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What’s the Matter with the smart home?
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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Technology
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I may be a bit cynical here, but to me, current smarthome systems are about two things: a) vendor lock-in, and b) holding your house hostage to push you away from one-time purchases and onto subscription services, much as is already hapening with computers/smartphones and modern cars.
From the seller's point of view, subscription services have several huge advantages: they ~~can milk you~~ have a guaranteed revenue stream for the lifetime of the system, they can collect/sell lots of data about you, and they can ram any TOS changes down your throat which you will accept as long as you care about being able to turn on the lights in your kitchen.
Interoperability is really bad for vendor lock-in, so I'm curious as to which supplier will implement it to what degree.
As for our house, it has some smart things, but none of those are connected to the internet, nor do I expect they ever will be.
For all its faults and risks, a smart home can still make your life a lot easier.