zlacker

>>pictur+(OP)
This enshittifcation is endemic. Corporations cannot just release a good product and support it. The better the product is and the larger the customer base becomes, the higher the likelihood that some business planner is going to see dollar signs and try to squeeze the product for everything it’s worth. And every time this ruins the product. And we’re here with a proprietary phone OS and proprietary apps. Proprietary firmwares on proprietary hardware. And we are completely at the whim of these companies.

And the option is what, buy a Zigbee dongle and a raspberry pi run some code written by unpaid enthusiasts? 3D print a case for it and mount it on the wall, running updates and fixing it ever few months when some package update breaks it?

I like the concept of lights that run from an app. I don’t have any of the physical Hue switches for my system and it’s fine. But I do not want an app that abuses me, and I do not want to maintain some fragile project made from slapped together code. I want robust open hardware with open source software.

I’m convinced that we can achieve this, but it won’t be with the current model of business and engineering we have today.

>>Taylor+We
The alternative is government standards. You have power outlets you can interchangeably plug different appliances into. Why? Standards. Let there be a standard for color-controllable light sources that ensures interoperability of components, and then there will be competition to hit price-vs-shittiness balances suiting multiple parties.

>>dzdt+kj
Before concluding that the NHS health record is the only option, you should consider industry standards like USB, which in some cases have worked well. We must have a failure-and-improvement cycle in case the standard is bad and fundamentally doesn’t work. We forgo that cycle when the government takes up the cause, even worse yet when the regulators are captured by some collusive fiend.

>>the_op+em
USB is now a pile of incompatible standards in a trench coat, holding hands with a menagerie of incompatible connectors in another trench coat, all wrapped in a third larger trench coat and claiming to be a single universal standard.

>>taneq+Go
Yeah, but at the end of the day the serial bus seems to work well enough.

Power delivery is wonky, but it’s pretty rare, bordering on never for me anyway, to plug in a peripheral and not have it just work.

>>dghlsa+ks
Power delivery is the worst, but for a long time it was super random whether you'd get USB2 or USB3 speed, wait sorry USB3 High Speed or USB3 Full Speed or whatever they renamed it to. And then there's the confusion between USB 1/2/3/etc. and A/B/mini-A/mini-B/micro-A/micro-B/C connectors, and the fact that it requires a half-page infographic to just sum up the latter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Connector_type_quick_refer...). Overall I feel that the USB Working Group, wait the USB Promoter Group, wait- who even are they? should take a vow of penance and refer to themselves as the SB Group until they sort this out.