A man who got kicked off a service because of an alleged remark.
Oh, this is the same story from June. This can basically happen to anybody who uses their Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, … account for anything important. All of these companies have very limited recourse for customers who got banned. I’m surprised he even found out why they banned him LOL
And this is why you shouldn’t allow things essential to your life to be mediated by some faceless tech giant. Self-hosting may be more effort, but you can at least guarantee that any issues won’t be as a result of some bureaucratic nonsense or administrative error. This is not just smart home stuff - there are similar examples affecting email, photo galleries, file storage, etc. etc.
Stories like this are why I’ve never really found the concept of a smart home appealing. I’m perfectly content to do it all analog, but hopefully there’s an alternative out there for folks who think differently than I do.
There are very good and fairly easy solutions for self hosting smart home functionality. Im using homeassistant which runs locally on my own hardware, and all my smart functionality is controlled locally so it works even without internet. And should my server crash, everything just defaults to normal “dumb” control.
Shameless plug for Home Assistant, here. Everything is controlled locally (unless you pay for their internet pass through service which is basically just a relay), most brands of smart devices are supported, you have extreme customization capabilities, and it’s all open source.
Plus, it can run on pretty much anything.
Shameless plug for just using your little fingies to operate the light switches and thermostats. Everything is controlled locally and you only have to pay for the light and the switch (fingers should be included in your default setup)
Fingers may be included in most setups, along with actuators like arms or legs often required to approach the finger to the switch, but they still come with a wetware control unit that gets easily distracted by anything from puppies, to the fear of being late for work.
That’s a good point; generally my little fingies aren’t the problem as much as the control unit.
Honestly I’m just a bit of a luddite when it comes to “smart” tech, which I guess is somewhat funny considering I’ve worked in IT for a looong time. Or maybe it’s because I’ve worked in IT that I turned into a luddite?
Controller locally except that one case - also unless you add devices that are cloud controlled (most things that say they are Alexa-compatible, most Wifi things, etc). Which a lot of people may not realize, and it’s a LOT of things). But is totally up to people to use, and there’s often a way to make (or hack) those things to be local-only.
Home Assistant really is best-in-class though for most Home Automation things. It’s super super powerful and supports virtually EVERYTHING, especially if you can put in a little work. And for medium/advanced users, it’s peerless.
They just still have a really long way to go to be as user-friendly as it should be. Even for “advanced” users.
If I ever get into smart home crap, I’ll definitely be aiming for a local network solution >_>
Go Home Assistant. They’re getting closer to having an offline voice assistant too, so soon you won’t need to use rhasspy or another open source solution.
I’m in the process of developing a whole home HAL9000 system.
