Many years ago (just after I left for college) my parents decided to build a brand new house. The plan was to include a computerized lighting system where every light was individually addressable and all "light switches" were actually banks of 4 to 8 programmable buttons. The possibilities were endless! What could go wrong?
I asked my parents to use a regular light switch in my room. You know the kind that I am talking about - it goes on and off, closing and opening an electrical circuit. It would have been less expensive and (in my opinion) more reliable since after all, it's just a few pieces of metal. I joked that "when everyone else's lights are flashing on and off at 3AM, I'd like to remain asleep". My father accused me (his resident technologist) of being a Luddite and they went on their merry way, finishing construction and installing a fully-computerized lighting system.
A few months after they moved in, I got a phone call from my father that started something like this: "Please don't say 'I told you so' but I have to tell you what happened at 3AM last night..."
(they flipped that house, and when they built their next one, it had regular light switches)
One area that I feel is also a "sometimes dumb stuff is better" that the article left out, is that (at least for me) hardware controls are almost always superior (tho certainly less flexible) than software controls. There's no better example than the physical keyboard vs. the soft keyboard. Recently I had to purchase a replacement stove, and I am amazed at how much worse the UX is on this stove than my old one. I don't want to slide my finger to determine heat intensity, and select which burner that applies to by pressing a soft button corresponding to the hotplate. Just give me a physical knob for each hotplate please. The UX there is excellent.
A more painful example is my Ford truck. Almost everything inside of it is software powered, and the bugs drive me insane. At one point my GPS/stereo touchscreen hit some bug, and the only way to "fix" it was to pull over at a rest stop and power cycle my truck (turn off, then back on again :facepalm: ). That is maddening. As a software developer I understand that bugs happen, but as a consumer I just can't tolerate that kind of stuff in my vehicle.
Without question tech has brought us nice things, but with complexity comes bugs (both security-related and non), and with bugs comes software updates (which themselves sometimes introduce bugs in something that was working fine before). Internet-connected things can also be a nightmare for security and privacy. Truly, sometimes the "dumb" version is much better (and way cheaper too).
I would say that usually the dumb stuff is better. People are sometimes surprised (since I work in IT) that I am against putting too many functionality in stuff.
First example: in my experience, there is nothing better than a blackboard for explaining a subject. I have never seen a blackboard that does not work. I also have never had a smooth experience with a smartboard (for starters, it has to boot and the projector has to be on and connected which just takes some minutes), and I have rarely had a good experience with whiteboards (usually the markers just don't work well, and there's no way to see that beforehand, so you end up trying a lot of them).
It also irritates me intensely how often it is assumed that you're always connected to the internet. Games nowadays not only have mandatory updates, but also require you to be connected. I used to play games once a week with a friend, and the experience just sucked. Call of Duty almost always had a multiple gigabyte update waiting for us, so that we had to wait half an hour to play (even though we didn't play online). It has happened multiple times that the internet didn't work, and we just had to find something else to do.
Then, smart TV's have some of the same problems too. I have had some new experiences since my roommate bought a 4k monstrosity with ambilight (which only purpose seems to be that ensure that no-one can concentrate on something else when the TV is on). I have never had to wait multiple minutes to turn the TV on before. I have never had a TV crash on me before. I have never been confused by a remote control before (the remote control has a button with a triangle symbol to go to all apps, and some other buttons with symbols I have never seen before, and there are two different places with apps - some of them are the same while others can only be found in one place). The TV also boots with the sound very loud, and I have to wait until the TV is fully booted until the sound can be adjusted. Which in practice means that I can't watch TV after my roommate goes asleep at 9:30.
We recently purchased a TV and chose one based on the lack of any Smart TV functionality. It boots in 5 seconds and doesn't try and join botnets. The future is stupid.
IIRC, schools are now veering away from smartboards (since they always break, high upfront cost and maintenance, low value) and instead veering towards TVs with a seperate see-through touch overlay on top of it. The cost is significantly less, since TVs with various types of inputs (HDMI, VGA, etc) can be bought cheaply since they are manufactured in bulk. There's also less maintenance since the TV and overlay are not electronically connected in anyway, therefore less moving parts. When a TV goes bad you just dump it out and buy a new one, etc
I've never understood the need to be always connected to the internet for gaming. Especially if its a single player game, I prefer to have steam just run it offline, but I guess the counterargument for game companies is DRM (they want to validate whether you purchased the game or not).
I do IT all the time and I am always against putting too much functionality in everything. People don't appreciate the simple things until they have to repair it themselves. I never bought into smart homes, TVs, amazon echo/alexa products, etc. I just don't see the need to automate these things that provide little value in the long run.
Per article, my rule of thumb is to always resort to the simplest, dumbest thing possible to validate whether or not I actually need the high tech solution. A good example of this, not mentioned in the article, is a pomodoro timer (a timer designed to work on 25 minute work periods). You can download a slew of apps to do this on your PC. Or you could just buy a miracle cube timer off amazon for like $10. Another good example is a todolist. You can find hundreds of these apps that integrate everywhere that it doesn't need to be. I resort to just using sticky notes and shove them in my wallet / keyboard to remind me of tasks I need to do.
You're right about blackboards but they make a hell of a mess with all the chalk dust.
The game updates situation... eesh. So many times when I've got maybe 20 minutes free to play a game and it wants to spend 10 of them downloading updates. One of the reasons I've come to love retro console gaming is that nonsense doesn't happen with PS1, PS2, Xbox, or Wii games.
For a lot of things dumb is often better and more reliable, especially at home: lights (though I do crave a master switch by my back door) and door-locks spring immediately to mind.
I haven't seen motion activated taps - the kind you see in public toilets - creeping into homes yet, but it's only a matter of time. Those things have always seemed pointless and overcomplicated to me, so if I ever move into a house that has them they'll be getting pulled straight out. What happens if you have a power-cut? I assume they'll keep working for at least a while, but sooner or later I imagine they'll run out of juice, and then what do you do?
> I have never seen a blackboard that does not work.
I have. It looks like a normal blackboard that doesn't have any chalk nearby. Smart boards are generally worse, but their chalk doesn't run out or disappear.
WRT whiteboards - the problem is ironically enough the users. They try to be frugal with the markers, using them as long as they can. I did too, until I did some introspection and realized what I was doing.
Once I had that realization, and identified how cheap replacement markers really are, the moment it starts to crap out it's tossed and replaced from a backup container sitting nearby.
I'm also biased against blackboards, having gone through school with them. I was all-too-frequently chosen to go bang the chalk dust out the erasers, becoming coated from tip to toe in said dust. Too much hassle for the value. Not to mention the need for a deep cleaning of the board periodically, though I guess it shares that with whiteboards.
So I got Sony super-duper 4k HDR with some chip that makes the colors better. I hook up my Sony ps4 to it. Every time a game launches, the tv fully shuts off. Not standby mode, fully shuts off, requiring a reboot through that stupid android tv screen. Good job, Sony.
Just got myself (an expensive Nobo) glass whiteboard for brainstorming my side projects and, with all the technology, laptops, tablets and gadgets I'm constantly surrounded by, it turned out to be a very fun and useful thing to have. There's something immediate about it that motivates you to do quick brain dumps, where it's always at hand's reach and it takes zero time to erase anything so you don't feel too committed.
// Blackboard in this case would have been be far less practical as everything around it would be eventually covered in chalk.
I'm going to verbatim copy a conversation I had on twitter a few weeks ago[0], because it seems particularly relevant, and I want to credit whomever is behind the algoglitches twitter account with coming up with the term "formerly fixable objects":
@JobvdZwan: My mother called me the other day asking why I "installed Bing". Because she does not grasp that software can modify itself, it did not occur to her that Firefox itself switched after an auto-update. In this light it makes sense that family members blame you for "breaking" their computer if you helped them out months or years before: if you fix, say, a door, it will not spontaneously change after that. But fixing a computer is not like fixing a door.
Soft touch "buttons" vs regular mechanical buttons.
Soft touch buttons are the bane of my existence. With most buttons, there's no feedback as to whether or not the button has been pressed. It's also difficult to develop muscle memory so you can you use the buttons without looking. For this reason I can't stand typing on an iPad's screen keyboard. Also the reason turning on a modern TV involves me dragging my fingers all over the bottom hoping I hit the power button.
The extreme of this is newer Macbook touchbar. Vim is a nightmare to use. Did I even press ESC? Can't tell.
Yes I would like a Starship Enterprise-style computer in my house. Who wouldn't? But it has to be the the ad-free version that works for me. It won't monitor the activities of my family and then sell the anonymized data to selected third parties. Then supply the de-anonymized data to government agencies and school boards at the drop of a hat for 'safe-guarding' or 'anti-terrorism' purposes.
In the meantime I recognise that there's some health value to getting up periodically to flick switches.
> Yes I would like a Starship Enterprise-style computer in my house. Who wouldn't?
I wouldn't. What's the point exactly? Take smart lights, what are they for?? When I enter the room I switch lights on, when I leave the room I switch lights off.
I'm not sure when I would need to switch lights on while already in the room. I never stay in the same room for so long that the sun sets while I'm still there not moving.
At night in the bedroom there are switches near the bed (attached to the wall, which can't get lost, contrary to a remote, and don't need sound, contrary to voice control).
My point is, we tend to accept technology even when it doesn't solve any problem we are actually having.
Then there's the ST:TNG episode "Contagion" where the crew spends the entire hour futzing around with the Enterprise's computer only to come to the conclusion of "let's reboot it!"
No one's going to build this for you. If you want an assistant built around your needs... start building. AI is not going to magically make a piece of software work the way each and every person on Earth would like, but making one for yourself is far more possible. :)
That's if you're lucky. I don't want to sound paranoid but if there are sensors in your house its only a matter of time before someone wants to use them.
I think this is kinda possible - if you hook up a raspberry pi with a bunch of relay switches. I think there's a speech-recognition project from Mozilla that's actually trained on the pi.
I vaguely considered it - but honestly, what's the point? Light switches are excellent tech. I think I'll go for a home computer the day somebody makes a roomba that can pick up trash, and clean the bathroom. Before that, all the really time-consuming stuff has to be done manually anyway.
There is two projects that make a step forward the privacy direction: Mark II [0] and Project Things [1] by Mozilla. There are of course not as developed as the big ones, but it's refreshing.
I think the advantage of "dumb" devices is that you can fully understand how they work, at least at a level of abstraction that covers all possible functionality you care about. For smart devices, you can't fully understand how all of them work, so you have to trust that they understand correctly what you want them to do and are actually attempting to do it. Or if you can't trust it, you have to spend time and effort verifying it. And you also have to trust (or verify) that they're not doing stupid/malicious things like punching holes in your firewall or leaking your personal data.
In short, you can simply use a dumb device, but you have to manage a smart device, and that requires much more mental bandwidth.
This is definitely how I view the "dumb" vs "smart" automation. Complex things are hard to reason about, and as much as you might claim they "just work" that's only true until they suddenly don't, and then you can't fix them easily. Simple things are easy to reason about. They may not always work, but at least when they don't it should be pretty obvious why. I bring this up a lot in my "why the Linux Desktop sucks" rants, but it sadly applies to a whole lot of technology. So many complex systems introduced to solve non-problems or problems created by the complexity in the first place.
It's enough that sometimes I want to just give up computing and live in a cave.
That's a good point about using a device vs managing a device. We need more "dumb" devices that have optional layers of smart enhancements. Best of both worlds would be my preference for replacing things like a kitchen timer or light switch.
I have done some neat hobby automation projects, and I have some thoughts:
1. With some more work it wouldn't be so, but when the power goes out it is like rebooting Jurassic Park to get my sound system back the way I like.
2. The proprietary power grab is worse than any video format war or chat program territory battle. I've tried to DIY as much as I can, but Google Home is a no go for DIY. I can emulate on/off Phillips Hue stuff for Alexa Scenes but for Google Home you have to go through the net.
3. I can't ask Alexa to do anything when the (rare) internet is out, but I can control everything fine with my phone or IR. Most automation projects seem to require outside the firewall stuff.
4. Would be cool if I could come up with a port knocking thing for Alexa Skills to talk back to the LAN with some kind of reliable security and encryption... But Skills seem to be only available to call out insecurely or to a running EC2 instance say but I don't have a free tier account being an early adopter of EC2.
5. In general, the products I will buy are ideally LAN only. Maybe that's unrealistic like a non smart TV?
My favourite "smart" dumb device has got to be single sensor electronics. The automatic hallway light to be exact. It's a piece of plastic with a photocell and a LED.
So long as it has power (but a battery backup would be simple enough) it never fails to turn on "if this, then that". Daylight savings, changing seasons, solar eclipse.
It's never a device I have to think about.
And at home depot they sell $80 IoT light bulbs demanding a property app.
...and what no one giving us this "progress" ever seems to realise is how often it is slower.
For instance our Whirlpool microwave - touch sensitive digital and achieving 5 or 10 minutes takes much longer and more clicks than our old one (no 5 min button, but the Panasonic's touch keypad didn't much like damp hands). Setting power or grill is especially unfriendly and rarely succeeds at first attempt. First microwave had a rotary control, now the preserve of absolute bottom of range rubbish, time setting always took one touch and under a second.
I find it's affecting my choices of cars though. Touch sensitive "improvement" of anything basic (heater or fan for instance) is a big negative mark for me as chances are I could formerly achieve it without taking eyes from road, but now I need to look, and you don't want everything on the steering wheel!
About the microwave: it seems to be purely American thing. Here in the UK even high-end very expensive microwaves have rotating knobs for setting the time and power. I've seen those monstrosities with a million buttons on the front but they are certainly rare.
There are varying levels of cynicism with which to view the smart home stuff.
On the plus side, smart home automation is great for those with mobility issues or disabilities, the elderly. It also could save a lot of energy globally.
On the other hand, a lot of things just don't need to be smart, and making them smart often means that they are not directly servicable by owners. When something breaks, you need a whole stack of knowledge about software to figure out where it went wrong. A lot of us here might have that knowledge, but even then it's a giant hassle. It seems insane that in the future it might require arcane knowledge of Python, bash, and Linux to get your lights on. That's some kind of fail.
The most cynical view, which I sometimes dare myself to consider, is that all of this smart home/internet of things is just another bubble where hardware manufacturers are pushing their chips into literally everything because they have to keep making more money...somehow.
In the latter case, well. Civilization doesn't need more hucksters, even if they are selling little black squares of silicon this time around.
Maybe a large part of why hardware buttons work so much better than software buttons is that they just are there. They do not pop up whenever you enter a new screen, and usually, you can't miss them (as in 'oh, I didn't realize that bar was clickable'). They are also much more restrictive than software UI's - so the designer really has to put in effort since you can't replace the hardware interface by putting out an update.
I can't resist to draw a parallel with programming. In the early days, where binaries consisted of carefully handcrafted code, they were in the range of kilobytes. Nowadays programs are in the range of megabytes to gigabytes due to all the libraries that are statically included (and possibly duplicated). When I install Xilinx ISE (no support for anything above windows 7) or Visual Studio (both 2015 and 2017, because both have features that the other one does not contain), I have already used more space on my SSD than I'd like.
I am a big fan of the Kindle 4. (2012) It's wonderful. I use mine practically every day. It has these huge things on the side called "buttons" that you can use to turn the pages. They have a tactile feel when pressed, and accidental button presses are never a problem. It's symmetrical, so you can hold it in either your right or left hand.
It's the last Kindle made before someone got the bright idea that people would rather have a touch screen instead of buttons. Because apparently, when I'm reading a book, the thing I want to do is use my thumb to cover up the screen (you know, the thing that is displaying the text that I'm reading), and hold the device in a very specific way such that I can press the page when I need to while avoiding accidental touches before I've reached the end of the page.
Recently, they decided to re-introduce the majestic "button" feature into some of the newer Kindle models. You can get it if you opt for the premium deluxe "Kindle Oasis" which for some reason has an asymmetrical bezel and costs $250. (The Kindle 4 originally retailed for $80, which is where pricing for current Kindle models also starts.)
I love my Kindle 4. I use it every day and take it with me everywhere, and whenever I misplace it and need to buy a replacement, I find myself going to ebay to look for a used version of the old model so I can have a device with buttons.
Oh yes, that was my biggest worry when i bought the paperwhite - If i would miss those buttons too much. Even now after a year, if I could get the paperwhite with buttons, I would.
It just works, you don't have to move your finger to change the page.
It's not much I have to move my fingers to change page on the paperwhite, but it's still so much more than should be necessary, the old model just fit like a glove.
(I would still get the paperwhite even with no buttons, and it has not been as annoying regarding accidental page changes as I had initially feared. And i really love the background lighting)
After reading the article, I wanted to comment about how Kindle might be actually one smart device better than the dumb alternative (paper). It's about the same size as a paperback, but much slimmer. About the same font size too. Paper has better contrast, but it's not too bad. For reading a lot of fiction, it's pretty much the ultimate option. And Kindle 4/5 are pretty much the ideal, I couldn't imagine doing anything better. Yet Amazon decided to make the new Kindle heavier, remove the great buttons and force to me to use touch screen. I use Kindle in freezing cold with my heavy gloves on, I use it in my bathroom with partially wet hands, the physical buttons just work. I'm still hoping to get a few more years out of my Kindle 5 (I bought two used ones on eBay, just to have a backup).
My Kindle 3 broke about a couple months ago. I've had it for nearly 4-5 years, worked like a champ, I had a protective case on it with an external LED light you could extend off of it to read at night. I got used to using purely tactile buttons when reading.
So I had to buy a new kindle. I looked into the Oasis, and the kindle paper white, and the voyager. I ended up going with the kindle paper white for $80, despite the fact it doesn't have tactile buttons
I actually prefer the kindle paper white. I actually find that pressing a tactile button on every page is kind of tiring with my old Amazon Kindle 3. Swiping back and forth is much easier if you do it constantly, and doesn't really take long to get used too
One of such example is when they offered us a "Smart Cup" on our Cruise (Royal Caribbeans). It has built-in chip so it know who it belongs to.
So you go to drink fountain, puts your cup in, LCD display nicely says your name (wow) and then you click which drink you wants and the cup fills in, while the display tells you from now on it remembers your favorite drink. Can't be better huh?
Five minutes later I go for a refil: "Sorry but you drank a cup less than 45 minutes ago. Please come back in 39 minutes".
I came back, but to the front desk to get a refund. Instead, I replaced it with more expensive regular cup that you could go to cafeteria and get refils of pretty much anything you want to as often as you wanted to.
A bit dumber than a “smart device”: the new AppleTV remote is a tiny touchpad that communicates with the box via Bluetooth. The problem is when this thing ends up in a cushion or gets squished under a pillow it pauses, stops, or starts rewinding the video. Compare that to a cheaper IR remote where it simply can’t communicate with the unit in those situations. Turns out line of sight is a feature for a TV remote.
The AppleTV 4 remote is, to me, the worst remote control I have ever used, with a big margin. I don't understand how this thing could ever get through usability/ergonomics testing at Apple.
> Turns out line of sight is a feature for a TV remote.
It can be, but for bad TVs you have to do "remote tai chi" to get LoS between the remote and the TV sensor from wide angles or when there are people or things in the way. I wouldn't call digital signalling better, but there are some benefits.
Yeah, that's happened to me, too. It's small, slim size makes it fit just about anywhere. I do like not having to point it at the box however, and it means the AppleTV unit can be placed out of sight. It is a tradeoff, though.
"One of the most common uses of Amazon’s Echo is to set a kitchen timer."
Truly worth the money. I suspect the greatest value of these things is that they seem like nice gifts. The same thing seems true of the cheaper drones.
I think the greatest value is probably in the speaker itself, most of the other features do just feel like fluff. Though personally I prefer a more “dumb” speaker I can control with my phone.
Jerry buys his parents a personal organizer, lies about how expensive it was, and then they want to buy more "tip calculators" for their entire condo board.
Most of the "smart IoT stuff" is built by (cheap) engineers and decision makers with no sense of IT security and reliability engineering
Also the infrastructure in a major city is usually much more reliable than someone living in the suburbs (especially in non-1st world countries). And I'm not even talking about internet, but electricity as well
See the Tesla remote unlock fiasco, people think it's a good idea to lock their car using a device which needs a recharge every day (and could break, has a higher chance of getting robbed than a key, etc), and needs access to cell towers to unlock the car? Compare this to other manufacturers where the mechanical keys will work even if the battery in the remote dies
See the bluetooth locks fiasco, you're putting a cheap and unreliable device between you and your house? Do people realize how stupid is that?!
I've always preferred tactile/mechanical controls (buttons, knobs, sliders) to the touch screens we have today. And I always trust mechanical systems over fly-by-wire systems. For example, I'm very uncomfortable with things like the Tesla's slide-out door handles, electronic locks in hotel room doors, touch buttons in elevators and GPS navigation systems in aircraft.
Smart tends to mean complex, and complex usually means more things to fail. Some things only need shafts, pulleys and gearwheels -- there is no need to bring a microprocessor into the picture...
There are two issues at play here. The first is that soft buttons, gesture recognitions and 'smart' UIs are applied tastelessly to give impression of futuristic product. UI design is very hard and I hope that best patterns will prevail over time. There are also many good examples of transition to digital UI and I like to think things are getting better.
The second issue is, in order to operate UI, you have to form a mental model (simulation) of it in your mind, in order to execute your intention. In analog days the controls were limited by space and cost, so UIs were simple to use. In digital age same UI surface can be used for different actions depending on context. It creates additional burden on user to hold this context in his mind, to know about all possible contexts and how to move between them. If you are surrounded with many such devices, all with different usage patterns, you will curse their designers often. I wish every digital interface would also have friendly API for remote control so I could build my own simplified interface for existing devices.
This is why I have been getting superior results working with a $100 tascam digital 4 track compared to what I used to get from logic pro. For music being able to use knobs with eyes closed to record is actually huge to me the GUI is actually a problem for music for my work.
There's a reason why most music today is still mixed on an analog console. Notice that mixing and recording engineers, even if they use Logic to record, the computer is somewhere on the side, it's not in their face. They don't look at the screen, they just keep their hands on the analog faders and listen.
[+] [-] adambatkin|8 years ago|reply
I asked my parents to use a regular light switch in my room. You know the kind that I am talking about - it goes on and off, closing and opening an electrical circuit. It would have been less expensive and (in my opinion) more reliable since after all, it's just a few pieces of metal. I joked that "when everyone else's lights are flashing on and off at 3AM, I'd like to remain asleep". My father accused me (his resident technologist) of being a Luddite and they went on their merry way, finishing construction and installing a fully-computerized lighting system.
A few months after they moved in, I got a phone call from my father that started something like this: "Please don't say 'I told you so' but I have to tell you what happened at 3AM last night..."
(they flipped that house, and when they built their next one, it had regular light switches)
[+] [-] freedomben|8 years ago|reply
One area that I feel is also a "sometimes dumb stuff is better" that the article left out, is that (at least for me) hardware controls are almost always superior (tho certainly less flexible) than software controls. There's no better example than the physical keyboard vs. the soft keyboard. Recently I had to purchase a replacement stove, and I am amazed at how much worse the UX is on this stove than my old one. I don't want to slide my finger to determine heat intensity, and select which burner that applies to by pressing a soft button corresponding to the hotplate. Just give me a physical knob for each hotplate please. The UX there is excellent.
A more painful example is my Ford truck. Almost everything inside of it is software powered, and the bugs drive me insane. At one point my GPS/stereo touchscreen hit some bug, and the only way to "fix" it was to pull over at a rest stop and power cycle my truck (turn off, then back on again :facepalm: ). That is maddening. As a software developer I understand that bugs happen, but as a consumer I just can't tolerate that kind of stuff in my vehicle.
Without question tech has brought us nice things, but with complexity comes bugs (both security-related and non), and with bugs comes software updates (which themselves sometimes introduce bugs in something that was working fine before). Internet-connected things can also be a nightmare for security and privacy. Truly, sometimes the "dumb" version is much better (and way cheaper too).
[+] [-] meuk|8 years ago|reply
First example: in my experience, there is nothing better than a blackboard for explaining a subject. I have never seen a blackboard that does not work. I also have never had a smooth experience with a smartboard (for starters, it has to boot and the projector has to be on and connected which just takes some minutes), and I have rarely had a good experience with whiteboards (usually the markers just don't work well, and there's no way to see that beforehand, so you end up trying a lot of them).
It also irritates me intensely how often it is assumed that you're always connected to the internet. Games nowadays not only have mandatory updates, but also require you to be connected. I used to play games once a week with a friend, and the experience just sucked. Call of Duty almost always had a multiple gigabyte update waiting for us, so that we had to wait half an hour to play (even though we didn't play online). It has happened multiple times that the internet didn't work, and we just had to find something else to do.
Then, smart TV's have some of the same problems too. I have had some new experiences since my roommate bought a 4k monstrosity with ambilight (which only purpose seems to be that ensure that no-one can concentrate on something else when the TV is on). I have never had to wait multiple minutes to turn the TV on before. I have never had a TV crash on me before. I have never been confused by a remote control before (the remote control has a button with a triangle symbol to go to all apps, and some other buttons with symbols I have never seen before, and there are two different places with apps - some of them are the same while others can only be found in one place). The TV also boots with the sound very loud, and I have to wait until the TV is fully booted until the sound can be adjusted. Which in practice means that I can't watch TV after my roommate goes asleep at 9:30.
[+] [-] ImaCake|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swaggyBoatswain|8 years ago|reply
I've never understood the need to be always connected to the internet for gaming. Especially if its a single player game, I prefer to have steam just run it offline, but I guess the counterargument for game companies is DRM (they want to validate whether you purchased the game or not).
I do IT all the time and I am always against putting too much functionality in everything. People don't appreciate the simple things until they have to repair it themselves. I never bought into smart homes, TVs, amazon echo/alexa products, etc. I just don't see the need to automate these things that provide little value in the long run.
Per article, my rule of thumb is to always resort to the simplest, dumbest thing possible to validate whether or not I actually need the high tech solution. A good example of this, not mentioned in the article, is a pomodoro timer (a timer designed to work on 25 minute work periods). You can download a slew of apps to do this on your PC. Or you could just buy a miracle cube timer off amazon for like $10. Another good example is a todolist. You can find hundreds of these apps that integrate everywhere that it doesn't need to be. I resort to just using sticky notes and shove them in my wallet / keyboard to remind me of tasks I need to do.
[+] [-] bartread|8 years ago|reply
The game updates situation... eesh. So many times when I've got maybe 20 minutes free to play a game and it wants to spend 10 of them downloading updates. One of the reasons I've come to love retro console gaming is that nonsense doesn't happen with PS1, PS2, Xbox, or Wii games.
For a lot of things dumb is often better and more reliable, especially at home: lights (though I do crave a master switch by my back door) and door-locks spring immediately to mind.
I haven't seen motion activated taps - the kind you see in public toilets - creeping into homes yet, but it's only a matter of time. Those things have always seemed pointless and overcomplicated to me, so if I ever move into a house that has them they'll be getting pulled straight out. What happens if you have a power-cut? I assume they'll keep working for at least a while, but sooner or later I imagine they'll run out of juice, and then what do you do?
[+] [-] humanrebar|8 years ago|reply
I have. It looks like a normal blackboard that doesn't have any chalk nearby. Smart boards are generally worse, but their chalk doesn't run out or disappear.
[+] [-] pjc50|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcolas|8 years ago|reply
Once I had that realization, and identified how cheap replacement markers really are, the moment it starts to crap out it's tossed and replaced from a backup container sitting nearby.
I'm also biased against blackboards, having gone through school with them. I was all-too-frequently chosen to go bang the chalk dust out the erasers, becoming coated from tip to toe in said dust. Too much hassle for the value. Not to mention the need for a deep cleaning of the board periodically, though I guess it shares that with whiteboards.
[+] [-] grigjd3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomMarius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aldanor|8 years ago|reply
// Blackboard in this case would have been be far less practical as everything around it would be eventually covered in chalk.
[+] [-] vanderZwan|8 years ago|reply
@JobvdZwan: My mother called me the other day asking why I "installed Bing". Because she does not grasp that software can modify itself, it did not occur to her that Firefox itself switched after an auto-update. In this light it makes sense that family members blame you for "breaking" their computer if you helped them out months or years before: if you fix, say, a door, it will not spontaneously change after that. But fixing a computer is not like fixing a door.
@algoglitches: Interestingly doors will probably be computers a few years from now cf https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/you-a... . We will refer to them as "formerly fixable objects" and they will produce their own glitches.
@JobvdZwan: Did you just make up the term "formerly fixable objects"? Because that should be a term.
[0] https://twitter.com/JobvdZwan/status/962328161429151745
[+] [-] kendallpark|8 years ago|reply
Soft touch buttons are the bane of my existence. With most buttons, there's no feedback as to whether or not the button has been pressed. It's also difficult to develop muscle memory so you can you use the buttons without looking. For this reason I can't stand typing on an iPad's screen keyboard. Also the reason turning on a modern TV involves me dragging my fingers all over the bottom hoping I hit the power button.
The extreme of this is newer Macbook touchbar. Vim is a nightmare to use. Did I even press ESC? Can't tell.
Another great example: http://www.homecrux.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/GE%E2%80%...
[+] [-] truculation|8 years ago|reply
In the meantime I recognise that there's some health value to getting up periodically to flick switches.
[+] [-] bambax|8 years ago|reply
I wouldn't. What's the point exactly? Take smart lights, what are they for?? When I enter the room I switch lights on, when I leave the room I switch lights off.
I'm not sure when I would need to switch lights on while already in the room. I never stay in the same room for so long that the sun sets while I'm still there not moving.
At night in the bedroom there are switches near the bed (attached to the wall, which can't get lost, contrary to a remote, and don't need sound, contrary to voice control).
My point is, we tend to accept technology even when it doesn't solve any problem we are actually having.
[+] [-] spc476|8 years ago|reply
Sigh.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Feniks|8 years ago|reply
That's if you're lucky. I don't want to sound paranoid but if there are sensors in your house its only a matter of time before someone wants to use them.
[+] [-] pasabagi|8 years ago|reply
I vaguely considered it - but honestly, what's the point? Light switches are excellent tech. I think I'll go for a home computer the day somebody makes a roomba that can pick up trash, and clean the bathroom. Before that, all the really time-consuming stuff has to be done manually anyway.
[+] [-] Epholys|8 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-m... [1] https://iot.mozilla.org/
[+] [-] rcthompson|8 years ago|reply
In short, you can simply use a dumb device, but you have to manage a smart device, and that requires much more mental bandwidth.
[+] [-] AnIdiotOnTheNet|8 years ago|reply
It's enough that sometimes I want to just give up computing and live in a cave.
[+] [-] exodust|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] th0ma5|8 years ago|reply
1. With some more work it wouldn't be so, but when the power goes out it is like rebooting Jurassic Park to get my sound system back the way I like.
2. The proprietary power grab is worse than any video format war or chat program territory battle. I've tried to DIY as much as I can, but Google Home is a no go for DIY. I can emulate on/off Phillips Hue stuff for Alexa Scenes but for Google Home you have to go through the net.
3. I can't ask Alexa to do anything when the (rare) internet is out, but I can control everything fine with my phone or IR. Most automation projects seem to require outside the firewall stuff.
4. Would be cool if I could come up with a port knocking thing for Alexa Skills to talk back to the LAN with some kind of reliable security and encryption... But Skills seem to be only available to call out insecurely or to a running EC2 instance say but I don't have a free tier account being an early adopter of EC2.
5. In general, the products I will buy are ideally LAN only. Maybe that's unrealistic like a non smart TV?
[+] [-] KamiCrit|8 years ago|reply
So long as it has power (but a battery backup would be simple enough) it never fails to turn on "if this, then that". Daylight savings, changing seasons, solar eclipse.
It's never a device I have to think about.
And at home depot they sell $80 IoT light bulbs demanding a property app.
[+] [-] oldcynic|8 years ago|reply
For instance our Whirlpool microwave - touch sensitive digital and achieving 5 or 10 minutes takes much longer and more clicks than our old one (no 5 min button, but the Panasonic's touch keypad didn't much like damp hands). Setting power or grill is especially unfriendly and rarely succeeds at first attempt. First microwave had a rotary control, now the preserve of absolute bottom of range rubbish, time setting always took one touch and under a second.
I find it's affecting my choices of cars though. Touch sensitive "improvement" of anything basic (heater or fan for instance) is a big negative mark for me as chances are I could formerly achieve it without taking eyes from road, but now I need to look, and you don't want everything on the steering wheel!
[+] [-] pdkl95|8 years ago|reply
Reminds me of the old "ha-ha-only-serious" joke about how a computer scientist would design a toaster:
http://www.fiction.net/tidbits/computer/computer_cs_toaster....
Unfortunately some people interpreted it as a plan for the future.
[+] [-] gambiting|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] titzer|8 years ago|reply
On the plus side, smart home automation is great for those with mobility issues or disabilities, the elderly. It also could save a lot of energy globally.
On the other hand, a lot of things just don't need to be smart, and making them smart often means that they are not directly servicable by owners. When something breaks, you need a whole stack of knowledge about software to figure out where it went wrong. A lot of us here might have that knowledge, but even then it's a giant hassle. It seems insane that in the future it might require arcane knowledge of Python, bash, and Linux to get your lights on. That's some kind of fail.
The most cynical view, which I sometimes dare myself to consider, is that all of this smart home/internet of things is just another bubble where hardware manufacturers are pushing their chips into literally everything because they have to keep making more money...somehow.
In the latter case, well. Civilization doesn't need more hucksters, even if they are selling little black squares of silicon this time around.
[+] [-] meuk|8 years ago|reply
I can't resist to draw a parallel with programming. In the early days, where binaries consisted of carefully handcrafted code, they were in the range of kilobytes. Nowadays programs are in the range of megabytes to gigabytes due to all the libraries that are statically included (and possibly duplicated). When I install Xilinx ISE (no support for anything above windows 7) or Visual Studio (both 2015 and 2017, because both have features that the other one does not contain), I have already used more space on my SSD than I'd like.
[+] [-] Kuiper|8 years ago|reply
It's the last Kindle made before someone got the bright idea that people would rather have a touch screen instead of buttons. Because apparently, when I'm reading a book, the thing I want to do is use my thumb to cover up the screen (you know, the thing that is displaying the text that I'm reading), and hold the device in a very specific way such that I can press the page when I need to while avoiding accidental touches before I've reached the end of the page.
Recently, they decided to re-introduce the majestic "button" feature into some of the newer Kindle models. You can get it if you opt for the premium deluxe "Kindle Oasis" which for some reason has an asymmetrical bezel and costs $250. (The Kindle 4 originally retailed for $80, which is where pricing for current Kindle models also starts.)
I love my Kindle 4. I use it every day and take it with me everywhere, and whenever I misplace it and need to buy a replacement, I find myself going to ebay to look for a used version of the old model so I can have a device with buttons.
[+] [-] Spacemolte|8 years ago|reply
It's not much I have to move my fingers to change page on the paperwhite, but it's still so much more than should be necessary, the old model just fit like a glove.
(I would still get the paperwhite even with no buttons, and it has not been as annoying regarding accidental page changes as I had initially feared. And i really love the background lighting)
[+] [-] lukaslalinsky|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swaggyBoatswain|8 years ago|reply
So I had to buy a new kindle. I looked into the Oasis, and the kindle paper white, and the voyager. I ended up going with the kindle paper white for $80, despite the fact it doesn't have tactile buttons
I actually prefer the kindle paper white. I actually find that pressing a tactile button on every page is kind of tiring with my old Amazon Kindle 3. Swiping back and forth is much easier if you do it constantly, and doesn't really take long to get used too
[+] [-] joering2|8 years ago|reply
So you go to drink fountain, puts your cup in, LCD display nicely says your name (wow) and then you click which drink you wants and the cup fills in, while the display tells you from now on it remembers your favorite drink. Can't be better huh?
Five minutes later I go for a refil: "Sorry but you drank a cup less than 45 minutes ago. Please come back in 39 minutes".
I came back, but to the front desk to get a refund. Instead, I replaced it with more expensive regular cup that you could go to cafeteria and get refils of pretty much anything you want to as often as you wanted to.
[+] [-] bradgessler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starsinspace|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] humanrebar|8 years ago|reply
It can be, but for bad TVs you have to do "remote tai chi" to get LoS between the remote and the TV sensor from wide angles or when there are people or things in the way. I wouldn't call digital signalling better, but there are some benefits.
[+] [-] grzm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nitwit005|8 years ago|reply
Truly worth the money. I suspect the greatest value of these things is that they seem like nice gifts. The same thing seems true of the cheaper drones.
[+] [-] sgillen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] humanrebar|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_(Seinfeld)
Jerry buys his parents a personal organizer, lies about how expensive it was, and then they want to buy more "tip calculators" for their entire condo board.
[+] [-] raverbashing|8 years ago|reply
Also the infrastructure in a major city is usually much more reliable than someone living in the suburbs (especially in non-1st world countries). And I'm not even talking about internet, but electricity as well
See the Tesla remote unlock fiasco, people think it's a good idea to lock their car using a device which needs a recharge every day (and could break, has a higher chance of getting robbed than a key, etc), and needs access to cell towers to unlock the car? Compare this to other manufacturers where the mechanical keys will work even if the battery in the remote dies
See the bluetooth locks fiasco, you're putting a cheap and unreliable device between you and your house? Do people realize how stupid is that?!
[+] [-] hliyan|8 years ago|reply
Smart tends to mean complex, and complex usually means more things to fail. Some things only need shafts, pulleys and gearwheels -- there is no need to bring a microprocessor into the picture...
[+] [-] Piskvorrr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] veli_joza|8 years ago|reply
The second issue is, in order to operate UI, you have to form a mental model (simulation) of it in your mind, in order to execute your intention. In analog days the controls were limited by space and cost, so UIs were simple to use. In digital age same UI surface can be used for different actions depending on context. It creates additional burden on user to hold this context in his mind, to know about all possible contexts and how to move between them. If you are surrounded with many such devices, all with different usage patterns, you will curse their designers often. I wish every digital interface would also have friendly API for remote control so I could build my own simplified interface for existing devices.
[+] [-] shams93|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x00000000|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4ad|8 years ago|reply