Yeah I’m with you. In most settings it’s me who is the tinfoil hat. I fully degoogled by 2019, began self-hosting bridgeable services years prior when SBCs and containers made it easier to scale, and all my smarthome artifice is offline save for a limited interface exposed via HomeKit.
But I still make guarded exceptions where the value-add is simply too high to ignore (e.g. using smart phones and fitness trackers) and/or the big-tech privacy commitments still appear to hold (though that’s pretty much down to just Apple now, and I know eventually they’ll turn too).
If it sounds like I want to have my cake and eat it too, that’s because I do, but I agree with you.
Like I stopped using fitness trackers on smart phones because I realized all of them want my data more than they want to be a value add to my smart phone purchase. I don’t want the power company to manage my thermostat because the power company isn’t on my side.
True on both counts. Fitbit is the worst offender I’ve seen so far. You’d think it would be Strava (which I’ve also stopped using outside competitions that require it) but Fitbit is just a health data broker at this point. I aggregate with apple’s health app now. It replaced a bunch of tedious spreadsheets and the watch collects way more useful and granular training data than I ever recorded myself. For PT management it’s just too invaluable to ignore.
Yes tried smart thermostats long ago and they never worked right for me. Nowadays I have zones scheduled mostly by time-of-use rates, sunlight and battery levels, which I think is the same idea behind giving the utility company control of your thermostat (they want to have a chunk of the grid to use for peak attenuation, but time of use pricing accomplishes the same thing without letting them past your firewall).
Yeah I’m with you. In most settings it’s me who is the tinfoil hat. I fully degoogled by 2019, began self-hosting bridgeable services years prior when SBCs and containers made it easier to scale, and all my smarthome artifice is offline save for a limited interface exposed via HomeKit.
But I still make guarded exceptions where the value-add is simply too high to ignore (e.g. using smart phones and fitness trackers) and/or the big-tech privacy commitments still appear to hold (though that’s pretty much down to just Apple now, and I know eventually they’ll turn too).
If it sounds like I want to have my cake and eat it too, that’s because I do, but I agree with you.
Like I stopped using fitness trackers on smart phones because I realized all of them want my data more than they want to be a value add to my smart phone purchase. I don’t want the power company to manage my thermostat because the power company isn’t on my side.
True on both counts. Fitbit is the worst offender I’ve seen so far. You’d think it would be Strava (which I’ve also stopped using outside competitions that require it) but Fitbit is just a health data broker at this point. I aggregate with apple’s health app now. It replaced a bunch of tedious spreadsheets and the watch collects way more useful and granular training data than I ever recorded myself. For PT management it’s just too invaluable to ignore.
Yes tried smart thermostats long ago and they never worked right for me. Nowadays I have zones scheduled mostly by time-of-use rates, sunlight and battery levels, which I think is the same idea behind giving the utility company control of your thermostat (they want to have a chunk of the grid to use for peak attenuation, but time of use pricing accomplishes the same thing without letting them past your firewall).