FFS an air fryer is a heating element, fan, and thermostat.

Why are any of them being built with online connectivity and data harvesting capabilities in the first place?!

Manufacturers: To deliver solutions to nonexistent problems. Free money.

Politics: To save our economy. It can only survive if people buy new stuff all the time. Could also come in handy as surveillance measure one day.

People: Oh how cool, I can monitor my chicken nuggets from my couch ~5m away.

'Last year, we asked the public for their views on smart products in a series of workshops. People shared concerns that products collect too much personal information, and said that they feel powerless to control how their data is used and shared'

Thank you to these people!

"hey Google, preheat the oven to 350°"

It'd be nice to be able to do that while my hands are dirty doing something else, instead of stopping and cleaning them so I don't put salmonella on the oven knobs.

Easy enough to enforce. Put all your IoT devices into their own subnet/VLAN with no Internet access. Then, you'll quickly see which devices you need to replace, or just not use as "smart" devices.

I have a ton of smart devices that don't even connect to wifi at all. None of them have Internet access of any sort.

Easy enough! except, that most people don't even know what is a VLAN, let alone have any network device that supports it. It takes a special kind of router to have such settings, and no, OpenWRT is not the solution for that as they have limitations on the minimum amount of memory the device has to have

So it's a skill issue, then? Got it. Any old PC + a $10 pcie network adapter can be turned into a router capable of it.

You could just do that first

Sometimes I forget. It would also be useful if I'm not in the kitchen and want to start it without having to go there and back to what I was doing while waiting for it to heat, if it's something like a frozen pizza that doesn't take much prep time.

As someone with ADHD, the implemented order of operations is never logically optimal.

The more steps I have to do to course correct the more likely I fuck up the next thing.

Home automation is a godsend for me.

I don't have an air fryer but if I did, the biggest help for me would be some sort of obnoxiously obvious reminder the nuggs are done so I don't A) burn the house down, or B) have cold nuggs when I wake up from my hyperfocus an hour later.

People: Oh how cool, I can monitor my chicken nuggets from my couch ~5m away.

This would genuinely be handy for me though. I've got a nine year old, and have similar aged kids over quite regularly. If I'm dealing with the kids, I can't always hear the air fryer finishing. A notification to the phone that's in my pocket would be really helpful.

As you say though, there's always shit tacked on

I only buy cheap shit. And I never, ever, ever ever ever connect anything to the net that doesn't absolutely need to be connected.

If I need an air fryer and the cheap one has smart shit on it. I will never connect that shit to the net. Never. Why the fuck would I? It's an air fryer. Not a laptop.

it is first and foremost a

Hardware issue.

but also who the fuck wants to have a power hungry PC as the router. old PC, so we can probably count with 80 W at the least

but also, how the fuck would a PC help with the skill issue?

I set a timer on your phone to match(ish) the timer on the air fryer

It means you don't know how to make it work. Last I checked, a used N100 all in one PC with dual Ethernet is cheaper than even most brand new consumer routers, and also sips watts.

My husband has been wondering if he should get formally diagnosed for ADHD now that our kid has been. (Talk about a carbon copy of a parent, this kid, geeze.) This explains a lot about the way he cooks. He always says it’s because he “needs more practice” but all I see is a chaotic stressful experience, and of course if I try to help him I just get in the way and make him irritated that I seem to think he can’t manage it on his own. Anyway all I’m saying is that it’s interesting to read your comment because I wonder if that’s my husband’s trouble, too.

Certainly sounds familiar, my tip to him is to try and write recipes down and get in the habit of mise en place-ing (prep chopping / pre-measuring) when you know what you're gonna cook. Once the food hits the hot pan, any semblance of a plan goes out the window

(but also know "sticking to habits" is hard for us with ADHD, as it frequently goes against our nature, so don't be shocked if he struggles there)

I tend to be the one to cook the "whatever's leftover in the fridge" dish, which is a guaranteed source of a little chaos. In those instances it's always helpful to have my wife around to pass ingredients or do some prep tasks on the side so I don't lose focus and burn the onions.

Also, if you don't already have recipes written down, having someone help build out a recipe book as you go can help smooth out future cooks.

Shout out to Recipe Keeper - after a first cook, usually from a website or book, we put everything we like in there for future reference.