The Internet of Things: A Hall of Shame

I recently saw a post describing a "smart" kettle that required an app or voice command to boil water. The user noted, "I can have tea as long as they have a wifi connection. Welcome to the 21st century."

This is the defining characteristic of modern tech-horror: a device made functionally inferior to its "dumb" ancestor by the addition of a microchip. The failure mode of a normal kettle is a pot; the failure mode of a smart kettle is a brick.

If you think the kettle is bad, here are five devices that prove we have peaked as a species and are now sliding rapidly backward.

1. The $400 Bag Squeezer (The Juicero)

Price: $400 (Launch price: $700) The Superior Alternative: Dieter Rams’ classic Braun Citrus Juicer ($60) or Human Hands ($0).

Juicero was a Wi-Fi-connected cold-press juicer. You bought proprietary bags of chopped fruit, put them in the machine, and it pressed them.

The "Smart" Feature: It read a QR code on the bag to ensure it hadn't expired. If the internet was down or the bag was expired, it would refuse to make juice. It is vital to note that the QR code checked the expiry of the bag, not the actual juice quality.

The Stupid Reality: Bloomberg News revealed that if you just squeezed the bag with your hands, you got the same amount of juice in the same amount of time. It was a $400 rolling pin that required a software update to function.

Furthermore, the machine’s refusal to operate on "expired" bags highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of biology. The main selling point was the ability to bulk-make juice to store. But juice is already pre-stored in nature's perfect packaging: fruit. An unpeeled orange is essentially juice with a shelf-life, contained in a biodegradable wrapper. The Juicero was a subscription service for squeezing a bag, offering less functionality than a mechanically rotated plastic cone from the 1970s.

2. The Bluetooth Salt Shaker (Smalt)

Price: $199 The Superior Alternative: Peugeot Paris u'Select Salt Mill ($45) + JBL Go Speaker ($30) + LED Candle ($10). Total: $85.

"Smalt" is a large plastic centrepiece that holds salt. It looks like an "ergonomically" designed, off-brand Waterpik.

The "Smart" Feature: It has a Bluetooth speaker (because you want your salt to play the soft jazz of Kenny G) and mood lighting, because you want your salt shaker to be a candle too. You can "dispense" salt by pinching a circle on your smartphone screen or asking Alexa to "dispense one teaspoon of salt."

The Stupid Reality: It requires batteries and a firmware connection to use gravity. The dispensing mechanism is a study in anti-ergonomics. To use the app, you must hold the heavy dispenser over your food with one hand. You must hold your phone with the other. However, a "pinch" gesture requires two fingers on the screen. Unless you place the phone on the table—taking your eyes off the food—or have a prehensile tail, the geometry of seasoning your soup is ridiculous.

Alternatively, you can talk to it. Because nothing kills the vibe of a dinner party faster than shouting commands at your table setting. This is objectively less functional than an electric button-mill (one thumb), a manual mill (two hands, one action), or the pinnacle of culinary interface design: putting your fingers in a bowl of salt.

#InternetOfThings #IoT #TechFail #Enshittification #SmartHome #TechCritique #Smarter #iKettle #RightToRepair #TechHorror #CloudFail #Abandonware

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3. The Vibrating Fork (Hapifork)

Price: $99 The Superior Alternative: A stainless steel fork ($2) and basic etiquette.

A fork designed to help you lose weight by eating slower.

The "Smart" Feature: It contains a motion sensor that tracks how many bites you take per minute. If you eat too fast, the fork vibrates in your mouth to tell you to slow down.

The Stupid Reality: It has to be charged. If you run out of battery, you just have a very heavy, thick fork. Also, users reported that if you "scoop" your food (like peas) rather than "stab" it, the fork doesn't register the bite, incentivising you to eat like a shovel to trick the algorithm.

Eating like a peasant? Shovelling the grub in there like a pig at a trough? The Hapifork brings you all the joy of being hit on the head with a guide to table manners by a Victorian mistress, all for the low cost of $99. It is essentially a vibrator for your teeth that rattles your dentures when you enjoy your meal too much.

4. The Egg Tray with an App (Quirky Egg Minder)

Price: $50 The Superior Alternative: The cardboard carton the eggs come in (Free) + Eyes.

Numerate enough to earn currency to purchase useless goods, but too lazy to count to twelve? The Quirky Egg Minder is the kitchen egg accountant you never thought you needed.

The "Smart" Feature: It connects to Wi-Fi to tell you how many eggs you have left while you are at the store. It has LED lights next to each egg to tell you which one is the "oldest."

The Stupid Reality: It turned a glance into a tech support issue. Most people eat eggs in the order they grab them, rendering the LED "aging" system useless. If the battery died or the Wi-Fi disconnected, it often reported you had zero eggs when you had a full tray. It solved the non-existent problem of "egg blindness" by introducing the very real problem of "connectivity failure."

5. The Hairbrush with a Microphone (Kérastase Hair Coach)

Price: $200 The Superior Alternative: A comb (invented approx. 5500 B.C. in Ancient Persia).

The "Smart" Feature: It has a microphone that listens to the sound of your hair breaking. It also has an accelerometer to tell you if you are brushing too hard.

The Stupid Reality: It requires you to sync your hair-brushing data to an app. It "gamifies" brushing your hair, giving you a "hair quality score."

It must be noted that the "hair quality score" has nothing to do with the actual biological state of your keratin; it is simply a game score. It effectively turns your morning routine into a round of Guitar Hero for your scalp, where you must hit the strokes perfectly to avoid a low score, only the prize is anxiety rather than applause.

Archaeologists date the first combs to 5500 B.C. For over 7,000 years, humans—from Cleopatra to the architects of Ayurvedic medicine—managed to maintain their hair without a microphone. We could make a joke about the unruliness of Medusa’s hair here, but a microphone on a hairbrush wouldn’t do much for her split roots; every time a viper struck the bristles, the accelerometer would trigger a "Brushing Force Warning."

The Verdict

We are filling our homes with landfills-in-waiting. We are trading simple mechanics for complex, fragile software.

If a normal kettle breaks, you can still boil water in it on a stove. If a smart kettle breaks, it’s a paperweight that might be DDOS-ing a server. Remember that the next time AWS-East goes down.

#InternetOfThings #IoT #TechFail #Enshittification #SmartHome #TechCritique #Smarter #iKettle #RightToRepair #TechHorror #CloudFail #Abandonware

The Internet of Things: A Hall of Shame

I recently saw a post describing a "smart" kettle that required an app or voice command to boil water. The user noted, "I can have tea as long as they have a wifi connection. Welcome to the 21st century."

This is the defining characteristic of modern tech-horror: a device made functionally inferior to its "dumb" ancestor by the addition of a microchip. The failure mode of a normal kettle is a pot; the failure mode of a smart kettle is a brick.

If you think the kettle is bad, here are five devices that prove we have peaked as a species and are now sliding rapidly backward.

1. The $400 Bag Squeezer (The Juicero)

Price: $400 (Launch price: $700) The Superior Alternative: Dieter Rams’ classic Braun Citrus Juicer ($60) or Human Hands ($0).

Juicero was a Wi-Fi-connected cold-press juicer. You bought proprietary bags of chopped fruit, put them in the machine, and it pressed them.

The "Smart" Feature: It read a QR code on the bag to ensure it hadn't expired. If the internet was down or the bag was expired, it would refuse to make juice. It is vital to note that the QR code checked the expiry of the bag, not the actual juice quality.

The Stupid Reality: Bloomberg News revealed that if you just squeezed the bag with your hands, you got the same amount of juice in the same amount of time. It was a $400 rolling pin that required a software update to function.

Furthermore, the machine’s refusal to operate on "expired" bags highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of biology. The main selling point was the ability to bulk-make juice to store. But juice is already pre-stored in nature's perfect packaging: fruit. An unpeeled orange is essentially juice with a shelf-life, contained in a biodegradable wrapper. The Juicero was a subscription service for squeezing a bag, offering less functionality than a mechanically rotated plastic cone from the 1970s.

2. The Bluetooth Salt Shaker (Smalt)

Price: $199 The Superior Alternative: Peugeot Paris u'Select Salt Mill ($45) + JBL Go Speaker ($30) + LED Candle ($10). Total: $85.

"Smalt" is a large plastic centrepiece that holds salt. It looks like an "ergonomically" designed, off-brand Waterpik.

The "Smart" Feature: It has a Bluetooth speaker (because you want your salt to play the soft jazz of Kenny G) and mood lighting, because you want your salt shaker to be a candle too. You can "dispense" salt by pinching a circle on your smartphone screen or asking Alexa to "dispense one teaspoon of salt."

The Stupid Reality: It requires batteries and a firmware connection to use gravity. The dispensing mechanism is a study in anti-ergonomics. To use the app, you must hold the heavy dispenser over your food with one hand. You must hold your phone with the other. However, a "pinch" gesture requires two fingers on the screen. Unless you place the phone on the table—taking your eyes off the food—or have a prehensile tail, the geometry of seasoning your soup is ridiculous.

Alternatively, you can talk to it. Because nothing kills the vibe of a dinner party faster than shouting commands at your table setting. This is objectively less functional than an electric button-mill (one thumb), a manual mill (two hands, one action), or the pinnacle of culinary interface design: putting your fingers in a bowl of salt.

#InternetOfThings #IoT #TechFail #Enshittification #SmartHome #TechCritique #Smarter #iKettle #RightToRepair #TechHorror #CloudFail #Abandonware

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