this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Technology

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[–] greensky 61 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A normal fucking doorbell doesn't need any hosting

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yup. Mine is a button that connects to a bell on my wall. It's not rocket surgery.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

And it won't snitch on you to the fuzz either

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

do you have a good place to start? I'm getting a house next month and would like to self host but it seems daunting.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Home assistant, and some zigbee solution (i use a conbee usb stick)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Zigbee and Zwave. Get both sticks.

Also recommend Home Assistant. Their integration page is a great resource when looking to buy products as they'll tell you exactly how your device will connect to it, whether it's local control, cloud control, etc.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Subscribe to @selfhosted and read the links on the sidebar. Any doubts, post a question and we'll do our best to help you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Seems the main focus there is on hosting Lemmy instances. I subbed hoping to see stuff about hosting your own domain, media server, storage server, etc but didn't see any posts that weren't about Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Be the change you want to see? Lemmy is still a baby and someone's going to have to make those posts or ask those questions if that content is going to show up there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That will die down. There has been a massive influx due to what's going on with reddit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

awesome-selfhosted on github is a nice place to start :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

appreciate this tyvm!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You can't self-host Amazon's shopping, and sometimes they're the only ones who carry certain items since they've fucked local retailers for the last 20 years.

But regardless, people should be allowed to use cloud services without fear of being banned whole-hog for pissing off some suit in Seattle.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Dont have a "Smart" home in general, especially not with Amazon shit

[–] GeekyNerdyNerd 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Smart home devices have been a godsend for accessibility though. My dad's got Parkinson's disease. He couldn't adjust our lamps without knocking them over and he couldn't use the pullcords on the ceiling fan lights without losing his balance. Smart bulbs + Google Assistant are the only reason why he doesn't need someone to turn the lights on/off for him.

Not everyone has the same needs, and unfortunately if these things weren't mass market products they probably wouldn't exist, or only exist at a price point that nobody living on disability payments could afford.

I'm looking into moving him over to a locally hosted setup, but this tech is still critical for a subset of people and definitely needs to exist at an affordable price.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah accessibility is actually a good point, but probably the only one, and i still hate the idea of literally allowing everyone with more than 0 tech understanding to spy out my entire life... Or that of my grandpa...

[–] ItsGhost 5 points 1 year ago

Absolutely! I’m disabled and it can take me some time to get to the front door at times, especially in our old 3 story house (mistakes were made). Being able to see who was at the door, and tell them I was on my way down saved me so many missed deliveries.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Exactly! A "dumb" home is just a liittle bit more inconvenient, but at least I don't need to worry about being policed by a megacorp

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My "dumb" home does exactly what i want, cause i made it "smart" myself (most stuff gets controlled by a raspberry pi)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Wish I had the skill to set that stuff up and how to use raspberry pi. Any good tutorials that I can learn from?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

It's a bit more inconvenient on average, but it's a heck of a lot more convenient when the power is out, the internet is down, or some giant company is just being dicks.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

We should stop calling cloud-connected iot devices "smart". How is it "smart" to connect to the internet just to check if you can use your internet-connected doorbell?

Actual smart home devices are AWESOME. If your iot devices use standard, open protocols, don't connect to the internet, except for your local network and can be controlled from anywhere in your house by using tools like Home Assistant, then they're ACTUALLY smart devices.

We should start calling cloud iot devices "dependent" devices.

The term "dependent" more accurately represents the nature of these devices: they are reliant on internet connectivity and proprietary protocols, limiting user control and adding unnecessary complexity to simple tasks. Unlike truly "smart" devices, these "dependent" devices are less functional and flexible, due to their need to always be tethered to the cloud.

Think about it: if your internet goes down, your "smart" doorbell becomes nothing more than an ordinary doorbell. If the company's servers have an outage, your "smart" security system can't alert you of potential dangers. You're left completely in the dark, with supposedly advanced technology that's completely useless when it's most needed.

With truly smart devices that use standard, open protocols and can function independently of the internet, you maintain control and can adapt your system to meet your needs. Even without internet, these systems can continue to monitor your home, control your lights, and more. That's the real power of smart technology.

So let's change the language we use and the expectations we set for this technology. Let's demand independence from the cloud, security, and reliability from our devices. It's time to transition from "dependent" devices to truly smart home technology.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I like your suggestion that devices of that sort should be called dependent instead of smart.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Exactly! We need more information about this. Unfortunately the majority of the people are IT security/privacy ignorant and they just buy all the shit that are on Amazon that costs a few bucks just to be able to turn on the lights asking Alexa (I find that to be really dum, except for people with ability problem and such).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are ways to have a fully smart home that doesn’t rely on internet access at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Right, but what percent of "smart home" users actually do this?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I have smart home devices, luke a doorbell, but I limit all traffic on them to be local network traffic only. No random requests or connections to outside servers and if I need to access it away from home I jump on a VPN. Not a solution for everyone, but it gives you a lot more control over your devices.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah, for sure. Don't trust Amazon for shit.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Write-up about the incident: here. (The account was unbanned after a week.)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So the doorbell was programmed to say "Excuse me, can I help you?" and the driver thought that was racist somehow?

So someone at Amazon decides to take the word of a gig worker delivery driver with no verification or investigation, and shut down all of the customer's Amazon devices? Wow, that's not a bad precedent at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The delivery person thought the very AUDACITY to ask them why they're there was racist. It happens all the time.

"Hi, can I help you"

"What, you don't think I belong here? It's because I'm black, isn't it you RACIST!"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

To be fair, it happens quite often that people of color are asked if they need help and what they're looking for when they have the audacity to enter white neighborhoods

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only plausible situation I can see is that he or one of his employees was purchasing consumables used as part of the repair business using the affiliate accounts. More likely is that at some point in the past 7 years someone Amazon associates with his account made a purchase using an affiliate link and they used that as the excuse.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This didn't happen to louis, or anyone in the rossmann group, this was a news story, he just happens to retell it.

EDIT: I was thinking of another video, ignore what I said.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You should watch the video - the title is misleading, his amazon affiliate account was deactivated (not his whole amazon account).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh you're right I'm sorry, this is not the video I thought it was. I thought it was the video from a few days ago when he was talking about what happened to Brandon Jackson!

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

man, this is rich

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