• Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    6 hours ago

    A grill should run on charcoal. It needs to get very hot and that’s literally it.

    There’s a universe where I attach some electronic controller with a PID loop or something to a smoker, to maintain consistent temperatures via damper control. I’m not buying that off the shelf built into the machine though.

  • cobysev@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    I guarantee this update didn’t drop on Thanksgiving. Photo OP probably hasn’t turned it on since their last BBQ months ago and is just noticing - on Thanksgiving - that an update pushed a while ago that they now need to install to get started.

    Pro tip: Start up your electronics a day or two in advance of events, so you can pre-patch anything that needs it.

    Source: Former IT guy here, who had to ensure that updates ran at the most convenient times possible for thousands of users. “Patching Tuesday” is an unofficial but well recognized “holiday” for IT folks. It’s not first thing Monday morning, which could throw off the workflow for the week, but it also gives the max amount of time to resolve any issues that patching might cause, so we (hopefully) don’t have to work through the weekend.

    Pay attention to when your stuff requires patches. A lot of the time, it’ll pop up on Tuesdays.

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 hour ago

      Tuesday is the perfect day for it. Finish up the update on Friday, review it Monday and fix where you probably fucked up something and didn’t notice, push it the next day.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 hours ago

      Source: Former IT guy here, who had to ensure that updates ran at the most convenient times possible for thousands of users.

      I used to work at a theater owned by a city. So we used the city’s IT department, and their network. During COVID, live-streaming took off. The city wanted us to install a streaming video package. After a month or two of installing a full video system, we finally get around to testing the stream. Boot up AWS, and it runs fine. We’re streaming in full 4K. Great!

      So the show rolls around. It’s Saturday, 7:30pm start time. We start the show… And the stream instantly shits the bed. Like we go from full gigabit upload speed, to less than a single megabit. We’re lucky to get 56kbps speeds. We’re getting one or two frames per second if we’re lucky.

      Sunday, we test the stream ahead of time, and it works flawlessly. Show starts, and the upload speed drops to fucking dial up.

      Monday morning rolls around, and IT strolls in to check their tickets. Sees a hundred from us, and gives us a call. They run a test on their end. No issues. They run a test on AWS. No issues. They run a test on the fiber backbone between the theater and city hall. No issues. They call the ISP. ISP said they didn’t have any issues over the weekend. IT shrugs, and marks the tickets as solved.

      Next weekend, same thing. We’re wondering if IT is automatically throttling us, or if we have a malicious user on the network. We’re asking about QoS, or maybe automatic port control kicking in when the stream starts. Monday rolls around, and IT marks it as solved again.

      Third weekend, same thing. This time, the city manager’s office is getting calls from angry patrons who paid for streaming and can’t watch their streams. Monday morning, IT rolls up. They run some more tests, and still can’t find anything wrong. They swear up and down that it’s nothing on their end, and it must be something on ours.

      After four months of this back and forth, IT finally admits that they have all of their maintenance tasks to run at 7:30 over the weekend. Every single computer, server, and fucking toaster connected to the city network begins their updates at exactly 7:30. Thousands of city devices, all singularly focused on devouring our upload speeds. Servers run off-site backups. Those backups consume all of the upload speeds for the entire city network. IT refuses to change the time, because “this is what works for us. It’s after city hall closes, so we don’t have any users who are affected. It hasn’t been a problem in the past.”

      • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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        1 hour ago

        And in those four months, did no-one think of firing up WireShark to see what was floating across that network during that time period?

        Seems like someone dropped the debug/analysis ball…

    • zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com
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      5 hours ago

      Pro tip: don’t buy a fucking BBQ that connects to the Internet.

      No appliances in general while we’re at it

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 hours ago

        Seriously. “Start it a day early” My brother in Christ why does your grill need wifi? Do you get updates when the steak is ready? Can it flip your burger?!

      • ZMonster@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Have tons of devices that can connect to the Internet. Apparently I’m the only one here resourceful enough to not connect them

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          4 hours ago

          I rip the wifi card out and if that’s not available all things can be solved with the proper application of an angle grinder.

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      pro tip

      I get it. I hate it, but I get it.

      another pro tip from someone else in IT: see that appliance with the digital screen? fuck it. don’t get it. get the old shitty one that’s $800 less that doesn’t have WiFi or non-tactile buttons. you know what doesn’t need firmware updates? a charcoal Weber grill.

  • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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    7 hours ago

    I like my home automation tech but it needs to serve a purpose. Just being connected to wifi is not a selling point for me. Lights that turn on in the morning when I need to wake up are great. A thermostat that can reduce energy usage when nobody is home is also great. But a grill….what the fuck does Internet access do to improve the grilling experience?

    And if it requires the cloud to work, I don’t consider it a functional product.

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 hour ago

      Less grilling, more smoking. Temperature monitoring for long cooking times without having to leave an air conditioned environment.

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Serious answer?

      I have an app on my phone that allows me to control my pellet grill as long as it and my phone have an internet connection.

      Doing a 12 hr smoke, I can leave the house and monitor it while I go shopping, change the temps if its not acting right. I can set temperature alerts and then go around the house and my phone goes off when the meat hits a certain internal temp. Its really really handy.

  • unmagical@lemmy.ml
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    10 hours ago

    What are the chances they shipped it on Thanksgiving vs Thanksgiving being the first time in a while the user turned it on?

  • N0t_5ure@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    I will never own a grill that has to connect to wifi. In fact, I actively avoid any appliance that adds unnecessary IOT functionality.

    • Taleya@aussie.zone
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      7 hours ago

      We’re starting to add some IoT stuff (mostly sockets and leak sensors for the basement brewery) but it had to wait until i’d built a beefier firewall and the HA server. 'Cos that shit is not leaving the house

    • Riskable@programming.dev
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      8 hours ago

      I know, right? Why send my BBQ data to the cloud when I can just cook with a handful of GPUs, locally? To start the grill you just ask the animated waifu to dance and sing a random, AI-generated song that matches your taste in music. Then the fans spin up and send scrumptious GPU heat into the grill, cooking up a delicious hallucination where your animated waifu sings, “That looks yummy! Yummy yummy yummy! Hai hai hai!”

      • rem26_art@fedia.io
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        10 hours ago

        DRM Ribs. The Salmonella will not die until you pay for Traeger’s $19 a month subscription

        • ssɐqɯnᗡ@quokk.au
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          24 minutes ago

          Someone’s gonna crack that shit and release it as a spice and when you open it a cool as fuck midi techno track plays while you crack your ribs.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            14 minutes ago

            Wow, that’s super-topical in more ways than I had expected. The more I read, the more scarily insightful it gets.

            spoiler
            • The main character being a refugee, with almost all that entails (can’t blame Doctorow for not anticipating it getting this bad)
            • The dystopian collusion between the appliance-rentiers and the landlord, as well as the climax hinging on lack of tenant protections
            • The way capitalism attempts to subsume all critique.

            This is a story that’s important, that everybody needs to read.

        • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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          10 hours ago

          Are you seriously taking the risk of brussels sprouts with outdated firmware?

      • Match!!@pawb.social
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        10 hours ago

        raw shrimp on a grill staying completely uncooked next to grilled chicken and steak because you don’t have the DRM for SeaPak©️ shrimp (photorealistic, art station, comedy, vivid)

  • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    It’s a smoker with wireless controls

    Instead of having to keep checking on it for several hours, an app on your phone will show the temperature and allow temperature adjustments online

    • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours ago

      ok but why aren’t you outside with a beer…pretty sure that’s a part of the meat smokers law

      • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Funny enough that’s what I’m doing now, then my cousin leans over with his phone to show me his brisket is sitting right at 225

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Because I live in Texas and being outside in the summer for extended periods is dangerous.

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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        10 hours ago

        I mean that’s what I do when it’s something small, but when it’s something that takes 10+ hours, that’s a lot of beer and standing.

        Though right now I just have an alarm to check it every half hour. Considering wiring up something with an arduino and appifying my meat without any proprietary tech.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          Considering wiring up something with an arduino and appifying my meat without any proprietary tech.

          I had the same thought and went with a HeaterMeter, although I haven’t finished building it yet.

        • 50MYT@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          I have a non digital charcoal kettle, and I found good options for blowers and temp control in China.

          It’s a simple fitting that I only use doing very long cooks. Saves all the mucking around with the official stuff

    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 hours ago

      You can also just get a normal smoker and a wireless thermometer that works with RF, which has a range of like 700-1000ft, and while it has some theoretical security flaws it results in a situation that is infinitely more secure than a WiFi/app situation. Even if someone bothered to sniff the rf traffic what are they going to do, see the temperature of your brisket? Oh no

      Additionally this way the smoker is basically invincible because it’s not digital and as long as you don’t let it rust out it will last forever. If you somehow break the thermometer it’s like $30 to replace but I guarantee you can find models that are somewhat repairable and have user replaceable batteries, which guarantee this thing doesn’t

      • Adubya@feddit.online
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        11 hours ago

        Just waiting for the day an evil hacker leaks someone’s smoker data to the neighborhood, exposing they cranked the smoker to 375° when they bragged about their brisket cooking 225° the whole time.

      • rockstarmode@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        You make some good points.

        I live a mile and a half from the ocean and run my smoker for long periods. It’s really nice to monitor and change the temp while I’m drinking the beer you refer to from the sand. I make a few quick runs back up the hill to tend to things, but mostly I’m free to be elsewhere for the 12-ish hours the smoker is running. It’s really nice, not a hard requirement, but really convenient.

        • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 hours ago

          Expensive options: thermoworks smoke-x

          1-200 depending on 2 or 4 channel version, legally can only be used in the us and Canada because they use a custom rf protocol. As a result the range is 1.24 miles. Thermoworks is pricey shit but it lasts long, can be calibrated, and generally is one of the most accurate cooking thermometers you can buy

          (albeit much much much more expensive than a $10-30 k type thermocouple and a used reader for $50 that is way more precise and usually will do data logging) also granted for most people a $20-40 thermometer would be fine with like 300-500ft range

          My issue with “smart” anything is not the inherent concept, it’s the execution 99% of the time. I have plenty of smart stuff in my house but it’s almost never convergence devices. I’ve learned that these types of devices are more than anything designed to be disposable trash. Designed as cheap as possible, cut as many corners, introduce as many security holes as possible, etc. we have 0 consumer rights so even if it’s strong they’ll change the tos after the fact when their profits fall and they need to make the line go up.

          So it comes to this. I’m not opposed to “smart” devices. They just have to occur in a dumb, roundabout way. They have to work without being connected to the internet, or in some rare cases by being bridged to the internet via home assistant from an isolated vlan. If I want a smoker I can monitor on the fly I will look at something like that thermometer paired with a standard steel smoker that will last decades. If I need to adjust it remotely I will look at why I need this option first: is it realistic that I would just adjust it without checking the contents? If I would then check open source and if nothing exists make it. It sucks but this where our garbage profit driven society led us, to shitty products that fill landfills and waste resources

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      OK, that seems smart. But why would it need updates? Been in IT 30-years, I get updates, but something that simple should have been hammered out before it left the factory.

      • Vivi@slrpnk.net
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        10 hours ago

        It’s because of the reliance on hundreds of thousands of third party web dependencies that are constantly updating and constantly getting security patches (and introducing vulnerabilities)

      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        For that and fear the company getting bored and pulling the plug on servers, leaving me with a paperweight, is why I didn’t get much into the IoT stuff.

        One time I bought some under armor shoes with bluetooth. They would connect to my phone and an app would take measurements on my stride and angle of my foot in my runs. At some point they decided to make the app a subscription. They wanted a whole $15/mo! I decided to just run like a caveman instead.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          I see it this way: If there are enough dumbasses willing to pay, go for it. I choose not to participate. OTOH, idiots paying subscriptions can hurt us all through enshittification.

          On Nextdoor.com I brought it up that Trump’s admin was trashing NOAA and the NWS, which we literally live and die by in Florida. One woman was quite proud to pay $15 for her Accuweather app. “And where do you think they get their data?”

          • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            One woman was quite proud to pay $15 for her Accuweather app

            Damn these smart capitalists figured out how to get a weather satellite into space for that cheap? No wonder socialism failed/s

            For real tho it reminds me of that joke about libertarians being like cats. Also $15/mo feels way to high for weather updates

    • Adubya@feddit.online
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      11 hours ago

      Knew someone who had to rush a family pet to emergency vet and they were able to keep an eye on the brisket cooking.

      Keep it Low & Slow!