71–80 of 122 posts
> "After more than a decade of service .... users can no longer open/close or manage their door lock via the mobile app or web portal." Wow, a whole ten years for a door lock. Kind of like wemo's recent abandonment/EOL of their plugs... a big company like belkin can't keep an on/off switch working?
I never understood the smart lock. Some other connected appliances make sense - HVAC for example. But unlocking my door with a key is such a trivially easy, failure-proof thing to do, and every smart lock I've ever seen so riddled with failure modes, that it boggles my mind anyone would go through the cost and effort to install.
I never understood the smart lock. Some other connected appliances make sense - HVAC for example. But unlocking my door with a key is such a trivially easy, failure-proof thing to do, and every smart lock I've ever seen so riddled with failure modes, that it boggles my mind anyone would go through the cost and effort to install.
I love walking up to my front door and having it automatically unlock when I’m carrying groceries. It’s also really nice to just leave the house and have it lock automatically behind me. But I didn’t fall for cloud bullshit. It’s purely local and z-wave.
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it's worse than that - those locks are bluetooth-based, so they don't care about the cloud. What happened is that they are disabling the app, so it is no longer usable.
Apps require constant maintenance. If you just leave an app in Play Store or App Store and don’t touch it for a while, in couple of years it will be gone. Compliance requirements, obsolete APIs, forceful upgrades by the Apple/Google all see to that. That means you need to keep the app project updated and all dependencies in reasonable form. It’s not outlandish if you are a big company but as someone who oversaw the d…
...and the Lovecraftian gradual drift as incremental recursive hallucinations turn them into still... mostly working... strange little app-like-bundles of Something Weird.
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Aw man, I'm gonna be that guy who goes kind of off topic, but videos of runaway escalators definitely dispelled the "it can only become stairs" failure mode of escalators for me. Terrifying stuff. Mitch Hedberg just died too soon after YouTube launched to see it himself.
In the best documented runaway escalator case I'm aware of -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Rome_escalator_accident -- it was determined to be the result of criminally negligent maintenance practices that included the use of zip ties to keep an emergency brake mechanism from engaging. There was a similar incident this summer at a subway station in Atlanta but there doesn't seem to be a clear root cause publi…
I find all these out of control scenarios terrifying (I suppose I am not alone in this).
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Aw man, I'm gonna be that guy who goes kind of off topic, but videos of runaway escalators definitely dispelled the "it can only become stairs" failure mode of escalators for me. Terrifying stuff. Mitch Hedberg just died too soon after YouTube launched to see it himself.
I also watched that video but we pretend it's not possible for Mitch
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Don't most washers and dryers have timed start like dishwashers do? I always remember mine having pictures like that but maybe that's just not a common thing
Delayed start is common for washers but not for clothes dryers (as you really don't want wet laundry just sitting there in the appliance for hours..)
They turn over and blow cold air periodically to prevent them getting stinky.
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it's worse than that - those locks are bluetooth-based, so they don't care about the cloud. What happened is that they are disabling the app, so it is no longer usable.
Apps require constant maintenance. If you just leave an app in Play Store or App Store and don’t touch it for a while, in couple of years it will be gone. Compliance requirements, obsolete APIs, forceful upgrades by the Apple/Google all see to that. That means you need to keep the app project updated and all dependencies in reasonable form. It’s not outlandish if you are a big company but as someone who oversaw the d…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Delayed start is common for washers but not for clothes dryers (as you really don't want wet laundry just sitting there in the appliance for hours..)
Pretty common in dryers as well. They turn over and blow cold air periodically to prevent them getting stinky.
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As someone living in a country where Abloy locks are used everywhere, I’m interested to hear what’s wrong with them
One of their digital lock designs had a rather cough Pleasing vulnerability. But other than that it's vendor lock-in (heh), and lack of availability in the US. With most so called locksmiths being drillsmiths in the US, not being able to clone DD and dimple keys. Puck one. Or maybe the OP is just bitter they can't pick it for their next "belt" after getting chuffed with themselves picking average american garbage.
I'm assuming you're referring to the VingCard vulnerability from 2018? (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43896360)
Digital locks aside, this is more applicable to any lock you buy and rely on (substitute US with your local region):
> lack of availability in the US
I wouldn't go out of my way to find something like Schlage here, when Abloy (Assa Abloy) locks are available in abundance with locksmiths able to duplicate usually all the key variants.