We really do live in a boring dystopia
I work in IT and I keep a baseball bat handy in case I suspect a device has gone online.
However what a ridiculous situation on Amazon’s part and it raises a bigger question. Even if this guy was 100% a racist shitbag, should he have had his Amazon account suspended unilaterally in the first place? Should someone have their bank account closed too then? How about utilities? I obviously am not agreeing with someone being racist but think that allowing corporations to impulsively take punitive actions is a slippery slope. Next thing we know, Amazon will be offering capital punishment as a service.
I’m of the opinion the “smart” home thing was just unintentional secondary, I can’t imagine them being smart enough to do so on purpose.
This sounds like it leads to the capitalist version of social credit scores.
House: “Bzzzzt, sorry, we cannot grant you access to your home since you have posted an offensive comment made to the bank that provided you the mortgage loan. We also have turned away a delivery package that reads: Bzzzzt…”
House: “Asthma Inhaler.”
House: Beeps.
House: “Please confirm $1,000,000 penalty payment to the mortgage company to regain access to your house. Have a good day.”
You: “But my wallet and everything is in this house…”
House: “911 have been dialed, you are trespassing this property. Please vacant the premise.”
Aggree, that’s not being an excuse to be a racist shitbag, but why does Amazon cares about this? This sets a dangerous precedent now, anyone who criticize something that the Amazon overlord like might get banned.
I mean if that man was doing something bad for the business side of Amazon (stealing, annoying customer support and whatnot) yeah sure but what he does outside of Amazon does not impact them?
Basically, anything that comes with a per-requirement to connect to a specific company provided server I just out right don’t buy them. (ie. some thing needs you to connect to a server in order to use “at home”) So I pretty much don’t have “smart” anything at home, if I need anything “smart” in the future, I believe there is tons of community project for all sorts raspberry pi controlled boards, switches, etc.
People have this idea that I’m either too paranoid or I might do things “better”, but it’s so arcane and confusing that they never could manage.
Of course the truth is that it might be a bit arcane to initially set up, but actually using it isn’t any more complicated than the commercial ones, except that you actually control what it does.
Then again, I don’t see why anyone would want lots of these things anyway - even if it was all selfhosted, do you really need a videocamera doorbell or app controlled lights? Some of these things just scream to me actually slower and more troublesome than just doing it the old fashioned way. Then again, I still like desktops with wired keyboards and mice, and I still prefer them to voice control or touch screens.
We had a Google speaker thing. Got rid of it because it was crap. All we could reliably use it for was asking it to play a radio station or play Spotify, but frankly it even got that wrong enough that grabbing my phone and connecting to the Bluetooth speaker was easier.
Even privacy invading problems aside they’re just a little bit rubbish.
Selfhosting is the way to go. All my automations are controlled by a HomeAssistant instance running locally.
Remember what “Cloud” means: Putting your data on some elses computer. No thanks.
Am I the only one who can be bothered to get up off my ass to flip a fucking light switch?
I got a family that likes to leave the damn light switches all on at night, I’m no longer going around and shutting them all off when everyone is in bed. Also, they are tied to my alarm, when I disarm the alarm or it goes off, they all come on.
But I’m doing all this through Home Assistant, a local open source automation server, not any of this cloud bullshit.
Some fights are just not worth the hassle tho, you got to pick your battles.
And it’s not like there is anyone factually “right” or “wrong”, it’s mostly a matter of opinions/priorities.
Another example, different expectations w.r.t. to cleaning. Either try to convince the other person to clean more, even if they don’t see the need, or be always the one cleaning and build up frustration. Or: Get a roomba.
If you’re using Alexa to simply flick a switch, that is indeed a bit overkill. I’m using a cheap Trådfri (or something like that) light switch from Ikea. I have a dimmable lamp with three different light temperatures and can simply set the lighting from my couch. That’s really convenient. But it’s also point to point, since it’s just ZigBee. And it’s pretty cheap, 20€ all in all.
“The cloud is just somone else’s computer”