Fucking GROSS.

So because »gestures at this timeline«, the first appliance from Cory Doctorow's ( @pluralistic ) "Unauthorized Bread" is now on the market. A 'smart oven' you buy and subscribe to the company's meals, which bear a QR code you scan so the oven, amidst its ongoing datastream to the mothership, 'knows' how to cook it. The company, which I will not name (and you please won't either), claim you can use the oven to cook your own food, too. But you have to have their app and a wifi connection to set it up and to operate most of its controls, which means at any moment the company can go "lolnope" or put controls (or the ability to cook unauthorized food) behind a paywall, or brick the thing deliberately, or sell your food logs, or do any of the other things Doctorow described better than I, which is why I've linked the story here.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Unauthorized Bread: Real rebellions involve jailbreaking IoT toasters

Cory Doctorow's book, Radicalized, is up for a CBC award. To celebrate, here's an excerpt.

Ars Technica

@isocat @pluralistic

So that story makes me feel icky.

Here's a fancy solar oven that has no wiring of any kind and works fully off grid.

https://gosun.co/products/sport

(They have some more expensive models that can use electricity to warm up too, but that isn't as good of brain clenser after a story about a DRMed oven.)

Sport

@alienghic @isocat @pluralistic
My mum "upgraded" her "smart" blender from one that had her favorite recipe stored on it to one that she has to pay $89 per year to access her favorite recipe. True story. 🤯
@adrigen @alienghic @pluralistic What the buggery bollocks is this "smart blender" nonsense?