[CapitalistCartr]

This essay assumes the wrong answer. The intelligence has to be built into the item, not the appliance, just as we do now. Packages have messages such as "Refrigerate after opening" on them. Anything that needs to be refrigerated will need to communicate that need, along with details such as temp, to the automated system.

[pascal_cuoq]

The article is on the difficulty of writing specifications. The fridge is a metaphor. Your insight amounts to “we can always assume that the specification has already been written and correctly implemented on the other side of the interface”.

This remark has a place in the discussion, but not the one you probably think.

[mentat]

So one only puts labelled packaged things in the refrigerator? I was recently thinking about the phenomenon of packaging but this takes it to the next level. I'm not sure if it feels ultra-modern or dystopian.

[keithpeter]

I was going down the...

    scan label
       if (grep "keep refridgerated after opening") AND (status OPEN) then
          store in fridge else
       ask

...but then I realised this is the AI contextual knowledge problem.

[kuschku]

And what do you do with Avocados?

[keithpeter]

They don't last long enough in our household to reach the fridge. They get eaten as soon as they land.

My point being: contextual knowledge. I suppose you could program a fridge loading machine to watch humans for a couple of weeks then work out some rules...

[jschwartzi]

I guess I need to put best before dates on all my fresh produce then. Otherwise how will I know whether I need to refrigerate my head of cabbage after opening it, and whether it is still edible or not?

[collyw]

Best before dates are a waste of time. I noticed this travelling in less devloped countries where they don't usually have them. And plenty of times I have had chicken that smells off despite being before the date on the packet. I had one cheese that got way better after being a month past the date.

[adrianN]

Best before dates are a really good idea if you want to reduce the number of food poisonings in a large population. Food is (statistically) very safe before the best before date, assuming proper storage. Most of the time it's still safe well past that date, but you would dramatically increase the number of people who get sick.

It's the same with pasteurized milk. Unpasteurized milk is mostly safe to drink, but occasionally you get really sick. In a large population the difference is noticeable.

Again the same with the much stricter cleanliness rules for restaurants and the like. Usually it's safe to store prepared food without refrigeration for a day, restaurants mustn't. It's also mostly safe to cook on a dirty stove, restaurants mustn't. The difference between your home kitchen and the restaurant is the number of people served.

[nommm-nommm]

Best before dates have nothing to do with safety, they are about quality. They are (mostly) voluntary and set by the manufacturer.

http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/do-food-expirati...

[newjersey]

I think somebody should extend this metaphor to demonstrate why garbage collection is rubbish.

[nippoo]

Side-note: a lot of fresh chicken will smell bad for about 5 minutes when you remove it from a vacuum-sealed package, but the smell quickly dissipates and the chicken is good to eat. In the UK there's a label on some brands of fresh chicken to that effect. I must have thrown away a fair bit of good chicken before first realising this...

[Turing_Machine]

Well, with something like cheese it's a roll of the dice (except in a cheese production facility run by experts). It might well be the case that the random mold and bacteria hanging around your location make the cheese taste better. It also might taste terrible. It also might kill you or at least make you very sick. Listeria has about a 20% case fatality rate even with medical treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listeria

[coldtea]

We cannot always change the real world to adopt to our spec needs -- e.g. make things that need refrigerated communicate that need.

There are literary thousands of things we refrigerate that don't come in packages with neat "refrigirate" labels.

[striking]

Although work is then required to package items appropriately, rather than the refrigerator automatically knowing what to do with items.

(More on-topic,) I think the point presented still holds. It's not possible to make an air-tight spec for absolutely everything.