"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."
this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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"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?"
"..."
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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I normally never shame buyers of "smart" products that end up being bricked, stupid or invading their privacy, because it's totally conceivable that they want advanced functions in a product that couldn't be achieved in the past and are now made possible by tech and ubiquitous internet, but corrupted by surveillance capitalism and greedy monopolistic corporations.
But a toaster with a giant screen that needs an OTA firmware update? Really? Like... why? When was the last time you thought "I wish my toaster had a big screen and internet access..."
Personally, I'm waiting for Talkie Toaster.
The future could be so fun with the technology we have, but we're ruled by imaginationless corporate minimalists.
Big Tech has boundless imagination when it comes to invading your privacy and putting you under surveillance every which way. And they even managed to convince people to give them their hard-earned for the privilege!
People pay beaucoup bucks for smart nonsense like this idiotic toaster, and voluntarily turn themselves into the manufacturer's true product. The dystopia that people have slowly accepted as their new normal over the past 30 years is nothing short of staggering.
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Given that the universe is infinite, and that god is infinite.... Would anyone like.some toast?
Howdy dooodley do!
We should make a RD community. I love it.
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Did you know there is a toaster from the 50's which is totally mechanically automatic? It slowly lowers and raises the bread automatically, controls the darkening of the bread by measuring the slice's temperature, and it is all powered by the thermal expansion of the heating coils themselves.
Ah, a fellow of culture I see. I also watch Technology Connections and also wish Radiant Control toasters were still a thing.
tech enthusiasts be like: my house is soooo smart!
tech workers be like: Fuck that shit.
The more you know the less enthusiastic you get.
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.
It was $5 cheaper.
Now give up your email address, phone number, name, mailing address, and sign in to our app to burn your bread.
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‘it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.
‘In other words – and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxy-wide success is founded – their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.’
Douglas Adams
I don't understand the appeal of this crap.
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.
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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.
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volume, brightness, time and date... i dont need any of those things out of a toaster
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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/
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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.
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The "revolution" written under the screen is just the cherry on top. (+ the irony of my comment saying a thing that is on the bottom of the screen is "the cherry on top".)
The toaster would go well with butter bot.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41085118-unauthorized-bread
The titular story is highly recommended. Published in 2019. Reality got pretty close to that in just 7 years.
edit: and they dare brand it Revolution 😡
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This can't be real. I refuse to look it up. I'm going to bed now
Anyone who buys "Smart" products gets what they deserve.
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.
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Someone flag Louis Rossman, I want his snarky take on this ridiculous thing.
I love tech, I love gadgets, our smart home is full to the brim with automation and information-gathering. So I'm a full-blooded nerd for 45yrs now.
But this? This and cars is where I draw the line. What could possibly be one single tiny benefit of having a toaster like that? Is there even one? I couldn't find one. Except that there's a cool display on it that can't serve any useful info.
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