I'm reading posts around fedi saying that fridges have no need to be controllable from the internet, and with some caveats I quite disagree.
Aggregated data on how fridges run in real life is valuable, and could be used to let them run more efficiently, which is good both for the owner and for the environment.
Now, with home fridges such data could only be collected by the producer, and I wouldn't trust most fridge producers to use that power in favor of the owners, so my fridge is pretty much disconnected from anything, thanks.
But if you have a supermarket chain, you have enough fridges to be able to make good use of that data, and you do want to collect it. And similarly, being able to control all fridges from outside the individual supermarket gives you a lot more versatility in how to use it.
Mind you, “from outside the supermarket” shouldn't mean “easily found on shodan, with 12345 as the password”, it could be a well configured vpn, or some other secure method of access: I'd consider those to still count as “on the internet”; and you need to keep the system up to date, but then with that many fridges you do need to have a budget for maintenance, and that's part of it.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
npub10e…vr80k
2026-10-13 16:17:00 UTC
Author Public Key
npub10et3qv3knm90xp84m7066lhxz3fa6skul0flemncn25gdu8tzudqcvr80kSeen on
wss://relay.ditto.pubPublished at
2026-10-13 16:17:00 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "I'm reading posts around fedi saying that fridges have no need to be controllable from the internet, and with some caveats I quite disagree.\n\nAggregated data on how fridges run in real life is valuable, and could be used to let them run more efficiently, which is good both for the owner and for the environment.\n\nNow, with home fridges such data could only be collected by the producer, and I wouldn't trust most fridge producers to use that power in favor of the owners, so my fridge is pretty much disconnected from anything, thanks.\n\nBut if you have a supermarket chain, you have enough fridges to be able to make good use of that data, and you do want to collect it. And similarly, being able to control all fridges from outside the individual supermarket gives you a lot more versatility in how to use it.\n\nMind you, “from outside the supermarket” shouldn't mean “easily found on shodan, with 12345 as the password”, it could be a well configured vpn, or some other secure method of access: I'd consider those to still count as “on the internet”; and you need to keep the system up to date, but then with that many fridges you do need to have a budget for maintenance, and that's part of it.",
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