Y'know, after a decade on Internet forums, I've found saying "I know I'm going to get downvoted, but—" usually leads to downvotes, while simply stating your position gets judged on actual merit rather than self pity.

Just my ฿ 0.0002.

I would actually speculate that it's the opposite. Though not exactly the same, 2 of my 3 most upvoted comments on reddit (465 and 510 votes) contain edits where I ask about why I'm getting downvoted. As soon as I added that question in, the voting seemed to switch directions. It's like people took a second more to think about the comment rather than just acting on emotion. I think that's why the saying has survived and you see it so often. Obviously this is just anecdotal, but I think there's some neat psychology happening when someone brings up upvotes/downvotes. It'd be interesting to do an analysis to see how those words effect a comment's score.

Edit: Just realized that the parent of the comment I'm replying to is the top comment on this post, so that's another piece of anecdotal evidence.

For what you've described, I agree: if you write a post, get downvotes, and then add an edit wondering about the downvotes because you're genuine about your position and are looking to engage, people tend to start engaging in kind and upvote you at least to neutral.

But I think the parent is talking about the habit of many who are about to post a counter-groupthink or controversial opinion to lead off with "I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but...". My feeling there is that people generally view that as a sort of flippant disregard/dismissal of the community moderation process, so it basically _invites_ downvotes.

You surely meant 0.000002 :)

[Off-topic] Shouldn't it be 0.00000002? As in 2 sts, since 2 cents is 2 x the smallest denomination.

Nah — I like it the way it is.

I sympathize with you. But you seem to be making the classic mistake of assuming that everyone's use-case and needs are same as yours.

Just an example:

> I'll walk over to the lightswitch and turn the lights on.

What if you are someone who has trouble walking or has mobility issues. Can you imagine how convenient getting things done with voice could be? These sort of things can be life changing for some people.

The Clapper never needed to phone home to the mothership.

Modern voice activated neural nets don't either. I don't buy voice activated appliances specifically because they are online, but with a new generation of offline neural nets, I just may revisit that choice.

There will never be a new generation of offline neural nets. AI will need more and more horsepower as it evolves and that is more then what a normal household would want to spend. Cheap end devices are what the average buy is looking for.

Internet bandwidth and speed are increasing and cheaper which was the main reason for offline in the past.

There is also the fact that they don't have to support outdated or multiple versions of a server or distribute updates. The end devices like Google home, Echo and the video fire stick, Chromecast are basic input > send to server > output. That is cheaper to support. Plus you get all the data to improve your product.

When I was young I setup up my first Home Server. Much like an enterprise server. It had share folders, computers backup to it, print server. Though it was the future and in a decade every house would have one. Now a days they don't but they do have stuff like Google Drive and Google Cloud Print and many more options that give you those options in the cloud.

Offline IoT/smart appliances will never become viable again. They simply can't compete with products that mine and sell your data.

How many devices can you actually control with a clapper? Seems like it would only be enough if all you want is switch on/off a light bulb.

But with smart home devices, you have much finer control over what device you want to control. How can someone do something fine grained like "Switch on external lights" or "show me who is at the door (Alexa does this)" with a clapper?

You're comments and views are completely acceptable here. The only reason you might get downvoted is your comments about being downvoted - a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would remove them as they don't add anything to the discussion.

Most people here love gadgets. That's pretty much the definition of a geek--someone who believes there's a technological solution for every problem.

However, like you, I wonder if trying to gain that additional 5% of optimisation is worth it. Modern Honeywell thermostats already offer enough settings (wake/leave/return/bedtime) that I don't see a Nest making my life significantly better.

Internet-connected smoke alarms, on the otherhand, I feel are useful. Just like I get an alert when my credit card is used, I'd like to know if something set off the alarm in my house. The microphone doesn't need to be in it, though.

As a Nest thermostat owner, I am underwhelmed. If I could find a way to leave feedback in a way that I thought it might be incorporated, it would be something like this:

* If your thermostat was really "smart" it wouldn't turn the compressor on 1 minute before the temp was scheduled to change (and turn it back off). * Your "smart" scheduling does more harm than good. And changing the schedule manually is a pain.

There are some good things:

* Retention of usage data is good. * Ability to change the thermostat from office/vacation/bed - pretty great I must say.

But I agree that the IoT thing is way out of control.

I chose the Nest because we don't have a typical up-leave-home-bed schedule. I contemplated highly programmable thermostats, but felt the extra capability of the Nest was worth it to us.

while i'm very skeptical of cloud-only smart-home devices, i'm absolutely all in on the general premise.

i want to have every even remotely conceivable automation and assistance at my whim. if there isn't a secure lan-only option, then let's (as a community) create either open source options or start a business focusing on this as a competitive advantage.

Home assistant (https://home-assistant.io/) combined with zwave devices gives you an open source controller and a LAN only network of things. You can also to in to hundreds of existing devices/platforms. The platform is growing rapidly in capabilities and integrations.

I've always hated the idea of IoT, but I've always wanted a Network of Things. And they should obviously have a well-designed automatic dumb-mode fallback.

I don't need a lot of the connected features, but I want them because I can see their usefulness.

I think we're still early-days for a lot of this home control stuff. The value is still pretty dubious in many cases, and all the vendors seem to think that these devices need to be internet-connected, whether to phone home about usage, provide access from outside the home, or just to receive updates. Obviously both of those things can be incredibly problematic wrt security and privacy, but sadly most companies don't care, and/or hope that the supposed benefits outweigh any concerns (they shouldn't, but often do).

I have an Echo Dot and a couple Hue bulbs in my apartment. The light switch setup is awkward so I end up having to walk in the dark a bit when I get home before I can turn on the lights. Being able to voice-activate the lights as I enter my apartment (or just have the Philips app automatically turn them on when my phone is close enough to home) is useful. Is it essential? No, of course not. Am I concerned about security/privacy? Yes. I've decided that the security risk of someone being able to turn a couple of my lights on and off without my permission isn't that big a deal.

I just picked up a Google Home Mini on discount over the Thanksgiving holiday. I like that I can tell it to play music on my Chromecast, or start Netflix videos on my TV. Again: not essential. But it's a hell of a lot more convenient than fumbling with my phone to do the same things.

My goal longer term is to build an open-hardware, open-software home assistant that can do most things without needing to leave the local network. There are a few projects out there already that do this, or subsets of it, but so far I haven't found much that meets my requirements.

But I totally agree that in many cases these things aren't necessary. They can make things more convenient, but in the absence of, say, someone with mobility or motor control issues, they're not essential. But, say, Google Maps isn't essential either (we have perfectly good paper maps), but I sure as hell wouldn't give it up. I do expect that home control will mature to a point where it's not just a "nice to have" anymore, but I figure we're years, if not decades, from that point.

I can see some use of things like Nest which keeps your electric usage efficient and low. Agree that other things are way over-hyped though.

Look at how hard Amazon has been pushing Alexa for years now, and the shopping experience on it is still terrible. For very specific use cases, it works kinda well (i.e. order more household supplies that I've ordered 100x before). For anything else, it's much easier and faster to use a phone or computer. Amazon is devoting hundreds of millions to solve a problem that literally doesn't exist.

As a shopping platform, Alexa is shit. Nobody wants to shop by voice. Unless maybe you're visually impaired. But I can't skim reviews or anything like that via Alexa.

But, I love the Echo so much, I recently upgraded from a single Dot to a full Echo and added two more Dots to the house.

Being able to ask Alexa for a weather forecast while getting dressed in the morning is great. Asking Alexa to play music or change songs/volume while I'm doing the dishes without drying my hands and fiddling with my phone is awesome. Setting kitchen timers while my hands are dirty from cooking, or while I'm putting something into the oven (I tend to forget if I wait until I've walked away from the oven) is pretty damn useful.

My kids love asking Alexa questions, and some of the skills (like the Magic Door) are huge hits with them.

Overall, I think assuming the Echo is meant for shopping is a bad assumption. It is meant to pull you into the Amazon ecosystem (Echosystem?), but I don't think voice shopping will ever be successful.

I don't see why having a smartphone should prevent you from taking a walk and seeing cool things.

Prevention is not the issue. It is the development of reactive thought patterns that result in being distracted too frequently. It's hard to think when you're used to not thinking at all.

It doesn't, really. It's just a background sense of being connected with an umbilical. Without a smartphone, no one can reach me, I don't have a map, a camera, music, distractions. Geez, to think people used to be always like that! If something goes "wrong" I might have to improvise--scary! Interact with people, take responsibility.

And there is the fact they are tracking the shit out of you, and lying about it.

Don't you think people were saying the same thing about having network accessible home computers decades ago?

Granted the internet of things is wildly different, and your points are valid, but surely we will find some happy medium between home automation ending in tears and a working solution?

Why do you even have a smartphone? If you are so freaked out cause of it why do you leave in it your most private space (your house) with its mic and out of date software. Why don't you save yourself money by not buying a smartphone and get a cheap flip phone for like $30? Which is clearly less hackable then a smartphone. I'm guessing you have wifi, why even pay for a mobile phone when it never leaves your house and use an Internet Telephony which is also way cheaper and more secure then your current setup.

> ... and teddy bears will work in a cyberwar with Russia

Why the future tense? Hasn't that been going on since 2015?

Im with you. I feel that we never stopped to ask ourselves how will this make the world better.

Sure automatically tweeting my pics is cute, but does it improve my life or anyones lives?

We are simply chasing novelty.

This.

The Cylons have already won, Commander Adama.