My poor tv is like, "connect to the internet? I need to call home! Help, i've been abducted by a luddite!"

Tv, you are never getting my wifi password.

Try plugging in a fork. Those still do what they are supposed to do

I have this smart lightbulb that I got for halloween last year because I thought it'd be cool to make the porch glow purple for trick or treaters. Now I have to replace it because the app that controls it has decided to try and blackmail me for camera and location access and the bulbs default state without the app is to flash on and off in a way seemingly deliberately designed to cause headaches.

I recently renovated and said fuck no to all the smart home shit. Just the idea of having to troubleshoot the WiFi because my kitchen light won't turn on drives me into a rage.

Omg yes preach !!! I feel it's everything these days, coffee maker....app Vacuum....app Scale...app Electric shower nozzle...fucking app Everything needs a password and an account and my mind is crumbling because of it.

Buy old stuff

Use open source

Downdate

etc

No waiting for firmware updates

This is absolutely a problem, but credit where credit's due, I'm really happy that the specification for Matter requires local control without calling out to the internet. Though Matter devices can still call out to the internet for additional features. I know Matter has it's issues, but I believe it is slowly improving the smart home. But I fully understand people that want to reject the smart home altogether.

The internet has become more and more complex. I miss the early 2000s when I was a kid and everything was open and easy to use. No need to register ,no need to download this or that app. Everything was easy, even the laws.

I remember when games asked you to register and it was optional... and people joked that they never did because there was no benefit to them whatsoever.

Now it is obligatory. No wonder I prefer retrogaming.

Did you know that Ryobi has an app that lets you register tools you've bought?

I went to a coffee shop yesterday that tried to tell me they only accepted orders through their app. I almost walked out, until the finally poured my coffee, but continued to give me shit about it, "ok but next time you have to use the app"

"Yea no. There will be no next time."

I totally agree! I'm trying to avoid logins and download this and that, as possible as I can.

This isn't a shit post IMO.

I helped my dad install a new dumb thermostat last winter. We just had to drill a couple of new holes to mount it, and moved the wires over. Boom,there was heat again. I thought about how much of a pain in the ass it was to get my Ecobee working, and how refreshing it was to just have something work immediately.

It's a very similar feeling to playing my GameBoy Color again after messing around with retro gaming linux handhelds. You just turn it on and play, then just turn it off. No boot sequences, no emulator settings to tweak. No SD card corruption that ruins your game library. Just on and off.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication (a bit ironic when you consider this quote comes from Apple).

Steam is fun and all, minecraft is a great game, but goddamn, i have a 10kbps at home, and network is unstable where i live, why can't i play my fcking ~~game~~ "licence" which is not even online based, because the network decided to stop??

I prefer from far a simple folder with assets and a .exe that i will put on my desktop with a shortcut.

What an application is supposed to be anyways.

I rented a car, a Mercedes B class or something

Everytime I started it, it would ask me to sign up for some bullshit Mercedes service Half the features of the car were disabled due to requiring subscriptions

I will NEVER buy that car nor rent it ever again

Im with you, I dont need my dishwasher to have WiFi and an account

I'm half on one side, half on the other.

The line I draw is between safety and convenience. On the safety side, I want things to be very manual. I don't want some app or external system managing whether or not the lights stay on, or whatever, on the convenience side, I 1000% want a way to manage things like the lighting from an app.

So anywhere that safety is a concern, like the kitchen, bathroom, a handful of other places.... There's zero "smart" anything. Everywhere else, yeah, I can turn off my lights from an app.

When I'm in my office/living room, where safety isn't really a concern, I don't have to get up to turn on the lights, I can yell at my Google home to do it for me, or use an app. If I want the lights to be some shade of turquoise, I use the app....

In the kitchen, as an example, no such control exists. You have to push the light switch, and you get basic removed white light. You don't get an option. You want the light off? Take your fingers and do the thing that makes the light switch go click and turn off the lights.

The decision to make anything smart relies on whether or not I'm going to be in danger if the lights go out and there's no way to turn them on again because the Internet is down.

What fantasy world are you living in? How could my glass hold water if I didn't sign up for a service that sends me spam? How could my table hold a book if I didn't sign up for the monthly subscription that prevents it from ejecting books into the air? Even my cat came with a ToS that said that by petting her, I give her access to my bank account and first born child. Hasn't it always been this way?

I really wanna ditch the smart TV I have and just get a display that only displays the picture of the devices I have plugged into its inputs and doesn't get online, doesn't receive updates or "improvements" and has inputs for everything:

3.5mm AUX audio

Composite

S-video

RGB

Hdmi

That optical audio jack made by (IIRC) Sony I can't remember the name of right now. It's what my stereo uses and it's amazing. Used to be super common on TVs.

Shit either has no buttons, with an capacitive touch surface, or if it has buttons, it's never immediate response, you have to press it for an extended amount of time.

it's fucking infuriating.

I used a normal wired phone the other day.

I picked it up and called people.

It blew my mind.