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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

Especially with the rising cancer known as SaaS. Soon you'll need to be paying $10/mo for your thermostat to work, and you'll need to fork over another $200 every other year to upgrade the hardware.

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And then the company will be purchased by a FAANG and you will immediately be forced into using new accounts and new workflows for the same functionality (yes, suddenly thermostats have workflows now...)

It's a small price to pay for the new Amazon Lord of the RingsTM television event where everyone's heaters will kick on at max whenever there's fire on screen.

This is actually an improvement. It aligns the incentives of the guys making your thermostat's web UI. Otherwise your thermostat wouldn't get new features and security updates

No, I want security updates without surveillance, without lock-in and without a monthly fee.

Sounds like too much to ask?

This is what Linux distributions has been providing for decades. And my 486 PC was less powerful than some thermostat.

SaaS gets hated on too much here. The incentives work out as well for desktop software - there's no longer the incentive to add new features to justify customers purchasing a new version (or withhold features until the new version). The problem I've seen is that it almost always comes with a big price hike when compared to an alternative of upgrading every 3 years. The only exception to this I can think of is Office 365 which still remains a deal.

Its a fucking thermostat.

I don't need the company to be bankrolling a $2mm/yr AI team so that the thermostat can try to make better guess about when I want to turn on the heat.

You don't, but they do. By analysing how you use thermostats they may figure you need an AC and sell your profile to AC makers.

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