There are numerous benefits in IoT / smart home and ubiquitous computing. Used in the right ways it can make your life so much better and even save lives. It is just sad to see all the wasted potential, the greediness and straight up noncompliance with basic human rights and needs for simplicity and privacy in its design.

Funny enough, it got me into reading some threads of people reverse engineering air fryer APIs (didn't expect that to ever happen) and it reminded me again of how great and compassionate some people are. Makes the stupid cat and mouse game seem even more stupid when 3 guys in their spare time can rebuild a 5 layer deep authentication stack with some unknown Philips / Xiaomi server that probably needed tens or even hundreds of engineers to build in an obfuscated manner in the first place.

I completely agree. If it's a household appliance, it better not fucking connect to the internet.

I just recently started getting into smart home products such as smart plugs and stuff and I absolutely make certain that they don't have internet connection and use home assistant to keep the data local.

I will only use Zigbee or Z-Wave devices so that there's no way they can connect to the internet.

You can't buy used on Amazon. I said used

The largest majority of people also can't be bothered to do a single shred of research before buying something. How is that anyone else's problem but theirs?

The best consumer protection comes from the consumer. Do a bit of research before you buy something.

If you can't be bothered to take a few extra minutes to do that, then quite frankly, you deserve to be fucked by scammers.

Again. That's a lack of skill. Why is it my problem?

If they can't be bothered to do 5 minutes of research before buying something, that's on them.

Caveat emptor.

I will never allow IoT devices into this house unless they can be used offline.

If you can't be bothered to take a few extra minutes to do that, then quite frankly, you deserve to be fucked by scammers.

and this is exactly how being fucked by scammers will become normal

stop with your fucking elitism and start thinking what to do for those whos work/hobby is not in IT, because that's 99.999% of people.

Why is it my problem?

Because when manufacturers see that they can get away with this shit, they will all start doing it, and then you can stick up your research because there will be nothing else.

Only if it's made too hard for a new company or more options to emerge.

It's not elitism to say "If you want something done right, do it yourself."

Elitism?

Dude. I am an almost 50 year old, former truck driver with no formal education on any of this shit, and yet, I managed to figure it out.

If you can't, then that's most assuredly a YOU problem.

SURELY you're smarter than a truck driver?

Here, let me help.

https://ebay.us/m/3res0I

Less than 20 USD.

Like I said. Not willing to even try to look for something appropriate for your use case.....

It's not about me, but about all the people around me

So punish those of us who do know how to make the cheap stuff work in a way we want, by removing the cheap stuff from the market, because other idiots don't?

Yeah, solid idea.

Someone please make a Bluetooth equivalent for smart devices. My thermostat doesn't need internet access but standardized wireless control is still a good feature

where did I recommend that?

It is a natural consequence of tighter regulations.

I bought a kettle with some WiFi features, but never planned to put it on my network as it works without it. Or was supposed to, at least. The thermostat was erratic and it needed a firmware update to fix it, only installable via this WiFi-connection. I set up a temporary VLAN just for the update, and disabled the VLAN right after. Then I took a shower.

I find it odd that one of its core features worked so poorly out of the box. And it's not like it was a way to trick me into connecting it either, as I first got a replacement part because they didn't know what the issue was.

Zigbee or z-wave for example?

I know everyone points out the problems with Nest, Ring, and various talking/listening/spying agents. For me, one of the worst offenders was a garage door motor that came with WiFi capability. Damn thing has the ability to just open up a door on my house on command. There's no way am I putting that online.

P2P + IoT could be great for safety and privacy. We should just remove the middle men (datacentres, servers) so that data travels between the devices you own, and not via some data vampire trying to get in the way.

to me that sounds like arguing that banning behavioral advertising would result in all monetarily free social platforms stopping to exist

chinese tech was cheap even before datamining and IoT was a thing. "banning" datamining wouldn't make chinese tech expensive