In 2024, a user noticed this odd traffic on their local network, took a screenshot of the graph, and posted it to Twitter
After discussing the issue with other Twitter users, the original poster realized that this graph was actually a mistake with their router or something. This reporting software was reporting some other device’s network traffic as being the washing machine’s traffic. The washing machine was actually only using a reasonable amount of data.
Despite this past revelation, in 2026, someone put together a “meme” of sorts comparing the supposed events in that 2024 graph to what people in the past had predicted the future to be.
For whatever reason, that “meme” was put through AI post-processing of some sort. Was the attempt to “upscale” this image after it had been passed around and been automatically compressed down by various platforms? Or was it someone using some newfangled AI-assisted compression technique in an attempt to create a smaller file size than any of the more traditional compression techniques? No idea. Whatever reason was, the image was left with a bunch of nonsense text on the graph portion.
I saw this “meme” and decided to share it here without scrutinizing the text on the graph. As mentioned in my first point, this graph was originally posted years ago, so I was already familiar with it and did not feel the need to read into it in the image I was sharing. I felt safe assuming it was just the same graph that I remember seeing years back.
After users here called out the nonsense text, I just recreated the “meme” from scratch. I grabbed the original screenshot of the graph from Twitter and a stock photo of clouds, and then combined them along with some text so that this is more-or-less the same exact “meme”, just without the AI gibberish.
My dishwasher is not audible in the middle of the night if I stand more than 5 steps away. During the day with all the noise of daily life… not even if I hug it.
That’s fair, honestly I was mostly joking. I just have a fairly deep distrust of IoT devices, even if not for the privacy angle they’re generally not built with robust network security in mind.
If I’m in my office I need to first get to the dishwasher. If I’m on my way home I can’t turn on the oven to preheat. If my kids leave the fridge open I want to be notified before all the food is ruined, even if I’m at work.
I know that lemmy is fully of contrarians, but not everything is a conspiracy theory. Sometimes progress is useful.
You really should not turn the oven on remotely, especially when you have kids. Also your food will definitely not be ruined because your kids leave the fridge open for a few hours. And for the dishwasher you can just set a timer.
Neighbors house almost burned down because of remote controlled device. It was a sauna stove instead of a oven and didn’t even have network, just control panel outside of the sauna where you could turn it on without checking the stove first. Kids had left some plastic toy on the stove. Gladly they noticed the smell just in time, few minutes more and smoke would have ignited, at least according to firemen who were alerted on site.
My stove has option for remote control too via simple relay input so I could just throw in esphome or whatever on it and control it across the world over home assistant, but for that exact reason I didn’t install anything on the header.
The oven is set high and has triple isolation, even after 1 h it’s barely hot on the surface, plus the kids are with us when shopping. The fridge will surely compromise the food, plus consume a lot of energy. And no timer can select the mode of the dishwasher, or change or on the fly or integrate projected solar production.
I will not make my life more expensive,.more risky and less comfortable to save 1kb of internet traffic.
If you have meat or dairy items in your fridge, those can become unsafe to eat after only 2 hours. Since the cold air is more dense, it spills out the bottom of the fridge and gets replaced by room temperature air rather quickly. I’ve definitely eaten my fair share of questionable foods going past this, but the calculus changes if you’re giving that food to other people.
As for the main point, agreed. I’m definitely not a luddite, but if I had kids who weren’t yet responsible enough to not leave a fridge open for hours, I think I’d just put child locks on the fridge and make sure they had access to something else.
It’s not the same (I have that setup for the washing machine which doesn’t have wifi). You just get on/off status and power usage, enough for notifications alone. You don’t get other info, or control. Like start the dishwasher remotely on a fast cycle because unexpected guests. Or on the eco cycle when solar power is available. Or pre-heat the oven when leaving the store with frozen pizzas.
It’s not a must have thing, but a nice comfort feature.
Yeah all this sounds really nice for with a home assistant setup. I’d love to be able to start my washing machine to start while I’m at work so it’s done when I get home and can throw it in to the dryer real quick even though I’m busy that day.
Privacy concerns, unecessary technical faultpoints, ownership and control concerns, security vulnerabilities (that then offer a jump point to compromise the rest of the network), bullshit repair hampering…
I volunteer my private information. Here it is for you too: I run the dishwasher at 55C in eco mode which takes 4h and 5 minutes. There, now the whole internet knows about it. It doesn’t have a camera pointed at my bed, it’s a dishwasher.
The wifi is not needed for it to work, it’s an addictional interface. If anything it provides redundancy, in case some of the buttons (which are exposed to water and chemicals) fail.
All my IoT devices are in a separate vlan and ssid, so security doesn’t worry me much
And regarding repair, I chose this brand because they offer replacement parts even for 20 year old appliances, with manuals how to repair it yourself. And again, if the wifi fails I will still have the buttons.
Spying on you (yours doesn’t seem to do that yet, but see pt.2)
Getting hacked because the domain it communicates with wasn’t renewed and got hijacked by scriptkiddies
Overall I’m quite excited about smart home stuff, but it must live on its own isolated network with some device I have full control over as a bridge to the internet (home-assistant+tailscale or a similar setup). No “IoT” device should have direct internet access, ever.
Point 1 doesn’t concern me much because the oven doesn’t come with a camera or microphone. At most they might know how hot I bake my pizza at. I can tell you all here: it’s 180C.
Point 2 doesn’t either, all IoT devices run their own WLAN isolated from my network and each other.
Similar setup here, home assistant bridge which is then available via reverse proxy from the internet.
Depends on the manufacturer, it can be useful. Here’s my dishwashers internet usage:
Basically two notifications, one that it’s done one that a machine cleaning is needed. Less than a Kilobyte of data.
I know that it’s done when it stops making noise.
“and in case it starts making noises I don’t recognize, there is a shotgun nearby”
Does your dishwasher not have a drying cycle?
My dishwasher is not audible in the middle of the night if I stand more than 5 steps away. During the day with all the noise of daily life… not even if I hug it.
That’s fair, honestly I was mostly joking. I just have a fairly deep distrust of IoT devices, even if not for the privacy angle they’re generally not built with robust network security in mind.
If only there was a way to show that information on the actual machine. The one you need to be in front of to do anything about the information.
If I’m in my office I need to first get to the dishwasher. If I’m on my way home I can’t turn on the oven to preheat. If my kids leave the fridge open I want to be notified before all the food is ruined, even if I’m at work.
I know that lemmy is fully of contrarians, but not everything is a conspiracy theory. Sometimes progress is useful.
You really should not turn the oven on remotely, especially when you have kids. Also your food will definitely not be ruined because your kids leave the fridge open for a few hours. And for the dishwasher you can just set a timer.
Neighbors house almost burned down because of remote controlled device. It was a sauna stove instead of a oven and didn’t even have network, just control panel outside of the sauna where you could turn it on without checking the stove first. Kids had left some plastic toy on the stove. Gladly they noticed the smell just in time, few minutes more and smoke would have ignited, at least according to firemen who were alerted on site.
My stove has option for remote control too via simple relay input so I could just throw in esphome or whatever on it and control it across the world over home assistant, but for that exact reason I didn’t install anything on the header.
The oven is set high and has triple isolation, even after 1 h it’s barely hot on the surface, plus the kids are with us when shopping. The fridge will surely compromise the food, plus consume a lot of energy. And no timer can select the mode of the dishwasher, or change or on the fly or integrate projected solar production.
I will not make my life more expensive,.more risky and less comfortable to save 1kb of internet traffic.
If you have meat or dairy items in your fridge, those can become unsafe to eat after only 2 hours. Since the cold air is more dense, it spills out the bottom of the fridge and gets replaced by room temperature air rather quickly. I’ve definitely eaten my fair share of questionable foods going past this, but the calculus changes if you’re giving that food to other people.
As for the main point, agreed. I’m definitely not a luddite, but if I had kids who weren’t yet responsible enough to not leave a fridge open for hours, I think I’d just put child locks on the fridge and make sure they had access to something else.
Yeah but i did the same thing with a zigbee socket.
Which i just stuck in there as a route booster between the main house and basement brewery (under kitchen)
It’s not the same (I have that setup for the washing machine which doesn’t have wifi). You just get on/off status and power usage, enough for notifications alone. You don’t get other info, or control. Like start the dishwasher remotely on a fast cycle because unexpected guests. Or on the eco cycle when solar power is available. Or pre-heat the oven when leaving the store with frozen pizzas.
It’s not a must have thing, but a nice comfort feature.
Yeah all this sounds really nice for with a home assistant setup. I’d love to be able to start my washing machine to start while I’m at work so it’s done when I get home and can throw it in to the dryer real quick even though I’m busy that day.
Yeah nah they’re not big enough carrots for the concerns introduced
What exactly are the concerns?
Privacy concerns, unecessary technical faultpoints, ownership and control concerns, security vulnerabilities (that then offer a jump point to compromise the rest of the network), bullshit repair hampering…
I volunteer my private information. Here it is for you too: I run the dishwasher at 55C in eco mode which takes 4h and 5 minutes. There, now the whole internet knows about it. It doesn’t have a camera pointed at my bed, it’s a dishwasher.
The wifi is not needed for it to work, it’s an addictional interface. If anything it provides redundancy, in case some of the buttons (which are exposed to water and chemicals) fail.
All my IoT devices are in a separate vlan and ssid, so security doesn’t worry me much
And regarding repair, I chose this brand because they offer replacement parts even for 20 year old appliances, with manuals how to repair it yourself. And again, if the wifi fails I will still have the buttons.
Bud.
I told you i don’t want to connect my dishwasher to the internet. In fact i was fairly emphatic about how much that was Not Going To Happen
Me giving you reasosn was a courteous reaponse to an inquiry, not an invitation to proselytise.
You’re getting weirdly insistent at this point. You do you, i’m not doing it. Respect that.
I never said that you should, THAT is a super weird take. I’m explaining MY reasoning to do it, the carrots are more than enough for me.
Do you always think that people talk about you in particular when discussing technology online?
Overall I’m quite excited about smart home stuff, but it must live on its own isolated network with some device I have full control over as a bridge to the internet (home-assistant+tailscale or a similar setup). No “IoT” device should have direct internet access, ever.
Point 1 doesn’t concern me much because the oven doesn’t come with a camera or microphone. At most they might know how hot I bake my pizza at. I can tell you all here: it’s 180C.
Point 2 doesn’t either, all IoT devices run their own WLAN isolated from my network and each other.
Similar setup here, home assistant bridge which is then available via reverse proxy from the internet.
any kind of unified interface for all those smart gadgets?
Home assistant
groovy