People lost control of their smart thermostats
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Perfect stick in the bike tire meme
And if they are determined they can defeat if with a small table and a candle or two under the thermostat. Sure, the company can set their air to 85, but they can make the small area by the thermostat think it's 95.
They could get a couple of resisters and connect them to the furnace terminals on the smart thermostats and then hook a normal thermostat to their actual HVAC hardware.
You do realize that what probably happened is the people heard rebate, then just scrolled all the way down to the bottom without reading it, right? It’s the exact reason why EULAs/TOSs aren’t enforceable in Europe, because of that.
Yep, just use enticing words like "rebate" and "smart", and see just how many so-called "intelligent human beings" lap it up without further thought.
Especially if it's accompanied by tons of legalese written in a tiny font that most people can't seem to be able to even see correctly, and consider how many (or rather, few) of them even like to read for fun.
Selling one's soul for a bit of convenience? Yeah, society has been slipping that way for more than a century now, but the beginnings of it are now so normalized, you can't even see them for what they were any more.
It's a lesson that letting the government/corporations run your life in exchange for the change they find in their sofa is a bad idea. But yeah, they signed up for this and only a retard would be surprised that they used a power that they were explicitly given.
This should be the top comment.
Most of the times these programs are optional signups. People VOLUNTEER to allow the power company to control their thermostat. Usually in exchange for a tiny discount each statement.
Good luck guys.
Let's give direct control over our environment to some third party who doesn't have to experience the consequence of their decisions. What could go wrong?
Just wait until they start turning off your refrigerator, or water, or power.
Is your refrigerator running? Check again This message has been brought to you by your power service provider.
as has already been said in this thread, customers opted into this program for a rebate. they are the ones facing the consequences of their actions. as they should.
''Discover'' their opt-in deal working as agreed?
Want the thermostat to allow the AC to run despite your opt-in deal?
Put something hot on it, like a boullotte ( is there an English word for it? A jiggly water container ).
Want it to allow heating? Do the same with ice-cold water bouillotte.
The point is to trick the thermostat to read a temperature in the range it still allows AC or heating to run.
If you deal allows totally cutting AC or heating regardless of temperature, WHY THE FUCK DID YOU AGREE TO THAT. Get out of that contract ASAP.
Hot Water bottle?
Whatever you call this thing. ( linked pic )
Water bladder perhaps. Extremely uncommon to name it either way.
Yeah, that's a hot water bottle.
Yeah, that's what we call a hot water bottle.
Install a non smart thermostat. There's step by step how to videos on youtube.
Reject the machine overlords, embrace manual labour
...or wait at least 2 weeks after they're connected to Twitter and start believing the Third Reich wasn't a bad idea...
Suddenly my thermostat understands when I am tired and can't speak English anymore?
I'd just jump the fucking wires. "Good job idiots, now I'm running the AC at all times."
Here I thought Colorado was all about corporate communism
Depends on the part of Colorado. Denver? Sure, go nuts. The desert and rural areas? No, they kind of hate it.
The more shit you own the more shit own you (or something like that) - fight club
you will fry in the pod
This is a program that people chose to opt into here in Colorado. I did not opt in. I'm in rural CO though.
Dystopian indeed..
I imagine they have a way to tell if you unhook their governor and raise your rates accordingly. Someone's going to figure out a dongle you can patch in to "fix" this
They feel lile they're in the good cartoons. Like The Jetsons.
I'm still holding out for the whole from bed to flying car to work automation.
I got slightly to drunk early summer, and not only was I hung over Saturday to Thursday, I smashed my phone screen while stumbling into the bathroom to pass out on the floor.
Had to mail it out and get the screen fixed. Would be real fun not being able to operate all my smart shit while waiting to get it back
Then when you get it back the retard tech did a factory reset for no reason, and all you authorisation tokens were lost, and now you can't even turn on the fucking lights, and the heating is on because it was a cold spring day, but now it is fucking scorching.
Paki shop bonus, doesn't take 2 fucking weeks.
its "showing off" how advance and well off they are.
The sad thing is, all this smart stuff is really cool and home automation can be fun and convenient. Unfortunately, it's all spyware and actively working against you. I'd love an AI assistant. Just one that I control and not some corporate overlord somewhere.
There's an open source AI assistant, called Mycroft, that you could look into. I don't know enough to address all privacy issues.
I've been on the Mycroft newsletter since they started the project. Unfortunately, it has been a slow development...
^^ A million times this.
From cell phones to look up anything on the internet pretty much anywhere on the planet I want to be, smart appliances that know what I want and need before I do, self-driving cars so I can get hours of my commute back, even cybernetic implants to improve memory and reflects. I wanted it all.
And then I grew up and realized even if the people that invent this stuff have good intentions, the people that ultimately control it will be the most sociopathic among the population.
Cool shit dreamed up by smart people used by retards to make everything worse. I don't exactly know when it started, but the trend is here to stay until we string up Christmas lights to declare victory if you know what I mean.
That's the sad part about this shitty future we live in.
Its filled with neat toys that should be making everyone's lives better and easier simply by their existence, but its marred horribly by also being constantly used for our detriment and eventually maliciously.
Have you NEVER seen the Terminator movies?
Yeah, in 2 John Connor gets an AI assistant and that works out pretty good for him!
Had to get a pirated firmware upgrade to work properly though.
And it is destroyed by the time the credits roll.
stands on one foot
Non smart TVs still exist, they're just sold as commercial displays. Jeff Geerling has some good videos on YouTube.
Tech enthusiast vs people who actually work in tech or are knowledgeable at least. I hate the whole smart home shit, knowing what can be done with it made me never want to get any. I still don't get why people even OWN an alexa aside from the whole spying on you shit. I can Google shit myself pretty well myself, people are fucking lazy nowadays.