this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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This might be a silly question, but why the fuck would your washing machine need to be connected to the internet?
Seriously, it's probably some shit about being able to start/stop it remotely, or get notifications when the wash cycle finishes or something like that
I don't hate the idea of notifs when it finishes, but I'd probably get pissy at it. These "smart home" things usually get really shitty if you isolate them to your local network. Probably for advertising/data collection reasons, most won't just send the notification to the app or anything like that, it'll send it to some obscure server on the other side of the world, then they'll ping each other about 30 times, before that server eventually sends you the notification
As to why it's using that much data, it's probably for peer-to-peer software updates. I think windows does the same thing. Some companies prioritise updates via P2P so they don't need to pay as many egress fees/maintain as much infrastructure, although they'll sell it as "making the update experience faster and more totally AWESOME for everyone involved!"
Just set a timer on your phone and you get a notification when the cycle is done. No need to install yet another tracking/advertising app on your phone that will almost certainly want to send you push notifications to buy their sponsored laundry detergent.
So it can doomscroll like the rest of us? What's it gonna do for the 23 hours a day it's not working?