#internetofshit
Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
91–100 of 338 posts
Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is a game changer is to be able to just turn off everything in the house when I leave, and know the iron will be off, along with all the lights. It's not critically important, but the many individually small conveniences add up.
Turn off the main switch ?
No, because I don't want my termostat to switch off, my clocks to reset, my home server to go down every time I go to the shops or have a meeting. And no, I'm not about to rewire the house to provide isolated circuits just for the things I don't want to switch off, when I could instead just replace a few light switches and plug in a few smart plugs.
I can assure you pretty much nobody goes to their fuse board and trips the main switch even when going on holiday, much less during their day to day life. Many of the people who don't do that still tend to turn off as much as possible when leaving the house.
Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is a game changer is to be able to just turn off everything in the house when I leave, and know the iron will be off, along with all the lights. It's not critically important, but the many individually small conveniences add up.
Convenience will destroy the world.
I highly doubt the ability to turn my lights off over a network will destroy the world.
And if you're concerned about internet access, there are plenty of hubs for smart projects that don't need internet access. Some don't even need or have wifi capability, but can be wired physically into a dmz with an open source home automation system like Home Assistant. There are USB dongles with Zigbee support as well that you plug straight into your open source based home automation box if you want.
That said: Most people just don't care most of the time, because for most peoples use the worst possible consequence is being slightly inconvenienced.
E.g. should my Lightwave RF gateway get bricked, the worst case scenario is that my Lightwave switches revert to being dumb switches and I'll be slightly annoyed I won't be able to voice control them.
Hardly world-destroying stuff.
What's slightly different here is that this is a new move for Hue (it's not for any number of other smart home providers people happily sign up for online services from), and so some subset of their customers will feel compelled to switch zigbee bridges and incur a cost. (But if you're price sensitive, why the hell are you using Hue in the first place?)
Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
#94Time and time again It takes just one MBA trying to boost numbers to turn a good product into a data collection nightmare. Honestly is there any IoT brand that we can trust long-term? Maybe IKEA stuff?
Buy based on protocols, and then focus on whether the bridges are trustworthy.
That is, be cautious about anything that will directly link to your wifi (and so doesn't need a bridge) unless you can confirm you can isolate them on their own wifi network or firewall them off should you feel the need to now or in the future, or anything that uses proprietary protocols where you can't rip out the bridge if the provider goes rogue.
Hue bulbs uses zigbee, so the bulbs themselves are not a problem. The bridge is. There are "dumb" zigbee bridges/interfaces, including USB controllers you can use with open source options like Home Assistant.
If you can't avoid a proprietary bridge, only buy what you can afford to replace, or where the device is still serviceable to a sufficient degree if you turn off/remove the bridge (e.g. Lightwave switches go "dumb" if you turn off the bridge, but still work), or if you firewall it (e.g. if you can still control it via wifi even if the bridge can't reach the internet).
Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, we need more regulation. Or a better system to begin with.
Do you think its a coincidence this came right after the ban on incandescent bulbs? Regulation got us here. It won't help when government is captured.
> Do you think its a coincidence this came right after the ban on incandescent bulbs?
Not really. I do not use incandescent bulbs nor bulbs that require account. You've chosen 216 and you'll find it everywhere in nature.
Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
#96Time and time again It takes just one MBA trying to boost numbers to turn a good product into a data collection nightmare. Honestly is there any IoT brand that we can trust long-term? Maybe IKEA stuff?
Shelly seems very good so far. No need to connect it to the cloud at all, or use their app, since you can configure the via an onboard web UI (well, they'll still check for firmware updates when you connect them to Wi-Fi, but that's it). They can be controlled from Home Assistant completely without internet. Of course, there's no guarantee for future products, but once they're set up they're not gonna change unless y…
From what I can see most of their products (all?) are z-wave, so even if they try to change as long as they don't break the z-wave support, you can buy a z-wave USB dongle and drop whatever wants to be directly connected to your network anyway.
Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
#97We need a no-tether law. If you buy a product you should be able to use it even if you completely break all ties with the original vendor. Otherwise it's a service and not a product.
Pretty much any home automation that supports zigbee or z-wave already provides this for everything except their bridges, though. And that includes Hue.
While I'd happily support regulating tethering as well, because it'd certainly make some things easier, with a little bit of thought you can build out home automation where it's all under your control. E.g. stick to zigbee and z-wave devices as the default, and get dumb zigbee and z-wave USB dongles, and connect them to an open source bridge, like Home Assistant, and you've got a good start.
Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a somewhat strangely named German brand that sells private IoT door / security cams. Forgot the name, sadly. They’re quite expensive though. My guess is they might sell private lightbulbs. For home audio, Sonos is great. Their voice assistant is completely locally processed.
Are you joking about Sonos? They force you to have account with them to use speakers and you have to enable location sharing on your app to connect (!!). They know more about people than their parents do.
Sonos are also agressively pushing out app updates that sunset older models of their speakers, as we all arbitrarily doing things like blocking streaming of audio from your phone.
Sonos might have been good in the past when they were selling a way of streaming your ripped mp3s around your house, they are no longer good now that they think they own the content too.
Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right: It's not the companies' fault they're engaging in deceptive and unfair business practices; they're profit-maximizing machines. They don't care about trust or know what it is. It's our fault we're letting them do that. Bad behavior should be affecting profits. Probably through regulation.
It is absolutely their fault and not that of the public at large. Companies are not sentient “profit-maximizing machines, they’re a collection of people. And it’s people making the decisions.
But that's not how it effectively works at scale. It only takes a single person not bound by morals to mess it up for everyone. Those people naturally float to the top and are loved by shareholders (hence who's in charge at most places).
Individually the organisation is made up of people, but at large it's a big anonymous machine because those people are rewarded super-duper one-dimensionally: Help profits and you're rewarded or hurt them and you're out.
It makes about as much sense to anthropomorphise corporations as it does to anthropomorphise lawnmowers. They can not feel empathy.
Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right: It's not the companies' fault they're engaging in deceptive and unfair business practices; they're profit-maximizing machines. They don't care about trust or know what it is. It's our fault we're letting them do that. Bad behavior should be affecting profits. Probably through regulation.
> Right: It's not the companies' fault they're engaging in deceptive and unfair business practices; they're profit-maximizing machines. They don't care about trust or know what it is. this is an extremely dumb take, of course the people working at companies are responsible for bad dumb decisions that make their products worse.
The people who actually act responsibly tend to be ousted and replaced by those who instead primarily look after profits. See my other comment.