The only reason I got rid of all of my smart home stuff (besides Google Home and ONE smart plug) was because of how unreliable that shit was. Not because of the "spying". Otherwise I might as well destroy my phone and unplug my internet line.

I'd ask Google to turn something on/off, and it wouldn't. Sometimes just straight up ignore me, or tell me it did it, but it didn't. Or when I'd tell it to turn something off and it would instead turn something else ON.

I just got to the point where I was screaming and getting angry all the time, and realized it's not worth it. I may be annoyed to get out of bed or walk downstairs to turn something off, but at least it's only momentarily, not an internal fucking rage.

It used to be great. They somehow got worse over the years. I tried using Home Assistant, but it just doesn't hit the same, especially since it doesn't fix the voice command problem. If I have to grab my phone to control stuff, I might as well just take a few steps, too.

The only smart plug I have left is to charge my eBike battery. Turns on when I plug it in, and turns off when it's charged.

moved landline to Gvoice 15 years ago and set it to dnd. house phone never rings. get a transcript of any voicemail.

You can't just shoot a printer if it makes "unexpected noise".

It's a printer for crying out loud. That's what it does.

I mean, my laser printer has pretty regular sound patterns and usually just does weird maintenance noises sometimes. But I remember the era when everyone had an inkjet, hoo boy, you tried to print a page and then there was a bunch of really incomprehensible noises and then you might get a printout, maybe.

Kind of, but with OPNsense for the router.

Can indeed confirm. I'm the first (tech enthusiast), slowly becoming the second. My dad is the second. He upgraded from windows 7 to windows 10 a few months ago. Like he knows tech, he just cbf about it. I was the first but then realized that smart home stuff is not worth it for my usecase.