[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.

[BoxFour]

> What about my robo vacuum cleaner?

Those aren't lightbulbs, which is what we were talking about.