The Internet of Garbage Things

[Dakota Tebaldi]

This guy bought a Bosch dishwasher. He spent hours installing it, only to find out that he cannot use eco mode, the plain rinse cycle, or a few other modes unless he first connects the dishwasher to wifi and creates an account on Bosch's website.


I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. It is so unreasonable and stupid. Fifteen years ago, this would have been a comedy skit.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

What the fuck? That's insane! WHYYYYY?

"Broken by design."

 

[Beebo Brink]

Dude. What is this "my wife and I can't spend an hour and half washing dishes every night"? You have FIVE kids. THEY are your dishwashers, right there, in the house, free of charge.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Dude. What is this "my wife and I can't spend an hour and half washing dishes every night"? You have FIVE kids. THEY are your dishwashers, right there, in the house, free of charge.

If they don't cooperate, you have at least one to spare ... if you catch my drift.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Dude. What is this "my wife and I can't spend an hour and half washing dishes every night"? You have FIVE kids. THEY are your dishwashers, right there, in the house, free of charge.

Wait a second......Mom???

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

What the fuck? That's insane! WHYYYYY?

So that Bosch can collect customers' personal data and sell it

AND

1. So that once enough customers have created accounts, Bosch can suddenly shift to a subscription model and force those customers to pay monthly to continue to be able to use the dishwasher they already fully paid for, or
2. So that after enough time Bosch can discontinue "support" for that particular model, making the connection-required features permanently unavailable and forcing customers to have to buy a new dishwasher if they want those features.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I recently bought some new appliances and that was a firm requirement in the showroom. “Dumb appliances only.”

I probably saved 50%.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I recently bought some new appliances and that was a firm requirement in the showroom. “Dumb appliances only.”

It really is a shame, because technology continues to march on and there's been some really neat features and things that have been invented that I would love to be able to use. But especially within I wanna say like the last ten years-ish, there's been this really hard anti-consumer, anti-ownership push where anything electronic you buy comes with terms of service that the company can change any time, and most importantly of all a remote kill-switch that the company can push whenever they want, permanently disabling the thing inside your house that you paid money for.

 

[Casey Pelous]

... the thing inside your house that you paid money for.

I think if you read the TOS, it is the thing you rented from the appliance company.

I redid my kitchen appliances a year or so ago and did get a couple that are "smart", but really they're dumb as rocks. The only "smart" stuff they do is notification stuff like, "Your oven is finished preheating." Feature in search of a problem, so far as I'm concerned, but at least it won't be fatal if Samsung switches it off.

 

[Essence Lumin]

This guy bought a Bosch dishwasher. He spent hours installing it, only to find out that he cannot use eco mode, the plain rinse cycle, or a few other modes unless he first connects the dishwasher to wifi and creates an account on Bosch's website.

That is most unfortunate. My dishwasher is a Bosch. I bought it several years ago and it has no internet connectivity, it just washes dishes. It is very reliable. I researched reliability before I bought it and most brands are not.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I don't use dishwashers, my hands work just fine.

My last roommate insisted on using it. Asked first... Does it work? "Fuck if I know, it's been sitting there for 20 years, the seals may have dissolved by now."

It was fine. Slow, noisy, a little leaky sometimes, nothing one paper towel couldn't deal with.

The idea that it would need a WiFi connection, for what, knowing if electric rates were on peak? Checking local weather? Geo location to know if it would drain counter clockwise due to being in the southern hemisphere? Zodiac forecast for your plateware? Crunching cryptocurrency while it cycles? Real time internal video observation of your flatware being sprayed? Bah.

I'll stick to getting my hands wet.

 

[Essence Lumin]

The idea that it would need a WiFi connection, for what, knowing if electric rates were on peak? Bah.

I'll stick to getting my hands wet.

For me, it's a bit too much effort to really clean things by hand. I clean all the gunk off before putting it in the dishwasher and let it clean all the grease and stuff off and make things shiny clean. The video above gives them a small doubt with maybe they are too cheap to put in a display so make you use an app but screw that, ridiculous. The day will probably come when there is no other option, kind of like trying to buy a good 55" dumb tv.

 

[Beebo Brink]

I don't use dishwashers, my hands work just fine.

There was a time when we would have welcomed a dishwasher because there never seemed to be enough time for domestic chores, but inevitably when I said, "Yes, let's do it, let's get a dishwasher" the conversation took a left turn that ended in a complete kitchen remodel, and a potential price tag of $10-15,000. Then we'd shake our heads and agree "Nope, not doing that" and give up.

We have a very old house and there's no counter or plumbing hookup for a dishwasher. Free-standing dishwashers were intermittently available at a much higher prices and with kludgy hose attachments to the kitchen faucet, where we didn't have enough water pressure to run a dishwasher. We talked about installing a counter on one wall, just for the dishwasher... but it would not even come close to matching the existing counter/cupboards that are easily 50 years old. Which means we'd want to replace ALL the counters.... and yeah, let's not do that.

Now I'm retired and have plenty of time to do the dishes. I just pop open a podcast and listen as I wash.

 

[Noodles]

What the fuck? That's insane! WHYYYYY?

"Broken by design."

Because we need to datamine important data like... How many times a week you run your dishwasher!

For ads!

DATA!

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I clean all the gunk off before putting it in the dishwasher and let it clean all the grease and stuff off and make things shiny clean.

It takes me so long to fill up the machine enough to justify running a load that whatever I failed to pre-rinse off them would be stuck on so thoroughly that I wouldn't trust the machine to work it lose.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

If you have a dishwasher, you should definitely use it! They use SUBSTANTIALLY less water to do the job than handwashing, although you can easily negate that if you put too much effort into cleaning off dishes before loading them in. Scrape off actual chunks of food first, but do not worry about tiny bits and sauces, even thick and dried-on stuff. The dishwasher will power it right off.

All you need to know about the thing in one convenient vijeo:

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I ran mine twice today.

 

[Noodles]

My dishwasher needs cleaned constantly. Like once a week. It's annoying.

 

[Free]

My dishwasher needs cleaned constantly. Like once a week. It's annoying.

Do you use a dishwasherwasher?

 

[Sid]

Strange, we let our mobile phone apps, Internet websites and social media harvest and harvest our data. Hardly ever people speak up.
Seems that a dishwasher collects more valuable data than that, because... all of a sudden we tend to draw a line.