Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

There's a meme that goes:

Person A: I'm a tech enthusiast! I have the latest smartphone, smartwatch, smart car, smart TV, smart home... all networked together and automated to make my daily life easier.

Person B: I work in tech. The last piece of tech I bought is a printer from 2004, and I keep a loaded gun nearby in case it starts acting funny.

Once you understand how the sausage is made and what the incentives are, you become very suspicious of every hot new tech integration that comes along.

But humans just don't write commercial software anymore. Don't expect to keep doing that for a living.

View on HN

I will never understand some smart appliances.

Like...a smart TV so you don't need a second device to play your streaming services? I kinda understand, though I think it's a silly move. If my Fire TV stick gets deprecated, I can buy a new one for under $50. If my TV itself gets deprecated, I'm spending $1500+ for a new one. But like...the number of people who have their heads in the sand when it comes to pervasive ads being injected by their TV is appalling.

But why does anybody need a smart washer (either clothes or dishes)? I need to be physically there to load it. There's literally nothing to be gained by having an app. Sure, sometimes I want a delayed start for whatever reason, but literally every washer already has that function without an app.

I don't even see the purpose of WiFi-connected light bulbs. The only time I'm turning a light on or off is when I'm entering or leaving the room, in which case I'm passing by the light switch anyways.

While I agree with you on ideally having a dumb TV - being able to install TailScale on your TV and then using your exit node in another country (to watch that other countries local IPTV) is a really nice convenience. And you can no longer buy a dumb TV, at least not in typical living room sizes.

The dishwashing machine being able to notify you ahead of time that you're low (but not already out) of softening salt or rinse aid liquid is also convenient - but indeed also solvable with display on the machine itself.

But the automation like lights, or blinds/shutters... Being able to open/close shutters from your bed (or automatically in the morning as part of waking you up), or turn on/off lights based on motion/presence detection - is actually useful.

Of course you shouldn't need Internet to operate it. And many people use Home Assistant exactly because they don't want their "smart devices" to talk to the cloud.

Sceptre still sells dumb TVs, and there are always computer monitors with HDMI in. I'm typing this on a 43" one. You'll still pay more, especially for the latter, but not hugely more.

Smart TVs mostly exist to subsidize the cost of the hardware though licensing deals. We use none of the features that came with our Smart TV, and stream through an Apple TV instead. If your Smart TV gets deprecated, you can always upgrade to whatever the latest streaming device is, and plug 'er in.

I do say that I very much like our smart clothes washer's app and find it useful. It sends me a notification when the washing cycle is complete so that I know it is time to move it to the dryer, enabling a more efficient wash day, and less likelihood of forgetting a load in the washer and having it mildew.

I also do like my wifi connected light switches quite a lot. I frequently find myself wanting to dim the lights after we have already sat down to watch a movie or something. I don't want to kick the cat off my lap just to adjust the lighting. And I use it every night when going to bed, as the light switch is on the opposite side of the room, and our bedroom is completely pitch black with the lights out due to my war on LED indicators. We also travel frequently and have a preprogrammed "away" lighting schedule to make the house look occupied. Smart lighting is a super useful upgrade.

My favorite response to this was a fellow dev who immediately replied “you let your printer near a GUN?!”

HN is full of people who are far more on the “enthusiast” side than the cynical greybeard side.

There used to be more of us cynical greybeards.

Greybeards tend to be a declining population.

Are the "enthusiasts" that you speak of enamored by something like a WIFI-enabled clothes washer?

Please don’t be sweepingly dismissive of people by framing like this. Printers lack mobility and firearms would only activate their defensive ink cloud reflexes, as every expert office IT worker knows (including you!). So the group B you’re describing is being portrayed as both excessively paranoid and blatantly incompetent in order to dismiss the views of tech experts that reject A.I. and support your own claim that they’re, to paraphrase your intent in last century’s terms, ‘dinosaurs’. That’s not a respectable form of rhetoric and your use of it paints both you and group A, the one whose beliefs you’re trying to promote, with a broad brush of skeptical disbelief.

Office Space: Laser Printer murder scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjsSr3z5nVk

Perhaps you couldn’t tell from ‘defensive ink cloud’ that I understand the joke being used to demean and dismiss group B. It was a great movie for its time and was a small but real contributing factor in my recent retirement. Doesn’t excuse the rhetorical behavior I’m objecting to, of course, but I’m sure its characters would have appreciated my pun slash half-joke* about squid ink-jet printers.

* Seriously, do not shoot a toner cartridge or any object containing one with a projectile weapon; silicosis is no one’s friend and while you’d probably be fine with a 100 respirator, your lungs would still really prefer you didn’t even just once do that. (doi:10.1002/ajim.23147)

I'm actually sympathetic to group B. The last para was a note that the economics of software dev means that the value of human-created code is low and dropping. It's ushering in a new hellscape if you desire quality software or just like programming, but here we are.

Valid! ..but I’m only here to object to the style of rhetoric used to demean B, not to stake a position on either A and/or B.

This has always been just a meme. Plenty of the people I know who know the most about tech are also very excited about it. Person B in this example is often miserable for a lot of other reasons that have nothing to do with tech, doesn't understand tech as deeply as the meme suggests, and pattern matches cynicism into everything.

Not just a meme. In my experience it is quite accurate for a large percentage of techies - especially the more hardcore they are.

It's the fresher ones, with less experience, that are more excited by stuff like "smart appliances" and the latest gadgets and trends. Or manager types nominally "in tech", but who haven't been in the trenches since forever. People who "who know the most about tech" only superficially, in that the know the most about the latest slop and trends.

The cynicism is borne out of experience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com