
This $1,500 Toaster Oven Is Everything That's Wrong with Silicon Valley Design - ceterum_censeo
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3065667/this-1500-toaster-oven-is-everything-thats-wrong-with-silicon-valley-design
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lostgame
The $1500 price tag alone makes it difficult for anyone to really be affected
by their objective of 'getting more people to cook.'

Who doesn't cook? Millennials. [1]

Who doesn't have money for a toaster oven that costs twice their monthly rent?
You guessed it.

The author nailed it here - '...yet, June is taking something important away
from the cooking process: the home cook’s ability to observe and learn.

The sizzle of a steak on a pan will tell you if it’s hot enough.

The smell will tell you when it starts to brown.

These are soft skills that we gain through practice over time. June eliminates
this self-education.'

If we want more people to cook, we should give them solid reasons to.
Automating the process doesn't teach people to 'cook', it teaches them to be
yet more reliant on a piece of technology.

[1]
[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/millenni...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/millennials-
groceries/506180/?utm_source=quartzfb&amp;single_page=true)

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kafkaesq
_Automating the process doesn 't teach people to 'cook', it teaches them to be
yet more reliant on a piece of technology._

Precisely the direction SV wants us to keep marching blindly in.

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mc32
I kind of agree with the author, but that ship sailed a long time ago. It's
not coming back.

This reminds me of the (Hitachi?) thousand dollar rice cooker.

I guess you can argue for balance between craft and automation, but it's
rather futile and more a nice mental exercise.

It's like trying to convince most kids to learn how to derive square roots
longhand when they have a computing device in their pockets.

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pedalpete
Which ship sailed? The one with all the people cooking? or another one.

I wouldn't count cooking as 'out' just yet. Many people of all ages love to
cook, but many of them love the creation of it. An oven that cooks for you is
like paint by numbers, it 'might' get people interested in cooking to the
point where they want to learn more.

~~~
mc32
The ship that sailed is the one that says we must keep traditional systems
alive and well in the modern world.

Yes, some people live cooking --as do I when I have the spare time, on the
other hand, often I don't have the time to futz and just need a pragmatic
meal, rather than experience based cooking.

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b409ba0801cd21
The first thing I thought of when I saw the headline:
[http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html](http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html)

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Mathnerd314
It seems like everyone's switched to 8-bit microcontrollers now, but pretty
much accurate.

That being said, there is room for a smartphone-controlled toaster / oven; but
it should give more control (customizable & shareable heating profiles, as
part of a recipe database) rather than less.

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beefman
Still 1800W, so it'll still take 5min to make a piece of toast.

"Carbon fiber heating elements ... preheats faster" Total B.S.

Much better to install a real outlet and get something like
[https://www.katom.com/569-FC33.html](https://www.katom.com/569-FC33.html)

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Cpoll
The only lasting complaint here is "the oven does things for you, which means
you won't learn to do things yourself." Which is ridiculous, because that's
the point of automation. Every other issue (bugs, price) can be chalked up to
the early adopter principle.

The other fallacy is that everyone wants or needs to learn how to cook. I
enjoy cooking, but sometimes I also enjoy dumping ingredients into a rice
cooker and firing and forgetting.

I think the thermal sensor is a very clever bit of tech. I'm guessing the
estimates won't be perfect because the oven can't gauge thickness, and it
refines estimates once it measures the rate of heating.

> The salmon's done at 6:52 p.m.

Which is meaningless, because this is the first time the article's mentioned
the time.

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alex-
I do LOVE that tag line

> Automated yet distracting. Boastful yet mediocre. Confident yet wrong.

