99% of smart home crap just feels like
why is it connected to the internet? so it can get updates
why does it need updates? because it's connected to the internet
Post
Remote status
Replies
36@eri@mk.moth.zone Or worse, so they can downgrade your experience over time so you will buy new products quicker.
@hj@shigusegubu.club @eri@mk.moth.zone I don't have any smarthome shit, not even local. My house has physical light switches and devices I turn on using buttons.
@Pi_rat@shitposter.world @hj@shigusegubu.club @eri@mk.moth.zone And yes about guns, I don't think anyone should own a gun. Police shouldn't have guns either.
@Pi_rat@shitposter.world @hj@shigusegubu.club @eri@mk.moth.zone Not a fan either, but I think it's sort of acceptable because you can't kill someone with it from really far away, and you also can't easily commit mass murder with it, like you can with a gun.
99.9999% of people are not mass murderers, but almost all governments are - thus if you want to ban guns, the government should be first.
Governments should not have guns, but it appears that individuals need a large collection of weapons, including swords, firearms (including a tripod machine gun), clay-mores and nuclear bombs (as that would be barely adequate home defence against the government).
It takes a similar amount of skill to commit mass murder with a sword than a gun.
@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com @hj@shigusegubu.club @eri@mk.moth.zone @Pi_rat@shitposter.world No, everything you're saying is incorrect.
If you have a proper democratic government that respects the people, you don't need home defense against the government. The government should be there for everyone's benefit.
It also definitely takes a lot more skill to commit murder with a sword than it does with a gun. Any mentally ill kid can shoot up a school if you give them an AR15.
Unfortunately, that doesn't happen unless there is the possibility of consequences if the government does not serve the people.
>It also definitely takes a lot more skill to commit murder with a sword than it does with a gun.
Even a pathetic sword swing is likely to kill and doing so is easier than using a rifle.
To use a rifle you need to load it, adopt a competent grip, aim and fire on target, not get spooked by the supersonic blast, handle the recoil and also change mags once you're out of ammo (and also, if you have limited magazines, loading them is difficult, let alone speed loading them).
You can give a mentally ill kid a sword and it would be easy for that kid to commit murder.
An unloaded AR-15 would be far less harmful in the hands of a mentally ill kid than a sword - as all it could be used for is a blunt weapon.
AR-15's are loaded in different calibers - for example .22, .223 or .308 - assuming a loaded .223, without practice, I reckon a mentally ill kid handed a .223 AR-15 could murder one person if they don't miss and then the kid will likely drop the rifle due to the unexpected recoil.
Unlike a sword, which is mostly silent, the supersonic blast makes it quite clear what's happening.
@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com @hj@shigusegubu.club @eri@mk.moth.zone @Pi_rat@shitposter.world I said mass murder. It's easy to incompetently swing a sword at someone, but after you hit one person everyone else will run away.
With a gun however, you can easily kill multiple people back to back. Even without changing magazines, an AR15 has typically 30 bullets in it, and assuming even most bullets miss their target you can easily kill 4-5 people with that if you fire at a crowd.
You can't pretend kids will immediately drop their gun from recoil, the recoil is not that bad. School shootings with multiple casualties happen almost every day in that shithole called America.
@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com @hj@shigusegubu.club @eri@mk.moth.zone @Pi_rat@shitposter.world Basically you can outrun someone with a sword, but you can't outrun a bullet.
@eri I put my HomeAssistant NUC on a vlan and every smart device is ZigBee only to HomeAssistant. Of course, the average user is probably not using HomeAssistant or ZigBee, or even a router with vlans.
I think the main thing that is missing here is education and a reason for the average consumer to care about privacy and want to do something about it. The average consumer has Facebook, or at least had a Facebook account in the past and don't see it as a problem. That's the first issue.
@eri Hmm, if we disconnect computers from the internet, they'll work forever!
@eri (and because it collecteds owners' datas so it had to stay functional)
@eri @ShaulaEvans Only 99%? 🤔
Yeah, today I've been teaching my firewall what internet access things in my house need: ntp -- ok for now; dns -- ok, since you use the server I told you to, https -- why? let's make that no and see what happens.
My solar panels seem to need http, https, ntp, dns, and some speciallized protocols.
And everyone wants to use https to contact AWS-compute. I don't think so. I just need to figure out how I'm going to do updates on the wifi -- because they are necessary, but there is no way that's what ALL the https chatter is about.
@eri@mk.moth.zone It's so they can do DDoS attacks more easily. There was an incident a while back where they found some dude's smart lights were hacked and used for exactly that. Lol
@eri the remaining 1% is "why does it need updates?" - "because we couldn't get all the features we promised in before we started shipping"
We bought a new kitchen range. It CAN connect to Wi-Fi. It cannot turn the knobs for the top burners. I guess it can manipulate the oven though. I verified all functions work without Wi-Fi before we bought it.
It is not calling the mother ship.
I suppose I should enable it and block the MAC address in my router and then disable it again for when I replace the router. I would probably forget to block again.
@eri dunno, some of the kit we installed recently was buggy AF in the initial release, and works better with the updates. (which I did over bluetooth, dammit :)
@eri and data collection. because they sell that shit and make money from it, which is in part why the cheap shit is cheap
https://support.tcl.com/us-googletv-setup-configuration/use-basic-tv-on-a-tcl-google-tv-
"Without an internet connection, your device won’t get important security updates."
@eri Why is it connected? So it can spy on you. Why does it need updates? Because too many other parties can use it spy on you.
@eri I carefully designed and bult a smart product that doesn't allow updates (and saves the planet), and >500k of them have been sold, so it's possible!
@eri Or because they shipped the product before it got finished.
@eri My husband works for NASA. I build websites (among other things). Our home is dumb af.
@eri I have some Matter-Thread devices that get over-the-air updates via HomeAssistant, as part of those standards. That seems useful: there may be bugs, new versions of some standard, etc
Granted, those devices are more expansive that some more locked-in ones.
I also have one sensor Matter-WiFi that bricks itself if it can't dial out during startup. sus af
@eri I've had luck blocking internet access to these smart devices and using Home Assistant(run locally) to control them. I would absolutely not reccomend ever letting them connect to the internet. There have been many times these companies have suddenly decided to start charging a monthly subscription to use devices that people have already bought and paid for. Sometimes even going to the lengths of removing functionality until a subscription is paid for. You shouldn't need updates if the devices aren't connected to the internet and they can't brick your device if it isn't.
@eri IoT VLAN to the rescue!
@eri i think it’s cool conceptually that you can do bullshit with your appliances and stuff but like the lights in my place barely even function properly so like i feel like there’s a certain dissonance here in terms of, Privilege