It turns out his router mis-reported it and it's around 1 MB. He posted about it.
Well, that's still around 1 MB too much IMHO.
It's reporting usage and error data back to the company. As an engineer who used to work on appliances that did this the data is used to drive design direction as well as find trends in failure that we could make changes for.
In this era of late stage capitalism, the only changes that will be made from this data will be changes that make the company more profit. Not necessarily changes that make the device more reliable, durable, or have a greater longevity.
Exactly , you still got DDR fridges going strong today. But can't build too good stuff , who gonna buy new appliances then?
No, anonymous diagnostic data is clearly a threat to my privacy!
Problem is ofc that none of the mentioned examples included any security...
I definitely meant to respond to the engineer as a joke, not to the doomsayer
I just pointed out one of the problems with "anonymous data" collection. Another big one would be the aggregation issue
I don't understand why washing machine should be connected to the internet. At my appartment I use the laundry room, we have some shared washing machines and dryers there. It use to functions with some coins, you buy the coins from the clerc, put the coin in a machine that is free, get 3 hours of usage. Last year they decided that this was too practical, so they replaced the coin system with a new systems that puts the machine online and use an app. I am wondering how the more eldery tenants are dealing with this, it's so complicated ! 1st you need a smartphone, then you need to register an online payment method on the app, you need to reserve your machine in advance, the machine will activate/stop based on some obscure conditions (no longer a simple timer, it's measuring the current drawn from the outlet to determin if the machine is in use, I presume). It's frustration how useless and unpractical this thing is ! In the end, it's the same old washing machines...
It could alert you to a leak, which would definitely be a helpful feature if your laundry room is flooding.
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
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