this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
646 points (99.2% liked)

Technology

4463 readers
289 users here now

Which posts fit here?

Anything that is at least tangentially connected to the technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.


Post guidelines

[Opinion] prefixOpinion (op-ed) articles must use [Opinion] prefix before the title.


Rules

1. English onlyTitle and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original linkPost URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communicationAll communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. InclusivityEveryone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacksAny kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangentsStay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may applyIf something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.


Companion communities

!globalnews@lemmy.zip
!interestingshare@lemmy.zip


Icon attribution | Banner attribution


If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

People. You don't need this shit. I promise.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] betanumerus@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's amazing that they actually designed the beds to fail in the worst possible way. I mean this is cartoon crazy.

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 241 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You know this bed is great and all, but what it's really missing is a mandatory connection to the Internet!

...jfc

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 38 points 2 days ago

“Carla! Carla! What the fuck is this? I know you sleep on a 25. A 25 or a 30 if you fuck up swiping. I know for a fucking fact that you would NEVER choose to sleep on a 60, and yet I found a goddamn record of a 60 when I was out last week. Who was it? Who was here?”

I really can’t see any other reason. A dial isn’t sexy but it’s far easier in every way

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Gladaed@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

Build your shit to be fail safe. The idea that this was less bad if you self hosted is ridiculous. You will have much more outages that way.

You may be right to criticize cloud everything, but as I said, just not the problem here. Only the trigger.

[–] Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 day ago (8 children)

So instead of it defaulting to last known good settings, it couldn’t poll AWS to retrieve the user settings and either just went into debug alert mode or the hardcoded defaults are full upright and max temp. More premium products kneecapped by poor management in a race to enshittify everything

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 178 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

People in the 80's: "In the year 2025 we're going to have hoverboards and flying cars!"

2025: "I can't use my bed because the servers are down"

Stop making the future stupid. Never buy anything that needs to be connected to a server to work for no good reason.

[–] undefinedTruth@lemmy.zip 68 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Smart products themselves are not the issue. The issue is making everything cloud based. The solution is companies designing their products so they can be controlled over the network.

It's a fucking bed! It doesn't need a persistent connection to some server. The problem is that they also want to mine and sell your data.

[–] MrTolkinghoen@lemmy.zip 27 points 2 days ago

That's the key. They want to mine and sell the data

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 days ago (4 children)

A reminder to not buy "smart" home appliances unless you can self-host it's internet connectivity or its "smart" features are optional.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ha, this reminds me of the death of the guy that gave the world lead poisoning.

[–] MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

He also invented CFCs, the chemical that nearly destroyed the earth's protective ozone layer. Quite a guy.

[–] Wahots@pawb.social 3 points 1 day ago

A one man environmental disaster. J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history"

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Never buying smart anything. Wish we could buy a smart president though.

[–] matlag@sh.itjust.works 51 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Reminds me that nurse interview in Spain during the blackout:

"But your hospital doesn't have a backup generator?? -Oh we have solar panels, we could be running off the grid! But the power management system requires an Internet connection, and it's down!"

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 2 days ago (9 children)

I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But why does a bed need to be smart? This is the dumbest timeline ever. It really is

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] AppleTea@lemmy.zip 35 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I feel like if I was gonna put a computer attached to a motor & heater inside a bed, the very first step would be making sure that if the software goes wrong, it always defaults to staying bed shaped and not catching fire.

I know I know hindsight is 20/20, I'm sure I'm just missing something. Venture capitalists would just give their money to any random idiot with a pitch, right?

[–] tuff_wizard@aussie.zone 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

why? what if they want more money and decide to make it go subscription based? do you and the shareholders want to risk people just....unplugging them and continuing to use them? the mere idea made me drop my monocle .

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 20 points 2 days ago (5 children)

It's already subscription based lol

[–] tuff_wizard@aussie.zone 12 points 2 days ago (4 children)

why do people buy these things!?!?!

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Wahots@pawb.social 2 points 1 day ago

Reminds me of the Naked Gun folding bed scene, haha

https://youtu.be/v664Yaqjw0g

[–] misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Close your eyes, take a moment and just imagine the engineering culture at Eight Sleep. I'd almost rather be homeless than work there.

[–] rafoix@lemmy.zip 67 points 2 days ago

lol, e-waste beds.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 58 points 2 days ago (19 children)

I’ve heard these beds are actually quite effective at helping you sleep and then wake up more naturally.

But they have wrapped entirely local events (it’s all just timers, folks) behind a cloud-exclusive subscription and the product is useless on a sunny day like we had yesterday.

They’re enormously expensive and the subscription serves no useful purpose other than to line the pockets of the investors.

I have a strict rule of no cloud dependency in my house. Otherwise, I’d be interested - if the price was remotely reasonable.

load more comments (19 replies)
[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 days ago (3 children)

What a stupid fucking product.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 25 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Not that it isn’t wildly ridiculous and stupid to have an internet connected bed, but couldn’t you just unplug it if it’s overheating?

[–] matlag@sh.itjust.works 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's what customer support would have told the poor clueless customers if the hotline had not been an AI agent running on AWS!

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 40 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So, what would be the community that is the opposite of buy it for life?

Seriously, I get that internet is ubiquitous in some areas, but everything should have the ability to function correctly without internet access.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I am more shocked that there are people who are interested in "smart" furnitures and appliance.

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 23 points 2 days ago

Smart devices are fine - it usually just means remote control or status. Plenty of use in that.

The problem is that no one can be arsed to buy a local hub and figure out how to connect it, so every company just builds an app and makes it cloud connected. That way they can farm your stupidity.

It’s not hard to make a device that works locally (it’s way easier than making a cloud service) but it’s far less lucrative.

That being said if I bought a $2000 mattress cover and it didn’t work offline I’d have gotten my fucking money back.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 18 points 2 days ago

Of course someone made a bed whose controls require an API with internet access..

load more comments
view more: next ›