6 ms·

Am I the only one who doesn't want - Digital Glasses, Google Glass - Smart assistants - IOT devices - Smart door locks - Internet enabled washing machines,

Am I the only one who doesn't want - Digital Glasses, Google Glass - Smart assistants - IOT devices - Smart door locks - Internet enabled washing machines, refrigerators, ovens, etc. - Push to order dash buttons - Smart watch - Smart cameras/webcams These devices are solutions looking for a problem. The value proposition is overshadowed by loss of privacy, interruptions by social media, potential for security flaws, and loss of control by the end user, loss of repairability, amongst many other issues. They provide little benefit at the expense of aforementioned disadvantages. Apparently, the general public loves these and Alexa devices sell like hotcakes, Apple watch is a huge success and Google assistant is getting smarter everyday. I honestly am satisfied without smart things in life. I understand this might come across as a kind of anti-technology view of life, but I love technology! I just don't resonate with the IOT/Smart devices. This trend is everywhere from my label marker to John Deere tractors. What happens when Focal goes bankrupt and the device cannot connect to their cloud for security updates? Yep, they become normal glasses with thick frame with dead batteries. I want longevity, reliability and durability from my devices. Dieter Rams has a great view on this issue: https://www.hustwit.com/rams/ https://www.hustwit.com/rams/

quirkot 8y ago
It takes a lot of detritus to fertilize the growth of good things
bhauer 8y ago
Maybe. But let's frame it differently. I want many of these things, but I want them to work on my own virtual private network—communicating exclusively with my other devices and only communicating off-network according to clear and obvious needs for external data (e.g., weather). The problem is today's third-party oriented cloud that assumes that all device-to-device communication requires a third-party intermediary. In an alternate timeline, an encrypted virtual private network shared by all devices would allow peer-to-peer on-network inter-device communication without a third-party eavesdropping. All too facile is the argument that a third-party cloud is required in order to handle the processing demands. This ignores the fact that it's relatively easy to have a personal "compute" node (it would be just a computer like any other after all) that you could run on your own private network (or even lease one from a data center). So yes, I want smart door locks, smart assistants, and all of these "Electric Dreams" gadgets. But I want them to serve me and not a third-party. In some of these spaces, there are viable options, but I want more companies to explore the opportunity of making money selling privacy-enabling omnipresent personal applications.
- sesqu 8y ago
  The cloud isn't there to meet processing needs, it's there to meet tech support needs. Everyone gets handed the same keys, so if something's wonky you just get a replacement. No debugging and repair costs, no standards adherence requirements, no getting shoved out of the software layer by a competitor - and the price is just the uncool segment of the early adopters.
- jpindar 8y ago
  >The problem is today's third-party oriented cloud that assumes that all device-to-device communication requires a third-party intermediary Phillips Hue products don't. (There is a cloud, but it's entirely optional).
biztos 8y ago
I don't want a lot of those things, but I really want a couple of them in a different form than currently available: - Smart driving (sun|eye)glasses. - Smart plant waterers for when I'm out of town. - Something that does what Apple Watch does without displacing my real watch. It seems I'm unlikely to see the second two -- AFAICT plant watering is stuck in DIY mode, and it looks like the Apple Watch business is booming so everybody will pile onto that design. But I could imagine smart driving glasses actually happening, and I think the road from "neat tool" to "annoying but required car UI" would be plenty long.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  For driving, I'd rather have a HUD on the dashboard, but the best still seem to be tiny, expensive, and underwhelming.
  - jumelles 8y ago
    The best solution I've seen is a dashboard display with integrated maps, info, etc. BMW does this.
    - crooked-v 8y ago
      It's not really the same, though, because a well-made HUD gives you infinite focal depth, so you're not shifting focus with it vs the road.
      - drjasonharrison 8y ago
        You're still shifting attentional focus. Which has a big impact.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jfim 8y ago
  > Smart plant waterers for when I'm out of town. A low tech way to do it is to use an upside down water bottle with a small hole in the cap. You can also buy spike shaped things that screw into the cap thread and are a little bit more stable.
Karunamon 8y ago
>I just don't resonate with the IOT/Smart devices. Try not to let some of the stupid dead-ends by a new class of tech kill off the whole concept for you. Humans have this great ability to come up with a new nail and suddenly everything needs to be a hammer. Example; you called out Google Glass. A first gen, pretty hokey bit of hardware that never really went anywhere. Take Google out of the picture for a bit and think of the general concept: It's a HUD. It's AR. Poorly implemented, but you can see kind of what they were going for. There's a lot of value down that road! Both economically and in the bettering humanity senses. Use a bit of imagination :) >I honestly am satisfied without smart things in life. I guarantee you the same thing was said by someone about cars, computers, and the internet. You speak for you, so you're automatically right, but you might be surprised as to how this stuff improves your life once the kinks start getting worked out and we're a couple generations head.
brian_herman__ 8y ago
Nope you are not the only one.
iends 8y ago
As a runner, I used to pop on a garmin gps device and go for runs to help measure my training. Some days I would measure my heart rate with a chest strap to help my training. Apple watch, while generally not as good, it is good enough, and is something I can just wear all the time and provides the same functionality. It also has a lot of extra features like unlocking your computer without typing a password, allowing you to respond to text messages without getting out of the shower, etc. It really does provide a lot of value. Allowing you to ping your phone is also incredible when your toddler likes to grab things and puts them in random places.
- blang 8y ago
  I'm glad you have the option and whatever keeps you running is a good thing, but I love exercising with as little as possible. It gives me a good time to truly unplug and be alone with my thoughts, I also think it lets my body set the pace.
  - singingboyo 8y ago
    Anecdotally, smartwatches are quite unobtrusive and pretty quickly reach 'just there' if you wear one the time. Mine is much closer to a keyring that you pull out as needed than a smartphone that comes out all the time, certainly closer than I'd expected. Of course, the other part may be that as with a normal watch, you tend to glance for a second and be done with it for a while.
  - iends 8y ago
    Running with nothing is great except if you want to make data driven decisions to optimize your training. Even basic speed work requires a timer and a track. (Or just a smartwatch).
    - core-questions 8y ago
      This is overkill for 99.999% of people who aren't at the top tier of competitive running where it makes a difference. For the rest of us, just pushing a bit harder and a bit longer will have all the effect of whatever you would have done with all this data, for far less cost and effort.
andyidsinga 8y ago
> what happens when Focal goes bankrupt... I'm not being flip when I say : the same thing that happens when other companies go bankrupt. They're products may or may not work anymore, may or may not be serviceable anymore, may decline in value to zero (or not), returns for defects not possible and so on... Different people - early vs late adopters - will have different tolerances for these things. > satisfied without smart things in life Does your home have a thermostat? Does your car have an engine control system, automatic heating and cooling system? Does your lawn-mower have a mechanical throttle governor? I am being a little flip in this last part - obviously you're not defining those as "smart things" but talking more about the modern "internet of shit" definition ..but my point is "smart things" today are different from what they were in years past and will certainly be different tomorrow.. :)
- taneq 8y ago
  > Does your home have a thermostat? Does your car have an engine control system, automatic heating and cooling system? Does your lawn-mower have a mechanical throttle governor? Does your nearly-new thermostat suddenly stop working when Nest cancels the product line? Does your 5-year-old car suddenly become scrap because the manufacturer pushes a bad OTA update? Does your lawn-mower brick itself because someone let a DNS lease lapse? Does your smartwatch stop working one day because the manufacturer was acquired by another company? There's a ridiculous amount of stuff these days which is deeply coupled with ephemeral online services when it has no need or right to be.
nine_k 8y ago
As somebody here on HN once said, internet of things is not going to happen until a local network of things happens. I do want smarter things. But I don't want them to depend on anything outside. They should be entirely under my control, tightly isolated from the big public internet and the company that produced them alike.

quirkot 8y ago

It takes a lot of detritus to fertilize the growth of good things

bhauer 8y ago

Maybe. But let's frame it differently. I want many of these things, but I want them to work on my own virtual private network—communicating exclusively with my other devices and only communicating off-network according to clear and obvious needs for external data (e.g., weather). The problem is today's third-party oriented cloud that assumes that all device-to-device communication requires a third-party intermediary. In an alternate timeline, an encrypted virtual private network shared by all devices would allow peer-to-peer on-network inter-device communication without a third-party eavesdropping. All too facile is the argument that a third-party cloud is required in order to handle the processing demands. This ignores the fact that it's relatively easy to have a personal "compute" node (it would be just a computer like any other after all) that you could run on your own private network (or even lease one from a data center). So yes, I want smart door locks, smart assistants, and all of these "Electric Dreams" gadgets. But I want them to serve me and not a third-party. In some of these spaces, there are viable options, but I want more companies to explore the opportunity of making money selling privacy-enabling omnipresent personal applications.

sesqu 8y ago
The cloud isn't there to meet processing needs, it's there to meet tech support needs. Everyone gets handed the same keys, so if something's wonky you just get a replacement. No debugging and repair costs, no standards adherence requirements, no getting shoved out of the software layer by a competitor - and the price is just the uncool segment of the early adopters.
jpindar 8y ago
>The problem is today's third-party oriented cloud that assumes that all device-to-device communication requires a third-party intermediary Phillips Hue products don't. (There is a cloud, but it's entirely optional).

biztos 8y ago

I don't want a lot of those things, but I really want a couple of them in a different form than currently available: - Smart driving (sun|eye)glasses. - Smart plant waterers for when I'm out of town. - Something that does what Apple Watch does without displacing my real watch. It seems I'm unlikely to see the second two -- AFAICT plant watering is stuck in DIY mode, and it looks like the Apple Watch business is booming so everybody will pile onto that design. But I could imagine smart driving glasses actually happening, and I think the road from "neat tool" to "annoying but required car UI" would be plenty long.

crooked-v 8y ago
For driving, I'd rather have a HUD on the dashboard, but the best still seem to be tiny, expensive, and underwhelming.
- jumelles 8y ago
  The best solution I've seen is a dashboard display with integrated maps, info, etc. BMW does this.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    It's not really the same, though, because a well-made HUD gives you infinite focal depth, so you're not shifting focus with it vs the road.
    - drjasonharrison 8y ago
      You're still shifting attentional focus. Which has a big impact.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jfim 8y ago
> Smart plant waterers for when I'm out of town. A low tech way to do it is to use an upside down water bottle with a small hole in the cap. You can also buy spike shaped things that screw into the cap thread and are a little bit more stable.

Karunamon 8y ago

>I just don't resonate with the IOT/Smart devices. Try not to let some of the stupid dead-ends by a new class of tech kill off the whole concept for you. Humans have this great ability to come up with a new nail and suddenly everything needs to be a hammer. Example; you called out Google Glass. A first gen, pretty hokey bit of hardware that never really went anywhere. Take Google out of the picture for a bit and think of the general concept: It's a HUD. It's AR. Poorly implemented, but you can see kind of what they were going for. There's a lot of value down that road! Both economically and in the bettering humanity senses. Use a bit of imagination :) >I honestly am satisfied without smart things in life. I guarantee you the same thing was said by someone about cars, computers, and the internet. You speak for you, so you're automatically right, but you might be surprised as to how this stuff improves your life once the kinks start getting worked out and we're a couple generations head.

brian_herman__ 8y ago

Nope you are not the only one.

iends 8y ago

As a runner, I used to pop on a garmin gps device and go for runs to help measure my training. Some days I would measure my heart rate with a chest strap to help my training. Apple watch, while generally not as good, it is good enough, and is something I can just wear all the time and provides the same functionality. It also has a lot of extra features like unlocking your computer without typing a password, allowing you to respond to text messages without getting out of the shower, etc. It really does provide a lot of value. Allowing you to ping your phone is also incredible when your toddler likes to grab things and puts them in random places.

blang 8y ago
I'm glad you have the option and whatever keeps you running is a good thing, but I love exercising with as little as possible. It gives me a good time to truly unplug and be alone with my thoughts, I also think it lets my body set the pace.
- singingboyo 8y ago
  Anecdotally, smartwatches are quite unobtrusive and pretty quickly reach 'just there' if you wear one the time. Mine is much closer to a keyring that you pull out as needed than a smartphone that comes out all the time, certainly closer than I'd expected. Of course, the other part may be that as with a normal watch, you tend to glance for a second and be done with it for a while.
- iends 8y ago
  Running with nothing is great except if you want to make data driven decisions to optimize your training. Even basic speed work requires a timer and a track. (Or just a smartwatch).
  - core-questions 8y ago
    This is overkill for 99.999% of people who aren't at the top tier of competitive running where it makes a difference. For the rest of us, just pushing a bit harder and a bit longer will have all the effect of whatever you would have done with all this data, for far less cost and effort.

andyidsinga 8y ago

> what happens when Focal goes bankrupt... I'm not being flip when I say : the same thing that happens when other companies go bankrupt. They're products may or may not work anymore, may or may not be serviceable anymore, may decline in value to zero (or not), returns for defects not possible and so on... Different people - early vs late adopters - will have different tolerances for these things. > satisfied without smart things in life Does your home have a thermostat? Does your car have an engine control system, automatic heating and cooling system? Does your lawn-mower have a mechanical throttle governor? I am being a little flip in this last part - obviously you're not defining those as "smart things" but talking more about the modern "internet of shit" definition ..but my point is "smart things" today are different from what they were in years past and will certainly be different tomorrow.. :)

taneq 8y ago
> Does your home have a thermostat? Does your car have an engine control system, automatic heating and cooling system? Does your lawn-mower have a mechanical throttle governor? Does your nearly-new thermostat suddenly stop working when Nest cancels the product line? Does your 5-year-old car suddenly become scrap because the manufacturer pushes a bad OTA update? Does your lawn-mower brick itself because someone let a DNS lease lapse? Does your smartwatch stop working one day because the manufacturer was acquired by another company? There's a ridiculous amount of stuff these days which is deeply coupled with ephemeral online services when it has no need or right to be.

nine_k 8y ago

As somebody here on HN once said, internet of things is not going to happen until a local network of things happens. I do want smarter things. But I don't want them to depend on anything outside. They should be entirely under my control, tightly isolated from the big public internet and the company that produced them alike.