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Comment by Joker_vD | Hacker News Reader

> I think it could be neat as a way to transfer a recipe to an oven, or specific washing instructions to a washing machine for particular items of clothing.

...is there also a neat way to remotely transfer the recipe's ingredients to an oven or load clothes into a washing machine?

One of my buddies once joked about the smart homes that they allow you to unlock your front door while being anywhere in the world — but sadly, there is almost never a useful reason to unlock your house's front door from 2000 km away.

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What about when you’re at work and want to let the repair person in? Or you run an Airbnb and want to let in your guests without having to worry about keys and lockboxes. Or you want to let in a family member. I think there are valid reasons for that.

Yeah, this reminds me of the other article on the frontpage, about Google not understanding why anyone needs 5m files in Drive. Well, maybe you don't.

Maybe it's not something that affects you, or 80% of people, 80% of the time... that doesn't make it useless. Try to step outside your own life even a few steps...

You would let a repairman in without someone present?

Well you forgot about my micro drone that follows them around filming their every move.

… except unironically

Sure. In such a scenario I could have cameras in place if I’m super paranoid. In my experience repair people have been extremely professional and have a reputation to uphold, so if I can’t be at home and a repair needs to happen, I don’t see a problem if that convenience is important to me.

Different areas of the world have different trust levels. In northern Europe nobody would think twice about letting in the repairman, we trust each other. It is a great place to live.

I'm guessing that the existence of edge cases like that are why Joker_vD included the "almost" qualifier.

If you ever have serious work done on your house, it requires letting contracts in for weeks. If you're not home, you need to leave them a key outside where dozens of people likely have access to it. I always change my locks afterwards, but a digital solution would be pretty nice.

I don't know. I think a lockbox would be a cheaper and easier solution for that use case.

How would that solve the problem? Any of the workers could take a picture of your key and recreate it later.

Perhaps I misunderstood the problem you were talking about. I thought it was leaving a key unprotected. A lockbox resolves that, by restricting access to the key to people who know the lockbox combination.

You mentioned rekeying the lock after the work, so I assumed that key copying wasn't the issue as you found a solution for that.

Rekeying the lock is the main issue. It costs money and then you need to redistribute keys to anyone who has one (other family members, nanny, cleaner, etc.)

True, but it’s pretty awesome being able to check if you forgot to lock the back door, and then lock it, as your flight is landing 2000km away.

Airbnb is about the only one.

Or your children lost/forgot the key and nobody is at home.

Or letting someone in to feed your cat.

Housesitting is a good one

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