tech never works for long
(midwest.social)
not_IO
Programmer HumorHomeassistant is cool though. Also most of my stuff would work without it, they just works better with it.
None of the devices I bought for it talk to the internet! Home assistant can control and even update the Shellys completely over the local network.
As it should be
Remember Home assistant =/= smart home nonsense
I dont need some AI assistant to automatically manage my thermostat, I just want to be able to control it all using my own local server.
Home Assistant is a free and open source alternative for home automation. Don't have to completely give up the future.
Tech here. Lots of smart home crap. All zigbee on Home Assistant
I guess the lock picking lawyer has something to say about those mechanical locks.
Yeah, he'd probably say "at least they aren't smart locks"
To be fair, that dude makes it look easy. Picking a quality lock you aren't familiar with is pretty tough.
I always loved the saying, "The 'S' in IoT stands for security."
This isn't humor, and most tech people have some of this shit. 3/10.
Well I have smart devices and a thermostat. Thermostat is awesome but local control only through home assistant and rest of the house is all zwave and ZigBee no internet required.
swap out those mechanicals windows for mechanical linux and then we'll talk
I use Arch BTW.
Like just huge arches instead of windows or even doors, Arch is all you need.
I thought Emacs is all you need?
I never thought about how a physical arch relates to physical windows. Interesting.
I am more of a hydraulic Linux person myself
You must feel compressed.
Likely not, the whole point of hydraulics is that the fluid is non-compressible!
That's pneumatic Linux, though.
OK here's one why do we assume someone working in tech is knowledgeable in tech. Its a job. I have met many network maintainers for companies who seem like they know nothing. I have met many support staff who don't know their bass from a home in the ground. Just because by outwork in the field does not mean you are an expert on everything or even the thing you do. And this doesn't just apply to tech
Oh no, google / alwxa should be shot in the face, don't mistake that.
And never trust any "smart" appliance that doesn't work without internet access.
I agree when it comes to most "smart" home devices. However, I wired an ESP32 to my heat pump for remote control and automation, which has been absolutely fantastic. Also, I use a ton of ZigBee and zwave, since those are not "smart" by themselves and are local-only.
It's the cloud bullshit that always breaks and spies on users that I hate.
Home Assistant šÆ
Yeah home built and programmed smart devices are the way to go. I'm addicted to the rush of making dumb appliances automated.
The smartphone controlled aircon for $150 extra? Slap a $4 Esp in that. $400 to get sleek control of your central heating? $4 Esp. Turn on the ice maker on the commute home? You guessed it, $4 Esp.
Where the hell are you getting 4 ESP. And no its not good for everything. I buy zwave switches and water sensors.
$2 is a normal price on Aliexpress for an Esp32 C3 super mini, $4 is almost expensive
Good, solid state tech should last basically forever unless something wild happens.
In Spanish, we have a saying: "En casa de herrero, cuchara de palo".
A rough translation would be "in the blacksmith's house you'll find wood spoons". It's not a new thing, it's been like that since ancient times.
"The cobbler's kids have no shoes" in English.
But this guy is saying he doesn't trust technology not to spy or be vulnerable.
Is that the same thing? The impression I get is that OPs post is about the IT worker actively distrusting smart tech. While I assume your example is more that the blacksmith doesn't bother with making metal spoons for himself and using what ever he had already, which would be more comparable to a network engineer still using the ISPs shitty router.
We use it when, for any reason, a person who could easily use something related to their field, doesn't use it. What it means is that if someone who could be using something because they know how it works, isn't using it, there must be a reason.
Ahh, the impression I got is that one makes it sound like they are avoiding it because they can't be bothered to while the other actively avoids it because its bad.
I think that is the most "correct" interpretation of it. Maybe they're saying that it's been bent over time.
Wooden spoons are better for cooking with cast iron pots and pans, which a blacksmith, being knowledgeable about metal, would be vey aware of.
Just as the it person is way more aware of the pitfalls of smart tech than your average person
I thought it was just teflon that is too weak to handle metal tools.
Sure but what us the downside? It us a huge field with everything from local to requiring the cloud. You can't blanket it all together.
That ks for sharing this, this is fascinating.
Maybe the underlying rule is: the more you know about something, the more you are aware of its flaws, making the alternatives you know less about more attractive?
The dev I know whoās most into home automation using cloud services has also fallen the hardest for āAI will build all systems and nothing will go wrong with thatā. Honestly, I should become a cyber criminal in this climate.
"no smart home crap" except smart home "crap" can be quite secure today... but please go on.
(80% of my smart home "crap" runs firmware I compiled, communicates only with a local server and have no internet access)
I already do that crap all day at work. The last thing I want to do is do it to my coffee maker or something.
That's exactly what I want to do! I saw a post some years ago, someone had connected a ~ESP32 (or the like) to their coffee maker, connected it to the WiFi and made an app to remote controll it.
I want to do something similar. Prepp the coffee in the evening, set a time for the machine to start and then have fresh coffee when I wake up. I realise that I could just do all of this and just press the button when I wake up instead, but the idea of this makes me happy.
i've worked with highly competent programmes and sysadmins whose houses are entirely connected. they do exist.
I work in IT, been a software developer for decades.
I have a full on smart home, all the smart tech you can imagine. All connected and running locally via home assistant.
Smart tech isn't bad, shitty tech is.
"Why are you sitting in the dark?"
"AWS is down š"
Same for me. I don't really like to expose my home and I don't understand how people are so eager to plug in shady WiFi stuff into their network. I've got one "smart" device with WiFi connectivity I've allowed to connect to my network, but I've disallowed going online and I've put it into a different vlan.
Friend of mine: "let's set up a camera in our bedroom to check on on the dog when we're away."
The one thing I will never use a smart device for is my door lock. I don't understand how tech literate people really trust that.
I was considering a smart lock for my (armored) front door, but just because there are some locks manufactured here in Italy that can be set to be controlled by external contacts.
Which means I could use and ESP or similar with esphome, now they also support wired, ethernet ones.
That's way more secure than the shitty lock I have now, I've seen videos of people picking that with a decoder device in 30 seconds.
Locks are not secure anyway and even if it is the most secure lock ever built may I present a window. Most break ins at least when I did home alarms where smash window right beside door and unlock it.
Iām gonna guess that you put a decent amount of time into figuring out a good set of smart home products and maybe even put some effort into looking up which products play well together and what configurations are ideal.
And thatās great if you enjoy shopping for, setting up and maintaining all those toys. But we all know there is too much shitty tech out there to think that itās a good idea to grab a bunch of smart home stuff at Best Buy one afternoon and just plug it all in and call it good.
I think the thing is, folks in tech are less likely to be cool with, for example, exposing their door locks on the internet without doing a decent amount of due diligence. You have to want it enough to put in the work to make sure you have something that you can feel is secure, smooth operating and meets your personal privacy expectations. It kinda has to be a minor hobby. Which is cool if you happen to enjoy it or get enough joy from the result to make it worthwhile.
For me, I have enough hobbies and pastimes. Iāll put in the effort when the payoff is high, like for a home media server. But thereās no way in hell Iām signing up for future chores and headaches just so I can control my window curtains from my phone.
Nope ZigBee or zwave cool. Not that hard. Next work offline with home assistant OK.
The key thing is you have exclusive root access to all of it and spend time on admin.
as a hardware iot security person, that is possible but too much attack surface to manage
ZigBee, Z-wave and Thread have virtually 0 attack surface from an IoT perspective, and even then what are they gonna do, do radio hacking to turn off and on my lights? It's not like they can be used in a botnet.
Locks is a bit more risky as an endeavor, but again, it's probably easier to pick the lock than hack it... Actually with the quality of many smart locks, smashing them is easier still.
Smart TVs are way more problematic devices for example, as soon as they stop receiving updates, you have a bunch of high-speed internet connected devices with unresolved exploits just sitting there waiting for the right chance.
Hear hear.
I feel the meme in the post is created by someone pseudoilliterate in technology. But I can guaranty you they have a smart TV connected to the same WiFi as all their computers and maybe a nas or home server.
Setting up zwave or ZigBee networks is not an attack vector.
Ditto. A smart home that can operate even if the Internet is offline was one of my core goals setting this up. And save for a few exceptions, I accomplished it. It's so jarring now to go on vacation and not have all this automation.
This is exactly the line of thought I think people aren't seeing as the gap. Y'all are too comfortable expecting the internet to be on 24/7. Or the power, for that matter.
If Cloudflare shits the bed again, are your lights stuck on or off? Can you not turn up the heat? We're in a period of history where things will bet worse, not better. The last thing I want is "error: can't connect to internet" being why you can't turn the things you can touch in your house on and off. I get it if you've managed to do the work to have it all locally hosted, but just as-is seems like a bet against one's self.
When the power is off chances are that whatever is integrated is degraded anyway. And for actuators just choose some that fail gracefully and allow manual handling. For the rest use HA as much as possible, favour local integrations with no cloud dependenciesā¦ and when there are dependencies than make sure the override is available physically (looking at my vaillant HP). Then stack UPSes or even better home grade batteries (my next endeavour) and have backup connectivity to internet and youāre a peachy as can be.
My house too. I don't work in IT, I just can't afford any of this.
https://biggaybunny.tumblr.com/post/166787080920/tech-enthusiasts-everything-in-my-house-is-wired
Pretty much anyone who speaks of "tech" tends to have no idea of that they are talking about. Same applies to people using "cyber" as if it was a real word outside of Science Fiction, and a very niche niche branch of engineering that doesn't necessarily deal with computers.
I don't think it just about tech and cyber, "medical/military grade" is very close on how it's used and how little people understand what they actually mean.. A person working close to a military would avoid many "military grade" products and so on.
A person working close to a military would avoid many āmilitary gradeā products and so on.
It's as with anything manufactured for a public institution. It won a bid by being the cheapest (and/or bribing an official). Once you know that, you'll look at the world with different eyes.
Grade refers to the minimum specifications tho, they don't even describe the whole product
To add on to your comment, and I've said this before, but specifically for military equipment, the terminology is military spec/milspec. The stuff labeled "military grade" is 100% bs.
Military spec can mean a ton of different things depending on the equipment. For example, for electronics it often means being in a blast, water and dust proof enclosure, and capable of withstanding rather impressive amounts of outside interference and temperatures.
This argument about lowest bidders everyone keeps coming back to is true, but the end product will still be of considerably higher quality than what you're going to get as a normal consumer.
Because this equipment is often under tight import/export restrictions, getting your hands on it isn't easy. Older gear can be bought at surplus stores, and maybe some things are easier to get in the US, but in general the good stuff won't be for sale until it no longer hold value to the military that bought it.
/rant
I have smart home things but they're all locally driven by HomeAssistant.
I want the convenience of the automations without ever having to worry that some corporation can or will take the functionality from me.
I work in cyber security and I have lots of smart home things. I also assume my networkās being compromised at all times and keep anything really important on paper in a safe.
Mechanical locks are so easy to break into with minimal tools. My friend that sells security doors uses digital locks for that reason.
