
Smart homes and vegetable peelers - lpolovets
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2018/1/4/smart-homes-and-vegetable-peelers
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tjoff
A smart home that is reliant on the cloud is dumb.

Self-hosted is the only acceptable alternative here where even the raspberry
pi has more processing power to run hundreds of homes.

A simple service to route mobile apps through the potential NAT is the only
thing the cloud should be needed for. Obviously downloading
"drivers"/configurations are a valid user case but that's part of the setup-
process.

Not saying that everyone should tinkle with a RPI but it is trivial to create
a more user friendly device. The fact that Amazon, Google, Apple etc. don't
even attempt this is just a consequence of them being hell bent on making
money from crap.

~~~
TheDong
Email that is reliant on the cloud is dumb.

A raspberry pi has more processing power than's needed to search and store
email. ... etc etc

This trope is absolute bullshit. What people want is for stuff to work and, if
stuff doesn't work, for it to be someone else's fault and/or be easy to fix.

Self-hosting fails massively at the second criterion there. Right now, if a
cellphone breaks, you can just get a new one and your contacts, messages,
apps, etc all sync back to it. Done, you're back on your feet.

If you have self-hosted email or smart-home-stuff, the failure modes are much
worse, and you're far less likely to have someone else to blame.

Also, a raspberry pi _does not_ have enough power to do good voice
recognition, not to the level of siri/alexa/google.

It also doesn't have enough storage to cache all your music, videos you may
wish to play on the TV, etc, so some external cloud integration will be needed
regardless.

Self hosting has failed. People use gmail, not postfix. People use spotify,
not cds or local mp3 players. People use netflix, not blurays. People use
google search to find previously seen info, not a locally saved and curated
archive of websites or a home-grown card catalog system. People use facebook
to communicate, not diaspora.

> it is trivial to create a more user friendly device

This is obviously false or else devices like this would have been trivial to
make and seen some success... but things like sandstorm.io, yunohost, and
others have been incredibly complex projects and have not really succeeded.
It's clearly not trivial since those people have collectively thrown millions
of dollars and dozens of man-years at the problem with no glimmer of hope.

The closest we have to success in this space, I'd say, is NASs which ship
owncloud... and those have not caught in for the average household at all.

~~~
taneq
It's understandable and acceptable that _my message that I 'm sending to
somewhere else_ doesn't work unless _my link to somewhere else_ is working.

It's not understandable nor acceptable if _my appliance within my home with no
inherent external dependencies_ doesn't work unless that link to somewhere
else is working.

> This is obviously false or else devices like this would have been trivial to
> make and seen some success...

Rubbish. There's simply more economic incentive for companies to create
devices which siphon off usage data for them to sell.

~~~
kasey_junk
Are you really arguing that it’s not easier for the company supporting these
products to deploy their software as a service in the cloud?

I’ll buy cynicism around the data collection aspects of these things but one
only need to look to the desktop application marketplace to see the broader
trend.

I’ve supported both self hosted & cloud hosted products for money. I know
which one I prefer to work on and I’m surprised anyone in tech would disagree.

------
bryanlarsen
"Most people in the UK have an electric kettle, but that's not true in the
USA"

This has two causes: the prevalence of tea and the availability of 220V 10A
kettles in the UK vs 115V 13A kettles in the States. Almost double the power
means a boil in little more than half the time, making the electric kettle
insanely useful.

New kitchens in the States generally have 20A outlets[1] so why won't anybody
sell me a 115V 18A kettle? Make one for me, I will give you lots of money! The
fact that it will have a funny plug is a feature to help you sell it by
emphasizing its uniqueness and help you sell it, not an obstacle!

1: [https://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-20-Amp-Commercial-
Grade-...](https://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-20-Amp-Commercial-Grade-Duplex-
Outlet-White-R62-CBR20-00W/202066702)

~~~
gambiting
Maybe because 20A is absolutely nothing to fuck with and while it's great for
an electric hob since it's probably hard wired by an electrician, the concept
of a kettle using 20 amps is terrifying to me.

~~~
lozenge
I can't say I've ever heard of any issues. In a British plug, the contacts are
mechanically hidden until the earth pin has already made contact. There's also
a fuse in the plug itself that prevents each appliance from drawing too much
power.

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lancebeet
My issue with smart homes is that they seem to provide few tangible benefits
compared to earlier inventions, such as those that are mentioned in the
article. An electric whisk will save you several minutes if you're whipping up
some cream (more if you're old or disabled), and there are practically no
disadvantages. If it breaks, you can simply use a manual whisk.

Smart locks, smart lighting, smart ovens etc may save you seconds at best, and
redundancy (code/physical key access, backup light switches etc) are much less
obvious, and may make the product less aesthetically appealing, not to mention
the privacy/security issues that have been plaguing the IoT market. Perhaps we
are, as the author suggests, yet to discover the areas where smart devices
will eventually become successful and ubiquitous, but using his approach of
finding such areas fails me.

~~~
Vinnl
> may save you seconds at best

I used to be skeptical about that as well. However, in the Netherlands, where
paying by card is ubiquitous, we recently got the ability to simply hold those
cards near the machine (contactless) rather than inserting it and having to
enter a code. Saves you mere seconds, yet it's a massively better experience
that quickly saw mass adoption.

~~~
lancebeet
Having used contactless cards, I'm not sure if I agree with the comparison.
Contactless cards don't save you just seconds, since people in front of you in
the line use them also. It quickly adds up to minutes every time you make a
purchase. This type of benefit can't be directly inferred from smart locks or
smart lighting.

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rwmj
> _[W]hen I go into my bathroom, do I want the light turned on? The answer is
> always yes, so why do I have to press the light switch?_

I have some battery-powered PIR LED lights in my bathroom that turn on
automatically. Very useful (especially at night), they _don 't_ need to be
connected to the internet, and you can buy them right now.

Edit: These ones: [https://www.mrbeams.co.uk/lights/universal-
light/](https://www.mrbeams.co.uk/lights/universal-light/) (other brands are
available)

~~~
icebraining
You mean you have to flail your arms at home too? That sounds dreadful.

I wonder why presence (as opposed to motion) detectors are not more common.
Seems like a few ultrasonic distance sensors would do the trick.

~~~
rwmj
No, I walk into the room and the light turns on and stays on until I leave. No
flailing is needed (with these ones at least).

~~~
icebraining
Even when you're still? OK, that sounds great, I can't say I ever experienced
that with motion sensors.

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chicob
This is an interesting article in what respects the making of an important
question: will this step simplify anything? I usually think that most "smart"
solutions are gimmicks for true believers. I am not a technophobe or a
luddite, but sometimes the old fashioned, manual solution is the best.
Sometimes I think people confuse practical with lazy.

For example, automating an irrigation/fertilization system in our small
backyard garden for those summer days we're away seems a pretty good idea.
But, at least for me, caring for a garden asks for a little more that keeping
it alive automatically. Of course, that not maybe the case for many people and
this is a grey area. But why automate, say, the toilet flush or soap dispenser
unless you're in a hospital or such environment?

Many of these solutions sound like the next startup pushing something in the
hopes of leveraging a hype into profit.

And I also find it a little uncanny that this kind of articles make no mention
of security or privacy concerns.

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gambiting
"Samsung Group's strategy is very clear - it wants the fridge, the cooker, the
AC unit and the dishwasher all to use the Samsung voice assistant, "

You mean the voice assistant that literally failed 3 times during the live
presentation?

I cannot imagine many things that I would like less in my house than voice-
assisted smart devices. Huge spiders, possibly.

~~~
Chris2048
Samsung makes all kinds of shitty apps, usually clones of better apps, that
they try to push on you via modifications to the hardware.

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pathsjs
I find it weird that the metaphor here is that smart devices will become as
ubiquituous as electric peelers, which I have never seen in my life :-? I
still peel my fruit by hand - if that - and I have never seen anyone do
otherwise

~~~
jakobegger
The author never mentioned an electric peeler. The author talked about people
using a peeler rather than a knife to peel fruit. (ie. the peeler is a "smart
knife").

~~~
pathsjs
Thank you, I had completely misunderstood! :-D

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jerf
"Many of the things that get a connection or become 'smart' in some way will
seem silly to us, just as many things that got 'electrified' would seem silly
to our grandparents - tell them that you have a button to adjust the mirrors
on your car, or a machine to chop vegetables, and they'd think you were soft
in the head, but that's how the deployment of the technology happened, and how
it will happen again."

There is a relevant difference though. The button to adjust the mirrors in my
car carry no significant disadvantages, other than a very nebulous and easily-
dischargeable moral hazard. (That is, even if you are worried about the
"laziness" of using a button to set your mirrors, you can easily negate this
simply by using the time or effort saved on some other worthy goal; even my
great-grandpa couldn't really argue with that.)

But a lot of these "smart" devices carry _several_ non-trivial disadvantages:
Almost every one of them is actively spying on you; a non-trivial number of
them are smart for the _sole purpose of spying on you_ because there is no
other current economic reason for the device to be smart. They generally add a
dependency to an external cloud service, which in many cases has a shorter
expected life span than the device itself. I'd submit that corporations would
be _far_ less enthusiastic about "smart devices" if they were not _planning_
on abandoning them after a couple of years, and instead had to book a 10-20
year liability on to the books to account for future support, even just
security updates for any network-attached devices that don't hook to a
"cloud". They add interface complexity to what is often a relatively simple
device, at least prior to its smartification. Some people may love their
"smart lightswitches" but there's just no way to beat the light switch in
terms of complexity.

I don't think the "you're just the old fogey of the future" argument here,
along with frankly being a bit audience-hostile, works. I'd submit as further
evidence for this that a lot of us who are most worried about all the smart
devices and most resistant _are_ the neophiles who have been surfing the
cutting edge for a long time. I've been a neophile for a long time, and I can
present evidence that I'm still a neophile in other contexts, but whoa, nelly,
I'm not filling my house with this stuff. Even my phone and I have an uneasy
relationship at times.

(I used to be excited about the thought of having a home robot for various
tasks. But now I can expect that home robot to be hooked to the cloud, and
literally spying on everything its sensors can get at, which is everything in
my house, and turning the full "nudging" power of every company involved into
manipulating me and sucking dollars out of my wallet with every scuzzy trick
anyone has ever thought up. It'll bring the non-ad-blocked browser experience
into the real world. I'm much less excited now. Perhaps I'll be able to afford
to pay extra for the ones that don't do that, but we're still talking a social
problem here for those who can't.)

Let me end with a re-iteration of the fact that the whole industry excitement
about "smart" is almost certainly entirely predicated on those industry's
fully-justified belief that they can toss a product out into the world, and
abandon it the instant it ceases to be useful for milking their userbase of
advertising dollars, which is "immediately" for some things like light bulbs.
If the industry had to account for long-term support, the industries would be
singing a completely different tune... how could a smart lightbulb carrying
10- or 20-year liabilities, often with a non-trivial black swan chance (think
Mirai here) of requiring very swift and very serious reworking of the
firmware, possibly compete with a dumb lightbulb where the companies only
carry very calculable and relatively brief warrantee obligations? There's a
non-trivial way in which this excitement about smart devices is _predicated_
on screwing customers naive enough to buy these things.

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stuaxo
I got confused at the electric vegetable peeler, I've never seen such a thing,
how often do you need to peel vegetables ?

