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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Why do people buy and use these things?

Because they are convenient for lots of routine tasks.

> And why have they taught their kids to use them?

If they are in a house with kids, the kids don't need to be actively taught to start using them.

> I feel like we're on the verge of an age where every single person is used to, and just has an Alexa/google home voice assist in their house.

Pretty close, yeah.

> Not only is it unnecessary

Unless you are dirt poor, chances are most of the things you have and use are unnecessary.

> but as you can see from thia tweet, they're never going to be perfect.

This tweet tells how they are (well, Alexa is) now, not what they will (n)ever be. But, yes, nothing is ever perfect. Clothes dryers are both unnecessary and imperfect, and kill people every year: are you going to go on a crusade against them, next?

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Clothes dryers - please elaborate. Why are they dangerous? (serious question)

I'm guessing fire risk - https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-too...

Fire risk, largely from people who don't know there's a lint trap and that they're supposed to clean it.

Well, that sounds like a design flaw if lint is being deliberately held where a heater can set it on fire. (Disclaimer - my HotPoint tumble dryer got recalled due to this kind of design flaw burning down a few houses)

There's also a fire risk from the vent getting clogged with tiny bits of lint that weren't caught by the trap.

Calling it a serious question doesn't put the onus on someone else to bring up a google search for you SMH.

Please don't do that here. All questions are welcome here, and this community is happy to share their knowledge.

Beyond the fire risks mentioned by others, front loading washers and dryers are sometimes used as a hiding place by children which has led to serious injury and deaths

Acting like a child climbing into a device that needs to be loaded with something before being used (and therefore is likely to be found) is even remotely dangerous is just fear peddling.

How many kids hide in ovens? They're all front load and you routinely turn them on without putting anything in.

I'm sorry but it's just not that rare an occurrence for a child to die in a washing machine. I don't know why it's different then other machines but its a thing.

https://www.google.com/search?q=child+dies+front+load+washin...

Im not disputing your claim, but the link you provided doesn’t really give evidence. Most results are for one incident and I don’t see any statistics

Front loading washers typically lock, ovens usually don't (except for self-clean cycles.)

Also, you’d usual need to take the rack(s) out of an oven for a child to get in.

Worse yet, there is NO WAY to unlock most front-loading washers!

You will literally have to smash the front glass window (which is at least two layers thick) in order to pull your drowning child out across the broken shards of glass, or have a prybar handy.

This might sound like an imaginary scenario, but it's not at all. It happens every year, and no agency has stepped up to mandate "An big red emergency unlock manual handle seems like a good idea, even if the water pours all over the floor", even though we have mandated emergency trunk pulls from inside vehicles (another place where kids like to hide.)

climate change

Any parents so fond of "convenience" that they delegate their house chores to their kids?

Or how many 10 year-olds do you know that go around doing laundry when they are bored?

> Any parents so fond of "convenience" that they delegate their house chores to their kids?

Many parents do, in fact, have their children do chores.

Not out of their own personal convenience, I hope. And especially not without teaching them first how to properly maintain things safe and in working order.

Why not? Why shouldn't a child contribute to keeping the household functioning? That kind of cooperation is an important life skill. Frankly, I wouldn't trust a parent who didn't have their child do chores around the house.

The objection is not with having the kids doing chores. Read again.

But real chores will of course be done for the parents' convenience (or that of the whole household). Otherwise it's just makework.

Eh, I thought you were doing it to "teach a life skill", not to have someone else do the work for you.

My oldest is about to be 5. Not in the age to be doing laundry by herself, but I do get her to pick her toys up after playing or to set her bed in the morning, help take out the dishes after dinner, etc. The thing is that it takes me more time to make sure that she is doing things properly and learning to do things independently in the future that if I just went on and did myself. It's more work for me. Convenience is the last of my concerns.

It's completely reasonable to expect kids to do things - e.g. cleaning their room, helping with the washing up - for your convenience. Why should life be completely one-sided? That's a way to raise a spoiled kid.

Of course, yes, you also make some requests for teaching purposes. But what you're teaching her is to do things for your convenience in future.

"For your convenience" sounds terrible, like you're using the child as a slave. But most families do things for each others' convenience the whole time, and that is fine and normal.

I am not disagreeing with you on the what, just on the why.

> But what you're teaching her is to do things for your convenience in future.

God, I really hope not. There are a thousand different ways where one can "avoid any inconvenience". You can hire help. You can just shove all their things in their rooms and simply not worry about what they do with it.

The reason we teach the kids is because we love them and we want to instill important values in them. To repeat: convenience is the last of my concerns.

>"For your convenience" sounds terrible, like you're using the child as a slave

Not just that. It sounds like relationships are based on some sort of transactional nature. I don't go making around some kind of calculus about cost/benefit of each act or what I am getting from it. Love is selfless.

I respectfully suggest that, like almost everyone, you are less than selfless - even when your children are concerned. You sometimes want them to turn their music down, clean their rooms, or run an errand, because it would be nicer for you. That is not a moral failing, but a reflection of the fact that you are a normal human being.

> There are a thousand different ways where one can "avoid any inconvenience". You can hire help.

There is almost no family that would not be seriously inconvenienced, at the very least, if children just did what they wanted. Most families can certainly not afford hired help.

Even if you can, the hired help probably isn't going to come around every single day.

> I thought you were doing it to "teach a life skill", not to have someone else do the work for you

Having, and handling real responsibility for things that really matter is a life skill. Makework isn't the same, and kids aren't (mostly) stupid enough not to see through the difference.

You can't meaningfully separate pedagogical purpose from parental convenience here because they are aligned.

Are you being sarcastic? Delegating house chores (including laundry) to kids is pretty normal.

without teaching them how to properly clean the lint trap?

At first, yes, of course.

You are assuming that the parent knows how to properly clean the lint trap, which might not always be the case.

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