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We recently purchased a TV and chose one based on the lack of any Smart TV functionality. It boots in 5 seconds and doesn't try and join botnets. The future is stupid.

I got a new TV last week. The problem with a preference for simple is that the best model bang/buck was a smart tv. I managed to crash it with only the remote controller last night.

Do you still think it was the best bang for the buck when you factor in the crash and how slow it is in general?

Depressingly, yes.

Yep the whole internet of things isn't my cup of tea either. I'm not letting my TV iniate an outbound connection without permission.

Security is a nightmare and I don't want to be profiled by anyone.

I'm getting worried I won't be able to find a dumb TV when I need a new one.

It's called "computer display" nowadays; the so-called TVs only have extra a RPi compute module and a DVB tuner ;)

TVs are also much bigger and cheaper and have multiple inputs and an IR sensor for remote control.

I use the remote control for one thing on our TV: volume. That’s just because all the sound goes in there via HDMI then off to an amp with no remote control.

I recently brought my first smart TV. I tried to avoid it, but the cheapest not smart alternative was more than twice the price.

But you know, except for a "do you want to update now" nagging that made it unusable for the first 2 hours after I plugged it on the net, and a immediate "please accept this EULA so we can display ads" that I declined, the smart features have been nice since then.

I am still wary of a future "we are shutting down our servers, this TV will be no more", but not of much more.

Which features are available that you find useful? I'm surprised any are turned on if you declined the EULA.

I decline a EULA. Basically the one offering ads. I don't think it's necessary for anything actually useful.

It's very nice to connect to the TV by Bluetooth. It's nice to plug stuff there and browse the web too, but does not make all that difference because there's a Kodi machine just under it (right now I'm not sure I will keep the computer).

Which one was that? Sounds great.

IIRC, schools are now veering away from smartboards (since they always break, high upfront cost and maintenance, low value) and instead veering towards TVs with a seperate see-through touch overlay on top of it. The cost is significantly less, since TVs with various types of inputs (HDMI, VGA, etc) can be bought cheaply since they are manufactured in bulk. There's also less maintenance since the TV and overlay are not electronically connected in anyway, therefore less moving parts. When a TV goes bad you just dump it out and buy a new one, etc

I've never understood the need to be always connected to the internet for gaming. Especially if its a single player game, I prefer to have steam just run it offline, but I guess the counterargument for game companies is DRM (they want to validate whether you purchased the game or not).

I do IT all the time and I am always against putting too much functionality in everything. People don't appreciate the simple things until they have to repair it themselves. I never bought into smart homes, TVs, amazon echo/alexa products, etc. I just don't see the need to automate these things that provide little value in the long run.

Per article, my rule of thumb is to always resort to the simplest, dumbest thing possible to validate whether or not I actually need the high tech solution. A good example of this, not mentioned in the article, is a pomodoro timer (a timer designed to work on 25 minute work periods). You can download a slew of apps to do this on your PC. Or you could just buy a miracle cube timer off amazon for like $10. Another good example is a todolist. You can find hundreds of these apps that integrate everywhere that it doesn't need to be. I resort to just using sticky notes and shove them in my wallet / keyboard to remind me of tasks I need to do.

The pomodoro example is interesting because the technique is named for a ubiquitous mechanical kitchen timer :)

You're right about blackboards but they make a hell of a mess with all the chalk dust.

The game updates situation... eesh. So many times when I've got maybe 20 minutes free to play a game and it wants to spend 10 of them downloading updates. One of the reasons I've come to love retro console gaming is that nonsense doesn't happen with PS1, PS2, Xbox, or Wii games.

For a lot of things dumb is often better and more reliable, especially at home: lights (though I do crave a master switch by my back door) and door-locks spring immediately to mind.

I haven't seen motion activated taps - the kind you see in public toilets - creeping into homes yet, but it's only a matter of time. Those things have always seemed pointless and overcomplicated to me, so if I ever move into a house that has them they'll be getting pulled straight out. What happens if you have a power-cut? I assume they'll keep working for at least a while, but sooner or later I imagine they'll run out of juice, and then what do you do?

The motion activated taps in public bathrooms are to prevent people from wasting water, not for convenience.

Makes sense, although I have to ask: are they a net saving in waste water and processing versus resources required to manufacture them (or price)? They've been around a long time now so I can believe they would be.

They also make sense from a hygiene perspective, the less (humid!) stuff everyone touches, particularly after they washe their hand, the harder it is for bacteria to spread.

But, not those Dyson hand dryers.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/dyson-dryers-hurl-60...

I hate those things: like everything Dyson makes they're noisy, ugly, overpriced, underperforming crap. I must admit to being slighly joyous at finding they're also something of a health hazard: sort of the icing on the cake of a terrible product.

If you can believe it, the Dyson Airblade V is even worse: it dries your hands by the clever trick of blasting the water from them and spraying it liberally over your trousers along with the wall and floor beneath the dryer whilst making enough noise to wake the dead. Total junk.

EDIT: And don't even get me started on the stupid Airblade tap/hand dryer hybrid. What a travesty of innovation. Got large hands? Prepare to confuse the thing as it can't decide whether to douse you in water or blow a hoolie. Talk about a solution begging a problem.

I would bet money that the motion-sensor toilets are not cost effective in the long run. I have seen way too many of them in some kind of malfunctioning or non-functioning state, and I don't think just any random plumber can work on them until/unless they learn specific manufacturing details, which involve electronics and sensors (not your typical plumber stuff).

I would never spec these in new construction unless they were the kind with a purely mechanical flusher incorporated as a failsafe.

Motion activated things on public spaces are there so everybody does not have to place their dirty hands on the same surfaces. It's a public health issue that does not make sense at all on private or even semi-private spaces.

While hygiene may be a auxiliary benefit if it were really about hygiene they'd give you more than a trickle of cold water.

A normal amount of warm water encourages people to wash their hands correctly. I have to sit through around five on-off cycles to get a good hand washing.

A few years ago I was at a university whose motion taps and motion paper-towel dispensers were battery powered. There was one time I went into a bathroom and most of the sinks were dead.

> I have never seen a blackboard that does not work.

I have. It looks like a normal blackboard that doesn't have any chalk nearby. Smart boards are generally worse, but their chalk doesn't run out or disappear.

If your blackboard "malfunctions" (runs out of chalk), it's obvious to a new user what the issue is, and how to fix it (borrow some from so-and-so down the hall, or send someone to buy a pack).

If your smart blackboard malfunctions, it's not obvious what the problem is (power loss/issue? Software bug? Something else?) and you definitely can't borrow a few ounces of chalk from your neighbor to fix it.

>Meaning if power goes out and is restored in the middle of the night the lights could suddenly turn on full brightness.

No, they just add 200 other failure scenarios of their own...

I have also seen uneraseable chalk boards, and boards where the chalk wouldn't adhere.

Besides, the chalk powder is a great health hazard, and the sound is a great distractor. There's a reason everybody switched into white boards, and it's not because of novelty.

About smart boards, they are great for remote conferences, and for mixing pre-made content with writing. I don't think they are worth the hassle (unless you do remote conferences a lot), but they are not all downsides either.

"chalk powder is a great health hazard"

Nonsense. Some individuals with pre-existing breathing conditions may have those conditions exacerbated by inhaling chalk at unusual levels, but to say that chalk powder by itself is a great hazard is nonsense on stilts.

> their chalk doesn't run out or disappear.

Unless they're stuck in an update loop, or the power is off, or sometimes the internet is down.

I got a Nintendo Switch lately and was overjoyed to see that its prompts to download and update offline games are skippable.

PlayStation does the same. It advises that you can skip the update if you don’t intend to use networked features.

Debian does the same. You are free to pick and choose what to update and even look what changed before applying the update. And the best is, you can change the update or create an update yourself!

Are there any popular distros that don't let you skip an update?

Well, Android doesn't let you skip updates of specific parts. It's all or nothing.

Fail to update Arch at your peril. All packages are built against the latest versions of libraries, so you quickly find that programs from the repositories don't work until you update.

PlayStation can also do auto updates if you leave the console in sleep mode rather than turning it fully off. When I start up my game I just get a notification that an update has been applied rather than a prompt asking whether I want to wait for an update or play offline.

The sleep mode is really nice too. I've been chalking these improvements up to the fact that it's also a mobile device.

WRT whiteboards - the problem is ironically enough the users. They try to be frugal with the markers, using them as long as they can. I did too, until I did some introspection and realized what I was doing.

Once I had that realization, and identified how cheap replacement markers really are, the moment it starts to crap out it's tossed and replaced from a backup container sitting nearby.

I'm also biased against blackboards, having gone through school with them. I was all-too-frequently chosen to go bang the chalk dust out the erasers, becoming coated from tip to toe in said dust. Too much hassle for the value. Not to mention the need for a deep cleaning of the board periodically, though I guess it shares that with whiteboards.

> I was all-too-frequently chosen to go bang the chalk dust out the erasers, becoming coated from tip to toe in said dust.

Our teachers had a small bucket of water and simply cleaned the sponges themselves, if we had to do it it was fun rather than a health hazard.

> Not to mention the need for a deep cleaning of the board periodically

Again wet sponge technology comes to the rescue, plus window cleaning thingies to get the blackboard to dry before the next lesson. That school was ass backwards in so many ways, but even they didn't manage to mess up using blackboards.

> the moment it starts to crap out it's tossed and replaced from a backup container sitting nearby

How does all that plastic compare to some colored chalk and water though? What's involved in producing colored chalk versus producing whiteboard markers? It's a honest question because I have no clue, but of course the implication is that it seems likely to me, not having looked into it at all, that chalk is way more environmentally friendly.

I also think the skill ceiling for chalk, and the possible range of styles, is greater, so to speak. But I never really saw gifted whiteboard use, and did have some teachers who had beautiful handwriting on a blackboard and used little tricks to make neat graphs or images, who had a real sense of craftsmanship if not artistry about it, so I'm probably biased in the other direction.

A very interesting data point. I don't think I ever saw someone use a sponge and water on a chalkboard in all my years. I mean, it makes sense, but I never saw it in action.

Perhaps it's because the drying time would have been too long, since most teachers would be re-using blackboard space constantly throughout a single class period.

I can certainly imagine that the environmental impact of blackboards is overall lower than whiteboards, but even given the sponge-and-bucket method, I'd have to say that whiteboards fall on the "easier to use" side of the equation; something that's hard to dismiss when we want minimal friction when writing something out on a board.

So I got Sony super-duper 4k HDR with some chip that makes the colors better. I hook up my Sony ps4 to it. Every time a game launches, the tv fully shuts off. Not standby mode, fully shuts off, requiring a reboot through that stupid android tv screen. Good job, Sony.

A large part of this is shitty engineering and product development. These products could be made so much better, but they suck instead.

True, but it is also the price to pay when you use technology. You can't test everything. The TV, for example, is a new model from a big, quality brand (and in general it works well). Likewise, Call of Duty (the game that requires internet even if you play offline - not sure if this holds for all games in the series) is not a small title. So if these products by big companies have that shitty engineering, then most products with the same functionality probably will have similar problems.

From what I've seen while working for large companies, the problem is most likely incompetence and/or quality not being a priority.

It’s important not to excuse the business decisions behind that incompetence: someone knew about the problem and figured you’d buy it anyway because of marketing or everyone else cutting the same corners.

Again, from my personal experience, most of the time the decision maker doesn't know there is a problem or that it could possibly be improved.

Or rather "fixing the problem would take time and money. Nah, just ship it."

Not really. Usually the developers and mid managers are doing this to themselves, they say something like "we can't tell him or he will fire us" and the decision maker is not aware of any problems. What happens when I step in is that I tell them what problems do they really have and most of the time the decision maker really wants to fix them and isn't going to fire anyone (except for the incompetent mid-managers that caused these issues).

You'd need tremendous amounts of engineering for all those not to suck. And engineering that's done by really experienced people. Too bad that people desiging the "smart" part are from the same IT industry that thinks 3 or 5 years of experience qualifies as "senior".

Can I quote you from another post?

> It's not really that difficult to learn six languages to a level of using them professionally. I've seen it happen. [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16458513

Oh, of course you can quote me. Though you should also explain how is this particular quote of any relevance here.

I believe using a language "professionally" means being senior. Which is different from having a profession where you use said language.

On the one hand you're arguing you can't become "Senior" in 5 years, but at the same time you can become professional with 6 languages with little effort.

You can be a professional developer that is on junior level.

"Professionals have standards"

Your definition doesn't make sense. I've been labeled a "Senior Software Engineer". Does that mean that any time I write code in any language I'm using it professionally, while people who have been paid to write the same language for years but don't have senior in their title aren't using it professionally?

How about "Senior Pascal Developer". Does that make sense?

Professional: "a person who is expert at his or her work". Are you an expert with every language?

> people who have been paid to write the same language for years but don't have senior in their title

Are they experts with the language / framework / tools?

From Wikipedia:

"A professional is a member of a profession or any person who earns their living from a specified professional activity."

Also from wikipedia, the second sentence:

"The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skills necessary to perform their specific role within that profession."

Also from wikipedia, the second paragraph:

"In some cultures, the term is used as shorthand to describe a particular social stratum of well-educated workers who enjoy considerable work autonomy and who are commonly engaged in creative and intellectually challenging work."

Can we please stop this nonsense now?

The paragraphs you've pasted say absolutely nothing about the seniority of said professionals. And there is no indication that we're using the term as the described shorthand.

> How about "Senior Pascal Developer". Does that make sense?

So are you saying I should have a different job title for every language I use?

> Are they experts with the language / framework / tools?

So you agree that being proficient in a language is a separate issue from job title?

Just got myself (an expensive Nobo) glass whiteboard for brainstorming my side projects and, with all the technology, laptops, tablets and gadgets I'm constantly surrounded by, it turned out to be a very fun and useful thing to have. There's something immediate about it that motivates you to do quick brain dumps, where it's always at hand's reach and it takes zero time to erase anything so you don't feel too committed.

// Blackboard in this case would have been be far less practical as everything around it would be eventually covered in chalk.