this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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My current thermostat is at least 20 years old. What's your point? That we should accept big tech telling us to throw our devices away long before they've outlived their usefulness because their programmers can't do their jobs without an ever growing 16-layered ball of code that performs like crap?
20 year old code can work as well as the day it was written. This is tech companies tying hardware to cloud services that they have no interest in supporting 10 years after they sold it to you.
Working as well and being secure are two different things. Smart devices are computers that connect to the Internet, and devices that no longer receive security updates are attack vectors.
From a SecOps standpoint, it's perfectly reasonable to block such devices from hitting your servers.
These thermostats still work as thermostats, you just can't use the cloud service.
Then they should give users a way to replicate the lost features on their own server. That'd be the user's own risk.
I know that no company does that. Doesn't make it right.
Don't buy IoT bullshit, kids.
TP-link does. My Kasa devices work completely locally.
Also, you can get (certain) dirt cheap Tuya based devices and flash tasmota on it. Esphome is also a possibility.
I build most of my own smart devices, though.
I see you’re getting downvoted but it’s a reasonable take. I fired from the hip thinking this was like most IoT garbage these days that is bricked without a connection to the server.
Your current thermostat isn't a computer that connects to the Internet, is it?
The thermostats still work locally.