Programmer Humor

I will trust people using their IT experience as a reason to avoid something, though

It seems like half of the people claiming they work in this field actually struggle more than the average person

it will be bitrotten within 5 years and dead with 10

Worse, it could get bought out and converted to a Meta, Google, or Amazon product.

It should be required that companies either maintain their services perpetual or release the software with a permissive license to allow users to maintain their own service.

I use Arch BTW.

Like just huge arches instead of windows or even doors, Arch is all you need.

I am more of a hydraulic Linux person myself

Microsoft Windows

Electric windows exist. I guess these days they can also be controlled wirelessly.

How about bio-windows?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_computing

none of the "smart" devices are actually smart. in my experience they're really fucking dumb

i once bought a "smart" electric kettle because i thought it'd be nice to boil my water to exact temperatures for my teas. it had a little button on a little screen to turn it on

and of course the screen stopped working, and that was the singular thing that broke. if the kettle had a physical switch i'd have only lost the ability to boil to exact temperatures instead of becoming fully useless

a similar thing happened with my Quest VR. a singular smart thing broke (the proximity sensor) and it bricked the whole thing (the proximity sensor deteced, well, proximity, and input from that decided if the screen inside was turned on. when it broke, the screen never turned on. the proximity sensor could be disabled - but only from within the settings menu that required the screen to be on in the first place. there was no other way to disable it, and that setting reset every full shut down)

never had that happen with my non smart devices, never had a non-critical feature failing bricked my "dumb" machine. oh the proper graphics card melted in my laptop? whatever i just disabled it, it might not perform as it used to but it's still functional and perfect for just browsing the internet or watching youtube

my dumb printer never just stopped for no reason, my dumb kettle with a physical toggle has been working perfectly for 3 years now, my dumb light bulbs only stop working when they've reached the end of their ability to make light, my dumb devices never refuse to work even when what they can do isn't perfect anymore

i was already annoyed by so many devices being labelled as "smart" when they're not, and now they're also adding "AI" to those things... i hate it here

As they should be.

You can tell it’s an IT guy’s home assistant if there’s no hardware that requires someone else’s cloud.

My home automation philosophy is that everything in the house should work with or without internet. It’s going well so far.

Boom. Exactly. Self hosted solutions are amazing. We have choices about this stuff.

Home Assistant and local, cloud-free protocols and devices are great

My trick with family is I tell them "Well, I can do it, try harder." It's my little way to show them how much I appreciate how often they told me I was mentally handicapped growing up.

I just started writing up invoices for my side hustle and quoting prices to fix their shit.

I do that for a day job, so I have no interest in working more for free. Putting a price tag on the help definitely helped cut down how much bullshit they tried to get me to do

Tell them "Only if you help me" and make them sit and watch and learn. If they stop watching/helping, so do you. They will then learn how time consuming it can be and it's not just one magic secret.

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.

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.

If you don't understand the desire then you don't have a use case. And that's ok. But that doesn't mean other people don't have a use case.

Properly set up home automation can reduce your energy usage. Track temperature throughout your house and open blinds, only direct heat/cooling to rooms that need it, etc. Sure a thermostat is programmable but it's limited by the ability to just turn on/off heat and a few temperature sensors. You can drastically expand what your thermostat can do (ie motorized blinds) and information it has access to (temperature outside, current weather, etc).

Or maybe someone is the type to have panic attacks about forgetting to turn the oven off. Having the ability to see oven status on the go is nice.

Or maybe someone has a larger house than you and the journey to the thermostat is more arduous than yours. Or the journey to the dishwasher or clothes dryer to see if it's done is arduous.

Or maybe someone has a disability and having quick access to various things is a huge time saver.

Maybe someone has a sensory issue and loud buzzing from a dryer finishing is problematic, so they want to disable the "finished" alert from the device and just receive a notification on their phone.

but if youre gathering that much data and making decisions with it, then from the OP "no internet connected thermostats" is a must. None of your smart home stuff should be able to phone home. Basically the openWRT argument but also for smart home. Use zigbee or zwave so devices can't just directly phone home and must simply connect through a hub (that you should control).

tl;dr - plenty of reasons to want these things, they just may not apply to you.

I hacked this guy's fish tanks, I reprogrammed the lights and I'm currently training his fish through EMDR to memorize all his passwords. In about six months time I'll break into his house, interrogate his fish and clean out all his bank accounts.

Dude's never heard of fishing attacks.