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I think any software engineer with some industry experience will absolutely NOT install a device in his home that receives automatic updates over the internet a

by yholio 5y ago

I think any software engineer with some industry experience will absolutely NOT install a device in his home that receives automatic updates over the internet and is critical for performing some task or using some basic functionality of the house; especially one that has a well known, highly stable and ergonomic traditional mode of interaction - controlling the lights and water, opening the windows and shades etc. We know from experience that a nebulous interface that can change without notice and provides no clear contract is a asking for trouble and will break your house "build", so to speak, or worse, it will bork at the worst possible moment, when you have "clients" over. In the early years of home electricity, there was a much higher chance of getting electrocuted or burning to a crisp, outlets had no grounding, insulation and conductors were of a bad quality etc. Similarly, the whole field of home automation is in its infancy, in a few decades most major mistakes will be made and early adopters will work out the kinks out of the technology (and find out why it's a bad idea to have an internet connected microphone listening in your home at all times).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
asxd 5y ago
Honestly. I may have just not heard the right sales pitch, but at the moment a smart home is a clear case of "if it's not broken don't fix it." I'd like my software issues to be minimal after 5pm! Like you allude to, I'm sure there will come a time where the effort is appropriately rewarded for a grump like me, and I'm grateful there are folks out there working and struggling to improve this.
- Tyr42 5y ago
  Blinds which close themselves after sundown is nice. Motion controlled lights for the stairs are also nice, especially if you don't always have your hands free. But I'm enjoying messing with Home Assistant anyways, so maybe that's not enough to convince you (and that's okay!). I did need to two two different zigbee integrations, but now it's working and I can buy the ikea stuff and I know it will work.
martythemaniak 5y ago
> I think any software engineer with some industry experience will absolutely NOT install a device ... I'm curious what goes on in one's mind when you write something like that. Surely you're aware that people other than yourself exist? People with their own thoughts and lives that are actually different from yours? Or you genuinely believe that there are no people out there who are smarter, more experienced and wiser than you that still install smart bulbs or whatever.
- tpush 5y ago
  Stating something that's painfully, obviously not the case with the confidence of someone who thinks his opinions define reality is somewhat of a staple of HN.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  Beginning with "I think" is a strong indication that they understand alternatives such as "other people think" and therefore "other people exist". Someone unaware of such a thing would leave that part out, because why specify "I do X" if there is nobody else? (Indeed, why write a comment at all if one believes nobody else exists?)
xvector 5y ago
Cybersecurity engineer here, have worked for FAANG, my entire home is automated to the teeth - every single little thing - and I'm not concerned about privacy or security because I've chosen my products and network firewall rules carefully.
- milkytron 5y ago
  > I've chosen my products and network firewall rules carefully. This seems like a lot of effort, and I've tried to do it. But even for some products that claim to never phone home, or transmit data outside the network, sales people have lied to me and then I have to go through the hassle of returning the product. To me, it seems like there is either 0 effort for 0 smart home automation, or lots of effort for any smart home automation, privacy being equal.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  >I'm not concerned about privacy or security because I've chosen my products and network firewall rules carefully. it sounds like you very much are concerned about privacy and security
omni 5y ago
Plenty of software engineers know how to put devices on their home network without granting them access to the internet. I have some wi-fi bulbs that I do this for, and I can control them over the network internally.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  The internet is only half the problem. The few iot devices I have all hang out on a separate vlan.
  - dicknuckle 5y ago
    It's pretty hard for my IoT devices to spy on me with no internet access on a separate VLAN.
driverdan 5y ago
> I think any software engineer with some industry experience will absolutely NOT install a device in his home that receives automatic updates Have you ever talked to another SE? The majority I know don't even care about privacy and have all kinds of invasive auto update devices in their homes (Alexa, Nest, Ring, etc).
- vultour 5y ago
  Same, most of the tech people I know have no aversion to these things, plus Chrome, Facebook, stock Android or other Google products. It makes me sad that the people who should be pushing against the death of the free internet don't give a shit. At this point I've accepted that Firefox will be going away at some point in the not-so-distant future, but somebody will have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
  - milkytron 5y ago
    > Same, most of the tech people I know have no aversion to these things, plus Chrome, Facebook, stock Android or other Google products. I have an aversion to all of the above. But when it comes to Android, it feels like the options are very limited. Either use iOS and only be able to use the device the way they want you to (for a steep price), or use Android and be tracked like crazy. As for Google products, YouTube is lacking competitors, I use YouTube vanced and NewPipe, but those aren't available everywhere. It seems like the options really suck right now if you want to participate in the modern world with even some of the comforts that are available.
    - pimeys 5y ago
      With Android you can also get much better privacy by trumping most of the Google services, using Firefox with Ublock Origin and a system such as Blokada for system level adblocker. With Android if you know what you are doing, you can stop a lot of it much better compared to iOS. With Apple the defaults are better than Android but many of the options for blocking trackers are not available.
BeetleB 5y ago
> controlling the lights and water, opening the windows and shades etc. Pretty much all smart devices I own work just like their dumb counterparts if you need them to: Switches, bulbs, etc. I think this fear is overblown. There's another comment about Hue lights not coming on for 10 minutes because of a bridge update. This makes no sense to me. If you disconnect the actual power to the bulb (via a switch) and then restore the power, they'll turn on at full brightness.
andrewaylett 5y ago
I'm a software engineer, 17 years of experience. If it talks IP, it had better receive updates over the Internet automatically. If the Internet connection dies, or the network goes down, the house (largely) reverts to dumb mode and we're no worse off than if we'd not installed any of the smarts. The Hue switches will still control their respective lights as long as there's power to the hub, and the Honeywell controller similarly only requires power for its smarts.

by yholio 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

asxd 5y ago

Honestly. I may have just not heard the right sales pitch, but at the moment a smart home is a clear case of "if it's not broken don't fix it." I'd like my software issues to be minimal after 5pm! Like you allude to, I'm sure there will come a time where the effort is appropriately rewarded for a grump like me, and I'm grateful there are folks out there working and struggling to improve this.

Tyr42 5y ago
Blinds which close themselves after sundown is nice. Motion controlled lights for the stairs are also nice, especially if you don't always have your hands free. But I'm enjoying messing with Home Assistant anyways, so maybe that's not enough to convince you (and that's okay!). I did need to two two different zigbee integrations, but now it's working and I can buy the ikea stuff and I know it will work.

martythemaniak 5y ago

> I think any software engineer with some industry experience will absolutely NOT install a device ... I'm curious what goes on in one's mind when you write something like that. Surely you're aware that people other than yourself exist? People with their own thoughts and lives that are actually different from yours? Or you genuinely believe that there are no people out there who are smarter, more experienced and wiser than you that still install smart bulbs or whatever.

tpush 5y ago
Stating something that's painfully, obviously not the case with the confidence of someone who thinks his opinions define reality is somewhat of a staple of HN.
jodrellblank 5y ago
Beginning with "I think" is a strong indication that they understand alternatives such as "other people think" and therefore "other people exist". Someone unaware of such a thing would leave that part out, because why specify "I do X" if there is nobody else? (Indeed, why write a comment at all if one believes nobody else exists?)

xvector 5y ago

Cybersecurity engineer here, have worked for FAANG, my entire home is automated to the teeth - every single little thing - and I'm not concerned about privacy or security because I've chosen my products and network firewall rules carefully.

milkytron 5y ago
> I've chosen my products and network firewall rules carefully. This seems like a lot of effort, and I've tried to do it. But even for some products that claim to never phone home, or transmit data outside the network, sales people have lied to me and then I have to go through the hassle of returning the product. To me, it seems like there is either 0 effort for 0 smart home automation, or lots of effort for any smart home automation, privacy being equal.
_dain_ 5y ago
>I'm not concerned about privacy or security because I've chosen my products and network firewall rules carefully. it sounds like you very much are concerned about privacy and security

omni 5y ago

Plenty of software engineers know how to put devices on their home network without granting them access to the internet. I have some wi-fi bulbs that I do this for, and I can control them over the network internally.

dehrmann 5y ago
The internet is only half the problem. The few iot devices I have all hang out on a separate vlan.
- dicknuckle 5y ago
  It's pretty hard for my IoT devices to spy on me with no internet access on a separate VLAN.

driverdan 5y ago

> I think any software engineer with some industry experience will absolutely NOT install a device in his home that receives automatic updates Have you ever talked to another SE? The majority I know don't even care about privacy and have all kinds of invasive auto update devices in their homes (Alexa, Nest, Ring, etc).

vultour 5y ago
Same, most of the tech people I know have no aversion to these things, plus Chrome, Facebook, stock Android or other Google products. It makes me sad that the people who should be pushing against the death of the free internet don't give a shit. At this point I've accepted that Firefox will be going away at some point in the not-so-distant future, but somebody will have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
- milkytron 5y ago
  > Same, most of the tech people I know have no aversion to these things, plus Chrome, Facebook, stock Android or other Google products. I have an aversion to all of the above. But when it comes to Android, it feels like the options are very limited. Either use iOS and only be able to use the device the way they want you to (for a steep price), or use Android and be tracked like crazy. As for Google products, YouTube is lacking competitors, I use YouTube vanced and NewPipe, but those aren't available everywhere. It seems like the options really suck right now if you want to participate in the modern world with even some of the comforts that are available.
  - pimeys 5y ago
    With Android you can also get much better privacy by trumping most of the Google services, using Firefox with Ublock Origin and a system such as Blokada for system level adblocker. With Android if you know what you are doing, you can stop a lot of it much better compared to iOS. With Apple the defaults are better than Android but many of the options for blocking trackers are not available.

BeetleB 5y ago

> controlling the lights and water, opening the windows and shades etc. Pretty much all smart devices I own work just like their dumb counterparts if you need them to: Switches, bulbs, etc. I think this fear is overblown. There's another comment about Hue lights not coming on for 10 minutes because of a bridge update. This makes no sense to me. If you disconnect the actual power to the bulb (via a switch) and then restore the power, they'll turn on at full brightness.

andrewaylett 5y ago

I'm a software engineer, 17 years of experience. If it talks IP, it had better receive updates over the Internet automatically. If the Internet connection dies, or the network goes down, the house (largely) reverts to dumb mode and we're no worse off than if we'd not installed any of the smarts. The Hue switches will still control their respective lights as long as there's power to the hub, and the Honeywell controller similarly only requires power for its smarts.