“Carla! Carla! What the fuck is this? I know you sleep on a 25. A 25 or a 30 if you fuck up swiping. I know for a fucking fact that you would NEVER choose to sleep on a 60, and yet I found a goddamn record of a 60 when I was out last week. Who was it? Who was here?”

I really can’t see any other reason. A dial isn’t sexy but it’s far easier in every way

Look you wanted a smart bed. We either incorporate that locally and jack the price and size 50%, or we offload the processing to a server farm and require internet

Smart products themselves are not the issue. The issue is making everything cloud based. The solution is companies designing their products so they can be controlled over the network.

It's a fucking bed! It doesn't need a persistent connection to some server. The problem is that they also want to mine and sell your data.

Also people in the 80's: "I love my waterbed, but my back is killing me for some reason."

You can get other versions than eight sleep. I had an insert for my pillow. Can't remember the brand though. It ran locally via an app and Bluetooth. I ended up returning within the trial period, due to it forming bubbles in the circulation, which woke me up

You can flash your own firmware if you want.

The nurse knew that the power management system required an Internet connection? That's one geeky nurse.

Still, I have hope with things like solar panels. I think these are likely to be teething pains there. Being off-grid on a solar panel is probably a pretty common situation, so they're probably going to eventually work out the kinks. As long as there isn't a monopoly on power management systems, or regulatory capture by the companies that make them, probably the ability to work disconnected from both the power and Internet grids will eventually happen. But, with Internet-of-Things stuff, there's often a commercial incentive to mine people's data and lock them into a subscription service model. So, that's really going to require regulation to fix.

• !assholedesign@lemmy.world
• !crappydesign@sh.itjust.works
• !unsustainable_products@slrpnk.net

why? what if they want more money and decide to make it go subscription based? do you and the shareholders want to risk people just....unplugging them and continuing to use them? the mere idea made me drop my monocle .

Reminds me of the Naked Gun folding bed scene, haha

https://youtu.be/v664Yaqjw0g

How about a Kohler toilet that watches you poop for an annual subscription.

Probably people with "help, my possessed bed folded me inside it, and now I'm trapped" fetishes

That's what customer support would have told the poor clueless customers if the hotline had not been an AI agent running on AWS!

Dont blame the victim, those poor people couldn't sleep, as if they could critically think /s

But then it’s not a smart beer, is it Todd?

They would have to know it does that first

Smart devices are fine - it usually just means remote control or status. Plenty of use in that.

The problem is that no one can be arsed to buy a local hub and figure out how to connect it, so every company just builds an app and makes it cloud connected. That way they can farm your stupidity.

It’s not hard to make a device that works locally (it’s way easier than making a cloud service) but it’s far less lucrative.

That being said if I bought a $2000 mattress cover and it didn’t work offline I’d have gotten my fucking money back.

I can completely understand it, if you ignore all the privacy issues and potential hacks.

For example, a smart fridge. Imagine a fridge that tracks the expiry date of everything inside and warns you before something goes bad -- or detects when something goes bad based on the off-gassing that it produces. Imagine it gets to know your purchase patterns and suggests items for your grocery list when you're running low. Or, if you fully trust it, it could even order those things for you.

Or, smart lights. Imagine lights that are nice and bright in the winter when you don't get enough sunlight. Then imagine those lights are smart enough to start dimming and getting "warmer" at a certain point in the evening on your personal schedule, making your body more prepared for sleep. Add motion / presence sensors so that the lights turn on when you go into a room, and turn off when everybody leaves the room. Most of the time a light switch isn't a burden, but if you're carrying things it can be a bit annoying, and we all know kids are pretty bad about turning things off when they leave a room.

In a world where you didn't have to worry about the privacy issues, the bugs had all been worked out, and so-on, smart appliances could be great. But, we're on v0.1 and so I'm extremely cautious in every "smart" device I use.

The only thing my bed has that my previous beds didn't was a removable charging outlet with USBs and stuff. That's it. That requires only electricity and is literally something that could have existed last century with no problem.

He also invented CFCs, the chemical that nearly destroyed the earth's protective ozone layer. Quite a guy.