This is a gen x complaint. Boomers would just ask their kids to set it up because they can't get it to work. Gen x realizes what is going on and that it is bullshit to need an account for a fucking lightbulb.
I think it's a complaint from everyone but Gen z, who are just used to it.
I think this is a common-sense complaint, mostly unrelated to generation.
I mean yeah we are used to it but it's still shitty. Are you not used to it?
I'm too poor to have this complaint, I guess. I have to do everything manually still
Millennial here. We are in agreement.
My late 50s mum happily signs up with her Facebook to everything. Meanwhile it's often the people in their late 20s to 30s who were introduced to computers during their youth before everything had super streamlined GUIs who know enough about software that they realize this is a privacy concern, what internet privacy means, and why it's important. People who are older or younger than that have to go out of their way to learn how and why to look behind the easy interfaces. That's my experience and explanation at least.
Remember when our parents were super nuts about keeping your info private online, not revealing too much info to strangers, and not signing up for stupid shit? My my, how the turntables.
My 70yo mom thinks I'm crazy paranoid because of my data privacy stances, while she's dealing with constant spam and account hacks. Guess who hasn't had damn near any info issues? :D
My young family members are the worst, they just click "yes" to everything, regardless of any effort I've made to explain how things work.
Any barrier to convenience is too frustrating to them. They don't like even using full applications in their laptops, always say "wheres the app, this is too complex". 🤦🏼♂️
Boomers would get the bulb set up by their kids, then something will happen, and you come over to find your parents sitting in a rave room because they need the light and can't fix it.
And haven't mentioned the issue even though it's been like that for months.
Nope. Mom's meross bulb got a little fucked in a power failure. She unscrewed its green self and put in a regular bulb.
Boomers WILL solve this. But they'll go low-tech even if it means unplugging the cord to turn it off.
Hahahahaha "rave room" ain't that the truth
Gen X here and can confirm.
what kind of lightbulbs are you guys buying? I've never had to set up an account for this kind of stuff
Sadly these days, it’s a hold over from boomer managers making the decision that services require logins, which in turn require accounts and emails. So gen-x managers who were taught by boomers do the same thing. It’s systematic really.
I don't think it's boomer managers doing that, necessarily; I think it's an unholy alliance of liassez-faire tech bro entrepreneurs and the
propagandamarketing industry.It's happening purely because people tolerate it.
It's also a millennial complaint.
Sincerely, elder millennial who recently had to make separate accounts for a lightbulb and an air cooler and is sick of that bullshit.
Boomer isn't really used as a generational term nowadays
Gen Z doesn't know what a "boomer" is...
How is this a boomer complaint? Why does everyone need my email and info?
So they can sell it to spam companies obviously.
Er I mean... For better customer exploitation!
Shit, I'm really not good at this but they're going to send me to the
to exploit you. not being exploited at a molecular level is boomer shit.
now, are you an old, or are you gonna send me a copy of your social security number and complete sequenced genome?
What I love was it is boomers that allows these changes so they gotta live with it. It's not like we all woke up and decided to start asking for emails for everything. It was sitting back and being cool with letting ads take over everything until they started needing more and more data so they weren't paying 30 million for beer ads to people who don't drink
Ok boomer.
Lol jk
For me it's that I don't want short form video anywhere near my view.
I went to a bar for a drink the other day. They had TVs all over the place which I normally don't care for but it looked like golf or something I could just ignore. After I ordered my drink I realized how wrong was.
It was actually some weird short form video TV channel. They croped the 16:9 screen into a 1:1 square with moving neon lines in the "empty space" where there was no video. Each video was about 5 seconds long and showed brainless content of people using a Rube Goldburg machine or doing card tricks and other such nonsense.
Once I realized what was happening it was too late as I got my drink and I felt compelled to finish it and pay. I tried to ignore the 5+ screens in my view but they were too big and eye-catching to really ignore. I kept catching myself looking at one of the screens after a minute or so. I felt like I was getting serotonin raped between ads.
Eventually I moved to sit by a window and stare at a tree. I'll never go back to a bar like that again.
This reads like a cyberpunk vignette; I enjoyed it. Thank you. I've started to take note when something decidedly cyberpunk happens in day-to-day life. I make a lot of notes.
Extrapolating a bit, here are the next steps
- screens in places where people might look at an ad will all have built in image recognition and eye-tracking.
- an algorithm/model will calculate the number of people within view and an acceptable level of eyes on screen per minute (or some other time increment tbd by an industry leading marketing psychologist) depending on the task they are doing.
- the algorithm/model can also calculate the local demographic
- the short format video content can be easily tweaked to improve engagement. If the racing crash clips aren't generating enough engagement, then it can try indoor cat clips.
- when the eye to screen levels are at or above minimum advertising levels, display an ad that would best match the target demographic that the advertiser set. The ad contents will also match the actions of the local population.
CHILI'S IS ABLEIST AND HAS LITTLE SCREENS KN EVERY DAMN TABLE THAT DISTRACT ME.
I went to a restaurant awhile ago and they told me to order using the little screen on the table. I said "no thanks" and left.
It's like a race to the bottom.
I have this exact same reaction.
I'm a grumpy bastard and hate similar things but honestly, this doesn't sound so bad that I'd be particularly bothered by it or leave if I hadn't already ordered that beer. It's just wallpaper. If I was by myself I'd probably appreciate it on some level and if I'm with other people I'd likely stop noticing. Overall I think I'd probably prefer the bar not have them at all but it's really not that bad.
Loud sports or music that can fuck right off but otherwise, meh.
Normally I would agree with you. But they had these 50" screens in every direction except for down. I was literally staring at the floor in an attempt not to look at them. The swirling colorful "boarders" of the short format square video was eye catching enough. But with the video changing scenes every 5 seconds it was a similar effect to the Eisenstein editing style in Battleship Potemkin. The screens were screaming at you to stare at it.
It was also just total garbage content, the type of stuff I left reddit for. It was just a step above what Americans of the future watched in Idiocracy. It was truly a bizarre experience for me and also one of the most "boomer" moments I've had. Although out of everyone else in the bar, only the boomers were happily watching the short format video.
@The_Picard_Maneuver I once bought a TV sound bar that wanted me to download an app, make an account and give it detailed location information just to use it as a wired speaker. I returned it.
I wish more people would do this!
If more people acted this way this wouldn't be the standard
The only radio with Bluetooth that fits my older car requires a fucking Android app to sync Bluetooth... Fuck you pioneer!
Thankfully there's a ton of workarounds for that.
If there's a tape deck, you can do headphone jack to cassette tape. If you don't have a headphone jack on your phone you can get a little bluetooth reciever to headphone jack type thing.
There's also the route of using a small device to broadcast your own little AM station (same deal, gets audio from jack or bluetooth), then tune into it with your existing head unit.
Best way is to just rig up your own aux in, but that requires some doing.
Was it a Bose? I once bought Bose headphones and downloaded an app to pair it. When Bose recognized the headphones, it told me that I had used the wrong app to pair to those headphones.
@snow_bunny Nah, it was Sonos. Which, I guess the app ecosystem is their whole thing - but I didn't know that at the time. I just wanted a basic sound bar, and the reviews didn't really mention that all that extra fluff was mandatory.
In retrospect Sonos sucks for a lot of other reasons too, so I guess it was a bullet dodged.
Good, cause it sounds like absolute junk
That's my pet hate with everything.
A mouse doesn't need an account. Just let me install the shit and configure it you fucks.
Linux has built in drivers for most shit with no account necessary. Logitech (for example) has a third party app called Solaar that does everything Logitechs own crappy mouse/keyboard software does.
Getting away from the endless hassle of popups and drivers was my biggest motivation for switching to Linix way back in 2008.
Bro we need to track you in every way possible so we can sell you even more shit, what’s the big deal?
Um, how about no Scott, okay? You got my money, if you wanna keep pestering for more money, I'm gonna return this original item and you aren't getting shit.
Ladies and gentlemen, Scotty don't.
Scotty n'est pas
The Olympics required four apps. Five if you count Visa Go, which just outright didn't work. All of them want you to make accounts and send you shit.
- Itinerary, account optional
- Tickets, account required even though the tickets were on the phone
- Transport, account required even though the tickets were in the
- Metro app, for which it told you to NOT DELETE THE DATA BECAUSE THE TICKETS ARE ONLY ON THE DEVICE
No, lightbulb, I won't give you my location
(actually happened)
For Android, the location permission was(is? not sure right now) basically required for anything that wanted WiFi or Bluetooth. As getting access to that, could in theory be used to locate you
Not that this was necessarily the case here, but an explanation
"required"
Required by Google, yes, but not actually required in any functional sense of the word other than the function of spying on you in another insidious way. It worked without invasive permissions for a long time and you absolutely won't convince me it wouldn't now if data collection weren't a priority.
(This isn't directed at you personally; apologies if it seems like it is.)
Yep technically it's called coarse location which in theory tells apps what neighborhood you're in, but can be exploited by marketing to know if you're in front of a shop stand. At least it won't drain your battery with GPS usage.
It works without it though. 🤔
Lots of times devices need access to a thing called location just to detect certain kinds of Bluetooth. I don't know the specifics but it's a trend I've noticed. It might not be the fault of the light.
Over my dead body
Fighting side by side with a boomer?
What about side by side with a friend?How about side by side with your mother?
It means the fight may continue well over 10 pm. I'm in.
That's not even a boomer complaint. Zoomer here. I fucking hate how everything needs an account. I recently started cleaning up my mail box and this shit makes that nigh impossible. I especially hate it when it's just a shitty novelty site, if it needs an account, you bet your ass I ain't ever using it, piss off!
make an email for different things, such as one for subscriptions, one for things like this, one for professional use, etc. it's annoying but also helps 🤷🏻 i hate that we're at this point lol
My trick is that I use a domain name I've bought for my personal emails which is a catch-all address, and I sign up to websites with "(websitename)[email protected]", so I'm assuming I'll know who the culprit is when the time comes and I can do something about it with relative ease. I don't know if that's actually smart or not but I'll see how I get on.
"Or sign in with your Facebook account"
No, this isn't Facebook!
The real solution: Buy your own domain name, and make a catch-all email address. Every account gets a new address with that account’s company in the email. Target is target@[your domain].[tld]… The benefit is that you can see exactly who is selling your info to spammers, and easily burn those accounts. You start getting spam sent to that target address? Congrats, now you know Target has sold your info and you can set a rule to automatically send any target@ emails straight to your trash. Also, get a damned password manager so every account has a unique password.
Create a fake persona. This persona has a fake name, birthday, favorite food, first pet, etc… Memorize everything about this fake person, or even just make a note about them in your phone. And none of it is real. This fake person’s info is used for all of your signup info. So when shitty fucking companies get hacked and lose all of your info, the hackers never actually got any of your info. And if you ever see spam addressed to that fake persona, you know you can immediately discard it.
Between the catch-all email address and the fake persona, you’re basically immune to all of the typical ads, phishing, data breaches, etc…
That's a massive ballache
Bitwarden can do both automatic email creation and also store the identity(s) and fill them in for you.
So it doesn't need to be a ballache, can be one-click transparent.
Commercial email providers will typically provide some number of aliases aimed at doing this for you.
Proton Mail's a popular provider in Switzerland, for example:
https://proton.me/mail/pricing
Their $3.99 /month service provides 10 aliases.
Their $9.99 /month service provides unlimited aliases.
And will work with a domain you own, so it's not like you're locked to them if you want to move to somewhere else down the line.
Abine (now IronVest) just sells the privacy aspect. They aren't an email provider -- that is, they don't give you an email box -- but provides this "masking" service to forward it to your regular email provider, if you already have email service.
Their $39/year service provides 50 aliases.
Their $99/year provides unlimited aliases.
They also do some other stuff like provide masked phone numbers that forward to your real number. They have provided masked, temporary credit card numbers with charge limits and a bogus name and address, so you don't even need to give your real name to someone you purchase something from online (though it looks like that's currently not available, says that they're bringing it back. I have used a masked credit card number from them in the past, so I know that at least some merchants will accept it, though I'd think that it'd tend to trip anti-fraud stuff at merchants, but...shrugs).
That being said, while I think that this sort of thing is a way to reduce the increasing degree of data harvesting -- you can't always choose whether-or-not to use certain services -- I think that if you have the option to choose a product or service that doesn't harvest data on you in the first place, that's really a better option.
Fyi, this can be done with Gmail as well. Just add a plus sign at the end of your email. I.e. your_email+target @ Gmail.com
That's a great idea! The fake information won't work for things that require real information, but it's otherwise great! Is there any retaliation you can take against companies that sell your information? I guess you could forward all of those emails to their sales address.
What service do you use for the catch all emails? I use "simple login" currently with my own domain. But, I'd love to look at other options.
I have one of the yearly deals on MXRoute. Unlimited domains. Been using them for almost 3 years.
https://www.migadu.com/ is a cheap and reliable one. Used YandexMail for years for free before, but they were shameless about reading the contents of emails and then had the audacity to remove the free tier and demand money for it.
Or better yet try making your accounts for fake characters like Goku or ash catchem so with enough people doing the same thing we can get spammers to look at the data they bought and think hey wait a minute I've been scammed
Or just stop buying useless products that demand internet access when they dont need it, and stop making those accounts.
I was going to buy a really sweet drone. Then I watched the Getting Started video and there was an app and an account thing, and I realized the second they shut down the service, that drone would be a paperweight.
I'm back to building my own because I'd like to use it for more than a year or two.
Far from being a boomer, but 100% agree with it.
It is sad to think there are people who don't think this is ridiculous and are just accepting that.
That's not a boomer thing. Boomer will be like "sure, I'll give you all the informations you want, even the name of my dog and my credit card number".
How else are they going to email you 20 times about changes to their privacy policy?
And then the inevitable email when they have to admit that all the data they gathered on you was stolen and that there is nothing you can do about it.
"We've updated our privacy policy and want to let you know we care about and value your privacy. You now agree that we can sneak into your bedroom at night and take videos of your genitals while you sleep, for sale on OnlyFans. If you disagree with this policy then we will brick your device."
I wish we could go back to the 90s as far as this shit is concerned.
Just take it out of the box and it works.
Send in a registration post card if you feel like bothering, but thats about it.
I am so sick of everything, especially shit that has no conceivable need to be online, not only demanding an internet connection, but demanding accounts and shit too.
Cause you know why they do it. They want to track you, harvest your data, and monetize it. Its not about selling you a good product, its about selling you a good listening device.
honestly this shit is so ridiculous, a fucking toothbrush wanting wifi and an account so people can spy on you even more closely than they already do, hell when it comes to regular internet services i 80% of the time nope out when they ask for an account...how do people WANT TO buy this shit 😭?
Exactly - it's not about selling you a product, it's about you becoming a product they can then sell to third parties.
That's not really a boomer complaint, that's just a pro-privacy pro-internet security kind of complaint. Everyone of all ages hates having to have an account for everything and its mother
It's also a lack of convenience complaint, and an anti e-waste complaint.
What happens when thier server has an outage or your internet is down...
What happens when the company goes out of business or just decides they don't care about the product anymore or they'd prefer it if you have to buy a new one...
I wrote an email app called Port87 for this. Every account gets its own address, and everything to that address goes in its own label.
How's this different from plus aliases?
Just chiming in, if you’re using + aliases for privacy some people can just remove the plus and see your email
For example if you sign up with [email protected] the service can remove everything between the + and the @ and see your real email is [email protected]
It is plus aliases*. It’s got additional features for them that other providers don’t have though. Like for each label (alias) you can toggle whether to get notifications, mark as unread, screen new senders, and show them in the “aggbox”. The aggbox is like an inbox, but since you don’t ever use your “bare address”, it just shows the labels you want. Your bare address autoresponds with a list of your public addresses.
* It’s technically subaddressing, using either a dash or a plus as a delimiter.
From what I can tell, not much. They use dashes "-" instead of pluses "+".
But neither of these two options provide you with much privacy. Plus addresses, as others have pointed out, can be automatically stripped (just delete everything after the plus sign) and you get the real email behind it.
This service specifically I dont know the details, but it seems there is a unique prefix per user, but no "real email". So for instance if you use gmail you can have "[email protected]" as your real email. You then use "[email protected]" for your lemmy account. If that email gets leaked out somehow, people can easily tell your real email address is "[email protected]"
This service seems to do something very similar with the difference there is no base email, so there isnt a "[email protected]", there will only be "[email protected]". It is worth pointing out you might still be tracked because all your emails will be prefixed with "sunny". So although spammers wont be able to figure out your real email address they can just try something like "[email protected]", and if multiple of your addresses leak it will be easy to link them all up to the same person.
This also creates A LOT of lock in. Because if the service shuts down you now have dozens of services for which you don't have means to access the emails anymore.
Your app looks amazing. Looking forward to it becoming available!
Thank you. :)
If anyone is interested in this, check out addy.io and simplelogin, which provide this exact service and are seen as privacy friendly by the community. Remember that any email service like this has the potential to read all your email, so pick a service you trust.
It's called data mining
This is but one of many reasons why people should (have) cared more about net neutrality and the abilities companies have to reduce the internet to a giant advertising platform without limits on how they can shuffle your personal info around.
If we had greater protections for personal data, we wouldn't have an entire internet that's now essentially a series of scams and grifts to keep you clicking.
Create an account so you can do anything with your purchased device? That's just plain abusive. How about: thank you for using your hard-earned, post-tax funds and choosing our product. Let's get you going as fast and easily as possible, then go as far as we can to make things work before having you stop and create an account?
Only reason to create one is so you can save a persistent context for multiple types of interaction. Support multiple users, or different mobile devices, maybe groups of devices. But for a single device, out of the box, no sign up should EVER be needed.
Unless the company's priority is to hoover all your usage data, analyze it to death, invade your privacy, and sell it for profit.
And your last point is moot because that is the exact priority. Sell product which in turn makes customer into product.
grocery stores trying to get me to sign up for their reward program or whatever
Im surprised Aldi hasnt completely taken over the entire country by now because of how they skip all the bullshit
its a grocery store. i walk in, i buy food, i leave
could not be simpler.
My local Kroger, however, has automated price cards that adjust to scalp their customers during high-traffic periods.
this is a practice that should be rewarded via targetted arson of distribution centers until our demands are met
oops autocorrect lmao
i meant this is a practice that should be outlawed via legislation that follows our due processes
Lidl does a reward scheme in lots of countries, so I'm surprised actually that Aldi hasn't done the same.
if they start, itll be the last straw that finally gets me to just go find a local farm and buy food direct from the source
Meanwhile in my password manager: 727 login accounts 😶
1510 in my Keepass and 1423 in my Bitwarden 😬
That's collected over 15+ years though.
Mine has 40.
There kind of is an argument here that maybe more services should permit for use of public-private key authentication.
Using one password with multiple services is a problem, because you have a shared secret with the other end, and if you use the same password with multiple services, that service or people who break into it could impersonate you elsewhere.
But with public-private key encryption, you never hand out your private key. You only use it to sign a specific request sent you, so that risk doesn't exist. You can use a public-private key pair with one or multiple services.
I mean, personally, I'd kind of rather have three physical keystore devices.
One I carry with me. That stores the key or keypairs necessary to do the sort of things that I carry auth data with me -- my keys and the cards I carry in my wallet. Just means that I only need one device.
The other I leave at home, stored securely. That authenticates to maybe more-critical stuff, things like a stockbroker, maybe -- stuff where I don't need day-to-day access, and don't want to worry about my credentials going missing.
The last I keep in a safety deposit box in a bank. That has all my authentication stuff. That's to deal with catastrophic situations, like my house burns down or I get killed and need a way to pass authentication stuff. The bank makes me jump through a lot of hoops to get access to it, but it's there.
I'd like the device to have a display and a keypad, so that I don't have to trust external input devices as to what it is that I'm authenticating (e.g. smartcard point-of-sale systems do this).
I'd rather not use a smartphone for the first device. The smartphone is just too damned complicated and rapidly-changing for me to really want it to store my authentication data. I'd rather have it be a separate token, something that I can plug into a smartphone or point-of-sale terminal if I want to perform an authentication.
There are crypto tokens that contain keystores -- powered or smartcard -- but they tend to not have a screen or keypad, to save on costs. I don't really feel like that's something that I need to save on, as long as I only have one.
I'd like the device to optionally permit setting a passcode for a given key on it. That's not an ironclad form of security, but makes it harder than just pickpocketing someone's keys. And for some things, that I use all the time -- like my house -- I don't need to have a passcode.
This has a number of benefits:
- If you're mugged or something, you physically are unable to authorize to things that require the keys on the device at home or the device at the bank. In fact, you can credibly say that you can't do so. That counters coercion issues:
-
You don't need to trust POS terminals. Sketchy terminal? Not a problem.
-
You can keep a log of transactions on the device.
-
You don't have to worry about the latest clever smartphone attack compromising your credentials.
-
You can use the thing the same way with a smartphone or computer or point-of-sale terminal. That's something that we really don't have today -- most people don't have smartcard readers, and vendors generally don't have support for authentication for those.
It has some downsides:
-
It's another device to carry.
-
It needs to be powered (though it could have very low power requirements, like a digital wristwatch, run for a year on a charge, unlike a smartphone, and could potentially charge off USB or similar). You wouldn't want your "keys" to lose power (though people who do stuff like smartphone payment already need to worry about this).
-
It costs something.
My lightbulbs don't require an account, I just get up from the couch and turn them off, has been working perfectly for decades 😘👌
It is possible to have lights that automatically turn on and off and not have to log in to the bespoke lightbulb app that stops being updated in three months while simultaneously rendering your lightbulb worse than useless because now it's stuck on a dim shade of green that you can't change because the last update broke the app.
The future we were promised is there, we just need to help it into the world.
People abbreviating random words when there's literally no need to.
I got absurdly upset over someone abbreviating information as "inf." recently.
watch out for infosec.
I'm trying to figure out what you're even referring to. The only thing I see abbrebiated here is TV. But TV is the default way to say television even in person and has been my entire life. At least it is here in the US. Is it different elsewhere?
I feel like some people are just too lazy to speak.
People making contractions when there is literally no need to.
I known'nt what you mean.
Heh. This was me when I was shopping for a new Sonic toothbrush. WHY ARE THRER APPS?!?!?? Seriously though, spending $100 for the (questionable) quality toothbrush that had zero need for my info. I don’t want stats. I don’t want to know the battery percentage.
Me shopping for (human) scales. This one tells you body fat, BMI, etc. Oh cool! Wait that screen is pretty small. Read fine print, needs app.
Same brand of scales, same functions, bigger screen to tell you the details, no app. Significantly cheaper.
Why would you choose the one that requires an app instead of the one that does the same without an app for cheaper?
I just want this stupid fad with smart devices coming with with obligatory app and account creation to be over already.
None of the boomers I know care about this and some even have duplicate accounts due to forgetting about them.
Yeah, boomers will just brute force their way through repeated "wrong password" attempts and inevitably make a new account every time and their take away from the experience is that "new fangled technology is so convoluted and never works"
Meanwhile the millennial experience is to have zero issues actually using the product because we're technologically competent, we're just going to complain the whole time that's it's taking unnecessary data, or find weird ad hoc ways to make burner accounts.
I will lecture my dad for having 14 different email accounts and he will retort with "you also have more than 10!"
Yes old man, and I use all 10 and know exactly how they differ and what each is used for. You think you have one account when you actually have 14, they all share one password which Is probably my name written backwards, and you're sending mail to your old account address then getting mad when you can't find it in the inbox of your new account, and you still refer to all mail platforms as "Windows mail" even though you've exclusively accessed your yahoo mail via the browser for the last 5 years, and have owned a Mac for 10 years... We are not the same.
I don't want my computer to treat me like an idiot, it's my computer let me run whatever commands I want.
GNU/Linux
There are a few utilities even on the command-line side that will require confirmation (or passing
--forceor something like that) but it tends to be in cases where you almost certainly don't want to do what you're doing.And there are a very few that just don't let you do so at all.
rmwon't normally remove a file if you don't have permissions to do so, though if passed-f, will give you the permissions if you have the authority to do so.mkfsutilities ("create a new filesystem") typically require a force flag to overwrite a filesystem that's in use; normally when that happens, it means that someone's typed the wrong device file name and is about to blow away the contents of their drive.fsck, the filesystem checking and repair utility, will refuse to modify a mounted filesystem at all (which normally could be expected to corrupt a filesystem).That being said, I think that there's a serious problem on Windows dating back many years where programs throw way too many warnings up, where users constantly encounter confirmation prompts even when they are doing a pretty normal operation and in fact do want to do something. That's not just annoying. It also trains users to just whack "confirm" anytime something comes up, which makes it impossible for software to meaningfully warn when there is a serious problem.
I'd also add that I kind of think that GUI software would benefit from a standard "confirmation API". It used to be the norm for software to throw a dialog box up for confirmation. Linux and Adnroid -- and I assume Windows and MacOS, but I'm out of date there -- have a notification API, where software can tell a notification manager that the user needs to see a message. That's nice, because then the notification manager can handle the notification in sophisticated ways; do things like text the user the notification, auto-dismiss notifications, filter some out, play a sound, refrain from playing sounds, etc. But AFAIK -- and I don't use a lot of GUI software these days -- they still use confirmation dialogs. I'd kind of prefer that they use something like the notification manager, so that one could set up the notification manager to auto-accept certain notifications, log notifications, and so forth. Another annoyance is that most dialog boxes are set up to have Enter and sometimes Space auto-accept. This is obnoxious, because one might be in the process of hitting Enter or Space when interacting with another window; if a confirmation dialog comes up, one can simply immediately inadvertently accept the confirmation. Having the notification manager handle confirmations would help avoid this. I'd personally rather have a dedicated key or key combination to confirm something that's used only for confirming things, and I'd rather have such confirmations processed in first-in-first-out order. With software throwing dialog boxes up, a confirmation can "jump in front" of another, using last-in-first-out order. Plus, it'd let me have the confirmations auto-accepted.
Companies just don't get enough resistance to this behaviors if more people went against them things wouldn't be in the state they are now.
With Philips you don't need to only make an account, you'll need yet another "Bridge" device (costing about as much as your lamp give or take) to get all the features.
IIRC, Phillips devices use Zigbee and can be controlled with stuff like Home Assistant and OpenHAB.
"Tomar, what would you say if a lightbulb in your house grew a mouth and asked you to make an account to make it purple?"
Grew a mouth, you say?
Apparently there are toothbrushes that use AI. What fuckery is this?
Not just an AI toothbrush, an A.I. toothbrush for 🧠 geniuses 🌟.
I took this the other day while toothbrush shopping so my partner and I could laugh about it. I bought the cheapest Sonicare they make and it works as well as every other one I've had for the last decade, but without bluetooth, wifi, AI, an app, etc.
(And it's still overpriced garbage. My last one just stopped working out of the blue, almost 2 years to the day after I bought it, right outside the warranty period. Planned obsolescence is an exact science these days.)
I have one of those. My partner got a pair of them with a heavy discount and it is an excellent toothbrush
I couldn’t tell you what it does differently i would need to download an app to see which is never gonna happen. I am using it as am bog standard electric brush and i cant be arsed to read the manual.
Theres a small screen that will display how long you brushed that shows you an frowning face if you cut it short. Il leave it up to others to judge how useful that is for an adult.
My dentist has no complaints and that is really the best i can ask so yeah its a great normal electronic toothbrush if you literally ignore the ai part of it.
Oh yeah, I have the same one (or similar one in the range)! I got it because it charges faster than the non-ai version. Disregarding the digital gimmicks it is an excellent toothbrush, and I couldn't tell you if the Bluetooth/AI make it better or worse because I literally can't care about the connectivity protocols or data processing capabilities of a fucking toothbrush.
AI is such a dumb stupid label they slap on anything these days.
It isn't even AI, if it was it would be a fucking sentient stick you'd shove down your mouth.
Just like how they used to slap Smart on everything years ago, the device isn't smart, it just has new features. They just abuse the terms to try and stay relevant in modern markets. It's annoying as fuck though, because actual AI is a pretty interesting concept, but I've not seen any real AI, since practically all of it is just yet another feature that someone programmed to do something specific.
I have a lightbulb that I can change the colour temperature of. There's no internet or app connection, you toggle through the different states by rapidly turning it off and on again. Whoever designed it deserves a medal
The real question is why our government in the USA hasn't stepped in and made any protections for our data, which would solve this issue entirely. Apps like Temu or Character.AI have very sketchy data management and privacy practices, you have no idea what they're really doing with your data, it's required to make an account for both of them. Clearly they are selling them and obtaining lots of your data to do all sorts of things with. Frankly, I don't think it should be legal to obtain huge amounts of people's data, specifying nothing about what it is actually, truly being used for
Add tik tok, meta, google, and amazon to that list
Finding a fucking living room lamp where you can change brightnes, was quite a search to exclude all the iot devices. That most online shops have no filters for iot, doesn't help.
My girlfriend always jokes with me that despite being tech-competent I am an old Luddite about tech. It is never more true than when something asks me to make an account.
I kind of wonder whether it'd be worthwhile to have a certification agency that just certifies things for privacy and non-cloud-connectivity or the like. Trying to dig through spec sheets and reviews to figure out how a product functions is a pain. I'd rather pay slightly more to just look for some privacy certification on a product. I don't really want to try to keep up with the latest privacy issues present in a given product category, would rather have a specialist do that.
Like, let me just look for a "PC-24-O" (Privacy Certification 2024 Offline) label or something on products. Saves me time. Also would let vendors like Amazon let me filter products for that certification.
You could set it up if it doesn't already exist! There seems to be a demand for it.
Woah, that would be so great. I love your idea.
Like GDPR
That's the "licensing" approach, where something is mandatory for all products that may be sold. I don't want to ban cloud-connected products across-the-board; stuff like a Roku, say, fundamentally is bound up with an online service. Or for everyone; some people are more-okay with cloud-connected products than I am.
I'd rather have a "certification" approach, which just makes it easy for people to choose what to get.
I would love something like this. I have to dig through documentation all the time for security reviews for various applications as part of my job and it would be so much easier if all that crap was just standardized.
Bro it's Guitarmasterx7 out in the wild.
The post made me look him up (it's been years since I've seen him in anything) and I just learned that good ol' Lyle McDouchebag was a voice actor in Class of '09. TIL.
Holy shit
I wanted a countertop dishwasher. Home depot doesn’t have them in stores, it was online only. I figured it would probably make me make an account in order to check out. I said nah.
Home depot and Lowes both let you make purchases as a guest without an account. I have done it recently at least.
its a shame you have to do this, but you can use HomeAssistant to disconnect a lot of those lights from their 'clouds' I bought dirt cheap RGBW bulbs from walmart and now I'm essentially emulating their 'cloud' on my local network. (tuya)
no more losing ability to control lights if the ISP goes down
Additional to that account thing: Why does one have to install an app in order to access all functions and to toggle options of a device?
My girlfriend once has bought new headphones. In order to switch off the telephone function (you can - among other things -answer calls from the connected smartphone by touching one side of the headphones) it is required to download an app (a sloppily programmed one as well) to switch off this specific function. All other functions (volume, play, back and forward) are operated with buttons.
I heard about the same thing but with printers: The scan settings can only be toggled by an app (I think it was HP who has that feature - who else!?)
Because it's cheaper that way. They already have your money and have shipped a product with the promised features. So it doesn't matter that the functionality sucks.
Oi m8, you got an account for that?
I got Sonoff relay switch, you can use guest account for it. But yeah all these smaet thing require a server and internet connection, so creating an account is mandatory in most case. One time my internet is down outside my control and i can't switch on my ventilation fan and have to use the manual switch on it, it's quite annoying. Kinda wish there's one made for just local because i don't need to use it remotely.
If you're willing to take the time to learn, you could always setup your own local home assistant server.
https://www.home-assistant.io/
I personally love having full control over my smart devices locally, as well as being able to use a variety of different brands seamlessly!
The learning curve can be rather steep though, especially if you aren't already tech savvy.
Minimal effort to investigate before you buy. But i guess most tech is bought on reflex.
It's one of those things people don't really think about checking because it's so moronic from the get go. If I'm buying headphones I shouldn't have to check if I can use all functionality without needing to download an app and creating an account. They're headphones, they're supposed to output (and input if they also have a mic) sound. They don't need a dedicated app that also requires an account. There was a time when checking for that wouldn't even cross my mind.
I definitely wouldn't blame the customer for not checking the moronic things companies put in their products. Times are changing and I do have to check how much control I actually have over the hardware I'm buying, but it shouldn't be like that.
It is so frustrating. Especially when you did your research but the information is out of date. Widget2000 rev1 was fine but Widget2000 rev2 requires an account.
Or it doesn't require an account but your options are "yes" or "ask again later." So all of your searches say it's fine. But if my experience is degraded for no good reason just because I don't want an account, that is a weak win at best.
Fuck that. I don't give that shit out either. Completely unnecessary.
- I am the only person in the entire country who knows and follows the rules for operating a vehicle.
This is a constant source of frustration for me. Im on the spectrum and even though my logical, intelligent side of the brain understands that rules are just words; the emotional part of my brain just screams "THATS NOT HOW THIS WORKS" every time someone hits their hazard lights and just gets out of their car in the middle of a 35mph road.
- Streaming services were better than cable for about 3 years somewhere between 2013 and 2019. Now there's too many, they're too expensive, and they shuffle their libraries around too much.
I wanna watch key and peele. oops its not on the comedy central app? who owns comedy central....hmmm....paramount? okay its on paramount plus...and its just a link that takes me to Amazon video? why? just play the show what is this
Paramount seems to be the most inconsistent streaming service between countries. It's just a random eclectic mix of stuff. It's all stuff they have made, but it's not everything that they've ever made.
This is something Matter was supposed to address at least for IoT stuff, but it's still not great.
Why does my TIVO think I want to record Swamp Loggers?
Time to make another Gmail account
Anyone remember Lyle and Dexter Manning from the Machinima series "Sanity not Included?"
If you want a lightbulb that changes colors to be controlled by a phone or network accessible device, as opposed to some other sort of special RF remote, and you DONT want random other people to be able to control or possibly disable or damage your lights, then it kinda needs to have an account.
By all means, avoid iot stuff if it's not your thing, but then why are you looking at color changing lightbulbs? The ones that need special remotes are terrible gimmicks and the ones that get wired into a hardwired home automation system cost a fortune to set up and require a ton of installation.
and you DONT want random other people to be able to control or possibly disable or damage your lights, then it kinda needs to have an account.
You need to have some way to either communicate with the lightbulb over the power lines (e.g. X10) or wirelessly communicate in an authenticated way, true enough, but that's not the same as requiring connectivity to a cloud service.
this can be done locally without access to a third party server though, local administration has been a thing for years
So there are newer protocols under an IoT standard called "matter" that solve a lot of these problems. You can manage them with a local controller like home assistant. No need to create accounts or ship data out to a public cloud. Private, local device adoption and mgmt. I've been an early adopter and there have been some challenges but it's gotten a lot better recently.
No, it doesn't need an account- wifi encryption is enough. If someone has their color changing light bulbs on unsecured wifi, that's on them.
Absolutely no reason these things couldn't be synced to an app on your phone/pc and communicate over wifi. You could use a VPN if you wanted to manage them remotely. The manufacturer doesn't need to be involved after they sell you the product.
My nephew says that about everything. Millennials seem to be totally okay with giving away personal stuff as long as it's by choice. Otherwise it's a hard fuckno.
And that's why boomers are constantly 'hacked'.
If you don't want someone else controlling those things, you do indeed need an account. If you are fine with a physical switch to control lights then just stick to that.
You do indeed need to authenticate that device to your other devices. But that doesn't require a middleman who won't care what happens to your hardware after they go under.
I can see the point of needing an account for a smartbulb, if you are away from home and want to turn on the lights before you arrive, it is needed.
want to turn on the lights before you arrive
But... Why?
I live alone in my apratment, I live in a suburb of Stockholm.
The winters gets dark in Sweden, so when I come home I open the door to a black hole, damn depressing.
But if I can turn on the lights when I am on my way home it feels as if I have someone at home waiting for me, vastly improving my mental health during the winter.
This feature alone put a smart light system in the top 5 things I have ever bought.
It is damn nice.
I get the account for a hub, but maybe if you buy like the 1 bluetooth bulb and that has to have an account, that would feel kind of dumb.
Yep, I agree fully, and the most annoyibg part is that it would be conceptually easy to get rid of all accounts and still have remote control of the system with access control.
Build the system so that the bridge gets a UUID from the Hue servers, when an app is connected to the bridge have it get the UUID and generate a token for the device.
Then when an external request comes to the Hue server authenticate it with the token and forward it to the bridge.
If you get a new device, simply connect it to the bridge as normal and you are done.
Then have a local admin password on the bridge to clear old tokens, and a nice reset switch to clear all config.
Conceptually, way easier for a user to use, and little need to store personal information on the Hue servers.
The problem is, unless you lock yourself into a single ecosystem, like hue, you need multiple apps to manage your fucking lights.
.... Or you can get home assistant or something.
Sure, you have a very valid point.
Also, I can see a method of setting up remote access to the system without an account.
Simply have the hue bridge report a UUID and set a token in the app when you press the button to authorize the phone.
The Hue servers accepts and forwards the request to a specified UUID as long as it is signed with an approved token.
There is a local admin password to remove individual tokens, and a nice reset button on the bridge that will clear any config and let you start again.
Sure you can use VPNs, however I may be an IT guy but I don't have the energy to deal with this stuff on my free time, I'd rather be out walking with my camera
Meanwhile, you accept that the social media hedonic treadmill needs an user account. Curious?
