I was at Home Depot tonight getting a new fire extinguisher (because my stove apparently has a short and nearly caught fire) and some spigot covers for the impending subzeropocalypse in Atlanta next week, and a refrigerator caught my eye for two reasons.
One, it’s $3,500, which is kind of a deranged amount of money for an appliance, even one with a giant screen.
And two…

Now… look. Certificate errors happen, and obviously this wasn’t a problem with Google’s cert because much of the Web would have lost its mind. This seems like Home Depot is proxying their Web traffic — smart idea — and someone misconfigured it. Happens, and I’m sure the IT guy at the store has a lot bigger fish to fry.
But looking at this is everything I don’t want in my appliances. There’s an old adage that anything plus a computer becomes a computer, and a refrigerator that even has the ability to have a security certificate error is revolting. The thing is going to need software support, security patches, the widget data providers will inevitably abandon them, the phone app will be integrated into something new or rendered entirely obsolete. There’s a hundred reasons that all of this technology is going to age this fridge well before its time and make it feel really out-of-date, regardless of how much it costs or how much cool stuff is in it, or even because of it. I cannot tell you how much I don’t want this.
My refrigerator isn’t exactly smart, but I wish it was dumber. It sends me text messages, repeatedly, when its water and air filters need to be replaced which sounds like a good idea, but all it really does it give LG an opportunity to upsell me. It also reports how many times a month I open the fridge and puts me on some kind of worldwide refrigerator-accessing leaderboard, which is high derangement. I don’t want a part of any of this. Keep my drink cold and make ice, and we’re good.
Not everything needs eight cameras, a touchscreen and an app store. At this point I’m not even convinced they can wire up a control panel that’ll last five years without making me feel like my house is going to burn down.






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