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Comment by superjan | Hacker News Reader

A design rule for the display of any appliance with a clock: It must be possible to remove or hide the clock. I don’t need 10 devices to keep track of time for me.

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Yes, please. I don't want a clock on my microwave, or my oven. If I'm not interacting with it, it should produce zero light.

(Some people use oven features that involve knowing an absolute time, such as "turn on at this time". That seems to be the uncommon case, and meanwhile everyone has to deal with a clock that's rarely right.)

> such as "turn on at this time". That seems to be the uncommon case

Indeed. "Please create fire hazard exactly at this hour when I'll not have time to do it personally".

Many Jewish people use the feature while home. There are prohibitions on lighting fire on the sabbath, which has been interpreted more broadly as a prohibition on "turning stuff on". That's why you can set your oven to be on all day on Saturdays, for example, but they are usually home while it's happening. You can't turn the oven on, but you can use it while it's on. Similarly, some elevators are configured to stop on every floor on the way up and down on Saturdays.

Do "many" Jewish people do this? It sounds like something only religious nutters would do, wasting energy etc. (Doesn't the bible/torah say people should take care of the earth?)

I don't have any stakes or interest in a debate about the validity of religious beliefs or the prevalence of believers. Suffice it to say it is a practice that exists, and technology exists to facilitate it. My oven has a sabbath mode, so it's not something you necessarily need to go out of your way to have either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator

The Torah is against harming nature (such as cutting down trees), and wasting things that are good.

However, climatism has devolved into its own, irrational, new religion. Followers of it believe, for example, that the apocalypse is nigh unless they drink from paper straws, while the very rich can fly in private jets so long as they pay a tithe to the priests of climatology.

Nobody believes this

Which bit? The plastic-straw phobia, or the rich transferring their sins to cash?

Harry Windsor, for example, has received awards from climate organisations for his contribution to the movement. He flies private jets but “offsets” it with money.

Certain climate organisations make be okay with people posturing like this, but the average person worrying about the climate is complaining about things like Leonardo DiCaprio's jet flights all the time and hates to use paper straws.

Not to mention that paper straws have very little to do with climate change; that is more of a local pollution issue.

At some point we have to start considering things like this as mental illness.

Peculiar oven and elevator behavior concerns me far less than many other religious beliefs.

Eh, if you only have a clock on only the microwave or oven then you lose access to the current time when you're cooking something or convert it over to timer mode. Having some redundancy isn't a bad thing in this instance.

Or simply have a dedicated clock in there and turn off the display on all of the appliances.

There should be two kinds of devices in my home: those allowed to connect to the Internet and keep their time up to date, and those that are not allowed to care what time it is. My microwave and my oven are in the latter category.

My microwave defaults to no clock after a power outage. I prefer it that way.

I used to have a range, then microwave, then toaster oven, then coffee maker, all with different times. I tried so hard to get them in sync, but it was just not possible. Plus, the coffee maker clock would drift over time. Since that point in my life the microwave, toaster oven, and coffee maker have been replaced and only the microwave has an optional clock.

Oddly enough, the newer appliances are all higher quality than the ones they replaced. I guess clocks are added to things to give them more perceived value.

> "turn on at this time"

This is a oddly important feature for Asian market rice cookers, which have a backup battery to retain the time and is not user-replaceable.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Zojirushi+Rice+Cooker+Model+NS-...

I think these guys have a clock for logging and warranty purpose.

Amen to that, I have a pair of built-in IKEAs, a microwave and convection oven, both with clocks when they're idle. But of course they're separate devices so they drift separately, which is obnoxious-looking. Happily the microwave did have a hidden setting to just display - - - - instead of the clock (though for no apparent reason the convection oven does not have that option, sigh).

Best they can do is blinking "12:00". Actually I encountered a kitchen appliance doing almost the opposite, after power off/on it didn't function before confirming any time.

My microwave, a Panasonic, will show " : " after a power outage. It's perfect.

My 4 year old Siemens oven is like this, as is the one (can’t remember the brand) in the previous house we rented for a short bit.

I wonder if it’s a kind of child safety thing. It’s possible on my current oven to enable a child lock by holding the clock button for 5 seconds, preventing the turning of the knobs from having any effect.

After a power failure the oven similarly will not react to the knobs being turned until the clock button is pressed, but a mere second or so is good enough.

Our microwave always starts at 0:00. When we go on vacation I always unplug it, but I literally never set the time on it anyway. Not sure why it even has one. Most ovens have one, and lots of people have a kitchen clock on the wall...

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