There's way too much stuff that relies on internet access. If I'm at home, and my washing machine (which is also at home) wants to tell me when it's done, why does that need to use the internet?

I try to stick to Zigbee or Z-wave devices where possible, since they're guaranteed to be local-only. If I need access when I'm away from home, I connect with a VPN to access Home Assistant.

there were reports of roombas not getting up because us-east-1 was down, don't be so surprised

They don’t rely on the server to sound an already scheduled alarm but they do rely on the server to set the next one for a repeating alarm.

A frustrating number of devices rely on cloud connectivity for astoundingly rudimentary tasks.

I was once at a friend’s house for a game night and it was really cold; everyone was under blankets. I asked to turn up the heat and they said, “The internet is down, so the heat doesn’t work.” 🤯