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

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

#261

Post by solatic »

osigurdson wrote: post #136
cogman10 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is just shit. As my company briefly decided to look into using them for a cloud provider it quickly became apparent that they are just awful stewards of any software that isn’t related to advertisements. It’s beyond shocking how amateurish GCP is being operated. My assumption is it comes down to really awful leadership. They only care about making and selling new things. You simply can’t trust that any piece o…

That is interesting, I thought GCP might be a good alternative - at least for managed Kubernetes.

GKE is an abomination. Its reputation is completely undeserved. Sure there's some nice things out of the box, like authenticating to clusters with your Google/GCP account, but day 2 operations are a constant frustration.

What sucks?

1. The Kubernetes Pod garbage collector is configured to be abominally slow, keeping terminated pods in the API server for far too long. This interferes with cluster monitoring by making it seem like there's a consistently high number of OOMKilled etc. pods rather than blipping as it happens. GCP support claims this is working as intended and recommends manually running a script to clean up the API server if it bothers you (this is a managed service?!). See e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75374590/why-kubernetes-... .

2. The rest of the Kubernetes world moved on from kube-dns and on to CoreDNS. Not GKE! On GKE your two options are kube-dns and the GCP VPC-native Cloud DNS (i.e. Kubernetes service and pod records are listed in the private DNS zone for the VPC). Surprise surprise - if you pick Cloud DNS to help scale your cluster, because GCP isn't operating kube-dns well enough on its managed control plan, then you're on the hook for paying for the Cloud DNS zone as well, it's not included in the GKE cluster costs. See e.g. https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/how-to/cloud... .

3. GKE clusters automatically log to GCP Cloud Logging, the first 50 GB of which is free. Fair enough. But the ingestion price afterwards is a truly mind-boggling $0.50/GB! (https://cloud.google.com/logging/#section-7). How do you turn off GCP Cloud Logging so that you can ship your logs to a cheaper vendor instead? Nope, there's no first-class managed setting; all you get is a community tutorial (https://cloud.google.com/community/tutorials/kubernetes-engi...) that links to this GitHub configuration (https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/community/blob/master...) aaaaand good luck :)

4. No native IPv6. See e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64110542/has-anyone-iden... . AWS of course does support IPv6: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eks/latest/userguide/cni-ipv6.ht...

And this is just off the top of my head.

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

#262

Post by pessimizer »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #251
mulmen wrote: post #249

Why would anyone have trusted Google on this in the first place? It’s such an obvious outcome I struggle to understand how anyone expected anything different. This is why we have open standards and interoperability. Imagine if you can only buy lamps from IKEA because your whole house has proprietary outlets. Who signs up for that?

People in the 60s: the government will wiretap your home. People now: hey wire tap, can cats eat pancakes?

I remember when discussions about surveillance involved obscure facts about the actual construction of an ancient device called a "pen register." Now you're a Russian spy if you don't think the CIA should be placing employees in the C-suites of all communications companies.

The amount of control and surveillance we inflicted on the children of the 90s has become the new expectation for adult citizens.

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

#263

Post by pessimizer »

spicyusername wrote: post #71

Google is the new IBM.

Not really. The only thing google has ever been unambiguously successful (profitable at all?) at is ads, although PageRank was pretty good for the year or three that it worked. IBM has accomplished a ton of things.

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

#264

Post by grepfru_it »

SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #225
cabalamat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new one is digital but isn't "smart". I do not, nor will I ever use, any "smart" device. "Smart" devices are - unnecessarily complicated - privacy destroying - overpriced - vendor lock-in - often infected with online ads you can't get rid of - likely to stop working if the vendor goes bust, their business model changes, or they just feel like it IMO, it is rarely or never a smart decision to get a "smart" devic…

I fully respect when anyone decides they don't want smart devices, but all of your bullet points are quite easy to accomplish with off the shelf devices these days ("unnecessarily complicated" will always be debatable though). All of my lights, outlets, and dozens of other niche things, never connect to the internet, and everything is fully functional when there's no internet connection. Home Assistant with Zigbee de…

Personally think zwave to be the most entrenched (commercial real estate relies heavily on zwave). The “cool” smart products typically exist as Wi-Fi, bluetooth, and zigbee devices (in that order). The requirements for those turn me off but I have been very successful with zwave. It powers everything from locks and lights to doors gates and my sprinkler system. HVAC is controlled by zwave and I even have a keychain scene controller that acts as a key fob to my house. When it comes close, it associates and that event can trigger a rule set.

I’m using openHAB instead of HA for the tinkerability, but the new versions are pretty power user friendly

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

#265

Post by Corrado »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #252
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…

I could not agree more with this sentiment. On an abstract level it is really interesting to me to see if this is how open source eventually wins all the things. I have an ASUS WiFi AP that has been running DD-WRT->OpenWRT for 15 years at this point (changing the underlying hardware twice, once to get 802.11n, and again to get 802.11ac). I look forward to the day when there are "standard schematics" for this sort of…

Funnily enough, there used to be "standard schematics" provided with electronic things. I think my first computer (VIC-20?) had pretty detailed information on the external ports (joystick, power, printer, etc.) I also look forward to the time when we get back what we used to have.

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

#266

Post by AmVess »

cabalamat wrote: post #208
titzer wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to replacing my furnace I had a mercury thermostat that was easily over 50 years old. The new one is digital but isn't "smart". I don't expect 50 years, but 20-30 seems reasonable. Somehow software people have forgotten that physical things last a long time, and people want them to keep working and stay the same as long as possible . My thermostat doesn't need "upgrades", and anyone who thinks they are going to…

> The new one is digital but isn't "smart". I do not, nor will I ever use, any "smart" device. "Smart" devices are - unnecessarily complicated - privacy destroying - overpriced - vendor lock-in - often infected with online ads you can't get rid of - likely to stop working if the vendor goes bust, their business model changes, or they just feel like it IMO, it is rarely or never a smart decision to get a "smart" devic…

I tried a few of Amazon's Echo devices. I didn't spend much on them except for the big speaker. It used to be ok, but now it asks me to sign up for Unlimited music every single voice prompt. This exactly ended my desire to get anything else made by Amazon.

I used to have an Ecobee thermostat. A good idea, but it wouldn't work at all without a connection to their server. Their server uptime was a complete joke which made my thermostat useless.

I also had a few smart plugs for lamps.

I spent way too much time fiddling with all this garbage, so I trashed it all.

All these "smart" devices are anything but.

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

#267

Post by ketzu »

riskable wrote: post #155
linsomniac wrote: post #144

My primary use of the Home speakers is playing music in the shower. That experience is actually pretty bad though, over the years between google music and spotify, getting it to play my music is just horribly obtuse. I can't reliably get it to start my music. "Playing a playlist called my favorites" or similar rather than playing my own playlist. At one point after 3-4 failed attempts like this I said "F you" and the…

I never understood why people put smart speakers in their showers. Why is a simple and cheap Bluetooth speaker not good enough? You can get them in any size and shape and sound quality and they (can) work with your phone's built-in "smart" assistant. I never use that though because when I'm in the shower all I want to do is listen to music. Here's my routine, for reference: 1. Turn on the speaker (which is hanging on…

It is fine and works well. I mostly got the smart speakers because i wanted multi room audio for my spotify, and alexa is the cheapest decent quality multi room audio I could get.

Also, my morning routine since I have them has simplified: Go to the bathroom in the morning, my presence detection will start my morning playlist as I enter. (Turning off not included in example, either switch playlist via spotify app at some point or tell alexa/spotify to turn off for a meeting or because I leave.)

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

#268

Post by esalman »

elif wrote: post #77

One day I fully expect to wake up to find my phone issuing me the warning "Google Fi has been discontinued. Please find an alternative carrier by the end of the month" Or "Google Photos has been replaced by our new service, Google Pixa. Please back up your photos as they cannot be transferred to our new service" It's almost like their project/team structure depends on cannibalisation. I already lost my wedding playli…

I have used Google products for free all my life. In last year or so I was forced to pay for two products - one is my wife's Google Fi phone and another is a friend's Google apps suite.

Both of these are ticking time bombs. These are like sensitive data that you haven't backed up. Might end in catastrophe any time. My wife's contract should be up sometime next year and that's when she'll switch to a different carrier. I also might migrate from Google apps by the end of next month.

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

#269

Post by Corrado »

sagarpatil wrote: post #241

Alexa isn’t any better either. I had Alexa’s in each room and when I used to ask her to start the AC, it would start AC in some other room (this is after assigning the Alexa and AC to that particular room). That right there is a deal breaker for me, I can’t keep telling my guests every time what’s the room called and have them remember it.

Alexa is weird this way. It has the ability to assign things to certain areas, it's just hard to figure out how to make it happen. For example, I have Alexa controlled lights in my basement and it knows what to turn on when I say "Turn on the lights" while in my basement. I also have Alexa controlled lights in my garage, and until recently I specifically had to tell it "Turn on the garage lights" while standing in my garage. However, I made a change recently (I can't remember what it was) and now my garage auto-magically knows that I'm talking about it's lights while I'm in the garage.

So, I think Alexa has the ability to know which A/C unit your talking about while standing in the room, but it's not clear how to make it happen. Also, it sometimes stops working, even after you have it configured correctly; that's the real frustrating part!

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

#270

Post by oceanplexian »

eastbound wrote: post #202
thayne wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somehow software people have forgotten that physical things last a long time, and people want them to keep working and stay the same as long as possible Maybe a little. But I think a big part of it is businesses realizing they can make a lot more money, at least in the short term, if people have to replace their products more often.

After maintaining online services, I’m quite sure it’s vulnerabilities. It’s extremely costly after 3-5 years to maintain old software. Ex: You have a thermostat or an alarm system that runs Debian, Debian gets a vulnerability, you try to upgrade it, but you need to change Debian versions, and your old stack isn’t supported on the newer version. Nowadays you need to keep patching all your old appliances, keep the old…

My smart home stuff is all Z-Wave and my oldest devices are going on 10 years now. A light switch doesn’t need to be maintained or updated. I guess a hacker could drive up to my house with a laptop and a SDR, reverse engineer the protocol and then, I guess, turn my lights on and off? That’s a security tradeoff I’m willing to accept.
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