Imagine having Google Home speakers all over so you can listen to your podcasts in any room without having to wear headphones at home
Wait I don't have to imagine, I'm already a fucking idiot
That's what I like about this lil cheap guy ; bluetooth speaker paired to my phone = just the normal amount of surveilance
I have some regular bluetooth speakers but using Google Cast is easier for a lot of reasons (don't need to keep the phone near the speaker, no interruptions from notifications or pausing when I open a game, can play on multiple speakers at once)
yeah, I like this thing because I can use it in the bathroom and kitchen without worrying about water killing it. podcasts while showering is amazing, makes shaving my legs so much less boring.
When an IoT device's computer breaks, it should become a non-IoT device, not a fucking brick. Sadly this is rare.
That's how my A/C works. The WiFi remote functionality is an add-in box, and connecting it through the manufacturer's cloud is opt-in, if you don't then it just works over your local WiFi.
Same for my front door lock. It's a normal Yale keypad lock with a slot for an IoT module. Zigbee and Z-Wave modules are available for local control as well as a HomeKit module and an August module.
I keep abusing my brother for putting style over substance as he redecorates the family home, but he and my dad have now gone for an IOT thermostat and a Google Nest with my protestations.
At least my room is a physically detached 'den' made out of a converted garage so I shall be vetoing any further attempts at introducing the gubmint into my personal bubble. Though they've already put in a wifi radiator. :agony:
Ah, yeah it's a heater - the den's only plumbed for the washing machine. But I guess since they're installing the thermostat thing, the actual house radiators will become wifi radiators anyway 🤷
IOT hardware that you don't completely control is stupid.
You can roll your own devices though.
Rolling your own devices? Nah, definitely more secure than your average IoT garbage, for a couple reasons:
-
it won't have any known exploits that will make it easy for drive-by takeovers by botnets (like scanning the internet knowing that every Samsung smart fridge running on port 42069 has a default password of "1234" - you take over 10000s of devices like that. It's not worth most hackers' time to try to break into "crime's 1337 IoT speaker" cause they'll only get one machine out of it, rather than getting something reproducible that works on tons of them)
-
you can keep it running on your LAN only, if you host your control server at home, so it won't be directly exposed to the internet - all the requests would go through your computer (or a dedicated raspberry pi or something)
-
you're not at risk of leaking data to a parent corporation and to the data broker they sell to, or any of the people that touch your data in the interim getting hacked and exposing it
-
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/
Cory Doctorow
These neoliberal BoingBoing technocrats don't really care that their politics leaves people without bread today, right now
Philip K. Dick was dunking on IoT in Ubik way back in 1969. I can't believe we're still "progressing" in this direction
Imagine having an internet connected stove and someone on the other side of the world hacking into the company’s poorly guarded servers and getting access to your account and then blowing up your house
Imagine thinking there's literally any chance of this happening.
Yeah personally the hacking thing doesn't worry me but capitalism trying to make everything run on a monthly subscription yeah, that's something I think about...
It's honestly not too hard to get something that won't need a subscription, you just have to do research. A lot of devices have some sort of local functionality, and therefore can likely be controlled by HomeAssistant. HomeAssistant is actually a good source for research because they have a pretty comprehensive list of the devices it supports, with information as to whether it can work completely locally or if it needs a cloud service.
Toasters get mechanical bugs too, if the spring fails and the toaster is plugged in, it turns on and doesn't turn off.
Homeassistant + zigbee running on a raspberry pi is pretty sweet tho.
Yea Home Assistant is definitely the way to go if you're trying to get into the IoT space but you're concerned about privacy.
