[arter4]

I personally am not offended by a feature. I wouldn't march on the streets to denounce this or anything like that.

What I am saying (though I cannot speak for anyone) is that I, on the contrary, would go out of my way to not get, not because I have thin foil hat or whatever, but because the reliability and privacy concerns this kind of thing carries far outweigh (in my scale) the benefit of having something that will come in useful once in a decade.

Note that things like that have already happened.

When an AWS region went down, things like doorbells and lights stopped working properly (https://financialpost.com/technology/personal-tech/pitfalls-...). Which, if you think about it, is ridiculous. I cannot turn my lights on because somewhere, potentially thousands of miles away, some datacenters failed, even if those datacenters could, ostensibly, only give me ads and "improvements" and not any core feature.

And when it comes to privacy, Roomba employees posted on Facebook picture of a woman on the toilet, a picture that was taken by the Roomba itself while cleaning (https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...). Now, you might say that the Roomba algorithm has to train a lot to be able to work properly, but why take pictures? And why upload them to the Internet?

Of course everyone makes their own judgement calls. I'm not offended if anyone gets smart fridges or voice activated lights.

[BoxFour]

> I cannot turn my lights on because somewhere, potentially thousands of miles away, some datacenters failed, even if those datacenters could, ostensibly, only give me ads and "improvements" and not any core feature.

It appears there's a misunderstanding here. When smart lightbulbs lose internet connection, they still function as regular lightbulbs.

In such cases, you simply revert to the traditional method of turning the light switch on and off manually, instead of using voice commands or an app.

[hansvm]

> It appears there's a misunderstanding here. When smart lightbulbs lose internet connection, they still function as regular lightbulbs.

That's a better way to install things, but it's not the only way that installation is done, and it's still excessive to need the internet for what could easily be a purely local operation. For device classes where "on/off" has historically been attached to the device itself (washer, stove, ...), it's more common than in the lightbulb case for the internet connection to be mandatory.

Pushing closer to tin-foil hat territory, when your lights can be controlled over the internet by servers you don't own, that operator can do nearly whatever they'd like. A common pattern in other industries (ocean navigation apps, OB2 monitors, ...) is to require a server for no good reason, sell a device at full market value, and then later extort the customer into some sort of subscription/data-leak to continue using their own devices. It's common for the remote server to just shut down (startup goes out of business, manufacturer decides it'd be nice if you bought a new device, ...). Less likely but worse if it happened, the server operator _could_ trigger epilectic seizures or whatever.

[BoxFour]

> That's a better way to install things, but it's not the only way that installation is done

It’s by far the most common. Most people just buy Hue lightbulbs and an hub to use with their existing home setup, which involves physical light switches still being present.

> Pushing closer to tin-foil hat territory…

For lights specifically: If this is a threat model that worries you, it’s quite easy to setup something like home assistant.io with zigbee lights.

Your repudiation appears to be about centralized services, not about “smart” devices as a general concept.

[hansvm]

I think we're talking past each other a bit. The person you first responded to said that some problems exist, you said they don't, and I expanded a bit, agreeing with them.

Your position seems actually to be though that you can make smart devices acceptable if you're careful enough. That's probably true. However, I've seen the code people write, and I still personally wouldn't want a smart oven or any number of other such devices.

> Your repudiation appears to be about centralized services, not about “smart” devices as a general concept.

There's some truth to that. I focused on that point just because smart devices usually have a markup for their extra features, even though you don't really own the product, manufacturers have a habit of shutting them down, and most of the "smarts" are just figuring out how to generate extra ad revenue. That's not _all_ smart devices, but it's a lot of them. Contrast that with a centralized service like Overleaf, where I know I'm renting server time and disk space, and it's obvious what the threat models are (they can read anything sensitive, and I should probably make sure everything is backed up). Selling living room audio recordings on a device you paid more than fair market value for just feels a bit slimy, and I thought that might be a good touchpoint to illustrate what sorts of things can go wrong.

[BoxFour]

> The person you first responded to said that some problems exist, you said they don't, and I expanded a bit, agreeing with them.

The person I responded to said:

> I cannot turn my lights on because somewhere, potentially thousands of miles away, some datacenters failed, even if those datacenters could, ostensibly, only give me ads and "improvements" and not any core feature.

That problem doesn't exist. Your smart lightbulbs fallback to being regular lightbulbs in the absence of an internet connection, even for the most popular centralized service ones today (Hue).

> There's some truth to that.

That seems like a separate, if related, problem. There are plenty of smart devices that don't involve centralized services. Check out homeassistant.io. Plenty of devices where you own the product and they can't be shut down.

[TeMPOraL]

> That problem doesn't exist. Your smart lightbulbs fallback to being regular lightbulbs in the absence of an internet connection, even for the most popular centralized service ones today (Hue).

What about my robo vacuum cleaner?

Also, you keep mentioning Hue as if this is what people buy. People with lots of disposable income buy Hue. Everyone else buys some cheap $noname Tuya crap (or get it installed by the contractors), and whether or not it works offline, they find out during their next Internet outage.