
English man spends 11 hours trying to make cup of tea with Wi-Fi kettle - Osiris30
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/12/english-man-spends-11-hours-trying-to-make-cup-of-tea-with-wi-fi-kettle
======
nicktelford
This stream of tweets reads like satire, but it demonstrates an extremely
important point: the "Internet of Things" will never become mainstream so long
as every appliance is a walled garden.

Without open protocols to allow people to connect together whatever they like,
this technology will remain a niche for the minority that know how to write
the software themselves - and have the patience to.

~~~
verbify
I think the bigger point is that smart devices should gracefully degrade to
dumb devices.

~~~
edejong
the thing I keep failing to understand is: why do these devices need to block
while updating? Can't they just use two (small) memory-banks and download the
image to bank 2 while working from the first one and do one quick switcheroo
in a couple of milliseconds?

(edit: question marks should mark the end of sentences which are questions)

~~~
Bartweiss
From the security we've seen in these devices, I'm assuming that would be both
a financial and technical no-go. The standard practice appears to be buying a
minimum-cost board and loading it up with some stolen open-source software -
sensible hot-swapping would be far too demanding for that.

(But yes, that really should be the case. It could also support elegant
failures back to the previous firmware version.)

~~~
dom0
IoT devices seem to be the result of putting web people in charge of embedded
development. Not to defend emb. devs... some truly horrendous stuff out there
as well.

~~~
krallja
I think it's the opposite; they put the embedded developers, who (rightly)
have no sense of the insane challenge of doing security, in charge of talking
to the Web.

~~~
dTal
Does it have to be either/or? You need both types of developers, and they have
to talk to each other, and you have finite hiring resources. These are very
different cultures, and the failure mode is either broken system software,
which will get noticed and fixed, or broken security, which likely won't.

------
collyw
Reminds me of a couple of weeks back, I went to a new Media Mark (consumer
electronics store) near my place in Barcelona. It had some robots in the
windows shuffling stuff of shelves for show.

I got in and realized it wasn't actually a normal store but some new high tech
version. There were some touchscreen devices where you were supposed to make
an order then go and collect it from the desk at the other side (and the
robots were getting the stuff from shelves). Tried the two that were
available. "Error establishing connection" type error. Tried the one next to
it. The same. The few staff that were on the main shop floor seemed busy
explaining how the things worked to other customers so I went to the old
school department store next door.

Welcome to the future.

------
roymurdock
This is one of the most British headlines I have ever seen. Up there with
"Chutney blew up my fridge"

[http://www.henleystandard.co.uk/news/news.php?id=1310323](http://www.henleystandard.co.uk/news/news.php?id=1310323)

~~~
dghf
The English regional press is brilliant for this sort of thing.

'Sudden appearance of white line in Evesham explained' [0]

'Evesham football club Chairman's says they would have been hit financial [
_sic_ ] if stolen tractors were not recovered' [1]

'Man stole coffee and spanners from Poundland' [2]

'Former Pershore asparamancer makes her global predictions for 2016'
[asparamancy: divination by throwing asparagus in the air] [3]

[0]
[http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/14128452.Sudden_appeara...](http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/14128452.Sudden_appearance_of_white_line_in_Evesham_explained/?ref=mr&lp=3)

[1]
[http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/14793275.Chairman__39_s...](http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/14793275.Chairman__39_s_says_club_would_have_been_hit_financial_if_stolen_tractors_were_not_recovered/?ref=mrb&lp=22)

[2]
[http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/14790600.Man_stole_coff...](http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/14790600.Man_stole_coffee_and_spanners_from_Poundland/?ref=mrb&lp=30)

[3]
[http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/14196327.Former_Pershor...](http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/14196327.Former_Pershore_asparamancer_makes_her_global_predictions_for_2016/?ref=ebln)

~~~
timthorn
You've reminded me of the Framley Examiner:
[http://framleyexaminer.com/](http://framleyexaminer.com/)

------
sevensor
I expect when it was ready, it was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

~~~
idlewords
I read the whole tweet thread waiting for this outcome.

------
laurent123456
> but now we're eating dinner in dark while lights download a firmware update

His lights probably got the last Windows 10 update and are now updating and
rebooting whenever they feel like it.

------
julienmarie
I just don't understand the concept as you can't fill it up with water through
Wifi, so anyway you have to physically handle de kettle.

~~~
collyw
There is way too much of this shit.

[http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/](http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/)

------
codingmyway
He did check for 418 responses, right?

~~~
mrec
That would only explain an inability to make coffee, not an inability to make
tea.

    
    
      2.3.2 418 I'm a teapot 
      
         Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the error  
         code "418 I'm a teapot". The resulting entity body MAY be short and  
         stout.

~~~
mxvzr
Actually as per RFC7168 a teapot may return code 418 to "denote a more
permanent indication that the pot is a teapot".

------
mtgx
Business idea: Start a tech _comedy_ video podcast network. With the predicted
explosive growth of IoT, there should be plenty of interesting material in the
coming years.

And of course,
[https://twitter.com/internetofshit](https://twitter.com/internetofshit) is
already great inspiration for one.

~~~
collyw
Start a store that sells old school manually serviceable stuff after everyone
has put the internet where it doesn't belong.

~~~
Bartweiss
Start a store that reprograms IoT things with a clawhammer, then sells the
DRM-free results.

------
noer
A lot of the time, when I hear about an IoT product (such as this tea kettle
or the wifi enabled bathroom Scale my coworker told me about) I think, "Just
because you can doesn't mean you should"

~~~
TheBeardKing
I want a smart scale. I've considered bluetooth but would prefer wifi, just
waiting to catch a deal on one. Seeing my daily weight charted over a year
gets my analytic side giddy, but my frugality has so far beat it back.

~~~
onion2k
I've owned a lot of "quantified self" style gadgets over the past decade and
all they've really done is make me realise that numbers along aren't enough to
get me to change my lifestyle. The data is interesting, but it isn't
_information_ because it lacks context, and as such it doesn't do anything for
you. Seeing a pretty graph that tells you that you've gained some weight might
sound helpful and motivating but (for me) it was actually just a little
depressing.

~~~
TheBeardKing
I can understand that, but I'm not looking for motivation, just statistics.
I'm already disciplined in weight management, tracking is just interesting.

------
andmarios
The title could also be “data specialist can't get work done without his
devops team”. :p

------
Chris2048
> Rittman was trying to build the integration functionality himself

11 hours is nothing

------
mikey_p
What's baffling to me, is that this is how almost every single Wifi gadget
seems to work for me. I've spent hours trying to get our Fitbit Aria scale to
connect to the right network, and reconfigure it, and it almost never works.
Same thing with the Anova cooker. It worked fine for a few days and then my
phone can't find it anymore. Try doing the setup again and it always fails.
There has to be a better way to handle setup and configuration for these types
of network connecting gadgets.

------
okket
See also:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12690121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12690121)
(9 hours ago, 6 comments)

------
FussyZeus
This is one of the rare parts of the future that makes me want to take up
isolationist living.

------
cyberferret
Time well spent. A good cup of tea is ALWAYS worth whatever time it takes. :)

I enjoy the looks of bemusement I get from my friends used to their '2 minute
takeout coffees' when they see me take 20 minutes or more to brew a nice pot
of tea...

------
timthorn
Of course, he could always have pressed the physical boil button on the base
unit...

------
lazyant
I've worked as a network engineer, I wasn't able to set up a printer with WiFi
after an hour or so (or rather I was able to set it up but settings will
disappear)

------
kayoone
so IoT DevOps is apparently a thing nowadays ;)

~~~
cyberferret
Had to LOL at "Hadoop cluster in his garage"...

------
Odenwaelder
@internetofshit right here.

~~~
tempodox
Downloading a cup of tea from amazon.co.uk can't be harder than this.

------
peterwaller
This is a work of art. :)

