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.
it’s the reason why the original Odroid Go it’s so special to me… it’s all built around an ESP32 microcontroller and it does emulate only NES, GB, GBC and a couple more, while honestly not even being perfect at it, but goddamn… it boots in like 1 second, even directly to the last game you were playing, it has no settings whatsoever, the battery lasts for like 7 hours it’s such a neat little device.
and it’s funny because in my head that it’s the device that kickstarted this whole retro handheld emulation craze, but it is the only one to take such a minimalistic approach
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
the fuck, which features?
My guess would be heated seats and driver aids.
Cruise control automatic distance keeping
Cruise control lane assist
Seat heating
Something else that I don’t recall
And I’m sure a lot more, I didn’t try much else after that.
Either way, I will NEVER buy a car with any of that shit
Hello fellow old person. I too miss things that just work.
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.
Buy old stuff
Use open source
Downdate
etc
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.
Yes long press needs to be relegated to the most obscure functions of a device, not the main uses.
Try plugging in a fork. Those still do what they are supposed to do
I’ve got some bad news
Ahhhhh! Nothing is sacred anymoooooore
I love some connected devices, and own a LOT of them, but some things are just stupid. I don’t need my blender to be connected. Washer, dryer? Unless it’s going to move my laundry from one to the other, nope. Stove, wtf? I have to go stir anyway so who gives a crap.
I like my washer and dryer being connected. I can load it in the evening a set my Home Assistant to start it when the price on power is low.
The other things I agree with
I would like em too, but only if they allowed local only without any accounts beforehand.
how often is your electricity provider changing rate timing?
this could easily be done on the device itself with a timer/schedule
I have dynamic pricing so it changes by the hour depending on the market.
I can see the pricing ahead of time so I could do it manually, but I don’t want to.
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.
car
Terrible mid 20xx introduction of full on touchscreen tablets to motor vehicles would like to know your location.
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.
After trying to get my new automated kitty litter box working with a POS app that can’t sync with the poop machine and the PM can’t connect to my 5 GHz wireless network (only 2.4 GHz) nor does it have any way to enter the password for said network I have resorted to deleting the app and just pushing two physical buttons in sequence on the PM twice daily to clean the litter area.
Me too, I gave up on the app. It’s easier to just push the button on the machine. Hate things that need an app. Also hate having an account to use everything.
I literally refuse to use ANY app. None. If your service needs one, I don’t need your service. End.
The 5 ghz vs 2.4 is such a pain in the ass. As far as I can tell Android won’t let you pick which to use so you can’t be on the same network as the device, even with the same ssid.
You can have your router split the different frequencies into different named networks to make it work. But you shouldn’t have to
The next thing I’m going to try is temporarily turn off my router, make a hotspot with my Android phone, in the 2.4 Ghz spectrum, with no password security and try that. I don’t care about tracking the cat’s weight or being reminded that the app thinks I need to buy more litter or deodorizer, I just want to set some settings (like how long to wait to rotate the poop into the hopper after a cat walks away from the poop machine) and that would make the machine “better.”
Using them in the same name isn’t that great either. These days you shouldn’t ever need to connect to 2.4 is markedly slower
Slower but up to spec for most people unless you need high data transfer speeds, and it also provides wider range than 5ghz.
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.
My sister bought me a smart desk light that insists on using an app and ‘doesn’t work’ without it.
Thing is, it will work as a normal desk light…if you’re willing to sit through 10 minutes of intense blinking while it tries to connect before finally giving up.
Yup.
Comcast “updated” their network yesterday and broke every fucking smart plug in my house. None of them will work anymore.
Did they disable the 2.4ghz band on your router?
Thought of that too, but yup it’s still active. A couple other devices are connected via 2.4 but none of my plugs or bulbs will connect. They worked just fine yesterday and now they’re all bricks.
