At work we have some boring toasters. It uses a dial for how well burned you want your bread. It works perfectly well. Purely electromechanical.
Why the fuck does it need this is beyond me.
I wonder if future generations of toasters will require age verification since they are running an OS that can presumably get online? I hate it here, but luckily I have an analog toaster I intend to keep.
Maybe in the future during rolling blackouts caused by ai they’ll only permit a light toasting.
The brave little toaster agrees.
volume, brightness, time and date… i dont need any of those things out of a toaster
It’s pretty useful to have a darkness control for the toast. That’s just a brightness control put on backwards
Smart toaster… Why? Alot of shit I can understand a justification but unless this toaster takes bags of bread and automatically loads and toasts the smart aspect is useless because who’s loading their toaster and not making toast right away.
Anyone who buys “Smart” products gets what they deserve.
Reminds me of the novella Unauthorized Bread by Cory Doctorow.
Love that one. For anyone who hasn’t read it, this is the full text: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/
That’s obscene.
Imagine installing electronics, which are sensitive to extreme heat, into a toaster.
Now imagine someone buying that toaster.
Ovens produce extreme heat and for a much longer time than toasters, and they’ve had some form of electronics for decades.
Having said that, they don’t tend to have touch screens, and for a very good reason.
An oven is actively cooled. Now you know exactly why.
Besides that, there are electronics suitable for extreme environments. I am very certain that the makers of this “smart toaster” did not think of this, or else the toaster would probably cost $1500
Your comment made me curious how much they are to buy. They are ~$400 usd for this monstrosity and that’s cheap model while it’s on sale! You can literally buy like 40 regular toasters instead of that piece of shit. Who the fuck needs a toaster like this? I can’t even imagine the richest buffoon needing a toaster with a touch screen.
But, look at the key features:
- Built-in digital photo frame: Load your favorite family pics to display when the toaster’s idle
- Wi-Fi smart display: See your local time, date, and weather at a glance
I do not feel bad for anyone that buys needlesly smart appliances like this and then has to deal with updates, ads, or the appliance becoming marked obsolete and suddenly being unusable.
Like, did you fr take a look a the rest of the “smart” technology ecosystem and somehow think that just wouldnt be a problem for you?? Absolute clown behavior.
20-40 bucks. Target. Goodwill. If you need a fancy appliance to feel special at least get something like an esspresso machine. I can make toast on the stovetop ffs
I don’t understand the appeal of this crap.
Very old internet story … seems appropriate here:
How To Build A Better Toaster
Day 1:
My boss, an engineer from the pre-CAD days, has successfully brought a generation of products from Acme Toaster Corp’s engineering labs to market. Bob is a wonder of mechanical ingenuity. All of us in the design department have the utmost respect for him, so I was honored when he appointed me the lead designer on the new Acme 2000 Toaster.Day 6:
We met with the president, head of sales, and the marketing vice president today to hammer out the project’s requirements and specifications. Here at Acme, our market share is eroding to low-cost imports. We agreed to meet a cost of goods of $9.50 (100,000 units). I’ve identified the critical issue in the new design: a replacement for the timing spring we’ve used since the original 1922 model. Research with the focus groups shows that consumers set high expectations for their breakfast foods. Cafe latte from Starbucks goes best with a precise level of toast browning. The Acme 2000 will give our customers the breakfast experience they desire. I estimated a design budget of $21,590 for this project and final delivery in seven weeks. I’ll need one assistant designer to help with the drawing packages. This is my first chance to supervise!Day 23:
We’ve found the ideal spring material. Best of all, it’s a well-proven technology. Our projected cost of goods is almost $1.50 lower than our goal. Our rough prototype, which was completed just 12 days after we started, has been servicing the employee cafeteria for a week without a single hiccup. Toast quality exceeds projections.Day 24:
A major aerospace company that had run out of defense contractors to acquire has just snapped up that block of Acme stock sold to the Mackenzie family in the ’50s. At a company-wide meeting, corporate assured us that this sale was only an investment and that nothing will change.Day 30:
I showed the Acme 2000’s exquisitely crafted toast-timing mechanism to Ms. Primrose, the new engineering auditor. The single spring and four interlocking lever arms are things of beauty to me.Day 36:
The design is complete. We’re starting a prototype run of 500 toasters tomorrow. I’m starting to wrap up the engineering effort. My new assistant did a wonderful job.Day 38:
Suddenly, a major snag happened. Bob called me into his office. He seemed very uneasy as he informed me that those on high feel that the Acme 2000 is obsolete—something about using springs in the silicon age. I reminded Bob that the consultants had looked at using a microprocessor but figured that an electronic design would exceed our cost target by almost 50% with no real benefit in terms of toast quality. “With a computer, our customers can load the bread the night before, program a finish time, and get a perfect slice of toast when they awaken,” Bob intoned, as if reading from a script.Day 48:
Bill Compguy, the new microprocessor whiz, scrapped my idea of using a dedicated 4-bit CPU. “We need some horsepower if we’re gonna program this puppy in C,” he said, while I stared fascinated at the old crumbs stuck in his wild beard. “Time-to-market, you know. Delivery is due in three months. We’ll just pop this cool new 8-bitter I found into it, whip up some code, and ship to the end user.”Day 120:
The good news is that I’m getting to stretch my mechanical-design abilities. Bill convinced management that the old spring-loaded, press-down lever control is obsolete. I’ve designed a “motorized insertion port,” stealing ideas from a CD-ROM drive. Three cross-coupled, safety-interlock micro switches ensure that the heaters won’t come on unless users properly insert the toast. We’re seeing some reliability problems due to the temperature extremes, but I’m sure we can work those out.Day 132:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We’ve replaced the 8-bitter with a Harvard-architecture, 16-bit, 3-MIPS CPU.Day 172:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months.Day 194:
The auditors convinced management we really need a graphical user interface with a full-screen LCD. “You’re gonna need some horsepower to drive that,” Bill warned us. “I recommend a 386 with a half-meg of RAM.” He went back to design Revision J of the PC board.Day 268:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We’ve cured most of the electronics’ temperature problems with a pair of fans, though management is complaining about the noise. Bob sits in his office all day, door locked, drinking Jack Daniels. Like clockwork, his wife calls every night around midnight, sobbing. I’m worried about him and mentioned my concern to Chuck. “Wife?” he asked. “Wife? Yeah, I think I’ve got one of those, and two or three kids, too. Now, let’s just stick another meg of RAM in here, OK?”Day 290:
We gave up on the custom GUI and are now installing Windows CE. The auditors applauded Bill’s plan to upgrade to a Pentium with 32 MB of RAM. There’s still no functioning code, but the toaster is genuinely impressive: four circuit boards, bundles of cables, and a gigabyte of hard-disk space. “This sucker has more computer power than the entire world did 20 years ago,” Bill boasted proudly.Day 384:
Toast quality is sub-par. The addition of two more cooling fans keeps the electronics to a reasonable temperature but removes too much heat from the toast. I’m struggling with baffles to vector the air, but the thrust of all these fans spins the toaster around.Day 410:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We switched from C++ to Java. “That’ll get them pesky memory-allocation bugs, for sure,” Bill told his team of 15 programmers. This approach seems like a good idea to me, because Java is platform-independent, and there are rumors circulating that we’re porting to a SPARC station.Day 530:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. I mastered the temperature problems by removing all of the fans and the heating elements. The Pentium is now thermally bonded to the toast. We found a thermal grease that isn’t too poisonous. Our marketing people feel that the slight degradation in taste from the grease will be more than compensated for by the “toasting experience that can only come from a CISC-based, 32-bit multitasking machine running the latest multi-platform software.”Day 610:
The product ships. It weighs 72 lb and costs $325.Who needs fiction. This one is $399
For anyone else looking for the source text: https://www.ganssle.com/articles/toastallessons.htm
This is the first time I’ve encountered it and rings way too real, even though it was likely written a while ago.
I’m laughing and close to crying, though I’m not sure whether from parallels to my work I get reminded of or from finding it hilarious.
I suppose it’s a bit from both.
Thank you for that story I wasn’t aware of! Considering the mentioned hardware and software I suppose it’s around 30 years old?This story was so much funnier before I worked in tech startups.
I work in a established tech company that makes hardware. The 2nd gen of a existing product that was supposed to be done in 8 months will be probably released in June, after 2.5 years.
Yeah been there so I can totally relate. The requirements sometimes were asinine. It was the first time I learned about feature creep.
Who needs fiction. This one is $399
I read “patented design crisps the outside of sandwich while heating and melting inside” and found its patented design also caused me to die a little on the inside.
I think one of the most interesting things about this story is how prophetic it was almost 30 years ago. It almost predicted enshittification.
Who needs fiction. This one is $399
Fuuucking hell 🤦
It’s a perfect stinger. Like “the Aristocrats!” Just… no notes.
I mean, yeah, there’s lots of notes in the sense that we don’t need $400 toasters jammed to the gills with computers. But the presentation? Just like that toast in the breakroom. Perfect.
the apartments’ appliances are designed to extract revenue. The fridge won’t chill unauthorized groceries. The toaster won’t toast unauthorized bread.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41085118-unauthorized-bread
The DMCA makes it illegal to toast anything the software refuses to toast. This is legal reality today, despite being featured in (dystopic) science fiction.
The toaster includes a sensor that detects if the bread contains DNA from the proprietary wheat that the toaster company has partnered with.
THAT or there is a series of tiny nanoprocessors embedded in the bread itself that are
mostly, surelyharmless to consume.THAT or there is an RFID chip in the bread package that communicates with a receptor in the toaster to ensure that you have the
approvedoptimum bread crafted especially for your toaster model. (Until they decide that the bread now has to be slightly changed in size and no longer fits in your toaster, thus necessitating you buying a new model)
Giving internet access to something that resistively heats wires until they glow seems like an obvious safety issue.
Luddite for Life!
Luddites get such a shit reputation when they were in fact worried about losing their jobs to automation. When they protested, the bosses said they just were afraid of the future. Then automation came and they lost their jobs.
I only found out about that a few years ago. I was always taught that they were like mean Amish people lol
Not just “worried about losing their jobs to automation”. They were trying to get the government to enforce laws that protected their jobs, but the government refused to do it.
As with most manufacturing at the time, there was a guild system in place where new workers went through an apprenticeship and after they proved their mastery by creating a masterpiece, they were acknowledged as master craftsmen and could work on their own. This was enforced by laws like the Statute of Artificers of 1562/1563 that required that apprentices work for a mandatory 7 years before they could move up.
The workers didn’t mind jobs being done by machines. They just wanted the machines to be controlled by people who were in the right guild and had gone through the proper period of apprenticeship. That would result in the quality of the end product meeting the standards of the guild.
Because the government refused to enforce those laws, the guilds took matters into their own hands. They led loud protests and strikes. In France the workers at these protests often wore wooden work shoes called “sabots”, so the French coined the word “sabotage” for these protests. Since the protests weren’t enough to get the government to enforce the laws, the workers attacked factories that were producing low-quality textiles made by low-paid employees who weren’t members of the guild and broke the machines by smashing them with hammers.
Instead of convincing the government to enforce existing laws, that resulted in the government passing new laws protecting the machines (stocking frames) used to produce the textiles, and eventually passed a law allowing the death penalty for smashing a stocking frame. As a result, the workers didn’t want their real identities revealed while they destroyed the machines. So, they claimed they were following the orders of “Ned Ludd” or “King Ludd”, who lived in Sherwood Forest.
It’s true that, to a certain extent, the workers were trying to stop technological progress in order to protect their jobs. But, mostly, it was an attempt to keep their fair share of the profits from doing the work. They didn’t mind that the machines existed. They just thought that the machines should be operated by a master craftsman instead of an orphan child, and that the final product meet the quality standards that the guild demanded. Meanwhile the owners of the factories and machines were basically trying to use the machines as a way to break the control the guilds had over the manufacturing process and to have as little money possible go to the workers, and as much as possible go to the owners of the machines.
Yeah, the machines that they smashed had been in use in England for 2 centuries at that point. It’s very unlikely that they just decided to rebel against this 2 century old “new technology” because they were some primitive brutes as they are depicted. History is written by the victors, and in this case capitalists were successful in tarnishing their reputation for centuries.
Hmm? Oh, no need to worry about that. I just checked with my smart home smoke detectors, and their uptime has been great. That’s good news, because we’re getting a smart gas range next week.
“Why does a toaster need internet connection?”
“So it can receive firmware updates.”
“Why does it need any updates?”
“Security patches because of the internet connectivity.”In case there are innovations in bread.
Hear me out. Bread. With AI!
I mean… I don’t think long-chain gluten molecules can do computations. But, there are other ways to combine AI and bread. There’s all that waste heat being generated by AI computations. It could be used for baking…
I bet people would be a lot less opposed to datacenters if everyone of them had a bakery built in and the delicious scent of sourdough wafted out whenever anybody was making out with their AI waifu.
“What benefit does the Internet connection offer?”
“You can make toast remotely.”
“but don’t I have to put bread in?”
“…”
“don’t I need to be there to eat it?”
“…”
In the future, all of our meals will be in the cloud. An implant in your tongue will allow you to taste them. Calories will be distributed into your stomach with an HP Cartidge which you must replace regularly.
A device connected to the cloud that will produce small film sheets (like those Listerine breath mint sheets that gave my former druggie youth pastor pause the first time I ever offered him one) that can be configured to reproduce the flavors you crave.
Wait… I kind of want this.
What is wrong with you?
So you suggest we need to add a system that can put bread and dispose of it when it’s ready.
We once had a printer that we couldn’t stop or the main software would fail. We didn’t want the printouts so we fed it directly into a shredder.
The good old days of recycling and feed paper.
Don’t give them ideas! Next it will only toast revolition brand bread. Any other will not turn on the toaster and void warranty
There’s an RFID chip in the bread to enable toasting on compatible models.
"No, that’s the XF-6800 toaster, it can only toast XF 6-series bread and above. You’re using XC-4, you need the one that says “premium ultra.”
We once had a printer that we couldn’t stop or the main software would fail.
Why doesn’t this surprise me at all?
Wild guess, it’s one of those gadget toasters that can toast images in bread. There are some that toast the weather forecast or a selfie.
It doesn’t, besides some preconfigured toast settings, it features a photo frame on the display. That’s it
Boring dystopia indeed
If only there were some other, better way to look at stuff from the Internet.
I used my laser cutter to do this once. It was pretty cool.
And not a single Jesus or Virgin Mary.
Those need the indulgence level of subscription to unlock
This is a good joke. Excellent even.
