From smart speakers and fitness trackers to Wi-Fi fridges and interconnected air fryers, smart products have integrated seamlessly into people’s homes and everyday lives – in fact, research shows that four in five Brits own at least one.*
People: Oh how cool, I can monitor my chicken nuggets from my couch ~5m away.
This would genuinely be handy for me though. I’ve got a nine year old, and have similar aged kids over quite regularly. If I’m dealing with the kids, I can’t always hear the air fryer finishing. A notification to the phone that’s in my pocket would be really helpful.
As you say though, there’s always shit tacked on :(
There are numerous benefits in IoT / smart home and ubiquitous computing. Used in the right ways it can make your life so much better and even save lives. It is just sad to see all the wasted potential, the greediness and straight up noncompliance with basic human rights and needs for simplicity and privacy in its design.
Funny enough, it got me into reading some threads of people reverse engineering air fryer APIs (didn’t expect that to ever happen) and it reminded me again of how great and compassionate some people are. Makes the stupid cat and mouse game seem even more stupid when 3 guys in their spare time can rebuild a 5 layer deep authentication stack with some unknown Philips / Xiaomi server that probably needed tens or even hundreds of engineers to build in an obfuscated manner in the first place.
Manufacturers: To deliver solutions to nonexistent problems. Free money.
Politics: To save our economy. It can only survive if people buy new stuff all the time. Could also come in handy as surveillance measure one day.
People: Oh how cool, I can monitor my chicken nuggets from my couch ~5m away.
This would genuinely be handy for me though. I’ve got a nine year old, and have similar aged kids over quite regularly. If I’m dealing with the kids, I can’t always hear the air fryer finishing. A notification to the phone that’s in my pocket would be really helpful.
As you say though, there’s always shit tacked on :(
There are numerous benefits in IoT / smart home and ubiquitous computing. Used in the right ways it can make your life so much better and even save lives. It is just sad to see all the wasted potential, the greediness and straight up noncompliance with basic human rights and needs for simplicity and privacy in its design.
Funny enough, it got me into reading some threads of people reverse engineering air fryer APIs (didn’t expect that to ever happen) and it reminded me again of how great and compassionate some people are. Makes the stupid cat and mouse game seem even more stupid when 3 guys in their spare time can rebuild a 5 layer deep authentication stack with some unknown Philips / Xiaomi server that probably needed tens or even hundreds of engineers to build in an obfuscated manner in the first place.
I set a timer on your phone to match(ish) the timer on the air fryer