Clickbait, he tweeted “inaccuracy in the ASUS router tool” later on.
In a follow-up post a day after his initial Tweet, Johnie noted “inaccuracy in the ASUS router tool,” with regard to Apple iMessage data use. Other LG smart washing machine users showed device data use from their router UIs. It turns out that these appliances more typically use less than 1MB per day.
the writer knew that the stats were bunk, yet wrote the article anyway. the site knew this, too, tacked-on the clickbait headline and published it. toms really has gone to shit the last few years–at least under the current ownership (last changed hands 2018).
and here we are 17 hours later with it as one of the top stories on this site.
We are soooooooo reddit 2.0.
And OP presumably read the article, knew there was no actual story, and posted it here anyway.
Thanks for saving me the click.
No it couldn’t. My washing machine cant connect to my network! I can’t think of a valid reason why I would even want that.
I tried it with our dish washer, just to see what it’s about. Turns out it’s all about nothing. It’s absolutely void of any useful functionality.
Yeah, I don’t get it. I guess I can see the appeal of some “Internet Of Things” connected appliances, like smart fridges suggesting recipes and keeping track of stock and auto-populating shopping lists for you. I don’t need that personally, but I can see why it could appeal to some people.
But things like washing machines and dishwashers? You need to be there in person to fill them up just before they’re ready to go on, and to empty them when they’re done. And when they’re not turned on, they’re sat there doing nothing. What “smart” functions can they even offer?
What “smart” functions can they even offer?
Notification that the cycle is finished and checking how much is left.
But that’s about it.
And also providing more programs and options without having to tack on a full-colour LCD or anything like that. Pretty much just a cost saving measure on the manufacturing.
The joke when I was a kid was the remote control toaster.
I can think of a very valid reason. I very often forget that I ran the washing machine, I’m already investigating how to send a notification to my phone or computer after it is done. Right now I am checking how much electricity it consumes and when it stops doing it. But a API would be nicer.
Have you considered setting an alarm on your phone?
What about a NFC tag that starts a timer on your phone?
They sell clean/dirty indicator magnets for dishwashers for like $2.
Because it’s advertised. That’s why.
A remarkable (and actually concerning) percentage of people completely lack the critical thinking skills to question whether that’s a good idea. The box says it has WiFi, WiFi is good, so I connect it to WiFi. Simple as that.
LG’s app is an absolute privacy nightmare too. That app must be used if you want access to any smart appliance features and it requires precise location permissions 100% of the time. Even then, the app features are mediocre, it doesn’t work very well and often doesn’t notify of a finished wash load until long after it’s completed.
Why anyone would want to allow their washing machine manufacturer to continuously track their exact location in exchange for some crappy, poorly implemented features is beyond me.
The LG app also checks SafetyNet/Play Integrity so you can’t use it with root. They probably fear that you can then unleash how much more of a privacy nightmare it is.
I just use a timer on my phone … average wash cycle I use is about 30 minutes … just set a timer on your phone … KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid
They probably want to see at which aisle your washing machine spends the most time on its grocery trip.
Just looked at the app’s permission settings on my phone… set to only allow location while being used.
Like you I don’t see much use for the app, though the notifications can be handy if you want to know when a load us finished and you can’t hear it’s beeps. I work out of my basement with my washer upstairs so that can be the case with me. But still rare that I ever use it.
I deleted the app and disconnected my LG appliances from wifi over a year ago. Maybe they fixed the issue.
Thinking back, I seem to remember that in order to receive notifications the app had to be running in the background while phone location was turned on, giving LG precise location tracking all the time. Is that no longer the case?
I’ve re-enabled notifications now and was receiving them fine with location setting of “only when app in use”. Then this morning I disabled location permissions entirely for the app and I continue to receive the notifications.
The one useful feature I’ve missed is a high temperature warning for my refrigerator, so since they fixed the app it may be time for another try. Thanks for checking that out.
I don’t think so. I’ve had the notifications off though so I’m not 100%. I turned them back on so I’ll know soon enough.
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Yes, socks can turn into a lot of data really fast, especially if they are multithreaded. Which is why I only use single threaded socks to protect my dataplan.
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This is the same reason why you dont feed farrets string (or thread, etc…) /s
You wouldn’t download a sock
I’m too lazy to Photoshop it into a real image
I’m sure they’re being downloaded to Russia and then sold back to the west to finance the war!
Modem = Materializer and De-Materializer
It really irritates me when IoT devices force you to use “the cloud” for access. My home automation consists of roughly 100 devices. The vast majority are Zigbee, but a few use wifi. With the exception of my irrigation controller, all the wifi devices are blocked at the firewall from accessing the internet. The fact that I have to send a command half way across the country to a remote server only so it can send it right back to my home network when I want to change the watering schedule for my plants is ridiculous. Sure, I could buy a different controller, but I already spent $300 once. I’m not doing it again.
You should explain this to your plants so they show the appropriate level of gratitude.
Will wifi switches locked down to home network only still function?
If it has an API that can be used locally, then sure. That’s the whole point of Zigbee, is that it’s an open standard that any IoT devices can connect to and use. So you can send local commands to any local Zigbee device, as long as they have an API that allows for it.
Open standard… hah… like bacnet was supposed to be? More and more i deal with bacnet devices that make some data unreadable (proprietary) so what was the point?
Agree with other posts about sending data to the cloud to work. Also I’m certainly way behind on my washing machine tech because I can’t fathom a reason they should be online. So I can get an alert when the cycle is done? Ok fine… stupid but fine - as long as it stays local.
It depends on the switch. If it has an API or an app that can be used locally, then yes.
Imagine spending extra money on a new clothes washer only to have someone turn it in to a crypto miner. 😬
I’m too lazy to come up with a witty money laundering joke.
IoT = bad
The ‘S’ in IoT stands for security
Internet of Targets
Thats gonna me my new excuse when I loose in CoD. The washing machine was clogging up the Network.
It was busy uploading a sock.
Plot twist: it was the Asus router misreporting the amount of data.
If you buy a “smart” washing machine and actually connect it to the internet, you deserve what you get.
I can think of a few smart functionalities of a washer that’d be nice. None of these would be motivation enough to buy one though, unless it was open source, which I’d guess isn’t a thing.
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind getting a notification on my phone … sometimes I don’t hear the little chime or I do but I’m the middle of something and forget.
Exactly. That’s a small benifit to potentially sacrifice your privacy for though, so they’re still a hard sell for me.
Literally get a vibration sensor and an esp32. Push notifications for a change in sensor value. Hoorah. No one needs to start it from their phone. You physically have to move the shit around anyways.
The smart people don’t connect these “smart” devices to the network
I don’t even let my smart TV connect to the internet. Why would I help it fetch ads for me lol
The issue with web IpT is that devices send data reports of their status every fraction of a second. The packet may just be a few bytes but over time it adds up. Instead I wished they could just send status when they change state and wait for a confirmation but that’s harder to code…
If (Status != Prev_Status) {Send_All_User_Data();}
Yes! The issue is that if the server misses that packet, the status is now wrong. So they need an aknowledgement send from the server.
Ok…? That’s extremely standard. And easy.
And yet they don’t implement it…
Every single one that uses an interface like that does. All of them. i’m talking about the requiring a response from the server part.
Most also do not do .1s update rate or whatever you think the one device you have does.
A washimg machine isnt a micro frontend, the machine should do all the calculations on cpu and not report every time the drum spins or whatever.
I think it’s dumber than that. It just sends a
status:onevery 0.5secThats verry dumb
No they don’t. Most send updates every 5 seconds, every minute etc.
My MyQ garage door would disagree with you.
Bought “smart” LG fridge, range and dishwasher a couple of years ago and never connected any of them, they function like they are supposed to, refrigerate, heat food and clean dirty dishes. No need to connect.
Fridge manual explained something like “in case of peak energy consumption your smart energy company can send a signal to your fridge to not use power”. What the heck do I need that for? To find spoiled food and mold growing in the fridge later on?
Why does one need to connect a range to WiFi?
Some people have hourly electric pricing, in their case it’s worth scheduling stuff based on predicted pricing. How that should work is that you’d have a home server which controls your IoT stuff (so the gadgets themselves can be firewalled from the internet and controlled only by you) and then your server would fetch pricing data and pause stuff that doesn’t need to run when prices are high and run stuff like washing when it’s cheap
TIL - cool, makes sense.
It would make sense if we had a server that could fetch prices instead of opening up potential weak systems to the internet.
Because now manufacturers are tying the last year of their warranty to having the devices connected to their stupid information harvesting apps.
Ugh! Now that you say that we are probably not far away from WiFi enabled ranges being a feature… that WHEN enabled will allow you to:
- Cook uninterrupted or at any time of that day
- Get discounted prices on gas
- Get discounts on home/renters insurance
- Receive discounts on range/oven cleaners
- Enable the back burners
- Enable broiling capability
- Allow in oven light to be turned on and off
- Claim warranties (as you suggested)
As a guy with some tendencies to worry if I turned my stove off Everytime I leave the house, this feature seems right up my list of needs
Thanks for that pov! I had not considered it and to my surprise I just thought of someone in my family that has the same type of worry you do, and that person would probably benefit from that kind of peace of mind like you suggested.
A: Why would a washing machine have internet access? B: If it has the option, why would You even connect it to the internet? C: If it has to be connected to the internet, why would You even buy it?
At least regarding the last point: maybe because there was no other option.
If you need specific features or have certain space constraints, you may end up with only two or three devices.
As an example: try to find a TV (not a monitor, a real TV with tuner, etc) without WiFi. Almost impossible.
I’ll have a go!
- A: It was the best reviewed washer and dryer on Cordcutter when I needed to replace ours.
- B: Because getting a notification on your phone that your clothes are done is cool, and being able to start a load from your phone from anywhere is cool.
- C: It doesn’t need to be connected. As a matter of fact, they stopped connecting to WiFi after about a year, and now they just work like a normal washer and dryer set. I miss the notifications, but not enough to try and figure out how to get them back online.
There are probably 3 main groups of people with WiFi appliances:
- The vast majority of people don’t care, and put it on their normal WiFi router and would never notice something like this
- A smaller group of people don’t care much, but pay attention to their bandwidth usage and would spot an appliance trying to send 3.7 GB of data a day
- A much smaller group of people are paranoid and would put the device on its own isolated subnet, or use firewall-type features to limit the access their appliances have to the Internet.
My guess is that if this were a widespread problem, people in the second group would notice, or would have immediately checked and chimed in and said “holy crap, mine is doing this too”. I didn’t hear many people saying that, so I’m guessing this is a bug, and it’s either a one-off weirdness, or it’s a bug related to people in group 3 who are blocking their appliances from being able to connect to the Internet.
It’s probably something as simple as a badly programmed firmware update check that doesn’t do exponential backoff when it fails. It probably connects, fails, then immediately tries again. A proper exponential backoff would wait before trying again, and if it failed again it would double the wait time down to some minimum value like once per day or something.
Incidentally, this is also why claims about smartphones monitoring people’s conversations when they’re supposedly off is BS. That would require either huge amounts of bandwidth to transmit all the conversations, or huge amounts of computing power inside the phone to decode the voices. Either way you’d be using tons of battery, and probably a significant amount of bandwidth. There are enough paranoid people out there that if this were a real thing, someone would have caught the devices doing it by now.
