Comment by Barrin92
21 hours ago
Literally every person I know who is obsessed with home automation has spend thousands of bucks and hundreds if not more hours on automating things that take a second or cost two bucks for a paper version that doesn't use electricity
The article is about a 2000$ eink display that shows a calendar and the weather. Your phone does that for free and you don't need to walk to the hallway every time.
This is basically anti-technology. It takes more time, money and effort than just buying something from the dollar store that does the same thing
Yeah, it really sucks when people have hobbies!
Hobbies are perfectly fine. Here, his hobby is to work for technology, certainly not that technology should work for him.
There is that - I won't object to hobbies, though I often do ask 'what is wrong with the common dumb switch. Which is why I have only 2 in my house - there are two lights where the standard switch isn't good enough.
The sunk cost and dollar store arguments assume the goal is information retrieval at minimum cost.
The relationship with technology you're designing around your family is worth considering too.
Looking at a shared hallway screen that shows a shared calendar which doesn't exist to pull anyone into a feed doesn't make a worse phone, it's solving a different level of shared understanding entirely.
The assumption that the phone is a neutral free tool tends to come most naturally to people who haven't yet thought about who designed the defaults and why. Free at point of use isn't the same as free. Someone optimized very hard for your continued presence.
So you see no value in the learning that comes with the tinkering?
I love how every chain in this thread starts off defending the practical utility of all this but ends with defending "learning" and "hobbies" when someone points out that you don't need to spend $2000 and 100 hours to know when a washing machine cycle ends.
Its disingenuous to claim that OP spent that much time and money to know when the washing cycle was complete. That's one of several different things the screen can do in addition to everything else it can display.
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