Microsoft and Miele collaborate to make smarter home appliances

[HEXUS]

And Fujitsu announces Microsoft IoT partnership to optimise (lettuce) production.

Read more.

[Saracen]

I suspect my reaction won't surprise many here.

Miele and Microsoft have developed a website where users select recipes. Once selected food preparation stages are downloaded to the user's smartphone or tablet and the matching program is loaded onto the oven through Microsoft Azure. The oven varies temperature, cooking time, humidity (by adding steam) and other factors to match the recipe to help cook your meal to perfection.

I'm no Michelin chef, but ..... really?

I'm a Miele fan, but a SmartOven? Give me strength. Maybe for the hopelessly inept, but what happens when, as the cook, you vary the recipe to suit your tastes? When you increase this, or substitute that for the other, or if you like whatever it is a little better of less done? How do you like you steak? Rare, medium or well-done? What about a roast?

Sorry, but it's not for me. I wouldn't pay 50p extra for an IoT oven, and NO WAY am I using a website, or MS services, that tell companies what I eat, or for that matter, which days I use my oven. I just told my utility company to shove their "smart" meter for the same reason. I wouldn't pay extra for this type of oven because no way would I connect it. And if the device came at a premium (and my bet is it will) it would cause me to buy a different model or, if need-be, a non-Miele product.

[crossy]

I suspect my reaction won't surprise many here.

Hmm, given the anti-Microsoft feeling coming from your recent posts I've read, I'd be sore afraid that the SmartOven would "accidentally" undercook and polish you off by food poisoning!

Like you I thought that cooking was a "creative" exercise, so I'm not sure that this latest thing isn't "cloud for the sake of it". After all, what'd be wrong with some kind of (non-cloud) DB lookup that the device could do - heck even a QR code-based thing. And no, I'm not getting at you with "anti-Microsoft feeling" - you gave pretty convincing personal reasons.

I had a look last year at one of those "smart microwaves" and came to the conclusion that it was actually a lot more effort-intensive than a "dumb" model. It was fine if you wanted the amounts of those foods it knew about, but hopeless otherwise. My negativity shocked SWMBO because she'd assumed I'd be all in favour of another "fancy computer gadget".

Maybe all these IoT advocates need to be sat down in front of films such as Demon Seed and maybe learn a lesson.

[shaithis]

I really like the idea of IoT in my kitchen, I just can't bring myself to wear the outlay of it (at least not yet).

Keeping track of my stock of ingredients, best before dates, offering cooking times/settings and even offering me recipes based on what I have in the cupboards/fridge/freezer all seem value added extra I would be interested in.

The problem is how much it would cost to cover those bases...plus we need great tools and an open API so that you don't get tied into horrid software or a fragmented ecosystem.

[Smudger]

What if someone hacks you and sets it to burn everything?

[shaithis]

What if someone hacks you and sets it to burn everything?

TBH, I would rather my lunch gets burnt, rather than all my data getting compromised. So it's less of a concern compared to devices I am already protecting.

I guess there would be the inevitable lawsuits in the US because "My firewall didn't protect me from the oven burning me!"

[Saracen]

Hmm, given the anti-Microsoft feeling coming from your recent posts I've read, I'd be sore afraid that the SmartOven would "accidentally" undercook and polish you off by food poisoning!

..... And no, I'm not getting at you with "anti-Microsoft feeling" - you gave pretty convincing personal reasons.

...

It's not really anti-Microsoft. It's more 'anti-the-way-things-are-increasingly-going'. I see MSs apparent direction of travel as a symptom, not the actual disease. It's the way so much is going.

For example, government presumption that our private medical data is theirs to use as they see fit. After serious backlash from the medical community, they at least conceded and gave us an ability to opt-out, but I wonder what proportion of the population did, or even realised that an implication of not doing so was that most of your medical records at your GP would (not could, but would) be uploaded to central servers, from which it could end up, even in identifiable form, in the hands of university academics AND private companies.

The result of that was that I had a very direct chat with my doctor, opted out and have written confirmation of that. Nonetheless, the system to connect and upload ALL patient records has, as far as I know, gone ahead and the ONLY difference between patients whose data is uploaded and those whose isn't is the presence or absence of a couple of read codes on the file meaning "don't upload". Assuming, of course, no coding 'mistakes' or 'accidental' removal/editing of those read codes.

Doctors, many of whom are opposed to this system, at least in the absence of it being opt-in not opt-out, don't have any choice but to comply, no matter what their ethical objections might be.

Anyway, it's a jump from MS to NHS GP patient data but the ethos is the same - we're all just blobs of data belonging to government or big corporates.

George Orwell was right, except about the date.

[kingpotnoodle]

I suspect my reaction won't surprise many here.

...

and NO WAY am I using a website, or MS services, that tell companies what I eat, or for that matter, which days I use my oven.

Nope, no surprise, but maybe you've gone a little beyond this time! Although, imagine the horror of it getting out that you eat pizza and chips 4 times a week. I'm pretty sure risk from an IoT oven is minimal, unless hackers overcook your Sunday lunch, before anyone suggests miscreants could overheat your oven and burn down your house I think that's vanishingly unlikely, ovens with pyrolytic cleaning hit 500C without causing fires after all.

[Saracen]

Nope, no surprise, but maybe you've gone a little beyond this time! Although, imagine the horror of it getting out that you eat pizza and chips 4 times a week. I'm pretty sure risk from an IoT oven is minimal, unless hackers overcook your Sunday lunch, before anyone suggests miscreants could overheat your oven and burn down your house I think that's vanishingly unlikely, ovens with pyrolytic cleaning hit 500C without causing fires after all.

You're missing the point. Other than supporting a product I've bought, i.e. warranty issues and/or recall, Miele don't need to know I exist, and as far as either my eating habits or oven-buying habits are concerned. nor do MS.

So, recipe data is one tiny little ad apparently harmless bit of data. But it would tell them where I live, when I do, or don't operate the oven, and given Miele's pricing, it sure hints at socio-economic grouping.

But then, the whole point of data warehousing and mining is that a snippet here, a snippet there, over a period builds into a remarkably detailed statistical picture of each of us.

So, next time someone's looking to sell high-end kitchen equipment in my area, a search shows I've bought a Miele oven (if, of courser, I had) and that gets me targeted. Or, whatever the snippet is.

My point is I don't want to be targeted. Ever. By anyone selling anything. No exceptions.

And as for IoT ovens, I see, for me, zero benefits from it. None at all. And so, any data given away gains me zilch that I want. So why on earth would I?

For the record, I don't remember the last time I had pizza.

[hb904460]

At some point life insurance companies will be looking at your eating habits and refusing cover or raising prices based on your diet.

[peterb]

Hmm, I sense the "Blue Steak of Death"

















/fetches coat

[peterb]

imagine the horror of it getting out that you eat pizza and chips 4 times a week.

And this coming from a username kingpotnoodle????

[crossy]

At some point life insurance companies will be looking at your eating habits and refusing cover or raising prices based on your diet.

Shush That's how Microsoft/Miele are going to "monetize" this particular cloud - they'll cross reference your "smartfridge" and "smartoven" (along with whatever Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda, etc are going to sell them) to figure out what you're eating with exercise data from fitness bands or phone. Then sell the results to insurance companies because they can then better estimate if you're likely to be overweight etc. Especially if the (privatised) NHS then sells them medical data.

Hmm, I sense the "Blue Steak of Death"

/fetches coat

Like it. Although maybe "BSoD" is Black Steak of Death.

[peterb]

Well, it won't be cooking Apple crumble, or Rasberry Pie!

[pp05]

Shush That's how Microsoft/Miele are going to "monetize" this particular cloud - they'll cross reference your "smartfridge" and "smartoven" (along with whatever Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda, etc are going to sell them) to figure out what you're eating with exercise data from fitness bands or phone. Then sell the results to insurance companies because they can then better estimate if you're likely to be overweight etc. Especially if the (privatised) NHS then sells them medical data.

Like it. Although maybe "BSoD" is Black Steak of Death.

Or worse your cooker will be on a subscription basis where you pay out on each hob as of when you need it, with advanced features like turbo-cook and projector beaming Jamie Oliver onto the wall giving you step-by-step guide. This innovation will be called Smartcooking 2.0.

[GuidoLS]

What if someone hacks you and sets it to burn everything?

I guess there would be the inevitable lawsuits in the US because "My firewall didn't protect me from the oven burning me!"

Already more than a few lawsuits because people didn't change the default username/password on their webcam, and they got 'hacked', behind the router that was still set to admin:admin...

As for me, I won't even purchase a major appliance (refrigerator/stove/washer/dryer) if it comes with digital controls (if it breaks, it costs more to repair/replace the digital part than it did to purchase the unit new). I certainly won't be making an exception for things that connect to the net. The big things being pushed lately are LED light bulbs and Nest thermostats.

Thanks, but I'll pass. I'm roughly 75% off the grid. The electric company has no need to know when my lights are on, for how long, etc.