Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/11/justifiably-angry-man-hacks-ev.html
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18 Likes
Communist idea? DRM is one of the greatest achievements of end-stage capitalism! Sounds like he needs a re-education camp.
65 Likes
Wow. That is some mean ass fridge design.
Mine has the warning but, not the auto shut off thank goodness. In my case, a Samsung, the warning light seems to actually coincide with a reduced water flow resulting from mineral buildup in the filter. So, at least I feeeeel as though the fridge isn’t trying to make me go out and buy unnecessary filters.
19 Likes
Maybe he was triggered by the furrin’-soundin’ last names of the inventors? If they had been named Smith and Jones, perhaps he wouldn’t have gone all McCarthy on them.
Abolish DRM, in all its forms.
20 Likes
That’s what they want you to think.
24 Likes
Ours is a little older, so it just resets the filter timer when I tell it to. We generally get three to four 6-month uses out of a filter before I begin to wonder if maybe I should replace it.
What really annoys me is our previous fridge went a year between telling me that the filter was (not really) bad. The filters haven’t changed size, only the manufacturer’s greediness.
17 Likes
Always check for this sort of thing before buying an appliance and boycott the brands that do it. Otherwise they ALL will eventually.
17 Likes
These things are particularly obnoxious for those of us who feed the fridge water from a reverse osmosis system – filtered even before the membrane by far more selective filters than the fridge uses.
I find out if they’re available with a bypass and if not refuse to buy them.
12 Likes
The linked site includes a correction that it was not, in fact, going to disable itself, but simply display the warning in perpetuity (with an ever increasing negative counter). Still doesn’t excuse this shitty design, but not quite as dire.
9 Likes
I like the tone of his website:
“So my fridge has a water-nazi-mini-hitler circuit board in it, I just had to see it.”
“The RFID Circuit Trapdoor of Shame”
“General Electric’s Integrated Führer Board(IFB)”
“Enjoy your filter freedom.”
“The Swap-a-roo method”
18 Likes
Yeah that’s way different. Our fridge does that too, but we just took bets on when it would stop or roll over (it stops and 99 and doesn’t roll over)
7 Likes
“99 fingers of shame on the fridge,
99 fingers of shame–
And now the blame remains the same:
99 fingers of shame on the fridge.”
13 Likes
I miss Cory.
21 Likes
I guess we’re old-fashioned. The available space lacks plumbing so the new fridge we bought last year lacks icemaker and filter. No problem. Hint: don’t buy appliances smarter than you are.
11 Likes
i have these plastic trays - we fill them with water - then we stick them in the freezer - and then, when they’re frozen, we have ice and pop out the cubes as we need them - repeat as necessary - seems to work just fine
also - i’ve never put chips in the freezer - when they thaw they’re just fucking mushy
19 Likes
LOL “communist”??? GE??? I applaud him for fighting this crapware, but it most certainly is not “communist”, it’s designed to MAXIMIZE PROFITS for a CAPITALIST company. Enough already with celebrating morons like this. I am frankly shocked and disappointed that he isn’t blaming this on ANTIFA.
17 Likes
Another reason to not buy GE appliances. The GE appliance division is owned by Haier now, a shitty Chinese entity.
At least Whirpool/Maytag is still a US-based company, has no disabling RFID tech, and will sell you a pass-through plug to replace your filter entirely if you wish.
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Me too. I know there have been threads speculating about the why and what - but the least they could have done was send him off with an acknowledgement for his contributions.
He just vanished…like he was…
5 Likes
It’s kind of like how Epson, Canon and HP force you to use their own brand of ink carts in their printers. Pure greed, no matter what else they say. I decided to boycott them and bought a Brother printer, since it uses cheap generic cartridges.
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