remember when Texas power turned off peoples heaters when they were freezing to death as Rafael Edward Cruz went on a tropical vacation?
yeah, they did that because those people registered their smart thermostats with the company and gave them control to set the temperatures in their own damn homes.
I have a bunch of IKEA “smart” light bulbs, but they are connected through a Sonoff USB Zigbee dongle. And all of it is controlled through the open-source zigbee2mqtt and home-assistant.
No one, but myself and my family, have any control or ownership of any of those devices.
*until the ZigBee alliance is purchased by a large corporation.
wait that happened when it merged into the Connectivity Standards Alliance in 2011.
my point is that merging home utilities with any technology is like drinking bleach. a small amount won’t kill you, but a large enough dose over time will.
being in the tech sector myself along with watching what the tech oligarchs are doing should warrant at least some caution.
IMO anything that is associated with corporate interests cannot be fully trusted. I understand that IOT cannot exist without corporate buy-in, but at the same time I think it should be acknowledged that anything that cannot exist without corporate interference is damaging to consumers.
It doesn’t really matter whether Zigbee was merged into something else, because it simply doesn’t have any technical means of phoning home. It simply can’t access the Internet.
There’s no intermediate corporate owned servers, there’s no proprietary software.
So it doesn’t really matter what the corporation does because it can’t affect my “smart” devices.
In the UK, the take up of smart meters for electric and gas has been slow due go concerns that this would enable companies to do the same.
It’s not a bad argument (haven’t paid, turn it off) but then if you’re struggling financially is it better not to be allowed to rack up further debt anyway?
What is the absofuckingworstly scariest thing about this is that I’ve personally read quite a few sci-fi books, like in half of them, like in any universe, such things were usually a Trojan horse by the threat of the week to exterminate the good guys, or at least Palpatine’s way of spying, or whatever.
OK, Palpatine’s coolest microphone was decorative trees with skin changing colors depending on vibrations, and a very complex system of restoring the sounds from image, if I remember that correctly, in one X-Wing book.
So how the hell does it happen that such things are presented in movies and books and series like a threat, and yet people buy them?
I can believe in people loving touchscreens because touchscreens were unfortunately popularized in Star Trek and even, sigh, Star Wars prequels, and everything sci-fi.
But this is something that was being recommended against in such media for decades.
Jesus Christ. I had no idea so many people were buying these things. That’s astounding.
If you’d asked me to guess what percentage of households had one, I’d have guessed single digits.
60% of people in UK are certified morons. Slightly higher than I expected.
I got several free from both google and amazon. My electric company gave me one too.
My parents’ ISP router has Alexa integrated into it
whatthefuck
Gross.
Why would they do that
Because we are the product…
remember when Texas power turned off peoples heaters when they were freezing to death as Rafael Edward Cruz went on a tropical vacation?
yeah, they did that because those people registered their smart thermostats with the company and gave them control to set the temperatures in their own damn homes.
“smart” means, “you don’t own it”.
That depends on the kind of “smart”.
I have a bunch of IKEA “smart” light bulbs, but they are connected through a Sonoff USB Zigbee dongle. And all of it is controlled through the open-source zigbee2mqtt and home-assistant.
No one, but myself and my family, have any control or ownership of any of those devices.
*until the ZigBee alliance is purchased by a large corporation.
wait that happened when it merged into the Connectivity Standards Alliance in 2011.
my point is that merging home utilities with any technology is like drinking bleach. a small amount won’t kill you, but a large enough dose over time will.
being in the tech sector myself along with watching what the tech oligarchs are doing should warrant at least some caution.
IMO anything that is associated with corporate interests cannot be fully trusted. I understand that IOT cannot exist without corporate buy-in, but at the same time I think it should be acknowledged that anything that cannot exist without corporate interference is damaging to consumers.
It doesn’t really matter whether Zigbee was merged into something else, because it simply doesn’t have any technical means of phoning home. It simply can’t access the Internet.
There’s no intermediate corporate owned servers, there’s no proprietary software.
So it doesn’t really matter what the corporation does because it can’t affect my “smart” devices.
other than drop all support when “big ma bell” enters the chat with a corporate competitor and you have aging infrastructure built into your home.
it’ll be like those crappy intercom wall units from the 1970s all over again, except you won’t be able to turn on your lights or plugs.
Even if all support is dropped, everything is running on open source software, so nothing is going to stop working as a result of dropped support.
Finding replacements might become tricky at some point though.
Even if ZigBee became the most evil corporation in existence.
They still wouldn’t be able to update their devices when they aren’t connected to the internet.
In the UK, the take up of smart meters for electric and gas has been slow due go concerns that this would enable companies to do the same.
It’s not a bad argument (haven’t paid, turn it off) but then if you’re struggling financially is it better not to be allowed to rack up further debt anyway?
What is the absofuckingworstly scariest thing about this is that I’ve personally read quite a few sci-fi books, like in half of them, like in any universe, such things were usually a Trojan horse by the threat of the week to exterminate the good guys, or at least Palpatine’s way of spying, or whatever.
OK, Palpatine’s coolest microphone was decorative trees with skin changing colors depending on vibrations, and a very complex system of restoring the sounds from image, if I remember that correctly, in one X-Wing book.
So how the hell does it happen that such things are presented in movies and books and series like a threat, and yet people buy them?
I can believe in people loving touchscreens because touchscreens were unfortunately popularized in Star Trek and even, sigh, Star Wars prequels, and everything sci-fi.
But this is something that was being recommended against in such media for decades.
A Torment Nexus sounds cool
I have three unopened google pucks that I received as gifts over the years.
I had four, but I opened one to take apart to help identify if it was possible to hack it.
at the time it was not. the only part that can be reused it the plastic shell.