Everything is a problem

This isn't a shit post IMO.
- Yeah. It's straight fire.
  
  This describes my reality nowadays.

Im with you, I dont need my dishwasher to have WiFi and an account
- How else are you supposed to see the live stream from inside it, and get progress notifications and ads?
  
  I would actually like a live stream of the dishwasher. I bet it is gross as hell. ("Technology Connections", a Youtube channel, cut a hole in one so they could film it doing its thing.)

I went to a coffee shop yesterday that tried to tell me they only accepted orders through their app. I almost walked out, until the finally poured my coffee, but continued to give me shit about it, "ok but next time you have to use the app"
"Yea no. There will be no next time."
- There's an Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode for exactly this situation
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzb355qT8RI
  
  It's so good. Best of theirs in a long time.
  
  I havent watched Sunny in ages. But yes, that was my experience lol
- A QR code and a website I could understand. But app? No.
  
  No, even QR I can only accept as an option, as in completely optional. I'm out and about without a phone quite frequently.
  
  No. Not even that, that's just shit and the site brings a plethora of formatting issues and accessibility issues.
  Just give me a fucking paper menu.
- "It's a work phone. I'm not allowed to install apps."
- Luckin Coffee, the extremely successful Chinese competitor to Starbucks exclusively operates via their app. Sadly, users prefer it because of all the discounts and coupons it offers. So really, just surveillance capitalism as usual.
- Dennis??

I used a normal wired phone the other day.
I picked it up and called people.
It blew my mind.
- what the fuck is your mobile phone like? i just click the calls app and click the contact and bam i call the person
  
  No you don't understand, you can't do that anymore. Because um, everything is actually really bad and enshittified. Wait you bought a not-smart TV to avoid the wifi and ads and such? Um yeah you can't do that.. same with kitchen appliances and everything else. You HAVE to get the wifi version so you can complain online.
  I had to watch a 45 minute ad to post this
  
  click the calls app and click the contact
  Two things you don't have to do on a dedicated phone. I bet you had to unlock your phone first, too.
  
  The government uninstalled my phone app and punished me to only receive calls from spammers and old people.
  I don't notice much of a change on the last part.

I rented a car, a Mercedes B class or something
Everytime I started it, it would ask me to sign up for some bullshit Mercedes service Half the features of the car were disabled due to requiring subscriptions
I will NEVER buy that car nor rent it ever again
- the fuck, which features?
  
  My guess would be heated seats and driver aids.
  
  Cruise control automatic distance keeping
  Cruise control lane assist
  Seat heating
  Something else that I don't recall
  And I'm sure a lot more, I didn't try much else after that.
  Either way, I will NEVER buy a car with any of that shit
- OP is now a proud BMW owner!

Buy old stuff
Use open source
Downdate
etc
- It is incredibly difficult for me to describe just how powerful a Linux desktop experience can be. You can buy a cheap computer that suports emulation and put QubesOS on it. Bonus points to putting a GPU in it and playing on either Windows or Linux with that GPU.
  
  I don't think Linux people entirely understand just how uninviting the prospect of messing around with an operating system is for the vast majority of the public.
  As bad as Windows is, and it is it getting worse by the minute, it honestly does just work. I dual boot my computer, mostly into Linux everyday and even now I occasionally come across problems that don't exist on the Windows side. The community need give up with this idea that Linux doesn't have major usability issues.

I helped my dad install a new dumb thermostat last winter. We just had to drill a couple of new holes to mount it, and moved the wires over. Boom,there was heat again. I thought about how much of a pain in the ass it was to get my Ecobee working, and how refreshing it was to just have something work immediately.
It's a very similar feeling to playing my GameBoy Color again after messing around with retro gaming linux handhelds. You just turn it on and play, then just turn it off. No boot sequences, no emulator settings to tweak. No SD card corruption that ruins your game library. Just on and off.
- No boot sequences
  (being annoyingly pedantic) technically there is a boot sequence: the Gameboy logo. on the DMG there's a little blob of code from 0x0000 to 0x00ff that clears some memory, sets up the screen, reads the logo from cartridge memory and scrolls it. the loader only jumps to the game if the logo is byte-identical (the idea being that unlicensed games could be sued for trademark infringement.)
  on the GBC the loader is a little beefier but mostly the same.
  t. made a horribly broken FPGA core for the DMG that got just far enough to load the Tetris intro
  
  Yes, but that's pretty miniscule compared to booting any of the linux based retro handhelds. An Bernice, Powkiddy, R36S, they all have like a 30-40 second boot time.
- it's the reason why the original Odroid Go it's so special to me... it's all built around an ESP32 microcontroller and it does emulate only NES, GB, GBC and a couple more, while honestly not even being perfect at it, but goddamn... it boots in like 1 second, even directly to the last game you were playing, it has no settings whatsoever, the battery lasts for like 7 hours it's such a neat little device.
  and it's funny because in my head that it's the device that kickstarted this whole retro handheld emulation craze, but it is the only one to take such a minimalistic approach
- It's not comparable. Nintendo must have spent millions on developing the Game Boy, meanwhile retro handheld is a hobby project someone did over the quarter. Ever try to port and run an RTOS on those ARM chips? And port a mainstream Game Boy emulator to it? "What do you mean you have to have MMU support?Just work, damnit?"
  It doesn't work like that.
  
  It's completely comparable in this circumstance. They are performing similar functions, playing handheld games. My R36S is a pretty impressive little device, and it performs excellently at playing games. But using it is much more complicated and longer than popping a game in a gameboy.
  Gameboy: insert game, turn on, play, turn off. R36S: turn on, 30-40 second boot time, locate game, play, exit emulator, shut down, 10 second shutdown time.

Hello fellow old person. I too miss things that just work.

What fantasy world are you living in? How could my glass hold water if I didn't sign up for a service that sends me spam? How could my table hold a book if I didn't sign up for the monthly subscription that prevents it from ejecting books into the air? Even my cat came with a ToS that said that by petting her, I give her access to my bank account and first born child. Hasn't it always been this way?

Shit either has no buttons, with an capacitive touch surface, or if it has buttons, it's never immediate response, you have to press it for an extended amount of time.
it's fucking infuriating.
- Yes long press needs to be relegated to the most obscure functions of a device, not the main uses.
- You just described my Chevy Volt so accurately. All the buttons are touch surface except the parking brake switch, and I usually have to pull that twice.

My poor tv is like, "connect to the internet? I need to call home! Help, i've been abducted by a luddite!"
Tv, you are never getting my wifi password.
- Through absolute chance (the TV i wanted was sold out on clearance so I got a different one on clearance) I ended up with an Android TV-powered sony bravia. It lets you go into the app permissions and disable the optical recognition whateverthefuck they call it software. The rest of the analytics can be blocked by some regex firewall/DNS rules. It's the only smart TV OS that I would recommend.

It used to be that when i got a new video game for Christmas, i could just put it into the GameCube/PS2 and play it. No need to wait for everyone to also try and download the 40gb update that morning.
- Every time I have to wait for a 10 year old game to "update" I want to murder whoever is responsible.
  
  Download size: 200 MB
  "Oh, maybe this will be quick and I'll actually be able to play tonight."
  Download complete. Patching files: 0.0/200 GB
  "Never mind."
  
  There was a recent update for Fallout 4 which broke a bunch of mods. Fallout 4 was released in 2015 and is a single-player game. Why did it get an update?
- Blows into cartridge.

Try plugging in a fork. Those still do what they are supposed to do
- I've got some bad news
  
  Ahhhhh! Nothing is sacred anymoooooore
  
  Obviously you just forgot to lick the tines!

I'm road tripping through northern Europe. Staying at Airbnbs and every fucking tv is a smart tv and not one can I pick up a remote and start surfing channels. And if I find tv most of them are slow to react. So it's press ch+ wait 5 seconds on black screen see that it's in a language I don't know and press again.
- I carry a Fire TV stick with me that accesses my Jellyfin server. Just connect it to the internet and you're good to go.
  
  O_O
  
  ^ OPs livin' the dream in 2045.
- Do people under 60 still have flow TV? Why would you sit though a bunch of commercials to let other people decide what you are going to watch?
  Streaming is becoming shit but for now it's still better than flow TV.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication (a bit ironic when you consider this quote comes from Apple).
Steam is fun and all, minecraft is a great game, but goddamn, i have a 10kbps at home, and network is unstable where i live, why can't i play my fcking ~~game~~ "licence" which is not even online based, because the network decided to stop??
I prefer from far a simple folder with assets and a .exe that i will put on my desktop with a shortcut.
What an application is supposed to be anyways.
- Luanti is a credible replacement option for Minecraft single-player
  
  You don't need a network connection for Minecraft single player. I'm not actually sure what they're on about.
- Steam has a "Go Offline…" options for pretty much that. Indeed it sucks that you have to do that before you go offline, but it sounds like a good idea with your setup and just switch to online occasionally to update.
  Furthermore it depends heavily on the games, not on steam. Some steam games work without the steam client, though for some of those you have to fiddle around or execute different binary.
- I don’t think it’s ironic, it just doesn’t say the quiet part out loud. Everything just works if they control the entire ecosystem, so if you want ‘sophisticated’ let us control everything and it will all just work.
- Steam works fine for me offline, though I can't speak to all the games - what are you running into with it?
  I hear you on Minecraft, though...
- Simplicity is easy to pirate though.
  If the product is a program that executes 100% of its functionality on your computer, it is impossible to make it pirate-proof. Even if all the functionality is client-side and the server is used only for authentication, it can be pirated.
  The only way to make a program pirate-proof is if it runs on the server with a thin client.
  That being said, some products execute on the client. Therefore if they want to prevent piracy, the only thing they can do is security through obscurity. That is, make it as complex as possible so the pirates take as much time as possible to reverse-engineer it.

This is one of the reasons why I still only use wired headphones.
- Tough to find phones that still have a jack. USB headphones or a dongle?
  
  OnePlus 5, bought used in 2019, LineageOS 22.2/Android 15. Has a jack.
  When I get a new phone, I'll probably use a dongle.

I love some connected devices, and own a LOT of them, but some things are just stupid. I don’t need my blender to be connected. Washer, dryer? Unless it’s going to move my laundry from one to the other, nope. Stove, wtf? I have to go stir anyway so who gives a crap.
- I like my washer and dryer being connected. I can load it in the evening a set my Home Assistant to start it when the price on power is low.
  The other things I agree with
  
  I would like em too, but only if they allowed local only without any accounts beforehand.
  
  how often is your electricity provider changing rate timing?
  this could easily be done on the device itself with a timer/schedule

I really wanna ditch the smart TV I have and just get a display that only displays the picture of the devices I have plugged into its inputs and doesn't get online, doesn't receive updates or "improvements" and has inputs for everything:
3.5mm AUX audio
Composite
S-video
RGB
Hdmi
That optical audio jack made by (IIRC) Sony I can't remember the name of right now. It's what my stereo uses and it's amazing. Used to be super common on TVs.
- I recently got really tired of my TV constantly nagging me to update the firmware for all the newest features. I just disconnected it from wifi instead. I do not use my TV for smart features, I use it as a display. I update the things plugged into it, because that's their job. If i need to stream something, I will use a box. A box that can be replaced or easily updated or changed out.
  A display has one job, to display whatever.
  
  I'd do that except that every few seconds, a big pop up that takes up 1/4 of the screen from top down tells me that the network is disconnected. 😬
- I mean I have that. It's called a smart TV that I never use the smart functions of, connected to the HDMI output of a PC. It's great for watching stream content and I don't have to worry about ads and stuff.
  In actual fairness to the TV it isn't too bad in that respect but the interface is just god awful and I hate having to type with a TV remote so I still use the PC.
- TOSLINK might be what you’re thinking of. And yes, it rules! I have a surround system that uses it and it sounds amazing
- The standard optical audio jack was developed by Toshiba.
- ...TOSLINK can't handle atmos bandwidth; you need eARC for uncompressed multichannel digital audio...
  
  I had fun with eARC a while ago, my TV definitely supports it because it was on the box but what it doesn't say is the fact that only one of the HDMI port supports it and it doesn't tell you which one. I had to go online into a random forum to find out, It's port 3 by the way, because that makes perfect sense.
  
  If only eARC worked well. It's support seems garbage.
  I had nothing but problems with eARC. DRM errors. Sound cutting out constantly. Device detection not working so the TV swaps back to internal speakers.
  Not one problem since swapping to optical.

No waiting for firmware updates
- Wait, I just have to reboot my watch

I recently renovated and said fuck no to all the smart home shit. Just the idea of having to troubleshoot the WiFi because my kitchen light won't turn on drives me into a rage.
- Good call.
  I took over for a previous manager who installed all smart lights controlled via Alexa. Every week....every fucking week...there would be a section not working, lights with disco colors, Alexa was offline so we could give the command to turn on lights..
  When I took over, 1st task was to rip out all the smart shit and I put in regular LED bulbs controlled with the light switch. Works every time
  
  The closest thing I have to "the world of tomorrow" are regular degular hand operated dimmer switches. They're great. I have one in every room.
  No idea why everyone thinks you need the Internet to dim a light.

After trying to get my new automated kitty litter box working with a POS app that can't sync with the poop machine and the PM can't connect to my 5 GHz wireless network (only 2.4 GHz) nor does it have any way to enter the password for said network I have resorted to deleting the app and just pushing two physical buttons in sequence on the PM twice daily to clean the litter area.
- Me too, I gave up on the app. It's easier to just push the button on the machine. Hate things that need an app. Also hate having an account to use everything.
  
  I literally refuse to use ANY app. None. If your service needs one, I don't need your service. End.
- The 5 ghz vs 2.4 is such a pain in the ass. As far as I can tell Android won't let you pick which to use so you can't be on the same network as the device, even with the same ssid.
  You can have your router split the different frequencies into different named networks to make it work. But you shouldn't have to
  
  Using them in the same name isn't that great either. These days you shouldn't ever need to connect to 2.4 is markedly slower
  
  The next thing I'm going to try is temporarily turn off my router, make a hotspot with my Android phone, in the 2.4 Ghz spectrum, with no password security and try that. I don't care about tracking the cat's weight or being reminded that the app thinks I need to buy more litter or deodorizer, I just want to set some settings (like how long to wait to rotate the poop into the hopper after a cat walks away from the poop machine) and that would make the machine "better."

Return to Analog!

car
- Terrible mid 20xx introduction of full on touchscreen tablets to motor vehicles would like to know your location.
  
  And your phone number and your address and your contact list and permission to read-write access to your files and your social security number and your blood type and your date of birth and your mother's maiden name and the location and shape of any birthmarks or scars and your fingerprints and your genealogy and your deepest darkest secret and what you ate for breakfast last Tuesday and if you've made any pacts with yogsathoth and if your soul is still available for sale and your dental records and your porn preferences and your favorite color and your BMI and the name you gave to your favorite stuffed animal when you were six years old
- This is a lovely comment, thanks!

Omg yes preach !!! I feel it's everything these days, coffee maker....app Vacuum....app Scale...app Electric shower nozzle...fucking app Everything needs a password and an account and my mind is crumbling because of it.
- You know you can dumb shit, right?
  It's rarely a secret these days whether something has wifi, or Bluetooth.
  
  TVs seem to have been pretty much taken over by 'smart' features.
  I don't mean this as a dare or a gotcha, but genuinely asking if you know of a decently priced modern TV that's 'dumb' please let me know so I can buy it.

Yup.
Comcast "updated" their network yesterday and broke every fucking smart plug in my house. None of them will work anymore.
- Did they disable the 2.4ghz band on your router?
  
  Thought of that too, but yup it's still active. A couple other devices are connected via 2.4 but none of my plugs or bulbs will connect. They worked just fine yesterday and now they're all bricks.

I remember when games asked you to register and it was optional... and people joked that they never did because there was no benefit to them whatsoever.
Now it is obligatory. No wonder I prefer retrogaming.

you can still have this, you just have to not buy the shit things
the only thing i'm aware of that has no non-shit option anymore is TVs, but then who the fuck watches TV anymore?
- I use a 40" for a PC monitor and dual-monitor setup to watch movies on the 55".
  But you're right. My wife and I keep talking about putting spare TVs in the kid's rooms, but they wouldn't watch them anyway.

The internet has become more and more complex. I miss the early 2000s when I was a kid and everything was open and easy to use. No need to register ,no need to download this or that app. Everything was easy, even the laws.
- The laws have always been a quagmire.
  I mean shit, you can't even handle salmon suspiciously anymore
  https://www.tastingtable.com/1913810/weird-uk-law-salmon-crime/

I have this smart lightbulb that I got for halloween last year because I thought it'd be cool to make the porch glow purple for trick or treaters. Now I have to replace it because the app that controls it has decided to try and blackmail me for camera and location access and the bulbs default state without the app is to flash on and off in a way seemingly deliberately designed to cause headaches.
- My sister bought me a smart desk light that insists on using an app and 'doesn't work' without it.
  Thing is, it will work as a normal desk light....if you're willing to sit through 10 minutes of intense blinking while it tries to connect before finally giving up.
- Phillip k dick (i think) wrote a story about this.
- What kind of bulb is it? There's a chance that homebridge or something could control it through an API without needing the app.

Join us over at /c/singlepurpose ;)

This is why I like hardware synthesizers
- everything is still a problem, it's just a self-inflicted problem! 😁
  
  Everything being my fault means I'm still in control!
  (This is actually not always true and is instead a rather toxic delusion of someone who has lost all control of their life blaming themselves for everything for the aesthetic of feeling like they still have agency and responsibility)

I bought a fan the other day, cause it warm. Cheap as I could find. Plug the thing onto the wall, can't figure out how to get it working. Read the manual: I need an app. I download the app, logged in with Facebook (had to create a Facebook account, for I had none. It was the only option), filled a form with my information, agreed to the Terms of Services and Privacy Policy. Gave it location access, to connect to the fan. It needed a few other permissions, which I had to give it. Now I can turn the fan on and off, from my phone (the fan has none). I can set a direction, turn the spinning on or off. Set the RGB light colours. I can even give it an image, and it'll display on the fan as it spins (probably why they demand entire system file access). I can even turn it on and off from the Quick Settings Tile. And make some changes from there as well. All in all, I must say, this fan is defin
- Looks like the fan hopped up and murdered OP before he could finish his post.
  
  Now THAT'S a Pixar movie I'd watch ...
  
  Don't worry, she fine
- This fan of yours sounds fucking terrible, bud.
  
  Hey, the fan's not horrible. The fan is actually very nice and friendly. You'd know if you ever got to chat to it
- Ngl sounds like expensive ass fan
  
  The Bluetooth speaker at the centre of the fan totally make up for the cost
- That makes me want to vomit.
- I wouldn’t even return that, I’d straight up get physical with it
  
  Hmmmmm… what'd you have in mind, $username?
- This was the cheapest fan you could find?
  
  Yeah, that's just how it be these days. The damn thing comes cheap, but surprise, surprise, they charge ya for it l8ter. Like, the fan was cheap af. Unmatched by the competition. Almost free, for that price. But the cartridges? Those damn things will get me broke. If I knew ahead of time it would only work with their proprietary air, I would have looked for another option. Costs more upfront, but you end up saving overall

I totally agree! I'm trying to avoid logins and download this and that, as possible as I can.

This is absolutely a problem, but credit where credit's due, I'm really happy that the specification for Matter requires local control without calling out to the internet. Though Matter devices can still call out to the internet for additional features. I know Matter has it's issues, but I believe it is slowly improving the smart home. But I fully understand people that want to reject the smart home altogether.
- My whole home automation is using Zigbee devices, they don't even know what internet is, and it doesnt matter which brand it is as longs it is supported by Zigbee2MQTT. Matter is great, so is Thread.
  
  Yeah! Where I can, I use matter over thread. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that should provide the same benefits as zigbee? From what I remember, thread evolved from zigbee.
  Unfortunately matter over thread simple doesn’t exist for some categories of devices. For light bulbs, only Nanoleaf offers matter over thread, and the quality is pretty terrible. Do they even make matter over thread air conditioners?

I'm half on one side, half on the other.
The line I draw is between safety and convenience. On the safety side, I want things to be very manual. I don't want some app or external system managing whether or not the lights stay on, or whatever, on the convenience side, I 1000% want a way to manage things like the lighting from an app.
So anywhere that safety is a concern, like the kitchen, bathroom, a handful of other places.... There's zero "smart" anything. Everywhere else, yeah, I can turn off my lights from an app.
When I'm in my office/living room, where safety isn't really a concern, I don't have to get up to turn on the lights, I can yell at my Google home to do it for me, or use an app. If I want the lights to be some shade of turquoise, I use the app....
In the kitchen, as an example, no such control exists. You have to push the light switch, and you get basic removed white light. You don't get an option. You want the light off? Take your fingers and do the thing that makes the light switch go click and turn off the lights.
The decision to make anything smart relies on whether or not I'm going to be in danger if the lights go out and there's no way to turn them on again because the Internet is down.
- I want everything as dumb as possible. I will register whatever I buy with the manufacturer for warranty purposes, but other than that: dumb toaster, dumb fridge, dumb washing machine, dumb robot vacuum cleaner, dumb doorbell, dumb locks, etc...
  If it doesn't need internet to function, it's not getting any.
  
  And if it does need internet to function....I'm going to try to not buy it.
  
  Last time I registered was for my dishwasher, all it did was get me on the mailing list to buy another dishwasher.
  How many fuckin dishwashers do you think I need, mate?
  I just stopped registering anything. I'm entitled to my warranty either way.
- I've seen some neat features included, but it's never worth all the added bullshit they add in. Being able to tell if your oven is still on, or garage door is still open is great, but the app is never just that. It always comes with a truck load of bullshit noone asked for.
- I agree completely. But now I can't get the image out of my head, of the maniac that has done the complete opposite of this. Like putting the sink disposal unit, door locks, and flush toilets, all on a publicly accessible "smart" network.
  
  Chaos.
- I want quality buttons and knobs that let me control all necessary functions manually from the device. Smart features are for convenience and tracking stats. Never should the device talk to any party but me.

Enter your pazswird; enter the code from your authenticator
- hunter2
  
  Huh?
  
  That's an oldie but it checks out sir.
- For the outdated services I use that still require passwords, my password manager handles all that.

Did you know that Ryobi has an app that lets you register tools you've bought?