A use case for a "smart" oven is that you can time the preheating so that when you arrive home (say, from work) it's ready to cook something you prepared ahead of time and were keeping in the fridge/freezer.
Though my "dumb" oven can do the same thing, more or less. You set it according to its clock so it starts preheating at a given time. The downside is that you can't change/cancel it remotely if something comes up.
IOT is great in theory, but yeah, I don't trust the implementation.
I have heat/AC that’s not on wifi but is programmable, and I think it has all the benefits (I can set it up to turn on an hour before I normally get home from work, or in the winter set it to turn the heat on an hour before I want to get up) with none of the downsides (it breaking due to internet issues in situations where a purely mechanical one would be fine; the manufacturer deciding to start charging me a monthly fee to use it).
I can’t see the use of a “smart” washing machine (you have to be around to put the clothes in before you can use it) or stove (ditto, you need to put the food into the oven and take it out when it’s done).
It’s not like it takes all that long for an oven to preheat.
Edited by Galadriel on Jul 2nd 2025 at 4:36:32 AM
Reminds me of a bit in The Stanley Parable making fun of players' desire to see themselves ranked next to others. The player is always portrayed as dead last, behind "A Dead Rat".
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If you concede, doesn't your ranking always go down?
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576I do wonder why more IoT devices insist on connecting to a company server instead of something the customer runs on their own LAN. I mean I don't really wonder (it's because the average customer can't and/or would prefer not to have to deal with that complexity) but y'know, I kinda wonder.
As for chess... anyone see that meme going around, "google en passant" "I know what en passant is, you just blundered mate in one"? That's about where my chess skill level is.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.
I've played you, you're better than that.
You're 800, easily, yxy(ep)?? — Yyy# is an issue generally confined to particularly flashy >600s who act as if EP is forced, and inexperienced blitz players.
Probably not, the worst thing you're doing by resigning too early is artificially inflating other players' rankings, which will resolve itself (they'll get obliterated by higher-skilled players and get back to where they should be), and resigning is generally considered polite under many circumstances. (Not that I do it, it just generally is, especially in tournament play. This probably applies less when you're resigning to crash your ranking and rating though, but it's probably not impolite. After all, your opponent gets to win.)
Edited by Florien on Jul 4th 2025 at 12:05:15 PM
Apparently 7 millionth place is actually even pretty good? So auto-conceding would only be impressive at around 200 millionth?
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3110:_Global_Ranking
Edited by Malady on Jul 4th 2025 at 7:01:36 AM
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576Hindsight is actually quite difficult when you're in that type of "artificial gravity" environment, along with vision in general.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Now I'd like to see other departments investigating.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.Yes, this joke is ripe for exploration with other fields.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"What if the moon turned into a black hole?
As always, the details of the question matter: is it a black hole the mass of the Moon or a black hole the size of the Moon? In the former case, not much would happen unless you were literally standing on it when it collapsed. The Moon doesn't affect the Earth all that much outside of its gravity.
In the latter case, we all die within seconds, with the rest of the solar system following us in hours or days.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 8th 2025 at 12:37:39 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Not really. As Randall points out, we have already done far worse to ecosystems with human activity, including and especially light pollution at night. Untouched ecosystems might suffer a bit, but in general things would be fine.
Edit: Earth would cool very slightly due to the loss of the Moon's reflected heat (mostly as infrared) but only enough to offset a few weeks of warming from anthropogenic climate change.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 8th 2025 at 12:40:16 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I like the idea of a smart house.
I do not like the idea of a remotely controlled smart house.
Keep all operations local, and wired if possible and just access your computer. One point of failure to keep watch over.
If nothing else you won't have battery anxiety.
Creed of the Happy Pessimist:Always expect the worst. Then, when it happens, it was only what you expected. All else is a happy surprise.