[jerrylives]

>Light is not just on/off, it's a million different shades and intensities, some more appropriate depending on the time of day.

Yea so you install one of these http://www.homedepot.com/b/Electrical-Dimmers-Switches-Outle...

>Try to imagine a house where there's a thousand different machines just there to make your life nicer.

Now try to imagine all the gaping security holes emanating from your house. And oh man it's gonna suck when the remote server goes down and your thermostat can't phone home so you're stuck at 55F during the winter

[leppr]

Why would a "smart home" need to interact with the outside world? Most applications cited in the story certainly don't require it, and if they do, there's no technical reason they need to be connected directly to the internet.

If people are too hesitant to give up their homes' security and privacy to corporations, some company will eventually come up with an open-source self-hosted solution that doesn't suffer from those issues.

[m4x]

There are already a bunch of open solutions. You can self host OpenHAB or Home Assistant right now and integrate many different devices from many different manufacturers using open protocols like Z-Wave.

In such a case neither the devices nor the main controller need to phone home.

[khedoros1]

It shouldn't, but it seems like most of the smart devices being marketed do, apparently for remote monitoring and access to data.

[Semaphor]

There'll always be people who lose their data because they don't have proper backups, people who lose control of their iot devices because they are open to and require an internet connection and people who die in a car crash because they think they are sober enough.

There are always tons of ways to make stupid decisions, a small amount of research usually helps.

[antonvs]

> Yea so you install one of these

Which one of those lets you customize the color and hue?