Oof. I’ve had the user account one before from Play for an app that had no user accounts. Apple isn’t much better though - currently trying to argue that asking for user location (when a user clicks ‘use my location’) for a real estate app is reasonable. They are insistent it’s not a valid feature and won’t accept it til it’s removed.
If an employer offered me a 5k paycut so they could ply me with coffee and snacks that’s not a deal I would take. So in reverse, I’d like the 5k please.
For snacks no. But for breakfast and lunch, that’s a 20$/d or 5.2k/yr value, so I’d take that for the convenience. I got tired of bringing lunch to work after about 4 years. Most places I’ve worked have had few takeout options. (Of course WFH changes calculus)
I have a semi-smart home in that I’ve got a few smart plugs connected with Alexa and it’s useful to turn on/off a bunch of lights at once - or have them come on in the evening while away. Other than that I’m not really sure what more I’d want. Maybe some kind of instant-disco lighting so I can rock out to Dire Straits?
A smart thermostat is useful. I would also like smart curtains (I made a prototype that I hooked up to Google Home ok - "Hey Google open the curtains" works, but the actual physical bit is tricky).
A smart lock would be very useful too, e.g. for granting temporary timed access to cleaners etc. But there's no way I trust any of the smart locks on the market with my home security.
I have some smart scales too. They are pretty great.
It isn't the concept that is the problem. It's the lack of standards and long term support. Non-smart curtains, scales, lights, locks, etc. essentially work forever, whereas I'd give smart versions 10 years tops. And I don't really want to lock my house into 5 different vendors' proprietary systems.
> But there's no way I trust any of the smart locks on the market with my home security.
The security provided by most door locks is completely illusory. You can break into most homes very easily. Most people have unsecured windows on the ground floor.
Most locks are there as a way to signal that this door shouldn't be opened. It's mostly a psychological detterent. As long as your insurance is fine with your smart lock, it's probably not much worth than a dumb lock.
The exception is of course the upper floors of apartment complex in large city in which case the five points locking system on your door is there to signal that it will me more time effective to break into your neighbor place.
> It's the lack of standards and long term support
Completely agree with that. All companies want to build a locked plateform. That's hindering the market growth a lot.
> The security provided by most door locks is completely illusory. You can break into most homes very easily. Most people have unsecured windows on the ground floor.
Maybe in America but that's definitely not true in the UK. Modern windows, doors and locks are really quite secure. It's definitely not completely illusory security.
If you watch LPL's videos many smart locks are designed with very little consideration for physical security. Exploits are often as easy as drilling a hole in a zinc casting and pressing a reset button, or even just removing screws.
That's way easier than drilling or snapping a lock with drill/snap protection or trying to lever open a composite door with multipoint locking, or even breaking through a toughened glass window, all of which my house has (and it's not at all an outlier).
Yeah I feel the plugs are a good enough thing for now. If they are duff in ten years? So what - it was a £7 plug and I’ll get some more with a hopefully open standard by then. I’d never go all-in the way things currently are.
Recently updated the iOS app and it's definitely got quite laggy, especially on the pots screen (I only have about 5 pots too). Used to be so nippy as well.
I made the adventurous mistake of upgrading my main iPhone to iOS 13 and the Pots screen just refuses to load - tapping the icon freezes the app. As I keep most of my money in pots, I didn't have any money until I got out an old phone and installed Monzo on it.
For a client of mine: couple of large DB instances + some smaller, several EC2, several TB in S3, Elasticsearch and elasticache + some misc bits. Was coming in around $2000/mo before we snagged some free credits. A good 50%+ was RDS costs though.
