Why do we need this stuff?

[OneViewpoint]

I bought a new toaster oven last Christmas. It has an app, a WiFi radio, and AI controlled cooking cycles for everything from baking to air frying.

I bought a solar charging battery powered skimmer for my pool last summer. It has an app and a Bluetooth radio along with supposedly sonar to map the pool shape and AI to determine the skimming pattern and make sure it doesn't get stuck in corners, behind the ladder, etc.

I replaced my refrigerator in the last 2 weeks. It has AI controlled cooling to supposedly optimize electrical efficiency. What the fuck is AI gonna do that a simple thermal sensor connected to a relay won't do!

I just replaced a double wall oven last week with a new oven that has WiFi and Bluetooth, and an app and super convection whatever the fuck that is, along with air frying. But... you can't use some of the cool 21st century features unless you download an app to your phone and talk to your fucking oven from your couch?

My car constantly bitches & moans at me because I refuse to allow data transmission to the manufacturer. The data they are collecting is being sold to data brokers who sell it to anyone wanting to know where I go, how long I stay there, how often I go there, & how fast I drive.

I'm a guy who values my privacy. Near zero social media presence. I pay someone to scrape my personal info and search history off the internet in real time. Any caller not on an approved caller list is screened by AI, presented with a fake name & phone number, & I am notified & asked by the AI whether I want to allow calls from that number. All my devices run across an encrypted VPN network that randomly shifts between about 200 servers worldwide. Devices are all purged & restarted several times daily.

Is this what it's come to? An all out war 24X7 to protect our data & privacy in order to shut down scammers & spammers & identity thieves? Anyone else think this is slightly insane? Is this what Capitalism has done "for us" or "to us"?

[jshm2]

LOL, you're shit scared of everything, is what you mean to say.

No one is interested in you, but if they were - you'd be dead already.

Get on with your boring life, and stop stressing. It will kill you before "they" do.

[OneViewpoint]

@jshm2,

Said like a good economic slave for life who's anxious for the approval of his master. You're gonna ride that AI train like a good stooge. I'm not scared of it. I bought it zipperhead. I just think it's useless and could take up my time if I let it. I think it's planned obsolescence as @genericname85 pointed out. I think it's another failure mode being introduce to a product that doesn't need it. And I think it's one more assault trying to harvest our data and sell it to the highest bidder. But you bend over and spread your ass cheeks for Corporate America if you want to.

[genericname85]

we don't need that. companies need that. cause these things break faster and have features that will not be supported soon. so soon you gotta buy a new toaster. that's the entire point. the economy is dependend on that. cause if you didn't keep consuming, market saturation would be a serious threat to financial growth. so they have to create shorter protuct life cycles and can't continute making products you'll keep using for 10 years.

[Horsegirly2001]

Same as my dish water, fridge, washing, tv, machine and dryer. Had ciri for a while, its garbage now.

My father says that cars are made to be eco friendly and gave more miles per litre but with all the extra stuff they put into cars the same model of car uses about the same fuel as previous due to the extra weight.

[NathanDavis]

yes.. that's capitalism

in the consumerism form... but, we did that to ourselves really

[In_Trance]

Seems like you're the problem
If you don't want AI, Bluetooth, WiFi, then don't buy it.

[OneViewpoint]

Not that easy Ace.

I can't control the software loaded into my car. And all auto manufacturers are doing it.

I needed a refrigerator and wall oven to fit specific spaces for custom appliances or I'd need to have the existing cabinets replaced with new custom cabinets to fit the cutouts for something else. Did not feel like throwing away $35K on kitchen mods to accommodate appliances.

The toaster oven, OK I could have bought a $39.95 Black & Decker Craptastic toaster over at Walmart. But this one is huge and loaded with features I actually use. But I've never used the WiFi / AI crap.

My fucking pool robot? I have 2 actually. One cleans the stuff below the water line and is "dumb" other than sonar to tell where the pool walls are. It works fine. The newer one is a skimmer for stuff floating on the surface. It's solar powered and AI enhanced. It's a pain in the ass. I dropped it in the pool this morning. It ran for 5 min and quit. I opened the app and it was demanding a firmware update. Which failed. It was flashing a message to not leave the screen and stay near the robot. Fuck that. After 10 min of watching the clock spin I shut it down. I tried again. Success. Actually there were 3 firmware updates stacked up. It has 2 modes AI Enhanced and Standard Mode where it just runs continuously until the battery runs down. Guess which one I use. AI mode sucks at doing any meaningful work.

[In_Trance]

That's some specifications you have as a consumer. The only models of any consumer product that fit your knees are the latest and greatest with all the features that you're complaining about.
Nobody makes anything that will work for you outside of this...

[OneViewpoint]

I guess you shop at Walmart for appliances. Nothing new. This house was built 26 years ago. Counter depth refrigerators were around back then. A 30 cu foot counter depth fridge with French doors is not common though.

As for the wall oven, that is a tower of babble in the appliance industry. Not only do manufacturers NOZT standardize sizes across the industry, they don't even standardize within their own product lineup for say, 30" wall ovens. So once you have a cabinet with a given size hole in it, you have 3 options. Find something that fits in today's market, cut or modify the existing cabinetry, or buy or have custom made to match the rest of the kitchen a whole new cabinet. Yeah, custom kitchens get expensive. I went with using the existing cabinet and I had it modified to accept the new unit.