My poor tv is like, “connect to the internet? I need to call home! Help, i’ve been abducted by a luddite!”
Tv, you are never getting my wifi password.
Through absolute chance (the TV i wanted was sold out on clearance so I got a different one on clearance) I ended up with an Android TV-powered sony bravia. It lets you go into the app permissions and disable the optical recognition whateverthefuck they call it software. The rest of the analytics can be blocked by some regex firewall/DNS rules. It’s the only smart TV OS that I would recommend.
Try plugging in a fork. Those still do what they are supposed to do
I’ve got some bad news
Ahhhhh! Nothing is sacred anymoooooore
Obviously you just forgot to lick the tines!
I have this smart lightbulb that I got for halloween last year because I thought it’d be cool to make the porch glow purple for trick or treaters. Now I have to replace it because the app that controls it has decided to try and blackmail me for camera and location access and the bulbs default state without the app is to flash on and off in a way seemingly deliberately designed to cause headaches.
Phillip k dick (i think) wrote a story about this.
My sister bought me a smart desk light that insists on using an app and ‘doesn’t work’ without it.
Thing is, it will work as a normal desk light…if you’re willing to sit through 10 minutes of intense blinking while it tries to connect before finally giving up.
What kind of bulb is it? There’s a chance that homebridge or something could control it through an API without needing the app.
I recently renovated and said fuck no to all the smart home shit. Just the idea of having to troubleshoot the WiFi because my kitchen light won’t turn on drives me into a rage.
Good call.
I took over for a previous manager who installed all smart lights controlled via Alexa. Every week…every fucking week…there would be a section not working, lights with disco colors, Alexa was offline so we could give the command to turn on lights…
When I took over, 1st task was to rip out all the smart shit and I put in regular LED bulbs controlled with the light switch. Works every time
The closest thing I have to “the world of tomorrow” are regular degular hand operated dimmer switches. They’re great. I have one in every room.
No idea why everyone thinks you need the Internet to dim a light.
Omg yes preach !!! I feel it’s everything these days, coffee maker…app Vacuum…app Scale…app Electric shower nozzle…fucking app Everything needs a password and an account and my mind is crumbling because of it.
You know you can dumb shit, right?
It’s rarely a secret these days whether something has wifi, or Bluetooth.
TVs seem to have been pretty much taken over by ‘smart’ features.
I don’t mean this as a dare or a gotcha, but genuinely asking if you know of a decently priced modern TV that’s ‘dumb’ please let me know so I can buy it.
Yeah when I brought a TV a few years ago I could not find a good one that wasnt ‘Smart’ except for commercial variants that were an extra couple of thousand.
That’s because the TVs are subsidized by selling your stolen info.
Ugh how depressing
I think they are saying to just not connect whatever. E.g. buy the smart TV and don’t connect it to the internet.
Doesn’t work anymore; they make shadow mesh nets with yoyr neighbors’ devices so if one connects…
Buy old stuff
Use open source
Downdate
etc
It is incredibly difficult for me to describe just how powerful a Linux desktop experience can be. You can buy a cheap computer that suports emulation and put QubesOS on it. Bonus points to putting a GPU in it and playing on either Windows or Linux with that GPU.
I don’t think Linux people entirely understand just how uninviting the prospect of messing around with an operating system is for the vast majority of the public.
As bad as Windows is, and it is it getting worse by the minute, it honestly does just work. I dual boot my computer, mostly into Linux everyday and even now I occasionally come across problems that don’t exist on the Windows side. The community need give up with this idea that Linux doesn’t have major usability issues.
I don’t think Linux people entirely understand just how uninviting the prospect of messing around with an operating system is for the vast majority of the public.
The point is that you can, not that you have to. My system is very customized. A few years ago when I had to work with Windows I used it with ConsoleZ (middle click paste!!!11), Kate (KDE4Win) & Dolphin (KDE4Win; explorer didn’t support tabs), that also wasn’t the most stable experience one could wish for. I would’ve used a tiling manager if such a thing would’ve existed, but there are some things you just can’t have on Windows. Everything works fine and stable when you use the standard stuff (for Windows that would be Explorer, MS Office, Outlook, Edge, Visual Studio, etc), but I’d expect the same from stuff like Ubuntu without third-party repos and no manually installed stuff. And even more if you just use GNOME/KDE with their standard software.
My experience is pretty limited and I might just be lucky in that everything worked for me, but installing linux was exactly as hard as installing windows. If anything, I found it less annoying because with Windows I tend to decline a lot of their services (no cloud, no office, etc) and I profoundly resent being nagged by MS to use services that don’t interest me.
If I bought my laptop with linux preinstalled, I wouldn’t say that it has been less usable than a windows machine. there is some missing support, but I had similar issues with switching from mac to windows and back.
I am not a power user, but I’m ok. I got sick of Windows BS, so when I got my Framework 13, I installed PopOS. I haven’t had to do anything to get things to work. It’s been fantastic.
I may be in the minority here, but I absolutely know how to rock every corner of a modern Linux setup and I avoid OS-tinkering at home like the plague. I have better things to spend my time on, so the bar for user-friendly computerized things in my home is incredibly high. In fact, to circle back to OP’s point, such things have to “just work”, be secure by default, and require minimal hacking and tinkering to function reliably.
The fuck are you doing, that you need to mess with the OS?
So Linux is just going to magically appear on your computer is it?
Not to mention all the dependencies for everything, I’ve gone multiple layers deep trying to install dependencies for the dependencies just to use a single module. Tbf I’ve mostly used Linux for bioinformatics so perhaps the problem for me is biologists creating software for other biologists and none are truly computer scientists (including myself)
It very much depends on the build of Linux you’re getting but there’s definitely quite a lot of builds out there that were designed for enthusiasts, where after you’ve installed it you have to spend the next several hours configuring everything. Your average computer user has very limited patience for this assuming they’re prepared to even do it at all.
I bet that 99% of people don’t even really know how you would go about installing a new operating system. It’s not exactly intuitive.
Yeah it’s funny. Post about stuff just working out of the box.
First reply: Open source. Downgrade. So… Do exactly what the post is raging about.
There are many advantages to open source software and a lot of it does actually just work. Linux isn’t one of them though.
To be fair that’s because an operating system is far more complicated than most open source projects which tend to be applications.
No waiting for firmware updates
Wait, I just have to reboot my watch
This is absolutely a problem, but credit where credit’s due, I’m really happy that the specification for Matter requires local control without calling out to the internet. Though Matter devices can still call out to the internet for additional features. I know Matter has it’s issues, but I believe it is slowly improving the smart home. But I fully understand people that want to reject the smart home altogether.
My whole home automation is using Zigbee devices, they don’t even know what internet is, and it doesnt matter which brand it is as longs it is supported by Zigbee2MQTT. Matter is great, so is Thread.
Yeah! Where I can, I use matter over thread. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that should provide the same benefits as zigbee? From what I remember, thread evolved from zigbee.
Unfortunately matter over thread simple doesn’t exist for some categories of devices. For light bulbs, only Nanoleaf offers matter over thread, and the quality is pretty terrible. Do they even make matter over thread air conditioners?
The internet has become more and more complex. I miss the early 2000s when I was a kid and everything was open and easy to use. No need to register ,no need to download this or that app. Everything was easy, even the laws.
The laws have always been a quagmire.
I mean shit, you can’t even handle salmon suspiciously anymore
https://www.tastingtable.com/1913810/weird-uk-law-salmon-crime/
I remember when games asked you to register and it was optional… and people joked that they never did because there was no benefit to them whatsoever.
Now it is obligatory. No wonder I prefer retrogaming.
deleted by creator
Did you know that Ryobi has an app that lets you register tools you’ve bought?
I went to a coffee shop yesterday that tried to tell me they only accepted orders through their app. I almost walked out, until the finally poured my coffee, but continued to give me shit about it, “ok but next time you have to use the app”
“Yea no. There will be no next time.”
There’s an Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode for exactly this situation
It’s so good. Best of theirs in a long time.
I havent watched Sunny in ages. But yes, that was my experience lol
A QR code and a website I could understand. But app? No.
No, even QR I can only accept as an option, as in completely optional. I’m out and about without a phone quite frequently.
I have my phone on me all the time. Still no way im using an app to order. The screens I can tolerate at fastfood joints because it gives me time to decide.
But if you can’t be bothered to come to my table to ask what I want at a real restaurant, I can’t be bothered to go to your > resturant.
OP said coffee shop so I’m presuming it’s not a real restaurant, and the app would facilitate ordering without queueing. Which I like. But I don’t wanna download an app, I want to just sit down, scan a QR and pay with one of the cards stored in my phone. And obviously cash should still be a backup option. I can see why they might want to do away with card terminals though.
True. I would put coffee shops in group with the fasfodd joints. There’s wasn’t really much service to begin with. But it should always be possible to order by a real person.
I wonder if it isn’t actually illegal to deny personal service for accessibility reasons.
Honestly, no idea. Laws vary so much by jurisdiction anyway.
Tbh I agree that there should be an in-person option always. If for no other reason then just to be able to pay in cash. Just make sure to let people know it’s not the most convenient option but it’s available.
I’m not entirely sure what the point of the app is though, compared to a website with payment options. Lots of people will say tracking, but you can get a lot of info through a browser too.
This sentence makes me realize I take my phone with me everywhere
No. Not even that, that’s just shit and the site brings a plethora of formatting issues and accessibility issues.
Just give me a fucking paper menu.
Paper menu has accessibility issues too. You have to stand up and go to the counter, for one. You have to talk to someone.
For different reasons, physical or mental, those aren’t great for a lot of people.
Mate you’re already in the restaurant. If you couldn’t talk to anyone, or move your own weight - you wouldn’t have made it inside the restaurant to the counter. Those issues already had solutions to get to the point of ordering.
I’ve personally got no problem talking to people or moving my own weight but if I’ve been on foot the whole day I’d rather sit down than stand in line
True, but both is fine together.
Luckin Coffee, the extremely successful Chinese competitor to Starbucks exclusively operates via their app. Sadly, users prefer it because of all the discounts and coupons it offers. So really, just surveillance capitalism as usual.
“It’s a work phone. I’m not allowed to install apps.”
Dennis??
I totally agree! I’m trying to avoid logins and download this and that, as possible as I can.
I helped my dad install a new dumb thermostat last winter. We just had to drill a couple of new holes to mount it, and moved the wires over. Boom,there was heat again. I thought about how much of a pain in the ass it was to get my Ecobee working, and how refreshing it was to just have something work immediately.
It’s a very similar feeling to playing my GameBoy Color again after messing around with retro gaming linux handhelds. You just turn it on and play, then just turn it off. No boot sequences, no emulator settings to tweak. No SD card corruption that ruins your game library. Just on and off.
No boot sequences
(being annoyingly pedantic) technically there is a boot sequence: the Gameboy logo. on the DMG there’s a little blob of code from 0x0000 to 0x00ff that clears some memory, sets up the screen, reads the logo from cartridge memory and scrolls it. the loader only jumps to the game if the logo is byte-identical (the idea being that unlicensed games could be sued for trademark infringement.)
on the GBC the loader is a little beefier but mostly the same.
t. made a horribly broken FPGA core for the DMG that got just far enough to load the Tetris intro
Yes, but that’s pretty miniscule compared to booting any of the linux based retro handhelds. An Bernice, Powkiddy, R36S, they all have like a 30-40 second boot time.
Just booted my R36S. 21 seconds to be on the title screen of a game, Gameboy is apx 4 seconds. I was just curious so I thought I’d share.
it’s the reason why the original Odroid Go it’s so special to me… it’s all built around an ESP32 microcontroller and it does emulate only NES, GB, GBC and a couple more, while honestly not even being perfect at it, but goddamn… it boots in like 1 second, even directly to the last game you were playing, it has no settings whatsoever, the battery lasts for like 7 hours it’s such a neat little device.
and it’s funny because in my head that it’s the device that kickstarted this whole retro handheld emulation craze, but it is the only one to take such a minimalistic approach
It’s not comparable. Nintendo must have spent millions on developing the Game Boy, meanwhile retro handheld is a hobby project someone did over the quarter. Ever try to port and run an RTOS on those ARM chips? And port a mainstream Game Boy emulator to it? “What do you mean you have to have MMU support?Just work, damnit?”
It doesn’t work like that.
It’s completely comparable in this circumstance. They are performing similar functions, playing handheld games. My R36S is a pretty impressive little device, and it performs excellently at playing games. But using it is much more complicated and longer than popping a game in a gameboy.
Gameboy: insert game, turn on, play, turn off. R36S: turn on, 30-40 second boot time, locate game, play, exit emulator, shut down, 10 second shutdown time.
Sir, I sincerely think you missed the point. Somebody, that nobody who only knows just enough programming, spent three months (at most) in his basement, putting together a embedded Linux and integrated emulators in a portable computer, cannot be compared with a video game company’s officially released commercial product. The money, the time, the effort, the equipment, the testing, not one is in the same magnitude.
Sponsor a group of enthusiasts who have the right skill to live for a year, they can replicate Game Boy with modern hardware too, 100% identical or even better. Consumers like us who only paid $20 for the retro handheld emulator? We don’t have a right to complain about the performance and quality.
This isn’t a shit post IMO.
Yeah. It’s straight fire.
This describes my reality nowadays.
