cars why not CPAP machines.
My microwave is a 1977 Amanda Radarange. It can boil a cup of water in ⅕ of the time a modern microwave can.
Now granted, it has zero fancy settings and a simple number pad that does nothing but set how long you want the microwave to run.
But honestly, this simplicity is a large part of it’s charm. No connectivity needs, no features locked behind paywalls, no extraneous bullshit or never-used features. Just a tool that does only one thing, and does it exceptionally well.
I got a "retrowave" in mint green. It's dumb, uses a turn dial to set the cook time, stands on little feet like it's from Rocko's Modern Life, and looks like it's from the 50's. Have a matching toaster and eventually want a matching fridge.
It's been 4 years and no issues which is more than I can say about a lot of other new appliances we've gotten for the house.
For dumb appliances with a fun aesthetics look up 'retro (name of appliance here) and you'll get all the brands who make stuff like that. It's the only way I've been able to avoid smart garbage so far.
Does it let you control the power level at all? If it does then no issues. If it can't, hardly an issue.
what is that thing wired into a 600v line??
Maybe just one without proper breakers?
Yes! The Amandas were the best.
It's only a matter of time before corporate WANs like Amazon sidewalk and/or the ever decreasing cost of cellular modems and IOT contracts mean they won't even ask anymore.
In the mean time, these things are usually programmed with minimal effort. I have to wonder if there's an actual unlock process or if giving it a completely isolated subnet would satisfy the check.
It’s only a matter of time before corporate WANs like Amazon sidewalk and/or the ever decreasing cost of cellular modems and IOT contracts mean they won’t even ask anymore.
Then it's time to heat up the soldering iron and disable the wireless connectivity in hardware.
At least an integrated modem wouldn't set my local network at risk. They might still collect sensible data with microphones, cameras and share usage profiles etc. But from my perspective that's at least technically decoupled from other devices.
I bought one of those ge induction ovens to swap out a gas one. The only smart feature I liked was the ability to turn my oven on to preheat from my phone. Guess what feature just doesn't work no matter the tech support help i get with it.
I worked for a phone manufacturer a few years ago. We'd get callers who were referred to us by shitty IOT vendors who wanted to insist their buggy apps just didn't work because our phone broke it and not because their crappy IOT "features" were clearly tossed together by lowest bidder contractors they stopped paying 2 years ago. The number of IOT devices I just referred the customer to the Google Play reviews and read them the first 5 reviews that all detail various bugs in the companion app was concerning to say the least
Please say there isn't a subscription
Stop! The MBAs can only get so erect
I wonder if they will eventually make a toilet bowl to connect to the Internet. Can't flush until you connects to the Internet just because....
There are toilets that analyse your waste and send the results to your doctor. They ID you by scanning your anus since everyone's anus is unique. Maybe one day the results can be sent to your kitchen and your fridge and airfryer can deny you access to unhealthy foods when your toilet tells them to.
Jesús fucking christ some guy made the Adult Swim skit into a real product?
This wasn’t supposed to be real
And GenAI isn't part of this. Not enough hype, no VC will fund it.
It's so you can have the New Turkey Mode
Seems to me like they do not know how to make a good oven.
If they will be running a botnet with your net at least it should be a fair pay.
That's because air fryer.
There are no dumb air fryers, are there?
Air fryer in this case just refers to the convection oven setting on the stove. It's not a standalone air fryer.
Mine doesn't connect to anything AFAIK. Actually, maybe it has Bluetooth? I've never bothered with it, though.
Our GE Profile oven did the same. Of course the software is so shit, it tripped up connecting to the VLAN I set up and now it has air fry mode and no wifi.
Maybe try switching to airplane mode on your phone while trying to onboard the oven? I’m sure it’s too late for that.
They are smart because they know how to spy on you without telling you.
Any smart feature must be optional.
I have smart lights at home, none is required to get light in the rooms, they are only used for mood lighting.
We have a lot of smart plugs that we use for plant timers. They are way more accurate than the old school notched wheel ones and we can set them to actual sunrise and sunset. They also can just be turned on and used like a switch if the internet goes out
Maybe you can buy a DLC to have additional functionality. Or you need to pay micro transactions with each cooking. No money is wasted.
Ugh I see CAFE in all caps and all I can think of corporate average fuel economy
What does the dismiss button do? Or the back button.
Just based on the messages (that could be miss leading) sounds like some features will not work.
Would be interested to know of you can connect, enable, then block it's access to the internet. That's what I did with Wyze cams.
Even setting up a vlan doesn't work half the time because the mobile apps don't talk directly with the appliance but phone home to a cloud service. A cloud service that will eventually go offline and leave the appliances orphaned. That's how GE's thermostats work.