ryoblog/src/blog/i-was-right-about-iot-again/index.md

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title: IoT: I warned, nobody listened, now everybody pays the price author: 寮 date: 2022-09-16 09:00:00 tags:technology,internet threadid: ANbXlxwrH0u3rICtsm

I remember going to Germany and just using random people's houses to spend my nights at (they call it AirBnB though) a couple years ago, I could already see quite a dystopian future in the making.
Every single household had at least one or more of the following: robot vaccuum cleaner, smart fridge, smart washing machine, smart kitchen, smart meter, smart heater, smart lock, smart doorbell, Amazon Alexa, and so on.
They only didn't have the toilets we have here in Japan, so that was disappointing.
And I deliberately avoided saying smartphone, smart TV, and smart tech in their cars, because literally everyone had all of these.

And I said from day 1 since the whole IoT stuff got announced to never allow that to happen, because terrible things will happen.
But absolutely nobody wanted to listen, and kept pointing out "MUH CUMWIINIENS!!" because they don't require any thinking of their own to use it.
Well yes, and that's exactly how you enable tech dystopia!

Now if you look at the whole smart aircon situation in Colorado, isn't this exactly what I was warning you all about all along?
They can no longer adjust the temperature in their own homes because they thought it was a good idea to give up autonomy over your aircon for a smart aircon they don't own (if you can't control it yourself, then you don't own it), just to get a little 25 dollar discount.
Imagine if the government would get at your doorsteps and said "if you allow us to burn your house down and make you homeless, we'll give you 25 dollar", would anyone actually agree with such a deal?
I used to think the answer is "no", but seeing how it went with the whole smart tech stuff, I'd rather think people will be stupid enough to say "yes" to that.

I'm so glad that Japan is such a technologically backwards country!
I mean, it's frustrating as you need a phone number for almost every single domestic soyvice, and lots of things will only properly work on WinDOS and/or iOS/Android, but at least none of these are actually mandatory, and at least most of us don't have any smart tech other than a smartphone and maybe smartwatch.

Over in Germany I really felt way too afraid to express myself freely, knowing that governments, corporations, or some shady glownigger would be watching me at any random time.
My home has no smart tech, I do have smartphones, but other than that everything is retarted tech.
I operate my own doorbell, I operate my own washing machine (it does have a timer, that's OK), I have to know my way around town, I have to know what's in my fridge while shopping, I have to manually search for recipes or songs, I have to manually turn my grill on, I have to activate my rice cooker by myself, and so on.

I have no TV at all, and when I had one, the IR reader broke and the TV manufacturer went bankrupt, so I had to actually stand and operate the TV on the screen itself, which isn't even possible with modern (both smart and dumb) TVs anymore, and I kept using the TV that way until I got too annoyed by TV propaganda and I started to just torrent anime 2 years ago, so I got rid of that TV completely.
I replaced it with a simple monitor connected to one of my ThinkPad docks, so I can still watch whatever I want as if it were a TV, but my note PC is the remote now.