3 ms·

I only use one assistant but yes, being able to send a command to do a bunch of things at once is pretty awesome. Some things in this genre that I do on a daily

I only use one assistant but yes, being able to send a command to do a bunch of things at once is pretty awesome. Some things in this genre that I do on a daily basis: "turn the outside lights on" -- I have two different structures with lights hung around the underside of the roofs. It's very dark where I live. Walking between buildings at night is really easy now because everything is illuminated between both places without installing a really long three-way switch. "turn the outside lights off" -- Maybe I'm already outside looking at the sky and want a little more clarity. Now I don't need to go find all the light switches for everything that is on. "turn all the lights off" -- I'm laying in bed, about to go to sleep. Did I forget to turn anything off? "time for bed" -- It's time to dim the lights and start cooling my brain down. This sets the scene nicely from wherever I happen to be. -- I don't trust it for things like locks/garage door openers/etc. Compromising my network shouldn't compromise my physical security.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Having it on your lock allows you to ask Siri if you locked your door or if your door is ajar. No more going down in the middle of the night to check to see if you remembered to close and lock your door, you just go down and look. Also, auto lock acted 10 minutes is nice. Not to mention proximity unlocks, but I see how people are paranoid.
- imoverclocked 3y ago
  The paranoia for me is less from the Siri/Apple ecosystem side and more from the 3rd party lock ecosystem. It's really hard for me to trust a company that has made physical locks for their entire existence to, all of a sudden, get software and networking security right. This is especially when their product reaches out to some cloud service, by default, to be able to remote-unlock. Then it comes down to wifi security over the long-haul. If I do things properly, I need several different networks because I have old-hardware (eg: a solar inverter) that only supports up to a certain generation of WEP or WPA and will likely never get updates. However, good luck getting everything happy with multiple networks or any kind of partitioning. I think the average consumer case is a simple, all-encompassing network with everything on it and that's what many ecosystems assume. Either that or they assume that everything will talk through a cloud-provided endpoint... or both in some cases! This all feels like the problem hasn't really been solved yet so I'll stick with physical-only locks for the time being. All of that being said, it sure would be nice to be able to check on the door+lock status from my Home app.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Again, Apple/Siri is just a front end, Yale does the actual work. You can take some features and skip some, so it’s not an all or nothing thing. I’m thinking about changing to a Level+ lock because they support Apple key, which allows you to unlock on tap contact with your watch or phone. The biggest features for me would be auto lock and some sort of quick unlock, which could be based on NFC rather than Wi-Fi.
    - imoverclocked 3y ago
      > Again, Apple/Siri is just a front end Sort-of. It's also a remote-capable front-end. I can turn my lights on/off from an arbitrary internet connection through it which means it's also a cloud service of some kind. This is the issue though and it's the same issue we have with smart-displays/TVs. There are way too many ways to accomplish the same thing. You want to turn volume up with an AppleTV connected to a display? Maybe it works through the volume on the Apple remote, maybe it doesn't. Do you have a remote control for the TV? That should work except you have HomePods or a soundbar or ... something. Bringing it back to smart locks: Do the locks support only NFC or is NFC one of the options? If it supports WiFi, is it also calling out to its own cloud endpoint while playing nicely with these other ecosystems? Why do we have more than one mechanism to access the lock? From a purely security standpoint, each additional mechanism offers yet another weakness. From a consumer (prosumer?) standpoint, it's more options for convenience. The market will often choose convenience and we end up where we are today. I have a little smart plug/power meter that I love. It's great at what it does but there is one huge flaw: when it isn't plugged in, it shows the last status (on/off) in the home app and in the app specific to the tech. Let's just say I learned not to plug a refrigerator into it. This leads me to know that status mechanisms are definitely not fool-proof in this ecosystem. Then I consider a smart-lock and think, "nope, not for me."
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        The Level 1 lock supports Wi-Fi along with NFC. But you can disable the Wi-Fi if you want. But it is a software disable so you have to still trust the software. At least on a Yale lock, the Wi-Fi module is optional and removable. But having it in enables most of the nice features (otherwise it’s just a lock with a passcode you type in). For me, I feel like I’m gaining more security than I’m losing, so it’s still worth it.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Having it on your lock allows you to ask Siri if you locked your door or if your door is ajar. No more going down in the middle of the night to check to see if you remembered to close and lock your door, you just go down and look. Also, auto lock acted 10 minutes is nice. Not to mention proximity unlocks, but I see how people are paranoid.

imoverclocked 3y ago
The paranoia for me is less from the Siri/Apple ecosystem side and more from the 3rd party lock ecosystem. It's really hard for me to trust a company that has made physical locks for their entire existence to, all of a sudden, get software and networking security right. This is especially when their product reaches out to some cloud service, by default, to be able to remote-unlock. Then it comes down to wifi security over the long-haul. If I do things properly, I need several different networks because I have old-hardware (eg: a solar inverter) that only supports up to a certain generation of WEP or WPA and will likely never get updates. However, good luck getting everything happy with multiple networks or any kind of partitioning. I think the average consumer case is a simple, all-encompassing network with everything on it and that's what many ecosystems assume. Either that or they assume that everything will talk through a cloud-provided endpoint... or both in some cases! This all feels like the problem hasn't really been solved yet so I'll stick with physical-only locks for the time being. All of that being said, it sure would be nice to be able to check on the door+lock status from my Home app.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Again, Apple/Siri is just a front end, Yale does the actual work. You can take some features and skip some, so it’s not an all or nothing thing. I’m thinking about changing to a Level+ lock because they support Apple key, which allows you to unlock on tap contact with your watch or phone. The biggest features for me would be auto lock and some sort of quick unlock, which could be based on NFC rather than Wi-Fi.
  - imoverclocked 3y ago
    > Again, Apple/Siri is just a front end Sort-of. It's also a remote-capable front-end. I can turn my lights on/off from an arbitrary internet connection through it which means it's also a cloud service of some kind. This is the issue though and it's the same issue we have with smart-displays/TVs. There are way too many ways to accomplish the same thing. You want to turn volume up with an AppleTV connected to a display? Maybe it works through the volume on the Apple remote, maybe it doesn't. Do you have a remote control for the TV? That should work except you have HomePods or a soundbar or ... something. Bringing it back to smart locks: Do the locks support only NFC or is NFC one of the options? If it supports WiFi, is it also calling out to its own cloud endpoint while playing nicely with these other ecosystems? Why do we have more than one mechanism to access the lock? From a purely security standpoint, each additional mechanism offers yet another weakness. From a consumer (prosumer?) standpoint, it's more options for convenience. The market will often choose convenience and we end up where we are today. I have a little smart plug/power meter that I love. It's great at what it does but there is one huge flaw: when it isn't plugged in, it shows the last status (on/off) in the home app and in the app specific to the tech. Let's just say I learned not to plug a refrigerator into it. This leads me to know that status mechanisms are definitely not fool-proof in this ecosystem. Then I consider a smart-lock and think, "nope, not for me."
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      The Level 1 lock supports Wi-Fi along with NFC. But you can disable the Wi-Fi if you want. But it is a software disable so you have to still trust the software. At least on a Yale lock, the Wi-Fi module is optional and removable. But having it in enables most of the nice features (otherwise it’s just a lock with a passcode you type in). For me, I feel like I’m gaining more security than I’m losing, so it’s still worth it.