• Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    7 days ago

    “no smart home crap” Yeah… That’s just a choice. I have two homegrown smarthome solutions that are amazing and complex without creating security holes.

    • Lemmee@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      You can tell it’s an IT guy’s home assistant if there’s no hardware that requires someone else’s cloud.

      My home automation philosophy is that everything in the house should work with or without internet. It’s going well so far.

      • howrar@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        I’ll add that things should also fail gracefully. If something breaks, they should all revert back to working like the dumb equivalent. Dumb switches, dumb thermostat, etc.

          • blargh513@sh.itjust.works
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            6 days ago

            My home assistant is set up that way. If I turn it all off, the house is a little less awesome, but everythiing works fine. You just have to turn on/off lights and open/close doors yourself now. you’ll have to diddle with the thermostat and ceiling fans more too.

        • Taleya@aussie.zone
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          7 days ago

          Don’t do the lightbulbs (unless you rent). Do the power to the sockets.

          Smart lightbulbs are a fucking rort

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Zigbee bulbs, third reality and sengeled (sp?) are most of what I have attached to my home assistant. Stay away from the WiFi shit tho

        • Lemmee@sh.itjust.works
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          7 days ago

          Like the other user mentioned: depends on your setup.

          I have recessed lighting throughout my house, so swapping to bulbs for all of them would have been an expensive pain. So I opted for smart switches. I got innovelli reds, because they were the best there was at the time. You can get them with any protocol you want (zigbee/zwave/wifi)

          With a smart switch, you can control lots of lights with only one device. Originally I just added Shelly relays behind each switch, but I wanted the dimming capability of the innoveli.

          If you do still want bulbs, nothing beats hue. But they are by far the most expensive.

          • 123@programming.dev
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            7 days ago

            As an alternative, we have found bulbs that can run tasmota with the MQTT integration to be perhaps the most reliable part of our smart home (as long as the hardware already had a descent CRI). I’ve heard good things about ESP home too, but we have not tried it.

            If someone has some light bulbs that are laggy (due to cloud integrations) or a pain to use due to software, its worth checking out of tasmota or esp home can be installed on them to locally pair with something like home assistant. It turned a regretful purchase into a nice addition.

            With that said, we don’t buy connected devices any longer without checking internet and cloud requirements first.

            • Lemmee@sh.itjust.works
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              6 days ago

              Tasmota is awesome. I flashed all my early Shelly devices with it. But now the native Shelly firmware is amazing, and it allows you to turn on local mqtt only. So I’ve stopped using Tasmota for everything besides the few devices flashed early and behind my wall switches. (I’m too lazy to pull them out)

              Is it hard to flash bulbs with Tasmota? Don’t you usually need access to the pins? Or have an OTA option for updating the firmware?

              • 123@programming.dev
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                6 days ago

                The ones I had you could do it over the air, but some do require access to the pins. Even with soldering experience it is not approachable as bulbs are not packaged to be opened, it is part of why I check for offline or flash compatibility before buying as even the same “model” could have different hardware revisions. No info = avoid.

            • LowlandSavage@lemmy.ca
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              6 days ago

              I love my lutron Caseta gear. Integrates with home assistant and reverts to dumb. Expensive ass dimmer though, and they run on a proprietary hub.

        • Tinidril@midwest.social
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          7 days ago

          It depends on the rest of your setup, but I recommend going with zigbee or matter/thread for the connectivity. I definitely wouldn’t put any “smart” devices on my general purpose wifi. That stuff is never going to be secure. Also, consider if smart switches would work for you instead. That way you don’t have to pay the premium when a bulb burns out.

          • dai@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            Yeah I’m stuck between those two options however it’s for much later down the road in my case. House needs a renovation but finances don’t allow just yet.

            I have a mix of TP Link wifi globes, IKEA ZigBee and Hue Zigbee throughout the house. Zigbee are controlled by a SLZB 06 and ZHA / MQTT. By far the Hue are the best I’ve tested and have been in service for around 10 years.

      • ragas@lemmy.ml
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        7 days ago

        This is why I’m conflicted about getting online weather information.

        • Lemmee@sh.itjust.works
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          6 days ago

          Pretty hard to replace weather info without internet. I don’t have any automations that rely on weather info, and I have a cheap rain gauge that a friend 3d printed for me. It uses a simple zigbee door sensor to detect rain accumulation. Pretty clever device (not my invention.)

          So eventually I want to automate the watering of my garden, and I intend to use the rain sensor to help there. But honestly, it never rains in the summer here in the PNW, so my 3rd reality moisture sensors are more useful than actual weather data.

  • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Having worked in IT for 17 years. I don’t trust any MFer that uses their IT experience as a reason to do something.

      • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 days ago

        Not all of us will do it to the same degree though. IT security has always been a sliding scale between security and convenience. The most secure data is stored in a locked safe without being turned on or connected to anything. That’s not very practical, so we make concessions based on how often we need such data and other convenience metrics.

        I’m not as paranoid as the OP, though I agree with some of the stuff said. Reasonable security measures are fine; you don’t need to look like a digital version of a prepper with a bunker, for most people.

        Edit: for instance I don’t use my TV all that much, but it is a “smart” TV, meaning it has apps that connect to Internet, and I have some online libraries.

    • ElectricVocalist
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      6 days ago

      It seems like half of the people claiming they work in this field actually struggle more than the average person

  • psud@aussie.zone
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    6 days ago

    Following computer security stuff makes every smart thing suspicious

    • shneancy@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      none of the “smart” devices are actually smart. in my experience they’re really fucking dumb

      i once bought a “smart” electric kettle because i thought it’d be nice to boil my water to exact temperatures for my teas. it had a little button on a little screen to turn it on

      and of course the screen stopped working, and that was the singular thing that broke. if the kettle had a physical switch i’d have only lost the ability to boil to exact temperatures instead of becoming fully useless

      a similar thing happened with my Quest VR. a singular smart thing broke (the proximity sensor) and it bricked the whole thing (the proximity sensor deteced, well, proximity, and input from that decided if the screen inside was turned on. when it broke, the screen never turned on. the proximity sensor could be disabled - but only from within the settings menu that required the screen to be on in the first place. there was no other way to disable it, and that setting reset every full shut down)

      never had that happen with my non smart devices, never had a non-critical feature failing bricked my “dumb” machine. oh the proper graphics card melted in my laptop? whatever i just disabled it, it might not perform as it used to but it’s still functional and perfect for just browsing the internet or watching youtube

      my dumb printer never just stopped for no reason, my dumb kettle with a physical toggle has been working perfectly for 3 years now, my dumb light bulbs only stop working when they’ve reached the end of their ability to make light, my dumb devices never refuse to work even when what they can do isn’t perfect anymore

      i was already annoyed by so many devices being labelled as “smart” when they’re not, and now they’re also adding “AI” to those things… i hate it here

  • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I just don’t understand the desire to control everything in your house with an app. It’s not like that app can load or unload the dishwasher or clothes dryer. That would be automation I could really get behind. And thermostats are programmable and then left to themselves. Even ice makers are automatically controlled with a microswitch.

    And yes, I did try the internet enabled thermostat thing and found I never used the app. Nor is the journey to the thermostat so arduous that I can’t get up and walk over to it if I should ever feel the need. Maybe I’m just too old to get it.

    But if you like it and want it then have at it. I certainly won’t stop you from enjoying it.

    • bisby@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      If you don’t understand the desire then you don’t have a use case. And that’s ok. But that doesn’t mean other people don’t have a use case.

      Properly set up home automation can reduce your energy usage. Track temperature throughout your house and open blinds, only direct heat/cooling to rooms that need it, etc. Sure a thermostat is programmable but it’s limited by the ability to just turn on/off heat and a few temperature sensors. You can drastically expand what your thermostat can do (ie motorized blinds) and information it has access to (temperature outside, current weather, etc).

      Or maybe someone is the type to have panic attacks about forgetting to turn the oven off. Having the ability to see oven status on the go is nice.

      Or maybe someone has a larger house than you and the journey to the thermostat is more arduous than yours. Or the journey to the dishwasher or clothes dryer to see if it’s done is arduous.

      Or maybe someone has a disability and having quick access to various things is a huge time saver.

      Maybe someone has a sensory issue and loud buzzing from a dryer finishing is problematic, so they want to disable the “finished” alert from the device and just receive a notification on their phone.

      but if youre gathering that much data and making decisions with it, then from the OP “no internet connected thermostats” is a must. None of your smart home stuff should be able to phone home. Basically the openWRT argument but also for smart home. Use zigbee or zwave so devices can’t just directly phone home and must simply connect through a hub (that you should control).

      tl;dr - plenty of reasons to want these things, they just may not apply to you.

      • silasmariner@programming.dev
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        7 days ago

        Getting back from holiday in a few hours and the weather is cold? Turn the heating on from your app before you get back. Wow. Life changing. Don’t have a use case for most things being connected but thermostat really isn’t that crazy IMO.

        • bisby@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          “Set and forget” time based thermostat programming only works if your daily routine doesn’t change daily or weekly or have outliers. The ability to change manually, or add other factors (is anyone home? let it get a bit colder, since it doesn’t matter) is pretty great.

          But I would still advocate for no internet connected thermostats from the OP. Your thermostat should be isolated to your home network (via zigbee/zwave or a quality VLAN) connecting to a server/hub you control. And your app should be communicating to your server/hub. Your thermostat shouldn’t be able to report back to google whether or not you are home.

        • Lemmee@sh.itjust.works
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          7 days ago

          Door locks and garage door openers are sweet to automate. My instance knows if I left by car/bike/foot, and welcomes me home with the proper unlocking/opening.

          Also, never having to worry about if I left the door unlocked or garage door open is nice.

          • bisby@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            I’ve never gotten any automated locks because I’ve always been concerned about security around them, but also, Ive had too many warped doors in my life where I have to lean on the door to get the deadbolt to properly set. Which means that there is no way an automated lock would be able to automatically set itself.

            Is the answer here: “there are just some doors this won’t work on” or do the smart locks have some way of working around that?

            • Lemmee@sh.itjust.works
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              7 days ago

              I think you gotta fix the door before you can have complete confidence.

              My automated deadbolt can ‘force’ its way shut when it has full battery. But when it gets low on juice, the door needs to be ‘fully shut’

              So your best bet is to better align your strike plate so the door doesn’t need shimmied to close fully.

      • Justifier@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        HomeAssistant and vlans are kind of the answer to most of the issues/concerns regarding smart devices this post has

        I have to say though, I find anyone who leans too far either way to be extremely silly

        Well chosen devices from reputable manufacturers can drastically improve quality of life

        One big one for me was window blinds on a sun timer. Because after a decade, I was swapping from nights to days permanently having spent that past time swapping from nights to days every Wednesday and had signifcant issues both waking up and staying up on those days, and even now I still do

        Having my bedroom windows open in the morning on their own to use natural lighting to wake me up has been extremely helpful for that, and then using HA that could be tied into external camera systems to close the windows automatically if a person or vehicle is detected within specific parameters, or having the ability to open my son’s window if I hear him crying to be picked up from a nap but I can’t immediately respond has been wonderful

        Now there’s also your Rings, your creepvacuumbots, any smart TV at all and any other host of problems with iot devices, but there are some gems that make life much better without the dark patterns we increasingly associate with connectes devices these days

        • oatscoop@midwest.social
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          6 days ago

          A lot of the “automation” we can buy is a joke: it should be unobtrusive and provide actual quality of life improvement and it’s not. Turning on a light shouldn’t require us to interact with an app on our phones.

          HA with some good hardware choices does that if you don’t mind putting in the work up front. Most of my automations require no interaction to work: they passively check conditions and trigger automatically – if I’m home, leaving, need to wake up for work, etc.

      • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        My phone has a built-in calendar and is about the only “extra” I use it for. It works flawlessly, and I have no other need for any other electronic calendering system. I do admit to using a wall calendar for certain things too. Old habits as a farmer are hard to break. Ye Gods, how I miss the weekly flip calendars I used to get from Cenex every year…

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I just don’t understand the desire to control everything in your house with an app.

      Shrinking the size of my wallet and getting rid of all my keys has an instant appeal. I’d much rather just carry around a single phone-sized multipass than a janitor’s worth of hardware for accessing a dozen different gates and appliances.

      • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Did you notice your electronic locks all have keys for when they fail? For me, I only need one key for my door lock so it adds nothing noticeable in my pocket. And in all my life I have never seen any home appliance that needed a key to operate-- excepting something like you would see in a laundromat. But you likely don’t have the keys for that either.

        As for gates, I’ve owned a lot of gates to control livestock. None of which needed a padlock. But that is very much a YMMV thing. Still, if you have a need for locked gates, a set of combination locks all set to the same combination or keyed locks with all setup for a single key once again minimizes the need for a bunch of bulky keys. Plus they are all cheaper to install and operate. You can literally operate an infinite number locks with just one key or combination.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Did you notice your electronic locks all have keys for when they fail?

          No, because I don’t have them. I have a fake rock with a key in it and generally don’t bother locking my front door anyway. But I’m lazy and cheap, not terribly interested in changing out all my locks myself or paying someone else to do it for a marginal quality of life improvement.

          Still, if you have a need for locked gates, a set of combination locks all set to the same combination or keyed locks with all setup for a single key once again minimizes the need for a bunch of bulky keys.

          Sure. And if you’re setting up a security perimeter from first principles, that’s fine. But then you add an interior gate or you need to replace a lock that’s rusted through or yadda yadda life happens, and you can lose the single key design.

          Case in point, my front door lock did foul a few years ago. My wife changed out the front door but didn’t bother to sync it with the back door. She didn’t want to bother with an electronic lock because she thought they were too expensive. So now we’ve got a front door that doesn’t match the side door or the garage door. And we only have two keys to the new lock, one of which has been lost almost immediately.

          A digital system that I can just sync from my phone would be far more appealing than juggling keys. Or staring at a key dish and trying to remember which ones actually link to which doors.

          • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            You can just get another re-keyable lock for any added later locks or replacement lock sets. It’s not rocket surgery and one of the reasons why you use re-keyable locks. And if you lost a key, just have a new key made. It’s cheap and quick. So you are still only needing one key per user. My key ring has a remote for my car, a post officebox key, (they do not deliver my mail to my house), and one door key to the house that has 3 locking doors. The car remote is by far the most annoying thing in my pocket.

            Look, we all want to be part of some cool kids club. I want a new 3D printer because despite my trusty old bed-slingers working flawlessly, I would like a shiny new enclosed Core xy printer so I can be as cool as everyone else with a printer. And if I’m not careful, I can have the same problem with shiny new pocket knives at times. Same thing with digital homes. It’s driven by the cool factor rather than any real necessity. So go ahead and connect everything you want. But at least admit to yourself that probably half the reason you do it is just to be a cool kid.

      • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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        7 days ago

        I also got rid of a bunch of keys, and I didn’t need an app to do so. if I have to use an app, I’d hate it

    • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Yeah, i think its all about use cases.

      I use home assistant in a tablet on the kitchen wall, for light control, ev charging and battery level monitoring for mine and my wife’s car which is not intuitive or easy in the official app. I use it for our shared calendar. Amd weather updates as well as for monitoring my 3d printer and cctv cameras. I host everything locally. Nothing is in the cloud except for the API i need to monitor the EVs and the weather server. I keep finding new things to use it for. I dont do much automation with it. But i find it very useful overall.

    • djdarren@piefed.social
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      7 days ago

      Personally, the vast majority of my smart home stuff is light automation. It’s nice having a selection of lights automatically turn on half an hour before sunset, and it’s nice having a button next to my bed that either turns on the reading lamps, or turns off all the lights in the house depending on how long I press it.

      Though in fairness, I am drifting back towards having my lights controlled by buttons, because voice control is mostly bollocks. But now the lights font have to be the ones wired in to the house. It can be any that I can add to Home Assistant.

    • epicshepich@programming.dev
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      7 days ago

      Having kids makes a big difference. It’s very useful to be able to shut off all the lights in the common areas and turn off the lights in their bedroom when they fall asleep. It’s also nice to be able to push a button to start a song on the speaker for musical routines (like cleaning up breakfast to Blue Danube or running to bed to Night Comes from Pikmin).

      We also have a TON of lamps, and their switches are not always easily accessible (especially because our house is a perpetual mess).

      The smart lock is because my wife always used to ask me if I locked the door after I got into bed, and I never remembered because ADHD.

    • RogueJello@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Nor is the journey to the thermostat so arduous that I can’t get up and walk over to it if I should ever feel the need. Maybe I’m just too old to get it.

      I live in a three story house, and sometimes only notice when what the thermostat is set to when I’m tired and ready for bed. Climbing a flight of stairs after going down and changing the thermostat doesn’t appeal much. I also got it on sale, which was nice.

      • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        That’s why you have a programmable thermostat. Set and forget. No need to climb stairs, (good exercise), to change the temp.

        • RogueJello@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          LOL. That’s not a bad approach. What I find happens in practice is that we turn it off during season transitions so we can open the windows, and then forget or need to turn it back on again to deal with the fluctuations in the weather. The temps here have shifted as much as 50 degrees in a single day. Hard to program for that in advance. :)

          • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            I live in northern Minnesota, so we get that a lot too in the spring and fall. But my thermostat is set to auto with a minimum temp of 68F to turn on the heat. And 74F to run the air conditioner when needed. It works with very, very little intervention from me year round.

            • RogueJello@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              Yeah, that’s a good option. However those temps swings also mean that it’s likely to get back down (or up) again the next day, and in the mean time I’m potentially running the thermostat.

              I’ve also got an old brick house, which means that thermal mass is a thing in a way that’s hard to explain to people who live in modern buildings, but the easiest way to understand it is to realize the house walls are a lot slower at changing temps than the air, which will also mess with the thermometer.

    • pfried@reddthat.com
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      7 days ago

      I also didn’t get Internet connected thermostats until the utility company added demand response discounts. It’s really a smart grid technology. This does mean that it should be secured as such, otherwise it’s another vector to attack the power grid (set all thermostats to maximum and cause blackouts). Regulations haven’t caught up.

    • thermal_shock@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I have some lights and speakers, that’s it. I like some automation things like speakers get set to X volume at 7pm, you can say “goodnight” and it has a list of items it does, asks for alarm, turns off all Lights, set speaker volumes lower, sets music in the living room for the doggo.

      I have my network locked down and and IoT ssid. I like a few of the conveniences and I watch my network and traffic like a hawk.

  • stickyprimer@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    I used to work the IT help desk as well and I didn’t want to fix broken shit in my spare time either. Friends and family were constantly on me to fix their shit or worse, help them setup their new thing / upgrade or whatever. The thing that always irritated me about it was that no one ever considered this a favor, you know, actual labor. To them, I just knew the secrets, and should simply share those secrets with them like a good friend. Because whatever they wanted to do, in their minds, was very very bad easy, they were just missing some small secret answer that would make it all suddenly work. And of course they’d only consult me late in the game after they’d made the purchase or whatever and gotten stuck because it didn’t work. Eventually I had to formally declare that I wouldn’t be helping anyone anymore.

    • opus86@lemmy.today
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      6 days ago

      My trick with family is I tell them “Well, I can do it, try harder.” It’s my little way to show them how much I appreciate how often they told me I was mentally handicapped growing up.

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I just started writing up invoices for my side hustle and quoting prices to fix their shit.

      I do that for a day job, so I have no interest in working more for free. Putting a price tag on the help definitely helped cut down how much bullshit they tried to get me to do

    • GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Tell them “Only if you help me” and make them sit and watch and learn. If they stop watching/helping, so do you. They will then learn how time consuming it can be and it’s not just one magic secret.

      • stickyprimer@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        If it’s a very well defined task with repeatable steps, sure. Often it’s more like “why won’t my CarPlay open my garage door?” And in those cases I barely even know where to start and need to experiment and fiddle, and the last thing I want is them hanging on my arm asking questions and offering bad theories.

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          That’s exactly when I want them hanging around, so they learn that I don’t know shit, and now we both will be learning how to fix something at the same time

          Next time they will think “he doesn’t know shit himself, no point in asking, might as well Google myself how to fix”

    • j5y7@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      The only people I do this stuff for is my parents, because they certainly did a lot for me over the decades. Also, if I don’t do these things for them, some asshole will drain their bank accounts because their passwords would be the names of their children.

  • arc99@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    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.

    • Sabata@ani.social
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      6 days ago

      it will be bitrotten within 5 years and dead with 10

      Worse, it could get bought out and converted to a Meta, Google, or Amazon product.

    • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      It should be required that companies either maintain their services perpetual or release the software with a permissive license to allow users to maintain their own service.

  • the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    This is me, nothing in my house needs automation for any reason. There is especially no need for internet connectivity. The closest to automation I have ever had is the timers that turn the lights on or off on my fishtanks.

    • musubibreakfast@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I hacked this guy’s fish tanks, I reprogrammed the lights and I’m currently training his fish through EMDR to memorize all his passwords. In about six months time I’ll break into his house, interrogate his fish and clean out all his bank accounts.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 days ago

    Exactly.

    My first personal e-mail way back in the 90s was with my ISP. Then I changed ISPs and saw the problem with that. So I moved to Yahoo.

    Some years later, in the 00s I just decided to get my own, paid for, Internet domain and have my e-mail there, even though I could’ve carried on using Yahoo or get Google Mail (very popular amongst techies back then) for free. The main reason was that I realized I must made sure the e-mail address was MINE, not actually owned by somebody else with me allowed to use it under their conditions.

    Twenty years later and guess it was pretty wise to not have my e-mail in the claws of “Definitelly Do Evil” Google.

    Experience using and living with Tech, mainly once your understanding of it reaches the level of understanding systemic elements, naturally informs ones choices in Tech, and that often means chosing something else than the mass marketed “popular” stuff that’s designed to lock you in, sell you stuff or sell your attention to others and eavesdrop on you and sell your data.

    • RogueJello@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Another perspective. You got lucky that the dependencies you’re working with haven’t gotten as bad as the ones for Gmail and the like. Sure you’ve got a domain, but you’ve also got a domain registrar you’re dependent on. Yeah, you’ve got your own email server, but it’s dependent on open source software, and the monopolists allowing it to still connection, though that’s getting iffy. You’re also dependent on the kindness of a number of people continuing to contribute to Linux, and it not being compromised in some way.

      I made a different choice 25 years ago, and went with Gmail, but the idea that you’re smarter because your dependencies didn’t turn to sh*t is as much luck as skill. 25 years is several eternities in tech, and there are no guaranteed outcomes.

      • teuto@lemmy.teuto.icu
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        7 days ago

        If you have your own domain, you aren’t stuck with your dependencies. Swapping registrars is a straight forward porting procedure. Swapping hosting is a matter of replacing 5 or so DNS entries. It took me about 20 minutes to reconfigure my domain’s email when I decided I didn’t want to use Proton anymore.

        • drath@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          It’s not a given. Some registars can be total dicks about transfers and drag it until expiry, after which they would kindly offer their services of “negotiating a buyout from the owner” (i.e. themselves), asking $100 upfront just for them say some absurdly high price and then hold it on park for a whole year just out of spite if you ever initiated the process.

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            7 days ago

            I suppose you can’t know that, but your odds on betting on a whole industry are better than a single company. Not to mention, the barrier to entry for a registrar becoming accredited really isn’t that high, so I wouldn’t expect market consolidation unless ICANN changes the process, at which point shit is fucked regardless.

            • RogueJello@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              True, I’d be more concerned about legislation to be honest. The CAN-SPAM act is just the mildest example.

              Also with the computer industry it’s getting pretty rare for any market niche to have more than 1-2 dominant players in it. Generally it’s winner take all. Just see what happened with all the indie ISPs.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 days ago

        Literally the worst that can happen to me if I’m really really unlucky is end up tied down to a single provider, same as you.

        There were already 100s of registars back then (and as of 2024 there were over 2000) along with a standardized process for moving a domain to another registar, all regulated by an international regulator, ICANN.

        Given that ease of migration is guaranteed by ICANN, making the market highly competitive, the only real risk that this entire system end up “consolidated” is if ICANN is totally subverted, a pretty tall order considering it’s in the interest of every single country in the World and millions of businesses (who also have domain names) that it is not, so that’s highly unlikely.

        Meanwhile Google is just one and has always been just one. From the very start there was NEVER any perspective of there being more than one provider of gmail addresses so there was NEVER any perspective of being able to move away from Google and still keep your e-mail address if Google screwed you in some way. As for all your e-mails, those were always freely accessible to Google and they could always do whatever they want with that data.

        In simple terms, you chose to be Google’s bitch and hope that they don’t screw you over too badly, whilst I, maybe, if I’m really really unlucky and an entire international system for domain name regulation is subverted against the interests of all countries in the World and most businesses, might one day at worst end up in the same situation as you.

        I’m afraid your face-saving risk “analysis” on this is hilariously bad.

        • RogueJello@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Literally the worst that can happen to me if I’m really really unlucky is end up tied down to a single provider, same as you.

          No, there are a lot more risks you’re running that I am not. Since you control your infrastructure, you’re also responsible for it. Current penalty under CAN-SPAM act is up to $53,088 per email. So, no the worst thing that can happen to you if you’re really unlucky is to die penniless after being sued into oblivious for operating a spam operation.

          Before the worst happens, it’s getting increasingly more likely that your domain will end up in a blacklist at Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook, for which there is no formal appeal process. All that would require would somebody hacking your domain, and sending spam, or just sharing an ip address with a spammer.

          That’s before we get into the things that you’re already lost: time and effort maintaining the system, which I have not.

          Anyway, I was just being polite, but since you’re incapable of doing so, and need to resort to ad homenium attacks, I think we’re done here.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 days ago

            You’re assuming I’m using my domain to send spam or am operating the e-mail server myself. That’s a pretty wild assumption.

            Further, I don’t live in the US nor do I have assets in the US, so that act means shit for me.

            You can pay a company that hosts e-mail to do it for you, and pretty cheap too.

            Which I do.

            Like the registar, one can change that provider too, and if do that I get to take the e-mail address with me as well as all my e-mails (all data is fully exportable), unlike with Google were the e-mail address is theirs, not yours.

            Try again.

  • rabber@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

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

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    6 days ago

    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.

  • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    You left your WRT open?

    I jest but you should be using OPNsense, OpenWRT is so old and OPNsense has many more features.