Programmer Humor

Mechanical Windows

As opposed to what, wireless windows?

As a general rule, if you buy "smart" anything where it requires an internet connection and a cloud service to function it will be bitrotten within 5 years and dead within 10. And that's assuming the company survives so long and is bothered to support it. That's from planned obsolescence and the ongoing cost of supporting the platform when they have something new to sell. And while things can benefit from an internet connection, if its white goods then run a mile.

I think forward thinking companies could actually gain a lot of free publicity and sales if they openly pledged that their software was in escrow and would automatically release after a period of time and/or as a failsafe if the company discontinued the product and/or they went bust.

Good, solid state tech should last basically forever unless something wild happens.

The dev I know who’s most into home automation using cloud services has also fallen the hardest for “AI will build all systems and nothing will go wrong with that”. Honestly, I should become a cyber criminal in this climate.

Technology under capitalism becomes a hazard and a threat.

"no smart home crap" except smart home "crap" can be quite secure today... but please go on.

(80% of my smart home "crap" runs firmware I compiled, communicates only with a local server and have no internet access)

I guess the lock picking lawyer has something to say about those mechanical locks.

My house too. I don't work in IT, I just can't afford any of this.

Smart TV is the only one I've really managed to avoid. Every TV is smart at this point

Same thing for mechanics. My dad has wrenched for 45 years and you should see what he drives lol

Well I have smart devices and a thermostat. Thermostat is awesome but local control only through home assistant and rest of the house is all zwave and ZigBee no internet required.

When I see an IT person post like this, I instantly think "So, you're the IT person who always finds a reasons to say no." I've manage IT shops for 30+ years, and you're not my kind of IT person.

Kind of meta, but does anybody remember garage door openers back in the day? My family had one for which the "security" consisted of an 8-bit "key," as in, the remote had 8 jumpers, and the lift unit had 8 DIP switches. You'd cut jumpers in a certain pattern, and flip the switches to match. What was fun was seeing how many garage doors around town we could open using the default pattern.

Smart locks have got to be at least a slight improvent, right?

I have plenty of iot devices. Like anything that goes online, it’s how you set it up. If you know how to monitor traffic, it’s not terribly hard to get these things to behave how you want them to.

I work in cyber security and I have lots of smart home things. I also assume my network’s being compromised at all times and keep anything really important on paper in a safe.