I get the dual benefit of having the “smart” when it works, and pointing and laughing at her when it doesn’t, because I told her so.

I have a smart TV not connected to the internet, just a HDMI connection to another box. Then I learned that IP-over-HDMI is a thing!

In the very near future this will be even more futile - the TV will have it’s own built-in cellular connection just for telemetry. Anyone who objects will be shouted down as a 5G conspiracy nut, but this is exactly what 5G is designed for.

But it will actually work better with 3/4G because 5Gs range is so short and it would be easy to block with just a little tinfoil.

Also, new IoT technologies use techniques allowing them to operate at a much weaker signal.

But you can always just destroy the antenna.

While it’s in the spec, I’m not aware of a single piece of consumer electronics that actually support it. The standard is an utter failure.

In HDMI 2.1 the wires previously used for Ethernet-over-HDMI are now used for eARC making these two features mutually exclusive.

[0]https://nogis.at/

AFAIU it has no TV tuner, so no air/cable/sat reception, while having full "smarts" with built-in internet and apps.

[0]https://www.swedx.se

My next TV is going to be a dumb one with a bespoke HTPC...

They're the most likely thing to be obsolete in the shortest amount of time.

edit: oh yeah my letterr "R" key is broken on my 2015 macbook po fom all my refreshing, so sorry fo the typos

Not to gloat or enjoy too much schadenfreude, but many of us learnt the lesson in advance because we saw it coming. It may just be because we are old and cynical though.

The fact that so many manufacturers are happy to certify with Alexa and Google, but not HomeKit, tells me a bit about their business models.

I will never buy another TP-Link device. Life is too short to be creating accounts for your smart plugs...

Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24785175

I was a little surprised, but pleased, to see that Lidl are launching a smart home line this week, which is all ZigBee too - that is definitely not niche either. They even mention the interoperability and privacy as selling points!

[0]: https://www.home-assistant.io/

The bigger hassle seems to be different zigbee hubs that have varying levels of compatibility, so while you can pair the devices you can't get the data you want.

I've just been down the research rabbit hole, and about to try using zigbee2mqtt to bypass this nonsense (this also then means the only internet connectivity will be through a device you control)

Philips Hue hub talks to diagnostics.meethue.com all the time, and it gets kind of annoying already in the pihole stats.

How did we get here and when will it stop?

You take your right foot out

You put your right foot in

And you shake it all about

You do the hokey pokey

And you turn yourself around

That's how you reset a GE connected lightbulb.

Why would you want it to stop now, when the tech is both amazing _and_ rough around the edges? Better hope development continues and the end-user experience stabilizes to something much better.

Capitalism continuously fails to deliver on its promise of "may the best win, and may all be incentivised to be the best" because companies have found several loopholes in its assumptions - constantly introducing flashy new features so the basic faults don't get the airtime they should, advertising with the best psychological manipulation money can buy, and flooding the market with enough barely distinguishable models that simple decision fatigue gets enough people giving up on research and buying the crappy models unwittingly.

The scheduling is pretty handy though. I have half a dozen outside and they turn on / off with dusk / dawn. In addition to that I have them set to go to bright white and 30-50% at night (just enough to keep security cameras in color mode).

In contrast to this we’ve had exactly one Philips Hue fail on us. Also cheerfully replaced for us. None of them have needed resetting and we have about the same # of light fixtures deployed. Probably the most annoying problem is Hue Play’s are prone to coil whine at 100% brightness on on certain scene colors, particularly those involving blue-white (6000K). Resolvable by going < 5000K or dropping to 90% brightness, I haven’t attempted to get warranty replacement for this issue but about 16/22 of my Hue Play’s are affected by the issue.

Integrated with Google Home it’s also common that some % of LIFX bulbs won’t respond to a “turn off all the lights” command, whereas Philips is very good at on/off even when the command involves large numbers of bulbs...

All the lights in my house are the philips hue that I bought back in 2013. So far I have replaced 2 only. The last one was coming back on by itself... wierd to replace a lightbulb because it doesn’t want to be turn off...

You also have to remember the negative externalities of extra e-trash affect everyone, so to read about yet another iot failure, it’s easy for me to continue to trash the whole industry.

Humans remember negative experiences much stronger than positive ones, and "it just works" isn't really something you tend to notice in the first place. There's a lot of bias here.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24680614

Also these speakers have only improved over the years through software improvements which would have only been made possible having a connection to the internet.

Happened accidentally for many users.

My Hue bridge is on a VLAN that doesn't even have internet access.

Your printer gets firmware updates from HP, whenever HP wants, right past all your firewalls and vlans and non-routable subnets, in the form of print jobs from your pc.

Apple has less incentives to spy on you than whoever is running philips hue.