damnesdelamer: mornington-the-crescent:solarpunkcast:eeveelutionsforequality:rtrixie:rtrixie
damnesdelamer: mornington-the-crescent: solarpunkcast: eeveelutionsforequality: rtrixie: rtrixie: rickjameskinkshame: rtrixie: Welcome to the future, where you don’t own anything and the stuff you rent stops working once your phone has no signal. App powered car? ♀️ I wish people remembered the age old wisdom that if something doesn’t absolutely require an Internet connection to function, it shouldn’t be connected to the internet - same goes for apps. WHY IS A CATFOOD DISPENSER CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET Sometimes I’m glad that I’m too poor for my “cool future stuff” monkey brain to be set loose to buy stupid shit like this. please please please do not buy into the Internet of Things. Digital displays for appliances are one thing, but you shouldn’t need the fucking internet to do your laundry or use the fridge. I hope this is obvious, but this is a means for corporations to abuse privacy and gather metadata. The only reason I can imagine no one discussing this is because it’s obvious. The thing is, some IoT connectivity is useful, but it can be implemented in a sane and non-intrusive manner. (This is my actual day job; I work at a product development company.)I designed a wireless mailbox a while back as a personal project that could let you know when the mail had arrived; it meant someone whose mailbox was down a long rural driveway and when mail delivery times were inconsistent could know when they needed to go pick up the mail.But the thing is that if it lost connectivity, it continued to function as a standard mailbox. It didn’t, like, latch the mailbox door or shred the mail or whatever if it couldn’t get connected.Similarly, my car has cellular data for maps/traffic and Spotify integration, as well as letting me use an app to set the climate control when it’s parked (turning on heat or A/C before I go out to the car); it’s great, I love it, and if for some reason I’m out where I don’t have signal my car continues to function as a car, even if I’m unable to stream music or get up-to-date traffic information for the GPS.Because even if you have a good usage case for connectivity, it should degrade gracefully and continue to function unless the connectivity is absolutely key to the inherent function of the device. A public kiosk for browsing the web, for instance, is obviously not going to be useful without connectivity; a car or cat food dispenser has no excuse to stop functioning.It’s not just egregious use of IoT to be buzzword-y, it’s also just plain bad design. I’m not sure which I consider the greater sin. -- source link
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