To be surprised fridges can reach 50C

[AIiswatchingyou]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crq5nzxv9q4yo

BBC article looking at a French supermarket cyber attack where hackers turned the fridges (in some cases) up to 50C

Quite worrying, but why would a commercial fridge have that temperature ability?

YABU - 50C is a normal temperature for a fridge
YANBU - 10C is maximum for a refridgerated unit

More importantly, what a waste of food!

Seems more likely they actually mean 50F which is 10C so too hot for a fridge

Edit: just read in the Independent that the freezers were forced into a continuous defrost cycle which made them very hot

More importantly why are we sleepwalking into a food crisis

And this is why there were movies about letting computers run everything being a bad thing.

I meaning changing my supermarkets fridge / freezer temperatures wasn’t anywhere on my bingo card but here we are.

This is a perfect example of why the ‘internet of things’ is such a bad idea. I had to work quite hard even a couple of months ago to find a decent washer-dryer that didn’t want to be connected to WiFi. Ridiculous. I’m no Luddite, but honestly, its always been easy to see how this sort of thing could go wrong.

I think situations like this is why we are being heavily encouraged to have a few days food supply at home

@Seziah The article confirms 50C (120F), that's why I was so surprised

Just seen your note that it was due to a particular cycle - so was it a malfunction of the fridge?

They didn't turn the fridges to 50 degrees. They made the motors overheat so they got that hot.

Thanks for the clarification. So it wasn't just a hacker going 'turn up to 50C' - which seems likely to be impossible.

So they broke the fridges so the motors overheated? @ColdAsAWitches

Pretty much, yes. They made them overwork so the temperature increased in the area.

@WhitegreeNcandle In terms of food crisis - is this due to the drought and global weather changes or related to the oil crisis and likely increase in shipping prices? or both?

@ColdAsAWitches That must have cost a fortune in energy as the fridges tried to cope with that as well as the wasted food cost.

Which is why an interconnected everything really isn’t such a great idea even if you like being able to control things form your phone

I was a little surprised too but I suppose they are very well insulated so I guess it makes sense if the motor just keeps going.

One more reason why I like my things at home to be manual, or at the very least not smart.

I can understand that a shop may want remote monitoring of its fridges and freezers - so they can detect a problem, but why do they need to be able to control them remotely? I've never adjusted the dial in my fridge/freezer, other than to set it midway after it was delivered and plugged. Technology for the sake of technology, just because you can is not a reason for doing it.

If you can detect there's a problem remotely, why wouldn't you want to be able to fix it remotely too? As a first step, if there's a fault in the middle of the night, it's much easier to press a couple of buttons on your phone instead of having to try to find who the local manager is and get them out of bed to drive into work, open up, check the setting, etc.

everything. We just don’t care where our food comes from as long as it’s cheap. Climate change is starting to have an effect on yields and what can be grown, it’s getting bigger. Our supply chain is so so vulnerable and we just don’t seem to care.

When stuff like this happens France is not going to carry on exporting while they have empty shelves are they.

Easier to fix and easier to break

sometimes the easy path isn’t the correct or best one

Well I think what has happened is why you don't rely on somebody pressing a couple of buttons on their phone. Rule one of security, don't leave the front door unlocked.

I had to check this was not an old article from 1.4.

frightening prospect even if the headline reads fictional.