Ask HN: What are some modern technologies that you refuse to adopt?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989059

by catstor • 8 months ago

26 59 8 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

Could be any modern technology that is popular, trendy but you refuse to adopt it for any particular reason. It could be environmental, social, political, legacy support or simple belief that it does not solve any significant problem.

catstor• 8 months ago

For me it's: Smart Watch, AI image generators, cryptocurrencies, auto payments of bills.

bontaq• 8 months ago

Any new editor, airplanes, tablets, smart watches (as mentioned by catstor), VR, e-readers (though these are actually very good, mine just died).

It's not any particular reason, they don't seem to improve my life much? The e-reader was best for sure.

setnone• 8 months ago

That would be smart devices: TVs, fridges, teapots, watches, phones

stop50• 8 months ago

Ai for anything but translations

al_borland3• 8 months ago

IoT. I have no interest in home appliances with fancy screen, internet connectivity, apps, and any of that other nonsense.

I’m also pretty skeptical of the whole smart home market. A lot of it seems like technology in search of a problem… and it also seems very buggy.

skydhash• 8 months ago

I like ereaders, but I installed koreader on mine and use the wifi only when I transfer new books (when I’m too lazy to get the laptop and a usb cable).

aydyn• 8 months ago

Dont forget about the IoT botnets too.

muzani4• 8 months ago

I have a few of these. They came with the house.

1) The power cuts out frequently and the autogate can't be manually opened. There's a battery and a switch that opens it but if the power is out for a few hours, I can't go home.

2) We have lights that trigger when the alarm rings. We can't turn off the button or it won't work. There's some glitch with many of them where the neighbor's lights burn out faster. Some of the neighbors just removed them as there's little benefit.

3) Smart lights are a little burden on the router, especially without a hub. Tàoo many and things start glitching. The best ones end up being a kind of mesh, which is why they're so expensive.

4) Our smart door isn't properly waterproof. Rain and humidity makes the fingerprint sensor glitch out. While we can open it with a key or card, the whole purpose is not bringing one. One alternative is using the free app that unlocks the door, but it means I have to watch an ad if I go home.

al_borland3• 8 months ago

it means I have to watch an ad if I go home.

These companies deserve to go out of business. Just hearing this makes me so angry. I’d be ripping that thing out and installing a traditional lock.

dzhiurgis• 8 months ago

Of course this had to come up heh.

Having outdoor and indoor lights turn on when I come back home feels like I'm a millionaire. Cost me like $50 to setup.

Side effect of smart home is you get pretty good monitoring (power use per room/appliance, unusual power use when you away - something left on).

Other nice things:

1. Garage door opener on your phone - long press iPhone lock button. Already got car key and contactless payments are ubiquitous here. Haven't had to carry anything else but my phone with me for years now.

2. Temperature changing light bulbs - one part of my house is lacking natural light so I got LED's that change temperature - blue-ish by day, amber after sunset.

3. Dedicated wireless buttons to turn on/off lights across halway without running wiring.

4. Long-press/double-press tricks with wireless buttons - turn on/off all lights, etc. Can customize to whatever you wish.

5. Per-bedroom heating using $20 smart plug, $10 tiny wireless temperature sensor and simple resistive heaters. Shuts on/off based on presence of course, but nicest feature is changing temperature by time of day (i.e. cooler for sleep). Precise control also means it's cheap to run (I've calculated heatpump payback would be 20 yrs).

6. Water leak sensors, smoke alarm notifications - cheapest form of insurance.

7. Hot water control - utilize TOU/excess solar and shut off when you leave / preheat after coming back from holidays.

8. Preheat home before coming back (probably easiest hack of all via infrared blaster).

9. Excess solar battery / EV charging - not strictly smart home feature, but using Home Assistant for this.

10. Crank up ERV speed when sensor in bathroom reaches humidity threshold.

11. On shoulder season, we start shutting windows during night and turn on ERV (helps keep heat in, but also avoids mosquitoes, neighbor wood burner smoke, noise, etc). I've added automation to check forecast night time temperature, turn on ERV automatically and send notification to close windows.

12. Lowkey, but HomePod plays news over radio every morning 8AM.

13. Home Assistant doubles as NAS for backups and NVR for cameras (thingino) with local AI object detection.

al_borland3• 8 months ago

1. I do have a smart garage door (came with the house). That said, I bought traditional remotes and use those 98% of the time. The app is nice to give me assurance that the door is closed. This has been pretty stable.

2. I feel like after the novelty of being able to changes colors/temps wears off, they’d be the same almost all the time, at which point buying the correct temperature bulb for the fixture would have the same net effect without any setup.

3. I got a wireless light switch for a lamp across the room in a place I lived over 15 years ago. No internet or accounts required. Getting smart bulbs just for adding switches seems like over-engineering.

5. I bought a smart plug as a way to dip my toe in the water (I was going to try it on the Christmas tree a few years back). I waited for Matter so I didn’t have to deal with a bunch of apps. I needed the vendor app anyway (and an account) just to set it up. Strike 1. When my phone upgraded it stopped working in Apple Home. Strike 2. I’ve tried to reset it up several times now and it doesn’t work, it only works in the vendor app. Strike 3. The vendor app is slower and uglier than Apple Home. Strike 4. It has not been a pleasant dip. My dad has a lot of smart home stuff and had a lot of stuff like this happen, and dismisses it because he thinks it’s cool. To me, seamless operation and stability is cool. Smart home stuff just isn’t there.

6. Water leak sensors are something I’ve thought about and looked at. Every one I saw had a loud siren on it. I don’t think I want that. I just want a notification.

8. I’ve actually been looking at going the other way on my thermostat. I have to replace the batteries in my basic programmable thermostat every year. It’s a minor annoyance. I have been debating getting an old school mechanical thermostat so I never have to change the battery again, since I don’t use the programmable stuff anyway. I’m always home and always want it the same temp. With the smart ones, I’ve been seeing articles about companies going out of business and killing access. I don’t want to have to buy a new thermostat because the company that made it decided to shut down some servers. The mechanical one will work for decades with no fuss.

10. I stayed in an AirBnB that had a bathroom fan tied to a humidity sensor. I can’t remember the exact issues we had, but I remember it driving everyone nuts, where it was the topic of several dinner conversations.

Some stuff can be neat, if it works, but from what I’ve seen that’s a big IF. And it seems to require constant vigilance and maintenance to keep it going. Every OS or firmware update is a risk. Are the use cases worth the hassle? For me, the answer is mostly no. Especially if it also has the potential to shorten the usable life of a product. A refrigerator might last 20 years. I bet a refrigerator with a big display will not last 20 years. Maybe the actual refrigerator part will, but how long before that screen on the front is useless?

The doorbell that came with my house is probably 40 years old and it works fine. All it has to do is make 2 wires touch briefly. For people who bought smart doorbells, how often will they need to upgrade them? The Diderot effect is in play, and then on top of that, the lifespan of all these things shortens to tech lifecycles instead of appliance or hardware lifecycles.

All of this doesn’t even touch on the privacy nightmare that a lot of these things introduce. The aforementioned smart refrigerator takes pictures inside the fridge, sometimes of the people opening it. I saw an article as well where there was talk of displaying digital ads in the kitchen via these screens. Smart TVs track what you watch and who knows what else, so they can display ads. I believe I read Vizio is losing money selling TVs, but more than makes up for it with all the ads they push to those TVs. These devices are turning the customers into the product. My home should be a sanctuary away from all of that. With my TV I don’t connect it to the network, but when buying smart home stuff, they don’t work at all without the internet, so they have you.

Using Home Assistant helps with some stuff, but the average consumer isn’t doing that. That’s also one more thing to add to the overall project that needs maintenance. Having a smart home is a hobby, and I’m not looking for my door locks and lightbulbs to become a hobby.

d3Xt3r4• 8 months ago

- Proprietary messaging apps like WhatsApps, Facebook Messenger etc. I think it's ridiculous that some people/countries are practically held hostage by them.

- Electron/Javascript based apps

- Chromium (Blink) and Webkit based browsers

- GTK4/libadwaita

- node.js

- And well, less of on refusal to adopt, but more like a refusal to acknowledge their value: bloated/modern web frameworks like React. I honestly can't think of a single useful website that absolutely cannot work without a bloated framework, that I'd actually need in my daily life, which couldn't have been achieved by a regular old-school website or a native app. Like literally, there's not a single actually useful website that I visit regularly, that I can look at and go "oh, this site (or the service they offer) absolutely cannot work without a modern bloated JS framework".

satvikpendem7• 8 months ago

React and similar frameworks are for the developer, not the user. But since it seems you don't use large scale UI based applications, you don't see a need for them.

d3Xt3r4• 8 months ago

I'm a developer too (well, technically DevOps and a hobby dev), and I can't think of any place where it's actually needed, where a traditional app can't do the job.

austin-cheney5• 8 months ago

React and similar frameworks are more for the employer than the developer. A capable developer can execute without them, but employers need them to vastly widen candidate selection without investing in training.

pcardoso2• 8 months ago

Short videos, stories, etc. I refuse getting addicted to them. Terrifying watching everyone around me consuming the stuff like we are in a crack house.

satvikpendem7• 8 months ago

You'd get addicted to short stories?

ifh-hn2• 8 months ago

I don't know if you've got kids, but they're like crack cocaine for young people.

pcardoso2• 8 months ago

Stories as in Instagram Stories, Youtube Shorts, whatever they are called in all platforms. Short video or video-like content.

d3Xt3r4• 8 months ago

To add to that: vertical videos in general. Especially when they're picked up by news sites or mainstream media and then displayed with blurred bars on the sides.

clusterhacks• 8 months ago

I never looked at short videos and couldn't understand how my friends and family would open their phones given even a minute of quiet time for these things. I viewed some Youtube shorts (maybe the least effective short video provider in terms of content and the recommendation algorithm?) and was shocked at how easy it was to burn time looking at crap. The experience really opened my eyes about how a person can be pulled into endless viewing.

I think the crack house comparison is entirely appropriate. The brain is weird . . .

ifh-hn2• 8 months ago

Anything "smart". Can't avoid TVs unfortunately.

Electric vehicles. I don't have a problem with the concept but similar to the above, you can be held hostage with a change in software. And the second hand market is a joke.

Nearly all web frameworks, especially for app development.

All social media, cryptocurrency, and most tech pushed by big tech to general consumers.

swissfunicular• 8 months ago

This

muzani4• 8 months ago

I generally don't buy secondhand cars, but the low prices and low maintenance required for EVs makes the secondhand ones seem like a good deal.

escapecharacter• 8 months ago

This is an odd take that might seem privileged, but: sales or coupons. Digital or physical.

If a company is offering a discount, sale, coupon, etc., they've done the math and determined the reduction in revenue to them is offset by your increased likelihood to purchase, or share in your mind. (Algorithmic) discounts are a technology in the sense that they're part of modern data science-driven consumerism. Just like going to a casino, the house is always going to win. So, I offer no mind share to these. I've bought many games from Steam sales I don't play, for an innocuous example.

I'm not going to throw out a coupon if it's thrust into my hand (e.g. Wonderville, a gaming bar I love in Brooklyn hands out wooden drink tickets and one is in my wallet.)

alloyrivet• 8 months ago

The useless empty talk technique of capital rendering

pete1302• 8 months ago

- Shorts/Reels (do I need to give a reason for this)(I happily "choose" a good 30 min+ fails/funny/wins compilation and watch it rather than playing with a slot machine). - Instagram (I am not a photographer/artist, then why should I convey everything to my friends in Audiovisual way?)(even Facebook was better).

austin-cheney5• 8 months ago

React - Let’s be honest about this. The primary purpose of React is not building things or rapid prototyping. Its primary purpose is to open employment to people who are otherwise less experienced or less qualified. I got tired of working with less qualified people, because less qualified people tend to be less capable of problem solving, less capable of rapid innovation, and more entitled.

Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) - It’s a massive pain in the ass. CDP is a backdoor into a web browser by opening a web server in a browser tab and providing an extensive API to remote access a web page as a third party. It’s very powerful but… WTF, so much ceremony. As someone who wants to write test automation on sites/pages I am authorized to test I would prefer to just open a web socket connection and go in through the front door. It’s so much more simple, but you don’t get an API to access all the dev tools panels.

Tadpole91812• 8 months ago

Just because you preceed your self-aggrandizing rhetoric with "let's be honest", doesn't make what you say factual.

austin-cheney5• 8 months ago

It’s a personal opinion not striving for factuality. It’s only striving for logical dominance.

card_zero4• 8 months ago

Linux. I think it's necessary to abandon Windows, but to quote from a Q&A on distrowatch:

Linux distributions try to provide everything you need in one central collection (called a repository). Windows and macOS users are accustomed to browsing the web, looking for applications, clicking a download link, and running an installer. With Linux we skip all of that. We can open the software centre (or "app store") and find just about anything we need.

Well, I hate that. We were accustomed to downloading some indie dev's binary, but now every platform has an app store, and this is apparently Linux's fault for starting the trend. I don't like package managers, I don't like auto-updates (I'll update next year maybe, is how I want it). I don't like installations and dependencies. In my dream world there could be, like, five or even six standard libraries, and they're all backward-compatible and you keep them up to date manually. I don't like file permissions, Sudo, and the multi-user paradigm. (It's just my computer and permissions shouldn't be a question.) I don't like the folder structure (/usr/, /bin/, /usr/bin/, /etc/). I don't like that there's a home folder: everywhere on my computer should be my home folder.

I'm investigating flatpaks to see if they can soothe my griping. But the first thing I see when I visit flathub is "Flathub is the app store for Linux". That's unpleasant. Who runs it, why? (Who runs any repo, and why?) The site lags. You can apparently set up your own flatpak repo, but isn't it allowed to just provide users with a flatpak file of your own program for download from your site? Just as if it was a more or less portable binary that you could unzip into whatever folder, and run it with high probability of it working, like how things used to be on Windows and Classic Mac. If flatpaks can do that, maybe I'll welcome Linux (back) into my life. Or maybe I want to use ReactOS really so I can pretend it's still the year 2000.

shubb• 8 months ago

Take a Damm Small Linux. Package manager (apt) optional.

I do think a lot of what you are rejecting (automatic updates, centralised package signing, permissions) are solutions to security problems that you might actually have.

card_zero4• 8 months ago

I don't think security problems should cause these systemic problems. Damn Small, you say? I'll check it out.

d3Xt3r4• 8 months ago

Perhaps you'll like AppImages instead: they're standalone binary bundles, that any indie dev can host on their website (or have it on their github or whatever). You don't need to "install" it via some store or something, don't need to worry about dependencies - just download a single file and run it.

Also, if you hate sudo and messing with permissions etc, there's EasyOS - in fact it addresses most of the complaints you've raised, so probably worth checking out: https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.htm...

card_zero4• 8 months ago

Right, but flatpak de-duplicates dependencies, while appimages are all going to be unnecessarily huge, I think/assume?

Hey, EasyOS might be OK. Top tip.

jm4rch• 8 months ago

Bluetooth. Ewww.

muzani4• 8 months ago

Wait, how do you go about without Bluetooth these days? It seems to be in everything - watches, speakers, headphones, mice, door locks, gates, passkeys, device verification.

Do you just try to avoid it or do you have ways of dealing with it when it's forced on you?

ValtteriL• 8 months ago

- smart watches / rings

- shorts / TikTok

- Instagram / X / Facebook etc.

- the Apple ecosystem

- TV

- tablets

muzani4• 8 months ago

React Native. I do most of the mobile technologies but something about RN rubs me the wrong way.

1) Whenever we do an analysis of which codebase to use for a new project, RN gets cut off early for multiple reasons. What's the advantage? KMP allows native-level control. Flutter/Dart was built from the ground up for mobile and multiplatform.

2) Whenever I ask someone who went with React Native, the answer tends to follow along the lines of, "I don't want to learn another language"/"It's the easiest"/"It's made by FAANG." There's some defensiveness, like "React Native can do squircles!" There's a lack of awareness of other platforms, "I can see my results immediately when modifying code with RN!"

More questioning pushes me further away. It's like the only advantage is it lets web people make apps.

3) All the darlings of RN seem to have dropped it slowly - Airbnb, Meta. I'm not a big fan of PWA apps either but at least Meta uses them to good effect.

4) Related to (2), but nearly all the RN jobs seem to pay less, and treat mobile as a cost center than profit center.

Happy to be convinced otherwise. It's on the list, but it feels like low ROI.

Tadpole91812• 8 months ago

It seems like you consider the technology but find it doesn't benefit your use-cases, which is a perfectly rational take.

React has advantages, and if you already have React, using React native has advantages. But if you can greenfield with Flutter or if you have a team for KMP already, it's entirely preference.

I think the biggest advantage at that point is that React has an enormous community with high-quality solutions, in particular some for "Figma to component library" kind of stuff for white-label products and companies with strong branding requirements.

jmstfv2• 8 months ago

I've been running small SaaS businesses since 2019 with varying degrees of success (currently running a profitable one).

I never really got into JS front-end frameworks. The sheer complexity, and the idea of maintaining essentially 2 apps as a solo dev, never really appealed to me. The furthest I got into JS world was tinkering with Rails' Stimulus framework.

https://stimulus.hotwired.dev/

gnatman• 8 months ago

what kind of stack do you use instead?

jmstfv2• 8 months ago

Rails, SQLite, Redis, all hosted on a bare metal server (Hetzner). Deploy with Capistrano (a fancy bash script). Tailwind for styling -- i heavily use their components/templates, which is quite convenient.

sevensor• 8 months ago

Self quantification. Sleep trackers, fitness trackers, bathroom scales. I am deeply uninterested in gamifying my body, and I resent attempts to do so for profit.

AnimalMuppet• 8 months ago

Using my phone to read the web.

pickleglitch• 8 months ago

Voice control. Give me a keyboard and a mouse or track pad any day. I can't even articulate a reason, I just don't like it.

card_zero4• 8 months ago

I can't even articulate

That seems like a good enough reason.

rufus_foreman• 8 months ago

Automatic transmissions for cars. I'll be sticking with manual.

New-fangled music formats like 8-tracks, cassettes and compact discs. Vinyl records work just fine.

Any payment technology that didn't exist by the year 1000.

petabyt2• 8 months ago

Visual Studio Code. I don't have a rational explanation but I feel like there's something deeply immoral about writing assembly in a text editor running inside a web browser.

fragmede• 8 months ago

hopefully the terminal emulator you're running isn't GPU accelerated

petabyt2• 8 months ago

AI for daily life stuff. I don't want AI to summarize anything for me, write my emails, or talk to me.

mstaoru• 8 months ago

Social media (FB, Twitter, Instagram...) - never had any, never felt the need.

TikTok etc - I strongly believe these are brain cancer.

Crypto - never had any need or interest.

Smartwatches - never solved any need for me either. Same with tablets.

Apple ecosystem - I have a Macbook but all the other stuff IMHO is pretty bad or I don't need it.

Pokemon - no interest.

Home IoT - despite working for many years in (commercial) IoT, home IoT never clicked for me, it's all really clunky and useless, at least in my experience.

VR - we have Quest 3 but rarely play it, it's just not fun somehow after the initial novelty wears off, I much prefer PS5.

Ask HN: What are some modern technologies that you refuse to adopt?

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