(Whoops, I meant to post this last night but apparently forgot.)<p>Stoves don&#x27;t advertise any degree of autonomy. You turn the tap, fire comes out. You put things in the fire, they get hot and&#x2F;or they burn. It doesn&#x27;t deliver any safeguards but it doesn&#x27;t promise any.<p>The other end of the scale (if we&#x27;re talking about gas-burning apparatus) would be your instant gas hot water system. It&#x27;s got a series of belt-and-suspenders safety devices in it to stop it from overheating, exploding, or gassing you out if the pilot light goes out. It absolutely <i>does</i> advertise that it&#x27;s an automated system which will do its thing without your intervention - and if it fails to do its thing, the results can be disastrous. So it&#x27;s designed to be safe.<p>The problem lies when you have devices in the middle of the scale, with devices that are designed to have some degree of autonomy but lack the commitment to see it through. Take my drip coffee maker, for instance - the manual firmly admonishes you to &quot;never run the machine unattended&quot; on one page and then on the next, explains how the easy-to-use timer system allows you to have fresh coffee waiting for you when you wake up. The intent is clearly that the system be used without supervision, but instead of engineering in the appropriate protections (and tripling the price) the manufacturer just put some ass-covering lines in the manual in the hope that if there&#x27;s a malfunction and a house burns down, that protects them from a lawsuit.