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by ceejayoz8 hours ago |
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upvoteby pavel_lishin8 hours ago|
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Monitoring makes sense, but it feels like it makes no sense at all to allow that kind of remote maintenance without staff on-site to OK and verify it - who could then do the maintenance themselves.

Otherwise, this sort of spoilage could easily happen by accident as well.

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upvoteby blitzar7 hours ago|
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> remote maintenance without staff on-site to OK and verify it - who could then do the maintenance themselves

These are minimum wage workers - they don't have bean bags in the nap room, employee massages and stock options.

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upvoteby esikich8 hours ago|
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Supermarkets don't staff HVAC/fridge repairmen. There are separate companies they pay to do this.
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upvoteby queenkjuul8 hours ago|
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Right: and someone from that company can come out and do maintenance when the monitoring indicates it's necessary
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upvoteby vkou7 hours ago|
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When, say, your internet craps out, would you rather your ISP try to resolve the problem, or schedule to send a tech out to your home before they start working on fixing the issue?

Groceries see HVAC in the same way. If they can get their issue addressed or diagnosed by their HVAC contractor without him having to schedule and physically travel to their site, they'd prefer him to solve/start solving the problem immediately. Time is money and the faster the tech can diagnose the problem, the faster he can get on fixing it.

And yes, the prevalence of these systems means that many HVAC techs have the ability to turn off their customers' air conditioners/fridges. They don't use it maliciously, because that would be actual suicide for their business.

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Source: A close friend of mine runs an HVAC business (~8 employees) doing residential and commercial installs, repairs, and maintenance.

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upvoteby christophilus8 hours ago|
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It seems like the sort of thing you’d do in-store and firewalled from the internet.
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upvoteby layer88 hours ago|
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You’d have to pay competent local staff for that.
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upvoteby asdff8 hours ago|
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How do you think grocery stores worked pre internet?
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upvoteby layer84 hours ago|
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They were paying competent local staff pre-internet.
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upvoteby ceejayoz7 hours ago|
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Lots of things worked pre-internet that now rely on internet in ways that would be rather chaotic and messy to undo.
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upvoteby pixl977 hours ago|
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You're going to have to convince VC and PE to give up the massive profits they're raking in.
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upvoteby esikich8 hours ago|
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The article didn't say they weren't.
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upvoteby lenerdenator8 hours ago|
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"That, like, costs money, man. The accounting department said there was a 1-in-100 year chance of this happening if we didn't shell out, so we didn't." - the CEO, probably.
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upvoteby asdff8 hours ago|
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That might justify a temperature probe in a dumb fridge. This smells of a salesman being here not an engineer though.
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upvoteby swarfield8 hours ago|
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Makes sense but monitoring doesn't mean you have to have remote control of power.
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upvoteby ceejayoz8 hours ago|
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"Utility has alerted us to an upcoming brown-out in a region impacting 40 stores. Cool everything down a few extra degrees in preparation."
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upvoteby mrob7 hours ago|
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A phone call from the HVAC company and physical thermostat dial (in a locked cabinet to prevent incompetent/malicious employees tampering with it) seems a safer solution.
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upvoteby ceejayoz6 hours ago|
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Some grocery stores - and this is probably far more common in France - have no staff overnight.

I think the cost/benefit equation is gonna collapse in the era of AIs exploting vulnerabilities at scale, but it's not like there's zero theoretical benefit of this capability on its own.

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upvoteby pixl976 hours ago|
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And when it happens at 3 in the morning? And when those people are in a meeting 10 miles down the road?

Take away the security aspect and centralized management is just so much easier and reliable. Humans suck at doing things they were supposed to.

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upvoteby codedokode7 hours ago|
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And centralized food destruction.
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