If people could be made more informed of what their devices are saying (and to whom) perhaps they'd be more reluctant to "smartify" their homes. Transparency would enable more informed decisions.

But if smart utilities take off, maybe some privacy label for consumers would be nice. Maybe in the future it's a selling point if when device is dumb as opposed to smart and connected. I also somewhat dislike the conclusion of the article that smart homes for everybody are inevitable or necessary. The utility, at least right now, of smart devices seems to be limited, so you don't have even to be a crazy hermit to boycott a smart home.

I know it's sitewide on every article from the mothership, Gizmodo, but still...

If you buy a "smart" TV, refuse to connect it to the internet and just get an Apple TV/Chromecast/whatever.

I laugh at the ancedote in the article about voice control just behind frustrating and resorting to using the physical buttons.

No one has ever explained why I'd want to remotely control my lights. Or why I would remotely turn on my coffee maker, after I have to physically touch it to prepare it before-hand anyway.

Some amount of this tech is useful when it goes unnoticed and solves real problems. For example, my outside lights turn on dimly at sunset and turn off at midnight, unless there's motion or my garage door is open, then they go to 100%. If no inside lights are already on, the front hall and a couple other lights turn on as it gets dark. This means we never come home to a dark house, but also if we're already home, we aren't having lights automatically changing on us.

I can control many things from my phone, but it's pointless. There's a button in the entrance to the kitchen that turns on several lights (that otherwise require using switches in four separate locations), another that makes them all dim, and another for off. If we leave them on, they turn off automatically by 3am.

So much of these IoT products do not solve useful problems, do not blend seamlessly into your life, and do not even work well in the first place.

I worked for a power monitoring company that put a box in your house, monitored power use for each circuit breaker. The CEO noticed that his house cleaners turned on lights in all the rooms and turned them off as they finished cleaning them.

You can learn a lot from watching a homes power, especialy if its split up circuit by circuit.

Ever since "IoT" started gaining momentum as a marketing buzzword I have been thinking this type of router could be an interesting product for non-nerd users.

Idea: The one device that only the user controls. User veto over all traffic to and from "smart" devices. In theory.

I recall seeing a comment from a Googler on HN once that basically admitted the users only hope for privacy is to control a router.

Not a laptop, phone, browser, smart thermostat, smart speaker, etc.

A router.

Boring.

But not insignificant.

Something as inexpensive and accessible as an RPi was good enough for this user.

I don't see myself ever getting anything smart, and if I can't avoid it there is no way it touches my internet connection!

I'd also rather get up to switch the lights on. Moving about periodically is healthy, right?

Why?! When I bought a Roomba a decade ago, it was a decent vacuum that picked up dirt, could not connect to the internet, and never nagged me. Why would I want it to be worse?

My stance on the smart home and privacy phenomenon is optimistic. I think apple will eventually have a fully integrated smart home ecosystem similar to their standard ecosystem now, which will make the process easier in general. Perhaps we can one day have a single device to control every other device, or a few devices which perform multiple functions (such as a bundled music player, television, light controller, air monitor etc) and that such a device or devices will be bundled such that the meta data will contain only information that the device is being used but not which function is employed. Surveillance is unstoppable at this point, and this means that everyone has the ability to watch everyone else, and I think this is a good thing. We already have a good sense when those in our social group are lying, or hiding things, or even when they need help. If governments and citizens alike understand what each party is up to, we can have a fully accountable society, and of course eventually we must negotiate the relevant social rules that keeps this accountability relevant and practical. This is something I believe we have to work with. We have to take responsibility and understand what is going on, and to also take the power into our own hands and create balance. We can figure this out, and I don't believe that necessarily involves destroying the structure of how our governments and corporations do business. It's simply more efficient to restructure, not to totally resist but also not to be completely complacent. and that's all I have to say.

I should have the ability to root and control the linux on my smarttv. Full stop. This is part of the problem. The same goes with things like phones. This is why both android and ios are NOT the mobile os of the future. They restrict the user from truly owning their device, and I'm fed up with this bullshit.

So remember that next time someone talks about how right Richard Stallman was right and gets downvoted to hell... HN is far too full of businesspeople pretending to be hackers instead of the other way around.

We still don't use the apps on the tv though.

Smarts that plug into to a TV are always evolving faster than Smarts built into the TV.

This seems like a clear contradiction, unless your username is unironic. I'm basically pessimistic: surveillance is stoppable, but we probably won't, because we get free cat pictures, and Google has figured out that lobbying is the best thing it can do with its cash hoard. However, thanks to lazy idiots like Equifax, some people are slowly realizing that the surveillance economy may cost more than they want to pay. There are a few crumbs of hope for a positive outcome.

It's worth pointing out that, done right, in return for your privacy you get an end to war and crime. That's a hellofa trade-off.

As a daydream years ago, I thought up a thing: public surveillance kiosks (like the ones I understand they are trying out in New York) that have cameras and large screens. They work by randomly exchanging (nowadays I can just call them) "vines", video snippets, and displaying them. So each kiosk is displaying vines from the others around the zone (city, world, whatever) and there's a very simple UI: tap to rewind, click a button to escalate. Anyone who sees anything weird on a kiosk can easily review it and call attention to it (like 911 but lower intensity.)

This would achieve a monitoring function without any special privileges and with limited privacy impact. It would have to be part of some larger system, but it hopefully gives the general "drift"?

is it entirely symmetrical ?