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New Design Trend: People Downgrading 'Smart' Homes to Analog 'Dumb' Homes, Some with Landlines and Offline Appliances (axios.com) 155

"People are creating 'dumb homes,'" the VP of research at the Global Wellness Institute, tells the web site Axios.

Some are swapping NASA-style setups for old-fashioned buttons, switches and knobs. Others are designing digital detox corners — all part of a bigger "analog wellness" movement...

The return to analog hobbies and spacesis about more than nostalgia for pre-internet times, researchers say. A home where "technology is always in the background, working and listening, feels anxiety-producing" instead of restorative, architect Yan M. Wang tells Axios... Design media brand Dwell named the decline of smart homes a top trend for 2025 and beyond.

Wealthy Los Angeles house hunters have started shunning WiFi-enabled, voice-activated appliances "to escape the $100 billion home-automation industry," according to the Hollywood Reporter. Meanwhile, landlines have found new fans — many of them parents who want to keep their kids off screens, the Washington Post reports.

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New Design Trend: People Downgrading 'Smart' Homes to Analog 'Dumb' Homes, Some with Landlines and Offline Appliances

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  • by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @11:36AM (#65767738)
    I won't buy an online Appliance if I can help it.
    • by parityshrimp ( 6342140 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:08PM (#65767820)

      Right. I look for appliances to have one function and perform it well. I find modern GUI software to be unreliable and draw the line at simple embedded stuff in appliances... a touchscreen would give me pause (non of my appliances have one).

      Wealthy Los Angeles house hunters have started shunning WiFi-enabled, voice-activated appliances

      I don't know how that ever caught on to start with. It sounds expensive and unreliable. Not to mention some of these devices need to communicate with a server to function, and the companies that make them can shut down those servers for whatever reason: bankruptcy, cancelled product line, buyout, etc.

      • by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:33PM (#65767874)
        I do get connected devices, but I have an IoT network in my home that is not connected to the Internet. It only connects to my Apple TVs which is my home hub, and those are explicitly allowed to connect to the internet. I also have a home bridge server running on a Lenovo Tiny. Together, I can remote control my home but none of my devices can connect to the internet. My TVs cant download the latest ads, and my devices are all under my control. I spend a little more for HomeKit enabled devices when I can find them, or I see if home bridge can connect to them without an internet server. Sometimes it can, because the devices have local control points / APIs, sometimes they cant and mimic it with the internet API. I reject those completely. I dont need my home to stop functioning because a company got purchased or went bankrupt.

        This is why I value HomeKit over Alexa / Google. No server to rely on. I also trust Apple to make it privacy focused.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by CalgaryD ( 9235067 )
          I wonder how much benefit you are getting from your effort of managing this. It looks like you turn home management into your hobby. Not everyone is into this.
        • by hjf ( 703092 )

          I just run Home Assistant with a ZigBee network. ZigBee is just completely offline and it works great. It's a mesh network too.

          For other things, I run ESPHome which is a platform built on top of ESP8266/ESP32 MCUs to make "smart devices" very easily. my "smart floodlights" are just cheap floodlights with a ESP8266 and a relay. They're connected to wi-fi and I can turn them off and on remotely, for example, to turn the outside lights when i hear a noise at night

          My camera system is ESP32-CAM boards. Under $5

        • It does cost you a lot of money and time to maintain, though.

      • by dbialac ( 320955 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @02:08PM (#65768032)
        My dishwasher for some reason came with wifi capability. I've never enabled it and I don't have a clue how to. I plan to keep it that way indefinitely.
        • Same with my LG washing machine.
          • The "done" notification on washer and dryer are actually some of the most useful automations I have. I can't hear the completion sounds in my large home with multiple floors. It is really good to know when cycles are done. The time is variable due to weight and dryness sensors.

            I currently have LG smart units. They are plugged in. Sadly, the notification functionality completely depends on cloud.

            I could implement the notification without cloud for clothes washer with a smart plug, just like for the dishwashe

            • The "done" notification on washer and dryer are actually some of the most useful automations I have. I can't hear the completion sounds in my large home with multiple floors. It is really good to know when cycles are done. The time is variable due to weight and dryness sensors.

              I currently have LG smart units.

              Funny that you specify LG here. I have an LG washing machine. Not an internet-connected one. It plays a tune when it's "done," but get this, it isn't fucking done! For some inexplicable reason, the machine's door stays locked for 3 minutes after it plays the tune. Why the hell would a washing machine play a tune to tell me my "laundry is not quite finished"?

              This tells me two things:
              1. LG engineers don't use their own products. Possibly they are kids who still live at home and their parents do their laundry.

              • by madbrain ( 11432 )

                Weird. My LG units don't do that. They were the top rated units in Consumer reports, which is why I bought them a few years ago. Models WM4000HWA and DLEX4000WA. I love them.

                The smart feature is great, but I know it will stop working eventually due to depending on cloud.

                It's worse than that, actually. It depends not just on the machine being connected to the cloud, but on me having installed the LG Thinq app on my smartphone. I know this because I reset my phone last weekend and didn't reinstall the LG app.

              • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                Funny that you specify LG here. I have an LG washing machine. Not an internet-connected one. It plays a tune when it's "done," but get this, it isn't fucking done! For some inexplicable reason, the machine's door stays locked for 3 minutes after it plays the tune.

                Your first mistake was buying a sh*tty front-loading washing machine in the first place. I dealt with those in the laundromat in our dorms at grad school. Never again.

                Front loaders mean that you can't add clothes when you realize "Oh, s**t, I forgot the towels upstairs." And now you're running entire extra wash loads because your washing machine is designed to lock the door and prevent you from opening it.

                Add to that the increased risk of flooding, increased mold problems, etc., and you couldn't *pay* me

                • Your first mistake was buying a sh*tty front-loading washing machine in the first place. I dealt with those in the laundromat in our dorms at grad school. Never again.

                  Front loaders mean that you can't add clothes when you realize "Oh, s**t, I forgot the towels upstairs." And now you're running entire extra wash loads because your washing machine is designed to lock the door and prevent you from opening it.

                  Add to that the increased risk of flooding, increased mold problems, etc., and you couldn't *pay* me to take a front-loading washing machine unless you let me cannibalize the motor and then haul the rest of it to the junkyard afterwards. It's a fundamentally bad design.

                  Some front-loaders have the door offset higher than the axis of the drum. So the water level in the drum is never higher than the bottom of the front door (except during the "clean" cycle.) So in theory you can add washing after the machine has filled with water, though I haven't tried it. Yes, the water level sensor could go bad, but a top-loader has the same failure mode. Front loaders tend to use less water (I live on the driest inhabited continent) and for small houses also have the advantage that they

            • Meh. I set the timer on my phone for an hour because I know no cycle takes longer than an hour. It's not something that you have to run up and tend to as soon as it's done. The clothes will wait for you.
              • Drying a king comforter certainly can take over an hour. When you have multiple loads to do, waiting longer than needed means dlit will take longer. Same for multiple loads of dishes. There are many programs, which dan take from 30 mins to over 3 hours. I have not memorized the time for each of them. I don't have to, my smartphone figures out when wattage goes back to 0.

            • My mother always used to solve the alarm problem with an analog bell timer. Also, never forget: this stuff isnâ(TM)t free. You are the product.
              • What good is a timer that you can't hear and that won't know the cycle duration?

                As far as me being the product, Home assistant is free. The Wifi smartplug cost $15 and runs on Wi-Fi without cloud - locally, even with Internet down. There is no data going out anywhere other than my own clients.

        • My 15 year old Miele did not. I plugged it into an energy monitoring Wifi smart plug. Home assistant now notifies me when the cycle is done.

    • by nosfucious ( 157958 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:14PM (#65767832)

      I would pay good money for a completely dumb TV. No google anything. No smarts. Adjust the colour, the volume, the inputs source and get out of my way.

      • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:25PM (#65767858)

        Commercial digital signage is the closest you can get nowadays, example: Planar Systems UltraRes P Series 65" UHD 4K Commercial Monitor [bhphotovideo.com]

        • by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:38PM (#65767884)
          It is really easy to turn the Google off on Sony TVs. You just enable the inputs you want and thats it. For me, it's one input that takes my receiver in, and my receiver goes from Apple TV to Playstation to Xbox and thats it. The problem is becoming all the streaming apps have commercials now, which is why I am the biggest pirate in my town. I have a 12 disk array on ZFS with a BitTorrent client, connected via long range wifi to a public wifi near by (directional antennas FTW). I download what I want by throwing a .torrent file into a folder. I have scripts that will add subtitles etc from subler. I also have an external blu-ray drive that I used to run with Netflix's Blu-Ray by mail program that ended a few years ago. I red box'ed a bit after that. Couple that with a VPN and voi la, home theatre experience galore. I have about 60tb of content. Never gets old. Some family contribute to it / vpn to it.
        • by skam240 ( 789197 )

          I believe a lot of the more expensive projectors still don't always come with smart features and projectors today are pretty nice. I don't expect this to last though, eventually they'll all be "smart" I'm sure.

      • by Sique ( 173459 )
        My TV set is completely offline. I don't know if it is available for you, but it's a DYON Enter, and it works perfectly well. If I want smart features, I have to fire up the BlueRay player, which works, but I barely use it.
      • My Samsung 82in 4K TV works just fine exactly the way you describe. It even has an IR remote sensor. I use a programmable IR remote with it. Only a couple keys programmed - on, off, and input 4 for the AVR.

        I only used the original Bluetooth remote for initial setup. Wifi connection is not required to operate it.

        I have an HTPC hooked up which can stream local content from my Plex server.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I would pay good money for a completely dumb TV. No google anything. No smarts. Adjust the colour, the volume, the inputs source and get out of my way.

        You can easily find them as "digital signage" screens. The big manufacturers typically have them - LG, Samsung, etc all have digital signage lines.

        The only downsides is they typically don't come in OLED variants as most signs display the same content continually so those would wear out really quickly and often most are left on overnight and thus don't have th

    • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:46PM (#65767896) Homepage Journal

      I bought a toaster oven with wifi. I never set up the wifi but a year later I found out it was listed as having some horrible backdoors and customers found the model being used to probe home networks.

      I really don't need this Internet-of-Things. At least not until it is essential mandatory for products to be open and audited properly, ideally certified on some trustworthy way. (Like a UL listed style of certification for network safety)

    • You may not have much choice anymore.

    • by Cyberax ( 705495 )
      Connected appliances are great, as long as the connection is completely local.
    • Other than my phone, my windows PC, my router and my FTTC box, I don't own anything that connects to the Internet at all. I will keep using my 32" Samsung dumb tv until it dies or Australia gets new OTA tv standards that require a new device.

  • by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @11:43AM (#65767754)
    Or little to no ROI or purpose for having smart homes/appliances
    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Internet connected appliances and smart homes are not even the same thing. It's not even clear what a smart home is. Maybe you'd like to automate some lights, but you don't need your dishwasher to know your WiFi password for that.

      • This industry is starved of common sense.

        The standards are weird, and poorly implemented.

        Everyone wants to monetize, rather than simply enable astute appliance and home device use.

        The haptic interface, where humans use things through a human feel, is great in some places, and entirely nonsensical in others.

        No one wants your stupid browser ads, we want functionality. I paid for the fridge, if you show me ads on it, I'm going to toss you.

        More features, product managers, are not better. We want long life from

    • Some appliances have great ROI, some don't. With capitalism, the market needs to decide. My Alexa-smart kettle is huge. Want a cup of coffee (I use an aeropress)? I can get the water boiling when the whim arises when I am sitting at my desk so it's fully boiling when I enter the kitchen.

      A smart fridge? Yeah....not worth it for anyone but a masochist who loves playing with technology for technology's sake...and admittedly, I was like that 20 years ago pre-kids when I had no real responsibilities in
      • by Sique ( 173459 )
        My kettle (completely offline) boils within a minute. There is no need to have water sitting around for hours just to boil it remotely. This is about the time I need to prepare my cup and teapot anyway.
      • Does it fill the kettle with water for you too?
        • Does it fill the kettle with water for you too?

          One could just top it up from the tap after each use.

          • Then you are using old water for each drink.
            • Then you are using old water for each drink.

              I drink enough coffee it's never that old. It's also filtered and boiled, so can't imagine it making a difference. Even if I forget to refill the kettle, it's huge having half the water I need boiling so I can just add it and have it be done in a few seconds. 15 years ago, if someone had described this, I would have thought they were crazy and lazy. But today, it's a $40 lifesaver...having the most time-consuming step of coffee complete before I get out of bed. As soon as I am lucid enough to speak, I

            • Then you are using old water for each drink.

              I guess so. I'm not really sure what "old water" is, or why it's bad. But in the case of the kettle, it's plain water, in an opaque vessel. It's not going to go mouldy, or suddenly sprout e. coli in the couple of hours between morning drink and afternoon drink. And gets boiled before use anyway.

    • by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:05PM (#65767810)

      Or little to no ROI or purpose for having smart homes/appliances

      My oven is wifi-conected. In theory, when the timer goes off, I can turn the oven off. But I have to wander into the kitchen anyway to take the food out so I've always been a little puzzled why this is a win. Until the oven comes with robot arms, it's an incomplete solution.

      OTOH, being able to check the state of my garage doors, irrigation, and pool gear is often handy. I wouldn't ditch the dedicated controls for a phone app but they're nice complements.

      I can also imagine that for new construction, I might want to disassociate switches from outlets. It would be nice to change what each switch does if needed. For the most part everything wired when the house was built is great. When I add switches or outlets, it would be nice to be able to program things. I'm not going to renovate my entire house around this, mind you.

      The biggest issue I see is technical obsolescence. The gizmos I bought 10 years ago are at end-of-life and I don't want to keep replacing all my outlets every decade or so. When standards settle down and interoperability is a thing, maybe I'll rethink it.

      • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        I wanted that feature for my dryer when I lived in a townhouse and it was two flights of stairs down to go check if it was done (it's a sensor dryer so no telling when it would finish). Now that I'm in a house with everything on one floor I couldn't care.
        • I set a timer on my phone for an hour.
          • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            Again, sensor based so it's unpredictable. One hour isn't always enough, particularly if it's something that has to be dried on a lower setting.
            • Then set the timer for a little bit longer than the longest it may be.
              • Then set the timer for a little bit longer than the longest it may be.

                Sure but means (a) you may get fewer loads done in a given evening and (b) you're more likely to be tying up a dryer someone else wants to use and (c) more likely to find someone put your clean dry undies in an untidy pile somewhere.

    • There is no decline in smarthomes any more than vinyl is the most listened to music format. This story is (much like the last one) about a new wave of hipsters looking for something else to be analogue after they got bored of their Polaroid cameras.

      Smart appliances are still selling just fine, and virtually all modern houses have some degree of smarts in them as a requirement for efficiency and health of the occupants - e.g. CO2 / PM2.5 controlled automated ventilation systems.

  • by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @11:51AM (#65767774)

    It's the 24/7 data mining from the providers of those devices. I have enabled a number of "smart devices" in my home, but I won't use anything that requires internet connectivity to function.

    HomeAssistant has been great to get the benefits of home automation using a raspberry pi class device to manage it all and store my data locally without sharing the details of my life with 3rd parties or paying ongoing subscription fees.

    https://www.home-assistant.io/ [home-assistant.io]

    • by ufgrat ( 6245202 )

      Exactly. I get notified if I leave my Garage Door open too long. I have lights toggle on/off automatically, either depending on time-of-day or presence detection. My bathroom exhaust fans are cheap, but automatically come on if humidity is too high. All done with Home Assistant and Z-wave devices.

      There's a difference between a "Smart Home" that has local smart devices, and a "Smart Home" that's wired 24/7 into Amazon or Google. I don't NEED wi-fi enabled toasters, refrigerators or microwaves. I don't

  • You do you. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Smonster ( 2884001 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @11:51AM (#65767776)
    I mean vinyl is still a thing; lots of people still like live theater; some cars are still made with foot activated physical clutches and manual shifters; none electric wood working tool still exist, and physical books are not yet uncommon. Some things don’t go away, even if more advanced forms exist; because they are perfectly good as they are. Retro will always have its fans. There will always be a niche for things like that. Personally I like modern connected technology. I also like to get away from it. When I want to get away from the digital world. I go camping, backpacking, pick up a physical instrument or a deck of cards, and sit by a fire with friends and family. But I do still have lightweight yet durable camping gear which is light years better than the stuff I had 30+ years ago. So modern tech is still with me I suppose, but it isn’t connected to the internet.
  • Enshitification (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GoJays ( 1793832 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:01PM (#65767796)
    I don't think people are necessarily against online devices, they are more opposed to how these devices have been deployed by their manufacturer. These companies have turned usable products into invasive spying tools or cash grabs. If these devices only went online for their intended purpose people would be fine with them, but instead corporations make them always listening, always harvesting, always abusing for the company's gain, not for user benefit. Take a digital picture frame that could show pictures from a online location such as Google Drive, or a NAS. That would be great, but some genius thought wouldn't it be great if it were to show ad's on the frame as well, or charge a subscription fee to use a frame you already paid for. Or by bricking old devices when they roll out a newer version that milks the user for more money thereby making the old device "obsolete". People are tired of this shit. Enshitification ruined these devices, not the online portion. Online connections can be very useful... but once they start adding "features" that really have no benefit for the end user, people would rather just say "no thanks."
    • Re:Enshitification (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SoftwareArtist ( 1472499 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @01:34PM (#65767970)

      I'm against online devices that have no reason to be online. My oven can connect to the internet. Why would anyone think I want my oven to connect to the internet? My dishwasher can connect to the internet. Why would anyone think I want my dishwasher to connect to the internet? I just can't figure out any scenario where an internet connection helps these appliances to do their job better.

      Even the justifications from the manufacturer hardly make sense. If I installed their app on my phone, I could scan the barcode on a frozen dinner and it would automatically set the oven to the correct temperature. Is that actually supposed to be easier than entering the temperature myself? It's obvious the only reason the online feature exists at all is to get me to install an app on my phone, which they can use to spy on me.

    • I have been into stuff being online since before there was widespread online to be on, but I have always been into it being based on open standards, as well as open source since that's been available. I went ahead and got a Google TV since we were already exclusively watching TV on a Google TV device (First a basic Fire Stick, then when they ruined that with updates, Nvidia shield tube) and even that is irritating sometimes even given that the convergence makes sense. I don't need any of my home appliances

  • by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:19PM (#65767844)
    Many of us never bought into the idea of the "smart" bullshit. We saw though the nonsense and realized we were just data sources or chumps that would get the service offed as soon as the "smart" company got bought or went bankrupt, or decided it wasn't financially feasible to continue supporting the newly bricked house toy .
  • by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:21PM (#65767846)

    I bought a whole bunch of op-amps and rheostats, but I'm having a hard time trying to get them to implement all of my lighting "scenes". The voltages often won't converge to a stable solution, and it's really hard to analyze all the differential equations with just my slide rule.

    • Gawdalmighty ... get a bloody chalk and slate. Even that is excessive.  It's rumored that Fourier did his best work on birch-bark sheets smuggled in by French Canadian trappers  for demonstration canoes.
    • It's easy to trim this setup. Just install a small faucet into the salt water rheostat tank, open it to a slow drip, and wait for a stable state.
  • by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:23PM (#65767852)

    ...useless and a stupid idea
    I use tech where it works well for me
    I have a home CNC shop and I design stuff with CAD/CAM
    I shop and learn online
    I design circuits and write software on my computer
    I'm not a technophobe, I love tech...but
    I use a wired phone and want NO "smart home" products
    I'm NOT available at all times. I'm available when I choose to be

  • I have several smart switches. The ones controlling outside are on timers. I love them. Now that the schedules are set, I have blocked them all from having internet access. They still keep their schedules, at least with Kasa they do. Easy to bring them back online and then reprogram them if I want to.

  • My experience with "smart" things is that for each device, you need to know the internal + external state machines and their transitions to actually be able to use it. it's mentally taxing.

    Example : Phillips hue lights using direct connection. The choice whether to turn them on using a switch or the gateway matters on how fast/if the adaptive lighting color/temperature will get set.
    TBH the best "Smart" devices I have are Enocean based ones. Those are a real, like real, pain to set up, but seem to "just work

  • by BrightCandle ( 636365 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:39PM (#65767886)
    The move fast and break things attitude of the computer industry is just about acceptable for short lived devices but when it comes to the infrastructure of the house we have expectations that things we last a bit more than a few years. The smart home device makers haven't realised they need to support their products for decades and not surprisingly people are dropping them and returning to products designed to last longer. The cost of installation is a big part of home costs.
  • by TurboStar ( 712836 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:41PM (#65767892)

    You're so poor that when AWS goes down, you can still get into your house. -El Programador Senior

  • by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @12:57PM (#65767914)

    I don't allow smart appliances or home automation in my house. And really, it's an easy choice. The cheapest stuff does not include that technology. You have to spend more to get a fridge with a screen.

    Aside from the obvious privacy issues and information sharing, which all of us here are familiar with, there's another overriding reason not to have smart appliances or home automation - reliability. When you add complexity, things break more often, and costs go up. Obsolescence of your investment happens fairly quickly.

    My line of work involves sometimes working inside of very high end homes and the newer ones contain every automation bell and whistle you can think of. And they break, and fail, a lot. One particular home is a brand new, probably a $25 million dollar plus creation, very modern and sleek. The entire house, HVAC, lighting, cameras, gates, door locks, etc. is controlled by a central service on a network. Things go wrong all the time. When the system goes down, nothing works. The more complexity you add to a system, the greater chance of a failure. These are people that paid a premium for these features, and I think they were sold a bill of goods.

    Home automation companies market whiz-bang features to high end home builders and their customers, not letting on that A. The ecosystem of hundreds of different products they are assembling is not perfect nor trouble free, and B. Whatever they are putting in the house now will be obsolete in 5 or 10 years, and it will become more difficult to maintain over the next 10, 20, 30 years without substantial upgrades and replacements. What is state of the art now will probably be seen as fairly archaic when the house is sold again. For large homes and mansions, there is probably a middle ground somewhere that allows for some automation, but has enough manual control so that if something fails the device in question is still operable. This is not what I'm seeing in the newest systems. They are entirely reliant on a server for things as basic as turning lights on and off. Where a light switch would be, there is a keypad with five or six buttons, none of which anyone ever uses except the top button that turns the light on and off, and it's harder to find and press vs. a traditional light switch. The idea of being able to have dimming presets, etc. sounds flashy, but in reality they go largely unused. The biggest visual effect of course is when you push the button, it slowly fades the lights on. I find that annoying. I just want it on. Maybe that's just me and my old school ass that grew up with regular light switches. Being around this stuff has completely absolved me of ever wanting it in my own home, and I used to be a pretty big home automation enthusiast in the early days of Homeseer, X-10, Insteon, etc.

    For a regular sized home on a regular suburban lot, there is no need for home automation. It is a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist. If you want to change the temperature, go adjust the thermostat on the wall. If you want to turn on a light, go hit the switch. There have been plenty of examples of home automation companies going under and the network enabled features of their appliances are suddenly rendered useless. With my dumb home, the problems don't exist. I don't have to do anything, maintain anything or subscribe to anything. It's bliss.

    • One particular home is a brand new, probably a $25 million dollar plus creation, very modern and sleek. The entire house, HVAC, lighting, cameras, gates, door locks, etc. is controlled by a central service on a network. Things go wrong all the time. When the system goes down, nothing works.

      Let me guess: that home, as designed and built had no built in batteries or generator to pick up the load when the inevitable power failure occurred. How long did it take for that brain phart to be corrected and how l
    • by madbrain ( 11432 )

      Is that central network service running locally, or remotely ?

      I have a massive home, and the need for automation is real. My system is based on Home assistant, running locally. I don't have any cameras. My 13 smart door locks have triple methods of entry - Z-wave (smart) which requires Home assistant to be available on Wifi, or a keypad that relies on 4 rechargeable AA batteries, or a physical key.

      The lighting is all smart, though. 97 smart Z-Wave light switches, and 222 smart Wifi light bulbs. The switches

  • If i ever bought an appliance that didnt work without internet, it would be returned immediately. The thought of having doorlocks, toaster ovens, shower heads, elevtrips plugs etc having to be connected to router is ridiculous. A friend recently moved into an apartment that requires his cellphone to unlock which is just dandy until the power is out or until tjere is a problem with his phone.....pass.
    • Connected to the router and connected to the internet is not the same. My Wiz wifi lights connect to my AP, as well as to the router for DHCP. They function fine even if I turn off the power to the modem, using Hone assistant.

      Lock wise, I use Kwikset HC620. Those have 3 methods of entry : Z-wave, which doesn't need Internet, battery powered keypad, and physical keyboard. No chance that I'm going to be locked out. Especially considering there are 13 outside doors.

      I use the keypad for entry the vast majority

  • Or in this case, humanity is coming to its senses. Hopefully the whole trend of screens and QR codes for everything is starting to go away everywhere, not just 'smart' homes.

  • I grew up exposed to many new technologies and made my entire career about it.

    But I'm no luddite and (I like to think) I'm a reasonable person and always tried to keep my home to a sensible level of technology. I definitely don't need to everything, from room temperature, to curtains opening/closing, to coffee making being automated and I resist to buying every new shining thing that shows up anytime.

    I think that most of the anxiety that people report nowadays stems not from the technology itself, but from

  • People never bough into that "smart" home crap and are using none of it or the small parts that work and come with long-term availability, support and standards-conformity.

  • by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @02:29PM (#65768082)
    "My name is Talky Tina, and I'm going to kill you." Living Doll, Twilight Zone S5E6 [wikipedia.org]
  • As a rule of thumb, anything claiming to be "smart", or "AI" is garbage that exists only to justify a massive markup. The functionality is borderline pointless and it will be bitrotten and broken in a few years. That is certainly the case for any dishwasher, washing machine, drier, cooker, fridge, freezer, air frier or other such appliance. They don't need to be smart, or require wifi or a fucking app you have to register the device online with.
  • Sad. So much potential in the story, but now it's almost deceased...

    • That was just a knee jerk snark. I withdraw the statement.

      From don't you find adding to the technology load is annoying ?... do I want to spend my time learning yet another proprietary interface.. soo many different and cryptic buttons, terms, blarg, get me outta here.. I find the words "easy web interface" also nearly always a bad experience.

      Too much work, not compelling enough to want to work for it, also, cryptic, and therefore annoying... usually accompanied by a person who thinks you will instantly kn
  • by Hans Lehmann ( 571625 ) on Sunday November 02, 2025 @06:14PM (#65768560)
    Having been in the engineering and software field for some 45 years, I knew better than to turn my home into something "smart." If I want to adjust my thermostat, I get up off my ass and manually adjust it, and I don't need to view the contents of my fridge or have my dryer tell me whether it contains an even or odd number of socks while I'm not home.
    • I love adjusting my thermostat remotely, from inside the house. For example, I'll be cooking and have dinner upstairs. Then turn on the heater in the theater zone downstairs using Home assistant, and Infinitive running on a Raspbery Pi. No cloud involved - works without internet on local wifi. When I'm done with my meal, the theater is warm.
      Prior to running the RS422 into the furnace bus, I had to walk all the way downstairs and back up. This took quite some time, and interfered with the meal or especially

  • It's just a silly idea. Especially given how it's usually implemented, where they depend on a manufacturer's “cloud” to work. I don't need “smart lights” that turn on using Wi-Fi; I go to the switch and simply turn them on. I once for fun thought about developing a refrigerator that would warn me when something inside was about to run out or expire, but... After seriously analyzing the case, I concluded that it is much simpler and more reliable to just go to the refrigerator and chec
    • I personally have door and temp sensors on my fridge / freezer / wine cooler. Using Yolink local hub. Not cloud dependent. I find it very useful, especially as my husband has a tendency not to close the doors all the way. It happened once with the freezer in the garage left open overnight, and the food was all spoiled. That is what prompted installiny the sensors. Now he gets a bunch of notifications on his phone when he keeps the door open for too long.

  • The only internet connected anything outside of my home office and people's phones is an android TV box that never gets used. There's some cheap solar lights that come on at night but I'm pretty sure they're not on TikTok.
  • by paul_engr ( 6280294 ) on Monday November 03, 2025 @08:26AM (#65769488)
    Astronauts don't have touchpad dashboards. They're not fucking idiots.

If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a conclusion. -- William Baumol

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