{"id":852,"date":"2017-03-31T12:23:52","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T04:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edtechnet.com\/?p=852"},"modified":"2017-12-07T13:36:25","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T05:36:25","slug":"smarthome-the-truth-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/?p=852","title":{"rendered":"Smarthome – the Truth 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sooner or later I was going to have to post my two cents‘ worth on the Internet of Things (short: IoT), and here it is. And for the lexically challenged or those who can’t be bothered to read the whole thing here’s the summary: Most of it is strictly for the birds.<\/p>\n

Smart TV’s<\/h5>\n

Who would have thought that government agencies with deep pockets and an army of specialists could hack into your Samsung (or other) Internet connected TV sets? Think for a second: here’s a device with a direct link to the net sitting in the middle of your private space, and powered by hard & software that is largely proprietary and\u00a0 infrequently updated or patched. Oh,\u00a0 and there’s an incentive for the manufacturer to collect data on you as well. Forget it. Buy a dumb TV with fast USB and HDMI ports instead. Get your Internet content (Youtube, Netflix, whatever…) through a reputable streaming box like the Roku or Apple TV. It’s safer, easier to monitor and easily replaceable when new technology comes out.<\/p>\n

Smart Appliances<\/h5>\n

It’s a load of hype, corporate greed and waste of money; aside from the security risks, that is. Nobody needs a fridge that automatically orders more milk from Amazon while providing them with intimate details of your dietary habits. If you run out of beer, why not get off the sofa and mitigate the liver damage with some exercise by walking to the corner store? The same goes for washing machines, toasters and all the rest.<\/p>\n

Alexa & Co<\/h5>\n

This one gets a special mention for extraordinary creepiness. For a moment, the idea of being able to just say „Alexa, turn on the air-con, or dim the lights in the living room“ sounds great. It’s the home of the future you see in movies. Then think about corporate greed, the bottom line, blanket government surveillance and a connected device that can potentially hear everything in your home. And as if that wasn’t enough, consider this: every time we get up to hit a switch manually, we do something good for our body.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So What Does Work?<\/h5>\n

All in all, I came up with a handful of connected devices that would justify the risks. Connected water or fire sensors that send a push notification in case of an emergency at home make sense to me. So do security cams and sensors that protect our homes from either intruders and\/or environmental damage (such as burglars, high humidity, frost etc). The same risks apply in terms of government intrusion, hacking and corporate data lust so I would do my homework very very carefully and choose wisely. Beyond that, it’s really time to separate the hype and commercial interests from what actually benefits most people. Remember that big (tech) websites are largely financed by advertising and there is no substitute for a healthy dose of skepticism coupled with common sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sooner or later I was going to have to post my two cents‘ worth on the Internet of Things (short: IoT), and here it is. And for the lexically challenged or those who can’t be bothered to read the whole thing here’s the summary: Most of it is strictly for the birds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":933,"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutecc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}