I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#101

Post by formerly_proven » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #4

While touring the house we eventually bought, my wife spied a Nest on the wall and said, "Oh, that's one thing bitwize is gonna want to rip out." Hooking your home up to the cloud and depending on cloud services for its operation just strikes me as the king of dumb ideas. You've got private, intimate data flowing to who knows where, cloud malfunctions affecting regular home operations (this has already happened at le…

Just use KNX. These proprietary single-vendor solutions will all turn into unserviceable e-waste sooner than later.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#102

Post by SergeAx » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:11 PM UTC

I love this approach. While the device is in use - it is ours, and you cannot open, repair, modify it of its firmware. When we discontinue it - it is your problem, we got your money, end of story.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#103

Post by vachina » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:12 PM UTC

I think a good rule of thumb is not investing in any hardware which has its functionality depend on someone else’s RPC endpoint, especially for something as trivial as switching things on and off.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#104

Post by ssbash » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

account-5 wrote: post #86

This sort of shit is the reason they will never get me to use their passkey implementation. The sooner there's a truly portable open source offline version of passkeys I'm all in. Until then I'm sticking with my password manager. I do feel the only thing you can really trust from Google are the things that make them money. Chrome, and any software that allows them to hook into for advertising money. It makes me worry…

I believe security keys are the offline version of passkeys you're looking for.

I am afraid that websites will somehow disable support security keys and only support passkey implementations from big tech (similar to how websites only offer signin with google, fb , etc).

Can someone clarify if WebAuthn protocol allows for this filtering against hardware authenticators?

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#105

Post by blibble » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:22 PM UTC

ssbash wrote: post #104

account-5 wrote: post #86

This sort of shit is the reason they will never get me to use their passkey implementation. The sooner there's a truly portable open source offline version of passkeys I'm all in. Until then I'm sticking with my password manager. I do feel the only thing you can really trust from Google are the things that make them money. Chrome, and any software that allows them to hook into for advertising money. It makes me worry…

I believe security keys are the offline version of passkeys you're looking for. I am afraid that websites will somehow disable support security keys and only support passkey implementations from big tech (similar to how websites only offer signin with google, fb , etc). Can someone clarify if WebAuthn protocol allows for this filtering against hardware authenticators?

yes, there's an attestation cert as part of the register request

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#106

Post by yellow_mixer » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:27 PM UTC

Corrado wrote: post #2

I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Goog…

If you’re looking for a good read, pick up a copy of Tony Fadell’s “Build”. There are a few interesting chapters where he writes about the process of selling Nest to Google.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#107

Post by blue_cookeh » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

briHass wrote: post #93

zamalek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Google devices with my HA setup just fine (although I want to move away). HA just added integrated assistant support, so I'm keen to try that out when I get back from vacation.

Does the HA voice assistant support require HA Cloud or whatever they're calling it? The price for that $6/m felt a bit steep for what it provided, though supporting HA development is appealing. When I started to read through the non-cloud option, I saw some analog telephone and POTS modem requirements and my eyes glazed over.

> When I started to read through the non-cloud option, I saw some analog telephone and POTS modem requirements and my eyes glazed over.

Confused on that one.

You can expose Home Assistant to the internet (preferably using a reverse proxy like Traefik or Nginx, which is basically what your $6 gets you anyway) to make Google Assistant work properly with it.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#108

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #59

largepeepee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's not only products that get left behind once Google gets bored. Many of Google's software eventually get worse too. YouTube for example has killed most of their social features by removing dislikes, limited searchability of videos by channel, allowed bots to fill the comments. And Google search has so much malware in their ads that pop up first, that even govts are recommending ad blockers by default.…

I had to delete the YouTube app simply because there was no way to disable Shorts. Those things are hopelessly addictive and unavoidable. If I wanted shorts, I'd install TikTok.

[deleted]

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#109

Post by Barrin92 » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

The Google specific issues aside I wonder if the average smart-home enthusiast will ever make 10% of the money and time back they apparently invest into their smart homes.

To me this isn't really about a single company, it's about shoving so much tech into your home that barely does anything it's no wonder something always breaks. How many years of uninterrupted light switch pressing do you need to do before this actually pays off?

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#110

Post by zo1 » Sun, May 07, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

Drakim wrote: post #73

hackernewds wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to delete the YouTube app simply because there was no way to disable Shorts. Those things are hopelessly addictive and unavoidable. If I wanted shorts, I'd install TikTok.

It's crazy, when I remove the YouTube Shorts pane it says "Shelf will be hidden for 30 days". It feels like a slap to the face by some promotion seeking Google Manager who tells me that he knows better than me. It's crazy. I didn't stop using YouTube like you did but I was darn close. I guess they do know better than me, in a way.

They also are very slowly "injecting" shorts everywhere. I'm randomly browsing the feed, not shorts, click on something and before I know it, I'm watching shorts. And yeah, they also recently added a shorts "pane" on the side of normal videos.