I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud | Jeff Geerling
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Software developer and open source proponent Jeff Geerling recently purchased a new Bosch 500 dishwasher, only to find it required an app to access certain features. This is his story.
I was hoping for the “this is how I bypassed all that cloud bullshit”, but he never got there :/
He mentioned that it is possible to bypass the cloud bullshit with a third party Library he just didn't want to do the setup for it, personally I was waiting for the "so I tore it out of the wall and returned it" because I can't think of a single appliance store that has a return policy that's less than like 30 days. Locking advertised features behind an app would be an instant "honey we're bringing this back to the store"
He even mentions that people have mentioned to return it already
When I posted on social media about this, a lot of people told me to return it. But I spent four hours installing this thing built into my kitchen. ... At a minimum, I think what Bosch should do is make it so that the dishwasher can be accessed locally with no requirement for a cloud account. (Really, it'd be even better to have all the functions accessible on the control panel!)
Why would they do that, the person who posted it's a prime example of why they don't, he's willing to just use it without the features, he isn't even willing to return it even though it's very clear he hates everything about the cloud requirement. Companies aren't just going to change with no action. They change when there's a loss of money involved, processing refunds because of the shitty mechanics hurts the appliance stores selling it which then snowballs into the store maybe thinking twice about buying the appliance again.
That is what makes companies change, not keeping the item and saying "oh well" I guess I'll buy a different brand next time.
Bosch is trosch
You still are & just don't know it. The power company can tell when & what devices you're using. You'd need a way to store enough power so your appliances never connect directly to the grid, basically a power firewall.
That has fuck-all to do with the guy's complaint, which was about it failing to provide the simple ability to use the advertised features of the machine from the machine's control panel, not anything to do with privacy.
I had assumed that he didn't want to use an app because of privacy concerns, not that he didn't have a way to install the app. We've allowed this behavior to become normalized already though. It is significantly harder now days to find consumer products like routers that don't require an app to manage & use. It's not like either side of the political aisle has been seriously pushing for regulation regarding privacy, when they absolutely love being able to get all that data directly from these conglomerates without a court order.
Wouldn't that monitoring need to be really close to the house? Otherwise I'd think the capacitance of the lines would even out any tiny profile surges. So I think it'd need to be in the power meter. I'd think you could verify or rule that out pretty quickly by looking if the hardware is capable of that sort of tracking.
Thats a new one.. I don't know enough to doubt it, but curious to how. Actual digital communication over power lines, or just recognizable power usage patterns?
It would have to be an inference based on power draw. Not at all accurate or definitive, I don't think. This seems a bit tinfoil-hatty to me.
I'm betting it relies on an assumption that every dishwasher would draw the same amount of current (within reason) as every other dishwasher. The same with every washing machine, every dryer, every AC, and so on. On top of that, all the current draws would need to be unique. If a dryer pulled the same current as an oven then the surveillance people wouldn't know which you were running.
Sure, you could infer a little based on time of day and such, but who's to say the homeowner isn't just running 10 microwaves?
There's stuff like ripple control to tell appliances to lower consumption. Pretty archaic and rare these days. There's nothing I know of that communicates to the utility.
I have no idea what John is talking about or why he brought this concept up.
Both actually... most smart meters are now smart enough to identify specific appliances, some have raised concerns & published papers showing that they may even be able to determine what TV channel an individual is watching. Power companies of course are also implementing machine learning to gather even more detailed information & behavioral patterns, including identifying patterns & usage of each household member:
Actual digital communication over power lines
Is a real thing, though not at all in the way the parent comment seems to be discussing it.