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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

#271

Post by Corrado »

cfeduke wrote: post #224

Google has done the same thing to Nest Secure. I removed an ADT system from my office because the monthly monitoring from ADT was $39.99 - the ADT system came with the office. I installed the Nest Secure cameras and system myself, even running USB power outside the office through the masonry. The monitoring was adequate - notifications sent to my phone - and Internet storage pricing was acceptable. But as of April 20…

Yea, the Google store credit really feels like a slap in the face. "Hey, if you liked the old thing that we took away you should purchase the new thing that we'll take away."

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

#272

Post by lodovic »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #149
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 still want profanity mode. Hurling insults at a Google Assistant and having to roast me in return would be amazing.

It should not respond like with "don't talk to me like that". It is a device, not a person, it has no feelings, and it is being used in a private home. No reason to police speech there.

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

#273

Post by egypturnash »

jon-wood wrote: post #63
mattmanser wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And worse still these things get inflicted on the next home owner. I bought a house with a "smart" boiler and the UI and app are absolutely atrocious. Worse still it doesn't have basic functionality like my parent's manual system had 40 years ago like temporarily being able to turn it on without changing the schedule, doesn't have a weekend setting, requires me to send my email address and address to a third party wh…

I don’t disagree with you on shitty UI, but I’m going to question “a treasure trove for thieves”. I just don’t believe there’s some sort of house thieve’s Union running attacks on boiler infrastructure in order to work out who’s on holiday this week, especially given the low penetration on those things meaning you’re going to get visibility into one in a hundred homes. It just seems so low value compared to driving r…

Driving around costs gas and time every time you go do it.

Compromising the centralized server is a one-time cost; once you've snuck something in there to regularly send updates where you can see them, you get alerts on those 1/100 houses that are rich and dumb enough to pay for this overpriced "smart" boiler. Maybe you can even work out a way to let people all over the world subscribe to these updates for a fee and let them take the risk of actually breaking in and fencing stuff.

Heck, you could even hack your way into a bunch of other smart home servers, and bundle all of that up into a nice little darknet service offering regular updates of stuff like "everyone in a 20mi radius of a given point who is setting all their smart stuff to vacation mode". That sounds like it might be a pretty nice passive income stream if you don't care about the very obvious legal/ethical issues involved.

And maybe your nice little darknet service could also let people say "hey, do you know anything about jon-wood?" and reply with "why yes we do, here's a few hints, would you like to pay for more?".

The risk/reward calculations on this might only work out if you're a regular employee of a highly-organized crime ring instead of the mysterious hacker running a darknet site that serves as one of many hubs of a decentralized crime syndicate, I dunno. The hacker sure makes for a cooler story if you're writing a techno-thriller or a cyberpunk novel though. :)

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

#275

Post by julianeon »

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…

Why a smart speaker?

I have Alexa, a Dot device, which works great - never any problems - with Spotify. I think it's better than Bluetooth speaker, yeah.

Because of the timers. I can ask it to set a timer for shampoo or condition, 3 minutes, or washing my teeth, 2 minutes.

But also I can request a song by name, and for many songs it works.

It basically works as well as a Bluetooth speaker, for the same cost, but with more functionality. Pretty easy choice.

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

#276

Post by egypturnash »

bruce343434 wrote: post #10

Investing? To me it implies stocks. You are not investing in anything, you are consuming goods and services. When people buy loads of crap and call it "investing in a [good] ..." is that some sort of coping mechanism? No, you don't own boot futures. You bought some boots and you wear them.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

- Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms

Sounds like a sensible investment to me. You spent a lot on some hella nice boots and if you don't care about keeping up with style, you can amortize their cost over a lot more use than someone who can only afford cheap, shitty boots.

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

#277

Post by uoaei »

notjoemama wrote: post #247
brookst wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> physical things last a long time There's a lot of survivor bias here. I have had plenty of dumb physical things fail in what seems like unreasonably short times. But I do have done physical dumb devices that are 100+ years old. I do not interpret that to mean that everything from that era / factory / manufacturer lasts 100 years, just that all of the surviving items did.

> But I do have done physical dumb devices Can you rephrase this? I don't understand the point you're making. Two verbs against the same subject but with different temporal context, perhaps you stuggle with communicating sometimes?

Obviously a typo -- done -> some

This is a weirdly confrontational comment.

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

#278

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Let's be fair to a small degree: Every goddamn "smarthome" vendor is doing fake open, embrace and extend, partial protocol, hidden preference for its hardware, scummy foot dragging on good standards.

It's just that Google adds completely rudderless leadership, its world famous utter disregard for customer support, and complete lack of commitment to the recipe.

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