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Screengrab via Mark Rittman/Twitter

English man livetweets heroic, 11-hour quest to make tea using a Wi-Fi kettle

This is everything that's wrong with the internet of things.

 

Austin Powell

Tech

Posted on Oct 12, 2016   Updated on May 25, 2021, 7:51 pm CDT

We’re all waiting for the day when the promise of a smart home is eventually fulfilled, but there’s no denying that sometimes smart appliances are anything but.

Mark Rittman, a data specialist in Hove, England, wasted his whole day trying to make a damn cup of tea using his new Wi-Fi kettle.

Rittman started around 9am, but quickly ran into trouble.

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Three hours later, he still hadn’t figured out how to connect his Amazon Echo to the kettle itself.

All of the attention he received on Twitter was not only distracting, but it was apparently saturating his network.

The descent into madness continued:

Part of the issue was that the kettle apparently didn’t really have any software of instructions help with the integration, so he had to hack something together himself.

Finally, some signs of progress:

Pittman did finally succeed, but the results are pretty anti-climactic.

If only there were a simpler way to boil water.

H/T The Guardian

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*First Published: Oct 12, 2016, 11:13 am CDT