Technology

“Carla! Carla! What the fuck is this? I know you sleep on a 25. A 25 or a 30 if you fuck up swiping. I know for a fucking fact that you would NEVER choose to sleep on a 60, and yet I found a goddamn record of a 60 when I was out last week. Who was it? Who was here?”

I really can’t see any other reason. A dial isn’t sexy but it’s far easier in every way

Sorry, I meant to say "stupid fucking people buying stupid fucking products."

Smart products themselves are not the issue. The issue is making everything cloud based. The solution is companies designing their products so they can be controlled over the network.

It's a fucking bed! It doesn't need a persistent connection to some server. The problem is that they also want to mine and sell your data.

Also people in the 80's: "I love my waterbed, but my back is killing me for some reason."

That's what customer support would have told the poor clueless customers if the hotline had not been an AI agent running on AWS!

They would have to know it does that first

I can completely understand it, if you ignore all the privacy issues and potential hacks.

For example, a smart fridge. Imagine a fridge that tracks the expiry date of everything inside and warns you before something goes bad -- or detects when something goes bad based on the off-gassing that it produces. Imagine it gets to know your purchase patterns and suggests items for your grocery list when you're running low. Or, if you fully trust it, it could even order those things for you.

Or, smart lights. Imagine lights that are nice and bright in the winter when you don't get enough sunlight. Then imagine those lights are smart enough to start dimming and getting "warmer" at a certain point in the evening on your personal schedule, making your body more prepared for sleep. Add motion / presence sensors so that the lights turn on when you go into a room, and turn off when everybody leaves the room. Most of the time a light switch isn't a burden, but if you're carrying things it can be a bit annoying, and we all know kids are pretty bad about turning things off when they leave a room.

In a world where you didn't have to worry about the privacy issues, the bugs had all been worked out, and so-on, smart appliances could be great. But, we're on v0.1 and so I'm extremely cautious in every "smart" device I use.

Smart devices are fine - it usually just means remote control or status. Plenty of use in that.

The problem is that no one can be arsed to buy a local hub and figure out how to connect it, so every company just builds an app and makes it cloud connected. That way they can farm your stupidity.

It’s not hard to make a device that works locally (it’s way easier than making a cloud service) but it’s far less lucrative.

That being said if I bought a $2000 mattress cover and it didn’t work offline I’d have gotten my fucking money back.

• !assholedesign@lemmy.world
• !crappydesign@sh.itjust.works
• !unsustainable_products@slrpnk.net

It adjusts temperature (can heat OR cool and in some versions it can heat one side and cool the other) and I think the even more expensive version can morph a bit to your liking, and according to them, reduce snoring.

What they don't mention is that regardless of whether you get the 3600 euro option or the 5800 euro option, you still have to SUPPLY YOUR OWN MATTRESS. It's also a subscription service.

If you didn't hate it enough, it's also advertised as being "powered by AI". Which almost certainly is just some temperature adjustment algorithm, maybe even a deterministic one.

Why would you buy a bed that goes upright?

Health reasons? There's a reason hospital beds can go upright.

Or just leisure, if they have a TV in the bedroom, or they use a laptop in bed, etc.

Through the internet?

Terrible design. There's no reason it shouldn't be possible with local connectivity. And realistically it should also have physical buttons as a backup.

Because, and this may surprise you, some (most?) people don't think about how their stuff works. They just see it has an app and goes "neat!".

I don't know why my dishwasher should be online. But I've been with people who's smart watches twinkled to alert them that their dishwasher, located 30min away, was out of rinse aid. I can think of no scenario in which that is relevant. Rant warning There's a God damn light on the front of the unit, that tells you the same damn thing, and you can't do anything about without being at the unit. What are you going to do? Drop whatever you're doing at work and take an hour lunch break early to drive home and deal with it? Didn't think so.

BUT the person had seen the dishwasher and thought it was neat, modern, and needed a new dishwasher. And that's whywe end up with a lot of "smart" devices, which are just "ordinary devices with an cloud based remote control"

I have awful acid reflux and have an adjustable bed frame. Having the top half slightly raised is a life saver since I can raise it for worse reflux and lower it for better sleep. I just use a remote, though. Doing it on an app through the internet is just stupid.