A man who got kicked off a service because of an alleged remark.
On one side, critics lambasted Jackson as a dupe for having smart devices in the first place; […]
Yah … that.
This is victim blaming. He isn’t at fault for trusting a company to have the bare minimum of respect for his property and autonomy, the company is at fault for not actually having that respect. Whether the company is actually trustworthy is as immaterial as saying someone “deserved” to have their car stolen because they forgot to lock it.
You can criticize him for not being cautious in this low-trust environment, but don’t let it get to the point where the party actually at fault gets off without criticism.
This is victim blaming.
Only to some degree. The guy is a software engineer and should have known better. I’d agree if it was Jenny from accounting. You could just as well point out “victim blaming” when I called someone a moron for jumping from a three storey building and breaking his legs, because it was neither his intention nor was he aware that it could break his legs. For a software engineer to employ cloud based “smart” devices and then wonder if it backfires is borderline moronic.
This is the reason my house has:
- mechanical locks
- mechanical windows
- routers using OpenWRT
- no smart home crap
- no Alexa/Google Assistant/…
- no internet connected thermostats
Fwiw, I think using a self hosted home automation setup (shout out to home assistant) paired with smart devices that don’t use internet (e.g. zigbee, zwave, or matter once it comes out) can allow you to have a smart home without these kinds of fears.
That said, I would definitely agree to using mechanical locks. Although a monitored smart security system is probably still a good idea - you’re letting a company virtually enter your house, but you can’t rely on a self hosted solution to notify you when your power goes out, for example.
Unless I’m mistaken, don’t HomeKit compatible devices need to be local-first too? I remember reading that if I switch my Ecobee thermostat to HomeKit (via HomeAssistant’s bridge), it will use local control instead. It’s on my todo list but I just haven’t done it yet.
I think this thread about Ecobee and HomeKit was where I started…
My experience from watching lockpicking lawyer is that locks are just social niceties that tell others ‘please don’t go here’ and have no real ability to stop anyone who doesn’t care. Other than the owner who gets locked out by forgetting their own key of course.
When I installed digital locks my partner was paranoid about them until I reminded her that we live in a house with a lot of windows. If someone is going to the lengths to crack my lock rather than smashing my windows, we have other problems.
You definitely still want locks because most people have no idea how to pick a lock and a lot of crime is crimes of opportunity. But I don’t think there’s that much of a difference in most locks. A slightly better lock might dissuade a thief who learned how to pick cheap masterlocks, but someone who truly wants to get in doesn’t even need to pick a lock. I’d hazard a guess that break-ins happen far more often by breaking the window than picking locks.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
