If you're willing to do some technical work, there is fantastic open source tooling in this space. Then you'll have a setup that isn't affected by the business desires or financial problems of others. As a bonus, you get better latency over lan.
https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Tasmota-IR/#sending-irhvac-co...
My only point was that even this server-based system is already selling without a subscription, and as you point out, the off-ramp to a system with no cloud dependency is pretty clear for those who want to avoid subscriptions (or dependencies in general).
Thanks for the pointer!
I was pointing out that even the parent comment's very example of a slow slide towards universal subscriptions that add no value didn't hold. It was framed as "I have inside knowledge of this nascent product category and its capture by useless subscriptions", while in reality this is already a market category that exists without any such issues.
This bizarre wild-eyed fearmongering about insane, lose-lose, somehow-inescapable business models is HN's version of QAnon.
I remember asking the CEO why would someone pay $5/month just to control their fan and he basically responded that the idea seems ludicrous and this point in time, but eventually people will catch on, and then he made an allusion to Microsoft Office and how that it's becoming a subscription product despite initially being one-off purchase 15 years ago.