10 years ago I would be really excited, as I could expect some groundbreaking tech like search engine or revolutionary approach to something, like Gmail (no ads sent to users, great UI, hige disk space).

Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web...

Maybe I am wrong, I hope I am wrong.

I'm so done with this smart home stuff.

"Alexa, turn on Living Room."

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding now."

I mean, yeah, I can toggle the light switch to get it to turn on, but then it gets screwed up and I need to go into the app to reset it when the internet comes back on.

I don't even want to think about a smart thermostat. My dumb thermostat from 10 years ago let's me set timers which is all I really need.

You don’t want a remote-controlled smart (actually: dumb) home. You want a fully local solution, then you can add remote, internet-dependent functionality like alexa to it. That way your primary mode of control will always work.

Agreed. I'll add to that a healthy application of the Principle of Least Astonishment. If you have a light, there should be an obvious light switch nearby that turns the light on and off, and does so even if your home automation system is offline for whatever reason.

"Smart" devices should, wherever possible, function as dumb devices if for whatever reason they can't be smart. There are a whole lot of devices that simply become bricks.

Rhasspy is an easy to use open source, fully offline, suite for this with wake word detection and integration with home assistant.

I've never understood the desire to control systems by speaking to them in code words. Speaking monopolizes a shared channel, requires diverting your conversation, and is really slow.

For practically anything that involves using code words to tell the computer what to do there are better input methods, like physical switches, or purely automated.

This is slightly off-topic, but in your opinion what are some of the reasons people prefer to use voice input with code words over the other options ?

If I'm curled up comfortably with my SO, and don't want to take ten minutes of unwinding, doing whatever, then tucking back up together...

It seems like in that case a remote control could be placed nearby -- are you also using voice activated code words to control the television ?

> are you also using voice activated code words to control the television ?

I happen to have backed a Kickstarter that will hopefully enable me to do just that ;)

I had to do something similar (minus voice controls) to keep my existing remote's volume controls working with an analog volume device [2].

[0] https://github.com/Pulse-Eight/libcec [1] https://github.com/rhasspy/rhasspy [2] https://rkeene.org/viewer/tmp/cec-volume.cc.htm