I don’t mind them hacking supermarkets but destroying food is drawing the line for me. Granted, most of the frozen goods sold there are probably highly processed and not very healthy, but still.
I would assume for remote monitoring of some kind.
You can imagine an automated system monitors 1000’s of freezers and helps control their temperature/performance.
That said, clearly this shouldn’t have been on the open internet, assuming that’s what happened. It could also be an inside job and/or unhappy former employee
Why does that need to be centrally monitored? All the information is local to the refrigerator and the rules about what to do are not dynamic. A refrigerator knows it needs to kick on if it gets too warm. Why does it need to call in to a server to ask for permission? It makes no sense.
All you’ve done is create the possibility of one MASSIVE system-wide failure for the price of a circuit board in every unit that costs a few bucks and that is inevitably going to be there anyway.
Principles aside, defrost shouldn’t be available remotely, even if all the other stuff is, because the freezers have to be emptied and that can’t be done remotely.
Ah, yes, I guess you can defrost without thawing items. I haven’t seen frost in my freezer for a long time, so I guess they solved it for people’s kitchens.
Yes, there are reasons to do things remotely, my problem is I think people knee-jerk to doing things remotely WITHOUT a reason, that just to being able to do something remotely is enough reason to do it remotely.
My door has been open for 10 minutes and my temperature is currently 65 degrees Farenheit. What do I do?
I better contact the central server.
Hello? Central server.
No answer.
Oh well. Guess I won’t activate the door alarm without permission, then, and let everything melt and develop deadly bacteria.
Though I guess, yes, knowing that there was a 40 minute period where it got warmer would be good to have somewhere at the home office (local manager might just not want to take the loss), gathering information centrally is not the same as running behavior locally.
The central server then sends the notification to an app. User of the app is local staff. E.g. they get this message each evening before the store close doors. Same with the freezer room backdoors. At sunday it might escalate to a supervisor who is responsible to a region. This is how such things typically work.
Additional value might be a freezer who can serve a range of minus temperature. It can buffer cold when energy costs are low - typically at night or at sunny days. You need the energy prices online tho.
Oh sure, but that’s a separate issue. These guys are hacking the stores knowing it will spoil food. Fast food workers are reprimanded for trying to not spoil food. Both things are bad.
I don’t mind them hacking supermarkets but destroying food is drawing the line for me. Granted, most of the frozen goods sold there are probably highly processed and not very healthy, but still.
Hacking the price tags is definitely great.
Consider the benefit though–one HUGE reason for people not to automate everything and still have people running the store.
The best way to influence business behavior is to disincentive behavior you don’t want by making it cost money, preferably a lot of money.
Typically IoT things controll the temperature in cold chain applications. This is about food safety and health.
Don’t know about those fridges. I assume the monitoring targets open door alarm (glass door fridges), temp controll at all, and saving energy.
But hey, shout out loud your bad energy first. Don’t start thinking.
And why does any of that need a constant internet connection?
I would assume for remote monitoring of some kind. You can imagine an automated system monitors 1000’s of freezers and helps control their temperature/performance.
That said, clearly this shouldn’t have been on the open internet, assuming that’s what happened. It could also be an inside job and/or unhappy former employee
Why does that need to be centrally monitored? All the information is local to the refrigerator and the rules about what to do are not dynamic. A refrigerator knows it needs to kick on if it gets too warm. Why does it need to call in to a server to ask for permission? It makes no sense.
All you’ve done is create the possibility of one MASSIVE system-wide failure for the price of a circuit board in every unit that costs a few bucks and that is inevitably going to be there anyway.
Principles aside, defrost shouldn’t be available remotely, even if all the other stuff is, because the freezers have to be emptied and that can’t be done remotely.
I’m just guessing 🙂
About defrosting, it could be that you want to turn the defrost on to literally remove frost without thawing the whole freezer.
Just saying there are reasons why you might want to monitor remotely and possibly be able to take action remotely.
Then again maybe this was a feature that was turned on/left on by mistake
Ah, yes, I guess you can defrost without thawing items. I haven’t seen frost in my freezer for a long time, so I guess they solved it for people’s kitchens.
Yes, there are reasons to do things remotely, my problem is I think people knee-jerk to doing things remotely WITHOUT a reason, that just to being able to do something remotely is enough reason to do it remotely.
Put some energy in your thoughts snd you‘ll get it.
Pretending I’m a fridge:
My door has been open for 10 minutes and my temperature is currently 65 degrees Farenheit. What do I do?
I better contact the central server.
Hello? Central server.
No answer.
Oh well. Guess I won’t activate the door alarm without permission, then, and let everything melt and develop deadly bacteria.
Though I guess, yes, knowing that there was a 40 minute period where it got warmer would be good to have somewhere at the home office (local manager might just not want to take the loss), gathering information centrally is not the same as running behavior locally.
The central server then sends the notification to an app. User of the app is local staff. E.g. they get this message each evening before the store close doors. Same with the freezer room backdoors. At sunday it might escalate to a supervisor who is responsible to a region. This is how such things typically work.
Additional value might be a freezer who can serve a range of minus temperature. It can buffer cold when energy costs are low - typically at night or at sunny days. You need the energy prices online tho.
Now those are good reasons to centralize. Thanks.
Fast food chains destroy food rather than donate it. People get fired for taking food home that’s “supposed” to be thrown away.
On an unrelated note, your avatar is awesome!
Oh sure, but that’s a separate issue. These guys are hacking the stores knowing it will spoil food. Fast food workers are reprimanded for trying to not spoil food. Both things are bad.
And thanks!