6 ms·

I still don't get the Internet of Things. The mental calculation just doesn't work out for most things. My personal rule of thumb is: benefitofmeaccessingXr

by 50CNT 11y ago

I still don't get the Internet of Things. The mental calculation just doesn't work out for most things. My personal rule of thumb is: benefitofmeaccessingXremotely(X) - costofotherpeopleaccesingXremotely(X)*riskofthathappening Benefits being low for most things, costs high, and risks...uhmm...nah. Only exception I can think of is very limited amounts of sensors (eg. is X on?). What's the benefit of me turning on a gas stove remotely? Almost none. What's the cost of someone else turning on my gas stove? Really high. How much is the risk? Way too high. Then there's smart devices, another component of IoT. But how much smarts do we actually want? Screens are nice. Making my shower multi touch isn't (capacitive touch + water = no bueno. Imagine water from hell scenario and no way of turning it off with your wet hands). Fridge compiling shopping lists automatically? Neat. Cheap android tablet that comes with a fridge glued to it? Nah. The only utility I see is locally connected devices. Using your phone as a remote. That seems handy. To a certain degree, we have that. Extra points if I don't need to download an app for everything, because don't you dare tell me that your blue-tooth on/off switch needs a 15mb .apk. If I gave one about the 14.9mb of branding you're including, I'd download your press kit. There's some utility in home IoT wudget-thingimabobs, but I'm almost certain we'll mess it up to no end in our excitement. There'll be some legitimately useful products coming from it, but most of it will be utterly cringe worthy in retrospect. /rant('IoT')

sorokod 11y ago
I was around when TV remote controls became popular. Couldn't see what was the point of them.
- 50CNT 11y ago
  Good point. I do believe that some very interesting things will come of IoT, it's the crass amounts of enthusiasm some people have regarding it that grinds my gears. The joys of being a killjoy and explaining why your toasters web interface won't do much good if you have to get up and insert the toast manually. Or SmartXthing to introduce the obsolescence cycles of digital electronics to everything else. No sympathy. I guess I'm just a bitter old person, and a way to young one at that.
- tdkl 11y ago
  I guess what parent meant was that using some "smart" stuff locally (same room, same house, same LAN) can be useful. To put your example in the perspective : how much useful would it be to operate the TV remote over the internet ? Yeah, it sounds cool that I've set the TV to channel 5, but I'm not there to watch it anyway, so it's kinda useless. Only thing that is now possible is some other people jerking around with the remote.
  - qb45 11y ago
    Oh man, wouldn't you want your phone to send GPS coordinates to Megacorp Electronics (TM) so that they can turn on your TV when you come home? It's free, man. Sure, your TV will play some audio ads while you are entering the house, but then it'll switch to your favorite soap.
  - sorokod 11y ago
    Security is a huge concern. Setting a TV channel the way you described is not useful. Checking with the fridge if I need milk on my way home, may be. And yes, security is a huge concern. Privacy too.
    - tdkl 11y ago
      > Checking with the fridge if I need milk on my way home, may be. Still parent makes a good point with "benefitofmeaccessingXremotely(X) - costofotherpeopleaccesingXremotely(X)*riskofthathappening". I'll add the "amountofdataimgivingaway+showingmeads"
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Operating the TV over the internet is useless .. but operating the PVR over the internet could be very handy. And operating the TV over the LAN from a smartphone could be handy: scroll through the EPG without disrupting the current programme. (I spend an hour this afternoon trying to get tvheadend+Kodi working to do almost exactly this, to replace my Windows Media Center PVR)
    - icebraining 11y ago
- Roboprog 11y ago
  As somebody with children, I HATE remote controls. I can no longer push buttons on the device itself, I have to spend 10 or 15 minutes a day, if I'm lucky, trying to find the "labor saving device", just so I can change the channel or pause a show. At least some devices (e.g. - Roku) let you use your phone or tablet as the remotes (plural!), which I guess finally is actual progress.
pjc50 11y ago
Part of this is the normal gadget cycle: invent a 'labour-saving' gizmo, market it to people, who buy it and use it once, then leave it at the back of a kitchen cupboard next to the sandwich toaster and the veg spiraliser. Slightly bad for the environment, good for employment, otherwise harmless. Part of it is the adveillance business model: get people hooked on a technology so you can sell their personal info to marketers. The smart fridge compiling your shopping list knows even more about you than your supermarket loyalty card. Part of it is ownership-to-rent: rather than let people buy an appliance and keep it for a decade, turn them into a revenue stream with mandatory updates, planned obsolecence, incompatibility, and so on. And part of it is an attempt to automate away the awkward middleman in consumerism, the consumer: let devices spend money on their own behalf. This is HP's "instant ink" (https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en), a service where you let your printer order the most expensive liquid in the world on its own initiative.
- 50CNT 11y ago
  There it is, half of those things absolutely terrify me, but they're also exciting. But then that's kinda the thing with new technology isn't it? There was a time when trains were exciting and terrifying machines (and they probably still are). Honestly, adveillance and order automation seem like they'll be useful. And abused. People hacking into celebrity fridges, script kiddies ordering toner and other very shady things on the ORM side will inevitably happen. I will however plead the Stallman on ownership-to-rent. DRM on Keurigs and usage timers on light bulbs just feel underhanded. So opposed to that. That's an entirely different argument though. Well, I kinda get consumer IoT now, but I'm still confused why people are going on about it like it's the best thing since sliced blue-tooth. Guess I'm not imaginative enough. Guess I'll be the old grumpy paranoid man at the end of the road that never showers and orders his own ink.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Most of the enthusiasts are people on the sell side who've decided it's the next big untapped market. Or the "maker" community with Arduinos and ESP2866 chips. Or the intersection of those on Kickstarter. But enthusiast IoT genuinely is exciting; people building little things tailored specifically to their needs. Not a multibillion dollar unicorn festival though. Home automation has been a minority interest for decades, and likely to remain that way.
roymurdock 11y ago
I wouldn't put too much stock/attention into consumer-facing IoT products...they're a drop in the bucket of a much larger market. But they get a lot of coverage because they're more relatable and controversial than connected car infotainment, HVAC, and industrial material handling systems.
- 50CNT 11y ago
  That's kinda where I as well think the interesting stuff is going to go down. Self driving trucks and automated loading/unloading? Oh boy. But if I start raving about that people think I'm crazy.
manyxcxi 11y ago
In my mind (has a hobbyist EE geek) I see the value that some of the things can provide. But just like you implied, the value is in spot use cases. 'Smart' TVs and fridges are a great example- sure the crap you bundled in to my TV MIGHT work okay now, but what about in a year when the APIs they use change? How are the updates provided? There is real value in the home automation side, but then there are the security concerns. Perfect examples are the HVAC and monitoring. When we're away it's nice to shut down the heat and AC but if it's January and we're coming back from the holidays that house needs to warm up before we get home. It's also nice to get an alert and video when motion is detected in the house while you're away- you can call the cops and respond with evidence immediately, or even possibly prevent your house from burning down. So yeah, there's a lot of value in conserving energy and protecting (or at least actively) monitoring the safety of your household. My Amazon Echo gets used at least 50 times a day. Timers for timeouts for the kiddos, alarms for when it's time to go to bed, the weather report as I'm making my coffee, adding things to my shopping list. It genuinely makes life just a little bit easier. That's just from a consumer prospective- if your company ran multiple properties or warehouses, shipped freight, etc. there are so many other fantastic possibilities as well. I don't need a fridge connected to my google calendar, I don't need a TV connected to my Dropbox to show family pictures as a screensaver. I don't need a freaking Barbie doll that is recording every conversation my children send around it. These are generally bad ideas and poor implementations, and people are starting to see it. We're in the hype cycle of IoT- we'll get to the valley of disillusionment after enough of the crappy devices piss people off, then we'll get a stable stream of meaningful product. IoT in principle isn't going away, there is actual value in some of these things. We just need the cream to rise to the top.
ethbro 11y ago
This is essentially the "last mile" problem in automation. What's the value of a fridge that warns you when you're running low on something? Almost nothing. What's the value of a fridge that prints out a shopping list based on what it currently has? Some. What's the value of a fridge that automatically orders those things, has them delivered to your door and/or restocked inside it? Significant. Why? Because we've already automated the basic 25-75% of most tasks (somewhere in the 1920s-1980s). The modern value proposition is binary: having to think about "it" any amount vs not having to think about "it" at all. Saving time at "it" is more or less worthless at this point, because we've already automated most of the raw time away. Or in other words: time spent in mental context switching dominates, and can only be avoided via 100% automation.

by 50CNT 11y ago

sorokod 11y ago

I was around when TV remote controls became popular. Couldn't see what was the point of them.

50CNT 11y ago
Good point. I do believe that some very interesting things will come of IoT, it's the crass amounts of enthusiasm some people have regarding it that grinds my gears. The joys of being a killjoy and explaining why your toasters web interface won't do much good if you have to get up and insert the toast manually. Or SmartXthing to introduce the obsolescence cycles of digital electronics to everything else. No sympathy. I guess I'm just a bitter old person, and a way to young one at that.
tdkl 11y ago
I guess what parent meant was that using some "smart" stuff locally (same room, same house, same LAN) can be useful. To put your example in the perspective : how much useful would it be to operate the TV remote over the internet ? Yeah, it sounds cool that I've set the TV to channel 5, but I'm not there to watch it anyway, so it's kinda useless. Only thing that is now possible is some other people jerking around with the remote.
- qb45 11y ago
  Oh man, wouldn't you want your phone to send GPS coordinates to Megacorp Electronics (TM) so that they can turn on your TV when you come home? It's free, man. Sure, your TV will play some audio ads while you are entering the house, but then it'll switch to your favorite soap.
- sorokod 11y ago
  Security is a huge concern. Setting a TV channel the way you described is not useful. Checking with the fridge if I need milk on my way home, may be. And yes, security is a huge concern. Privacy too.
  - tdkl 11y ago
    > Checking with the fridge if I need milk on my way home, may be. Still parent makes a good point with "benefitofmeaccessingXremotely(X) - costofotherpeopleaccesingXremotely(X)*riskofthathappening". I'll add the "amountofdataimgivingaway+showingmeads"
- pjc50 11y ago
  Operating the TV over the internet is useless .. but operating the PVR over the internet could be very handy. And operating the TV over the LAN from a smartphone could be handy: scroll through the EPG without disrupting the current programme. (I spend an hour this afternoon trying to get tvheadend+Kodi working to do almost exactly this, to replace my Windows Media Center PVR)
  - icebraining 11y ago
Roboprog 11y ago
As somebody with children, I HATE remote controls. I can no longer push buttons on the device itself, I have to spend 10 or 15 minutes a day, if I'm lucky, trying to find the "labor saving device", just so I can change the channel or pause a show. At least some devices (e.g. - Roku) let you use your phone or tablet as the remotes (plural!), which I guess finally is actual progress.

pjc50 11y ago

Part of this is the normal gadget cycle: invent a 'labour-saving' gizmo, market it to people, who buy it and use it once, then leave it at the back of a kitchen cupboard next to the sandwich toaster and the veg spiraliser. Slightly bad for the environment, good for employment, otherwise harmless. Part of it is the adveillance business model: get people hooked on a technology so you can sell their personal info to marketers. The smart fridge compiling your shopping list knows even more about you than your supermarket loyalty card. Part of it is ownership-to-rent: rather than let people buy an appliance and keep it for a decade, turn them into a revenue stream with mandatory updates, planned obsolecence, incompatibility, and so on. And part of it is an attempt to automate away the awkward middleman in consumerism, the consumer: let devices spend money on their own behalf. This is HP's "instant ink" (https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en), a service where you let your printer order the most expensive liquid in the world on its own initiative.

50CNT 11y ago
There it is, half of those things absolutely terrify me, but they're also exciting. But then that's kinda the thing with new technology isn't it? There was a time when trains were exciting and terrifying machines (and they probably still are). Honestly, adveillance and order automation seem like they'll be useful. And abused. People hacking into celebrity fridges, script kiddies ordering toner and other very shady things on the ORM side will inevitably happen. I will however plead the Stallman on ownership-to-rent. DRM on Keurigs and usage timers on light bulbs just feel underhanded. So opposed to that. That's an entirely different argument though. Well, I kinda get consumer IoT now, but I'm still confused why people are going on about it like it's the best thing since sliced blue-tooth. Guess I'm not imaginative enough. Guess I'll be the old grumpy paranoid man at the end of the road that never showers and orders his own ink.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Most of the enthusiasts are people on the sell side who've decided it's the next big untapped market. Or the "maker" community with Arduinos and ESP2866 chips. Or the intersection of those on Kickstarter. But enthusiast IoT genuinely is exciting; people building little things tailored specifically to their needs. Not a multibillion dollar unicorn festival though. Home automation has been a minority interest for decades, and likely to remain that way.

roymurdock 11y ago

I wouldn't put too much stock/attention into consumer-facing IoT products...they're a drop in the bucket of a much larger market. But they get a lot of coverage because they're more relatable and controversial than connected car infotainment, HVAC, and industrial material handling systems.

50CNT 11y ago
That's kinda where I as well think the interesting stuff is going to go down. Self driving trucks and automated loading/unloading? Oh boy. But if I start raving about that people think I'm crazy.

manyxcxi 11y ago

In my mind (has a hobbyist EE geek) I see the value that some of the things can provide. But just like you implied, the value is in spot use cases. 'Smart' TVs and fridges are a great example- sure the crap you bundled in to my TV MIGHT work okay now, but what about in a year when the APIs they use change? How are the updates provided? There is real value in the home automation side, but then there are the security concerns. Perfect examples are the HVAC and monitoring. When we're away it's nice to shut down the heat and AC but if it's January and we're coming back from the holidays that house needs to warm up before we get home. It's also nice to get an alert and video when motion is detected in the house while you're away- you can call the cops and respond with evidence immediately, or even possibly prevent your house from burning down. So yeah, there's a lot of value in conserving energy and protecting (or at least actively) monitoring the safety of your household. My Amazon Echo gets used at least 50 times a day. Timers for timeouts for the kiddos, alarms for when it's time to go to bed, the weather report as I'm making my coffee, adding things to my shopping list. It genuinely makes life just a little bit easier. That's just from a consumer prospective- if your company ran multiple properties or warehouses, shipped freight, etc. there are so many other fantastic possibilities as well. I don't need a fridge connected to my google calendar, I don't need a TV connected to my Dropbox to show family pictures as a screensaver. I don't need a freaking Barbie doll that is recording every conversation my children send around it. These are generally bad ideas and poor implementations, and people are starting to see it. We're in the hype cycle of IoT- we'll get to the valley of disillusionment after enough of the crappy devices piss people off, then we'll get a stable stream of meaningful product. IoT in principle isn't going away, there is actual value in some of these things. We just need the cream to rise to the top.

ethbro 11y ago

This is essentially the "last mile" problem in automation. What's the value of a fridge that warns you when you're running low on something? Almost nothing. What's the value of a fridge that prints out a shopping list based on what it currently has? Some. What's the value of a fridge that automatically orders those things, has them delivered to your door and/or restocked inside it? Significant. Why? Because we've already automated the basic 25-75% of most tasks (somewhere in the 1920s-1980s). The modern value proposition is binary: having to think about "it" any amount vs not having to think about "it" at all. Saving time at "it" is more or less worthless at this point, because we've already automated most of the raw time away. Or in other words: time spent in mental context switching dominates, and can only be avoided via 100% automation.