We really do live in a boring dystopia
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We had a Google speaker thing. Got rid of it because it was crap. All we could reliably use it for was asking it to play a radio station or play Spotify, but frankly it even got that wrong enough that grabbing my phone and connecting to the Bluetooth speaker was easier.
Even privacy invading problems aside they’re just a little bit rubbish.
They’re awful if you have a weird accent like I do. Suppose there’s worse problems to have, at least I’ll never have any use for a smart speaker.
I have found that their killer app is natural language alarm-setting. something like, “google, set a timer for 30 minutes”, and having that timer appear on your phone is handy in the kitchen.
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Basically, anything that comes with a per-requirement to connect to a specific company provided server I just out right don’t buy them. (ie. some thing needs you to connect to a server in order to use “at home”) So I pretty much don’t have “smart” anything at home, if I need anything “smart” in the future, I believe there is tons of community project for all sorts raspberry pi controlled boards, switches, etc.
Am I the only one who can be bothered to get up off my ass to flip a fucking light switch?
“I have working legs, doesn’t everybody?” -person online
A motion sensor in the hallway to turn on the light is handy. It can be found in most hardware store. No need for Internet nor Amazon account nor smartphone. Your grandma, grandpa, toddler, local burgler, anyone can turn on the light.
Delayed off is really nice. Push a button as you’re getting ready to leave the house, and a few minutes after you’re gone, all the lights turn off. Also, having your “alarm clock” turn the lights on is very effective.
I got a family that likes to leave the damn light switches all on at night, I’m no longer going around and shutting them all off when everyone is in bed. Also, they are tied to my alarm, when I disarm the alarm or it goes off, they all come on.
But I’m doing all this through Home Assistant, a local open source automation server, not any of this cloud bullshit.
That sounds more like a social problem than a technical one…
Some fights are just not worth the hassle tho, you got to pick your battles.
And it’s not like there is anyone factually “right” or “wrong”, it’s mostly a matter of opinions/priorities.Another example, different expectations w.r.t. to cleaning. Either try to convince the other person to clean more, even if they don’t see the need, or be always the one cleaning and build up frustration. Or: Get a roomba.
Reason 89327458934795 I will never have any smart home shit in my house that I can’t host myself.
a bit off-topic but relevant nonetheless:
i know i’m probably in the minority opinion here, but there are better privacy-respecting (and google spiting) platforms for viewing these videos than the official youtube website and rossman has been vocal in his support for these; particularly Odysee. below are 3 different projects, Odysee which is a whole separate and sustainable project, and piped & invidious which are privacy-respecting frontends to youtube. i think in future it’d be valuable to link these alternatives instead of the official youtube link.
https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/amazon-accuses-customer-of-racism-shuts:2 – Odysee
https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=NfiIXooD77s – Piped
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=NfiIXooD77s – Invidious
Odysee is good for privacy, and fine for viewing, but most creators aren’t going to use it as a primary way of distributing their stuff.
If you’re publishing, you want an audience (and preferably a monetization method), and odysee doesn’t have that.
On this video Rossman has 1200 views on Odysee, but over 725K views on youtube.
Almost everyone publishing on Odysee (myself included) do it as a secondary distribution channel, with youtube as the main (because, again, the viewers are there, and it has a monetization method).
i agree in terms of what we have right now. but without users engaging with the videos on that platform, we’ll never see any platform change unless there’s spooky investor money thrown into it.
as “power-users” (ew) or tech-literate people, i feel like we should be the ones doing the early adoption.
for anyone who doesn’t want to use odysee because there isn’t many videos, I recommend the Watch on Odysee extension. when you open a youtube video it’ll automatically redirect you to the Odysee upload, if there is one. it’s available on Chromium and Firefox.
become the change you want to see :))
All I’m seeing is a place to upload video instructions to the tutorials I’m going to post here. Heh.
I think you’re totally right, thank you for the links.
No better reason to ditch the internet of things.
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Even if the accusation had been true, Amazon shouldn’t have this ability.
Worked at Amazon = moved entire family off the public cloud. Everything is self hosted and still “easy”. I backup one of my backups to an s3 provider and call it good.
This is dystopian. Amazon should be crushed and split into hundreds smaller companies.
Are there any voice assistant solutions that run locally? Don’t really care about conversational stuff. Just the basic ‘lights on’ type commands.
There are open source options. The main limitation is hardware. I would love to be able to reuse the half a dozen Google speakers I have for something local that works with Home Assistant!
The pieces are all there (STT, TTS, and the wyoming protocol), and hassio has made voice the number one priority this year, so I would assume hardware voice support is high on the priority list. Fingers crossed!
Selfhosting is the way to go. All my automations are controlled by a HomeAssistant instance running locally.
Remember what “Cloud” means: Putting your data on some elses computer. No thanks.
