- cross-posted to:
- lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
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In Spanish, we have a saying: “En casa de herrero, cuchara de palo”.
A rough translation would be “in the blacksmith’s house you’ll find wood spoons”. It’s not a new thing, it’s been like that since ancient times.Is that the same thing? The impression I get is that OPs post is about the IT worker actively distrusting smart tech. While I assume your example is more that the blacksmith doesn’t bother with making metal spoons for himself and using what ever he had already, which would be more comparable to a network engineer still using the ISPs shitty router.
Wooden spoons are better for cooking with cast iron pots and pans, which a blacksmith, being knowledgeable about metal, would be vey aware of.
Just as the it person is way more aware of the pitfalls of smart tech than your average person
I thought it was just teflon that is too weak to handle metal tools.
Metal tools also scrape the bottom lining that forms over time off, which is a big no no when cooking with cast iron.
Are you sure? I’ve often heard chainmail recommended to clean cast iron.
P sure (but not entirely) that thats for when you purposely want to remove the lining, fx for resale, to make it look brand new
Havent personally heard chainmail reccomended tho, mostly heard of steel sponges, chainmail sounds way cooler tho lol
Depends how hard you scrape. Steel sponges with a lot of force will take you down to metal, chainmail might work nicely for cleaning stuck on food without damaging the coating too much but I haven’t used it.
Metal tools you need to really scrape at it to remove the coating, I don’t think it is something you could do by mistake.
The seasoning? I seriously doubt that. People seem to think cast iron is more vulnerable than it is. You can wash it, too, just dry it off after.
Whatever man, the wooden spoons taste better i guess, that’s the reason now
Sure but what us the downside? It us a huge field with everything from local to requiring the cloud. You can’t blanket it all together.
We use it when, for any reason, a person who would could easily use something related to their field, doesn’t use it. What it means is that if someone who could be using something because they know how it works, isn’t using it, there must be a reason.
We have a similar saying in Denmark, something like “shoemakers kids always have holes in their shoes” but in this case it’s more about that the people in the profession don’t prioritize their own craft. I’ve seen this with electricians where whole house is done but electrical sockets aren’t installed but for IT I think it’s more about distrust towards developers (takes one to know one)
Ahh, the impression I got is that one makes it sound like they are avoiding it because they can’t be bothered to while the other actively avoids it because its bad.
I think that is the most “correct” interpretation of it. Maybe they’re saying that it’s been bent over time.
That ks for sharing this, this is fascinating.
Maybe the underlying rule is: the more you know about something, the more you are aware of its flaws, making the alternatives you know less about more attractive?
“The cobbler’s kids have no shoes” in English.
But this guy is saying he doesn’t trust technology not to spy or be vulnerable.
Yeah but I doubt that saying has ever been used to mean the blacksmith thinks metal spoons are bad. Right?
It’s worth sharing but this post is more about the software engineer knows how much shit is spying on you.
It implies worse though, doesn’t have to be bad. Worse gets deprecated just the same.
Well I have smart devices and a thermostat. Thermostat is awesome but local control only through home assistant and rest of the house is all zwave and ZigBee no internet required.
No HA*, no Zigbee, no containerized service landscape but the routers run OpenWRT. Hmm, Okay.
*one of the OSS contenders is fine.
Well, you shouldn’t keep a gun next to it, unless you want the printer to take ahold of it and rob you.
Why On Earth would you keep a gun NEXT to it!? That’s just asking for problems. That printer knows if it gets a hold of that gun, it’ll look like a suicide, not a murder.
Mechanical Windows
As opposed to what, wireless windows?
How about bio-windows?
Microsoft Windows
deleted by creator
Exactly.
My first personal e-mail way back in the 90s was with my ISP. Then I changed ISPs and saw the problem with that. So I moved to Yahoo.
Some years later, in the 00s I just decided to get my own, paid for, Internet domain and have my e-mail there, even though I could’ve carried on using Yahoo or get Google Mail (very popular amongst techies back then) for free. The main reason was that I realized I must made sure the e-mail address was MINE, not actually owned by somebody else with me allowed to use it under their conditions.
Twenty years later and guess it was pretty wise to not have my e-mail in the claws of “Definitelly Do Evil” Google.
Experience using and living with Tech, mainly once your understanding of it reaches the level of understanding systemic elements, naturally informs ones choices in Tech, and that often means chosing something else than the mass marketed “popular” stuff that’s designed to lock you in, sell you stuff or sell your attention to others and eavesdrop on you and sell your data.
Another perspective. You got lucky that the dependencies you’re working with haven’t gotten as bad as the ones for Gmail and the like. Sure you’ve got a domain, but you’ve also got a domain registrar you’re dependent on. Yeah, you’ve got your own email server, but it’s dependent on open source software, and the monopolists allowing it to still connection, though that’s getting iffy. You’re also dependent on the kindness of a number of people continuing to contribute to Linux, and it not being compromised in some way.
I made a different choice 25 years ago, and went with Gmail, but the idea that you’re smarter because your dependencies didn’t turn to sh*t is as much luck as skill. 25 years is several eternities in tech, and there are no guaranteed outcomes.
Literally the worst that can happen to me if I’m really really unlucky is end up tied down to a single provider, same as you.
There were already 100s of registars back then (and as of 2024 there were over 2000) along with a standardized process for moving a domain to another registar, all regulated by an international regulator, ICANN.
Given that ease of migration is guaranteed by ICANN, making the market highly competitive, the only real risk that this entire system end up “consolidated” is if ICANN is totally subverted, a pretty tall order considering it’s in the interest of every single country in the World and millions of businesses (who also have domain names) that it is not, so that’s highly unlikely.
Meanwhile Google is just one and has always been just one. From the very start there was NEVER any perspective of there being more than one provider of gmail addresses so there was NEVER any perspective of being able to move away from Google and still keep your e-mail address if Google screwed you in some way. As for all your e-mails, those were always freely accessible to Google and they could always do whatever they want with that data.
In simple terms, you chose to be Google’s bitch and hope that they don’t screw you over too badly, whilst I, maybe, if I’m really really unlucky and an entire international system for domain name regulation is subverted against the interests of all countries in the World and most businesses, might one day at worst end up in the same situation as you.
I’m afraid your face-saving risk “analysis” on this is hilariously bad.
Literally the worst that can happen to me if I’m really really unlucky is end up tied down to a single provider, same as you.
No, there are a lot more risks you’re running that I am not. Since you control your infrastructure, you’re also responsible for it. Current penalty under CAN-SPAM act is up to $53,088 per email. So, no the worst thing that can happen to you if you’re really unlucky is to die penniless after being sued into oblivious for operating a spam operation.
Before the worst happens, it’s getting increasingly more likely that your domain will end up in a blacklist at Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook, for which there is no formal appeal process. All that would require would somebody hacking your domain, and sending spam, or just sharing an ip address with a spammer.
That’s before we get into the things that you’re already lost: time and effort maintaining the system, which I have not.
Anyway, I was just being polite, but since you’re incapable of doing so, and need to resort to ad homenium attacks, I think we’re done here.
You’re assuming I’m using my domain to send spam or am operating the e-mail server myself. That’s a pretty wild assumption.
Further, I don’t live in the US nor do I have assets in the US, so that act means shit for me.
You can pay a company that hosts e-mail to do it for you, and pretty cheap too.
Which I do.
Like the registar, one can change that provider too, and if do that I get to take the e-mail address with me as well as all my e-mails (all data is fully exportable), unlike with Google were the e-mail address is theirs, not yours.
Try again.
If you have your own domain, you aren’t stuck with your dependencies. Swapping registrars is a straight forward porting procedure. Swapping hosting is a matter of replacing 5 or so DNS entries. It took me about 20 minutes to reconfigure my domain’s email when I decided I didn’t want to use Proton anymore.
And you knew 25 years ago that the market wouldn’t consolidate down to 1-2 registrars?
I suppose you can’t know that, but your odds on betting on a whole industry are better than a single company. Not to mention, the barrier to entry for a registrar becoming accredited really isn’t that high, so I wouldn’t expect market consolidation unless ICANN changes the process, at which point shit is fucked regardless.
I think there’s a wider point here, open source is the good long term bet
Having worked in IT for 17 years. I don’t trust any MFer that uses their IT experience as a reason to do something.
It seems like half of the people claiming they work in this field actually struggle more than the average person
I will trust people using their IT experience as a reason to avoid something, though
Not all of us will do it to the same degree though. IT security has always been a sliding scale between security and convenience. The most secure data is stored in a locked safe without being turned on or connected to anything. That’s not very practical, so we make concessions based on how often we need such data and other convenience metrics.
I’m not as paranoid as the OP, though I agree with some of the stuff said. Reasonable security measures are fine; you don’t need to look like a digital version of a prepper with a bunker, for most people.
Edit: for instance I don’t use my TV all that much, but it is a “smart” TV, meaning it has apps that connect to Internet, and I have some online libraries.
I just don’t understand the desire to control everything in your house with an app. It’s not like that app can load or unload the dishwasher or clothes dryer. That would be automation I could really get behind. And thermostats are programmable and then left to themselves. Even ice makers are automatically controlled with a microswitch.
And yes, I did try the internet enabled thermostat thing and found I never used the app. Nor is the journey to the thermostat so arduous that I can’t get up and walk over to it if I should ever feel the need. Maybe I’m just too old to get it.
But if you like it and want it then have at it. I certainly won’t stop you from enjoying it.
Having kids makes a big difference. It’s very useful to be able to shut off all the lights in the common areas and turn off the lights in their bedroom when they fall asleep. It’s also nice to be able to push a button to start a song on the speaker for musical routines (like cleaning up breakfast to Blue Danube or running to bed to Night Comes from Pikmin).
We also have a TON of lamps, and their switches are not always easily accessible (especially because our house is a perpetual mess).
The smart lock is because my wife always used to ask me if I locked the door after I got into bed, and I never remembered because ADHD.
I have some lights and speakers, that’s it. I like some automation things like speakers get set to X volume at 7pm, you can say “goodnight” and it has a list of items it does, asks for alarm, turns off all Lights, set speaker volumes lower, sets music in the living room for the doggo.
I have my network locked down and and IoT ssid. I like a few of the conveniences and I watch my network and traffic like a hawk.
I work every 3rd day, so for an odd schedule it’s nice. I set up Home Assistant to look at my calendar.
HomeAssistant and vlans are kind of the answer to most of the issues/concerns regarding smart devices this post has
I have to say though, I find anyone who leans too far either way to be extremely silly
Well chosen devices from reputable manufacturers can drastically improve quality of life
One big one for me was window blinds on a sun timer. Because after a decade, I was swapping from nights to days permanently having spent that past time swapping from nights to days every Wednesday and had signifcant issues both waking up and staying up on those days, and even now I still do
Having my bedroom windows open in the morning on their own to use natural lighting to wake me up has been extremely helpful for that, and then using HA that could be tied into external camera systems to close the windows automatically if a person or vehicle is detected within specific parameters, or having the ability to open my son’s window if I hear him crying to be picked up from a nap but I can’t immediately respond has been wonderful
Now there’s also your Rings, your creepvacuumbots, any smart TV at all and any other host of problems with iot devices, but there are some gems that make life much better without the dark patterns we increasingly associate with connectes devices these days
My phone has a built-in calendar and is about the only “extra” I use it for. It works flawlessly, and I have no other need for any other electronic calendering system. I do admit to using a wall calendar for certain things too. Old habits as a farmer are hard to break. Ye Gods, how I miss the weekly flip calendars I used to get from Cenex every year…
Personally, the vast majority of my smart home stuff is light automation. It’s nice having a selection of lights automatically turn on half an hour before sunset, and it’s nice having a button next to my bed that either turns on the reading lamps, or turns off all the lights in the house depending on how long I press it.
Though in fairness, I am drifting back towards having my lights controlled by buttons, because voice control is mostly bollocks. But now the lights font have to be the ones wired in to the house. It can be any that I can add to Home Assistant.
Nor is the journey to the thermostat so arduous that I can’t get up and walk over to it if I should ever feel the need. Maybe I’m just too old to get it.
I live in a three story house, and sometimes only notice when what the thermostat is set to when I’m tired and ready for bed. Climbing a flight of stairs after going down and changing the thermostat doesn’t appeal much. I also got it on sale, which was nice.
That’s why you have a programmable thermostat. Set and forget. No need to climb stairs, (good exercise), to change the temp.
LOL. That’s not a bad approach. What I find happens in practice is that we turn it off during season transitions so we can open the windows, and then forget or need to turn it back on again to deal with the fluctuations in the weather. The temps here have shifted as much as 50 degrees in a single day. Hard to program for that in advance. :)
I live in northern Minnesota, so we get that a lot too in the spring and fall. But my thermostat is set to auto with a minimum temp of 68F to turn on the heat. And 74F to run the air conditioner when needed. It works with very, very little intervention from me year round.
Yeah, i think its all about use cases.
I use home assistant in a tablet on the kitchen wall, for light control, ev charging and battery level monitoring for mine and my wife’s car which is not intuitive or easy in the official app. I use it for our shared calendar. Amd weather updates as well as for monitoring my 3d printer and cctv cameras. I host everything locally. Nothing is in the cloud except for the API i need to monitor the EVs and the weather server. I keep finding new things to use it for. I dont do much automation with it. But i find it very useful overall.
I just don’t understand the desire to control everything in your house with an app.
Shrinking the size of my wallet and getting rid of all my keys has an instant appeal. I’d much rather just carry around a single phone-sized multipass than a janitor’s worth of hardware for accessing a dozen different gates and appliances.
I also got rid of a bunch of keys, and I didn’t need an app to do so. if I have to use an app, I’d hate it
Did you notice your electronic locks all have keys for when they fail? For me, I only need one key for my door lock so it adds nothing noticeable in my pocket. And in all my life I have never seen any home appliance that needed a key to operate-- excepting something like you would see in a laundromat. But you likely don’t have the keys for that either.
As for gates, I’ve owned a lot of gates to control livestock. None of which needed a padlock. But that is very much a YMMV thing. Still, if you have a need for locked gates, a set of combination locks all set to the same combination or keyed locks with all setup for a single key once again minimizes the need for a bunch of bulky keys. Plus they are all cheaper to install and operate. You can literally operate an infinite number locks with just one key or combination.
Did you notice your electronic locks all have keys for when they fail?
No, because I don’t have them. I have a fake rock with a key in it and generally don’t bother locking my front door anyway. But I’m lazy and cheap, not terribly interested in changing out all my locks myself or paying someone else to do it for a marginal quality of life improvement.
Still, if you have a need for locked gates, a set of combination locks all set to the same combination or keyed locks with all setup for a single key once again minimizes the need for a bunch of bulky keys.
Sure. And if you’re setting up a security perimeter from first principles, that’s fine. But then you add an interior gate or you need to replace a lock that’s rusted through or yadda yadda life happens, and you can lose the single key design.
Case in point, my front door lock did foul a few years ago. My wife changed out the front door but didn’t bother to sync it with the back door. She didn’t want to bother with an electronic lock because she thought they were too expensive. So now we’ve got a front door that doesn’t match the side door or the garage door. And we only have two keys to the new lock, one of which has been lost almost immediately.
A digital system that I can just sync from my phone would be far more appealing than juggling keys. Or staring at a key dish and trying to remember which ones actually link to which doors.
You can just get another re-keyable lock for any added later locks or replacement lock sets. It’s not rocket surgery and one of the reasons why you use re-keyable locks. And if you lost a key, just have a new key made. It’s cheap and quick. So you are still only needing one key per user. My key ring has a remote for my car, a post officebox key, (they do not deliver my mail to my house), and one door key to the house that has 3 locking doors. The car remote is by far the most annoying thing in my pocket.
Look, we all want to be part of some cool kids club. I want a new 3D printer because despite my trusty old bed-slingers working flawlessly, I would like a shiny new enclosed Core xy printer so I can be as cool as everyone else with a printer. And if I’m not careful, I can have the same problem with shiny new pocket knives at times. Same thing with digital homes. It’s driven by the cool factor rather than any real necessity. So go ahead and connect everything you want. But at least admit to yourself that probably half the reason you do it is just to be a cool kid.
You can just get another re-keyable lock for any added later locks or replacement lock sets.
All things that are a pain in the ass.
If you don’t understand the desire then you don’t have a use case. And that’s ok. But that doesn’t mean other people don’t have a use case.
Properly set up home automation can reduce your energy usage. Track temperature throughout your house and open blinds, only direct heat/cooling to rooms that need it, etc. Sure a thermostat is programmable but it’s limited by the ability to just turn on/off heat and a few temperature sensors. You can drastically expand what your thermostat can do (ie motorized blinds) and information it has access to (temperature outside, current weather, etc).
Or maybe someone is the type to have panic attacks about forgetting to turn the oven off. Having the ability to see oven status on the go is nice.
Or maybe someone has a larger house than you and the journey to the thermostat is more arduous than yours. Or the journey to the dishwasher or clothes dryer to see if it’s done is arduous.
Or maybe someone has a disability and having quick access to various things is a huge time saver.
Maybe someone has a sensory issue and loud buzzing from a dryer finishing is problematic, so they want to disable the “finished” alert from the device and just receive a notification on their phone.
but if youre gathering that much data and making decisions with it, then from the OP “no internet connected thermostats” is a must. None of your smart home stuff should be able to phone home. Basically the openWRT argument but also for smart home. Use zigbee or zwave so devices can’t just directly phone home and must simply connect through a hub (that you should control).
tl;dr - plenty of reasons to want these things, they just may not apply to you.
Getting back from holiday in a few hours and the weather is cold? Turn the heating on from your app before you get back. Wow. Life changing. Don’t have a use case for most things being connected but thermostat really isn’t that crazy IMO.
“Set and forget” time based thermostat programming only works if your daily routine doesn’t change daily or weekly or have outliers. The ability to change manually, or add other factors (is anyone home? let it get a bit colder, since it doesn’t matter) is pretty great.
But I would still advocate for
no internet connected thermostatsfrom the OP. Your thermostat should be isolated to your home network (via zigbee/zwave or a quality VLAN) connecting to a server/hub you control. And your app should be communicating to your server/hub. Your thermostat shouldn’t be able to report back to google whether or not you are home.Door locks and garage door openers are sweet to automate. My instance knows if I left by car/bike/foot, and welcomes me home with the proper unlocking/opening.
Also, never having to worry about if I left the door unlocked or garage door open is nice.
I’ve never gotten any automated locks because I’ve always been concerned about security around them, but also, Ive had too many warped doors in my life where I have to lean on the door to get the deadbolt to properly set. Which means that there is no way an automated lock would be able to automatically set itself.
Is the answer here: “there are just some doors this won’t work on” or do the smart locks have some way of working around that?
I think you gotta fix the door before you can have complete confidence.
My automated deadbolt can ‘force’ its way shut when it has full battery. But when it gets low on juice, the door needs to be ‘fully shut’
So your best bet is to better align your strike plate so the door doesn’t need shimmied to close fully.
People connect their thermostat to the internet?
Yes, so they can change it while they are away from home … for some reason.
Because it takes time for an air conditioner to cool down the place, and it wastes energy to keep it running for 8 hours while you’re at work.
As a general rule, if you buy “smart” anything where it requires an internet connection and a cloud service to function it will be bitrotten within 5 years and dead within 10. And that’s assuming the company survives that long and is bothered to support it. That’s from planned obsolescence and the ongoing cost of supporting the platform when they have something new to sell. And while some things benefit from an internet connection, if its white goods or whatever where functionality is locked into an account, an app and the cloud, then run a mile.
I think forward thinking companies could actually gain a lot of free publicity and sales if they openly pledged that their softwarewas in escrow and would automatically release after a period of time and/or as a failsafe if the company discontinued the product and/or they went bust.
it will be bitrotten within 5 years and dead with 10
Worse, it could get bought out and converted to a Meta, Google, or Amazon product.
It should be required that companies either maintain their services perpetual or release the software with a permissive license to allow users to maintain their own service.
I don’t even know what IT stands for and I knew all that shit is garbage
When I see an IT person post like this, I instantly think “So, you’re the IT person who always finds a reasons to say no.” I’ve manage IT shops for 30+ years, and you’re not my kind of IT person.
Also IT here. I’ve worked with these sorts of guys, also agree not my kind of IT person. Usually craps on anything and everything.
For some reason, I feel like you’re the type of person who uses AI to write code.
I guess the lock picking lawyer has something to say about those mechanical locks.
Yeah, he’d probably say “at least they aren’t smart locks”
And still pick them in 10 seconds.
Without a doubt. He’s the lockpicking lawyer, after all.
But a lot of smart locks are basically locks that have all the attack vectors of normal locks, plus a bunch of extra attack vectors due to being ‘smart’.
To be fair, that dude makes it look easy. Picking a quality lock you aren’t familiar with is pretty tough.
Oh, so are they (IDK the name but dude is locksmith but also throwing knives) pretty elite skill wise in locksmithing space?
I have no point of reference for that but in rock guitar term are they like Stevie Vai, Guthrie Govan level ?
McNally is the axe/knife guy. I can’t speak to their reputation in the broader hobby, but these guys are VERY experienced. To me, it seems like a magic trick to open locks in 30 seconds when it might take me 1 minute to 1 hour. Except master lock. It really is that easy.
I work in cyber security and I have lots of smart home things. I also assume my network’s being compromised at all times and keep anything really important on paper in a safe.
swap out those mechanicals windows for mechanical linux and then we’ll talk
I am more of a hydraulic Linux person myself
You must feel compressed.
Likely not, the whole point of hydraulics is that the fluid is non-compressible!
That’s pneumatic Linux, though.
Actually it’s GNUmatic Linux.
I use Arch BTW.
Like just huge arches instead of windows or even doors, Arch is all you need.
I thought Emacs is all you need?
Real programmers use memes to program the machines of the world.
Tfw you come to your first day of work in critical infrastructure to maintain drivers and highly critical network applications and they’re all written in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE
Incorrect, you need
According to this documentary, you’re wrong!
I never thought about how a physical arch relates to physical windows. Interesting.
