#the only impediment is that corporate profit is the legally mandated priority

[mjec]

Ok so here's the thing. This post is right and wrong at the same time.

The reason all TVs are smart TVs is that the computing power required to decode digital HD video is so much that adding the smarts doesn't really add any hardware cost. Sure, that software could be far more limited, but that's a bit like putting Windows 95 on your new laptop: not only does that vastly underutilize the hardware capacity, it adds annoying software restrictions. You can just download a copy of VLC for Windows 11; playing a Blu-ray on Windows 95 is essentially impossible. And that's before we get to the question of whether you can get drivers for your video card working on '95.

It's the same with fridges and dishwashers too. You could build a complex analog circuit that controls timings and responds to control inputs and sensors and such. Or you can spend $1.30 on your bill of materials to include an ESP32 and everything can be done in software and you get wifi and Bluetooth thrown in.

So yeah actually I think every device over $20 probably should have some smarts and wifi. The problem is the other thing: everybody wants to build recurring revenue and sell data, so they hook these things into The Cloud and don't publish API docs and they gave the gall to tell you to your face that bypassing that is a fucking crime in the US under the DMCA or maybe even the CFAA.

But let me be clear: the problem is capitalism, not technology.

In a different world, where money wasn't the absolute priority, we'd have exactly what prev describes: your router would come set up with a local-only Matter network, and you could connect everything to it.

Your router would probably be $50 more expensive, but would run Home Assistant and you wouldn't need anything else. You'd probably leave your router behind when you move, like you do an alarm system or electricity meter, you'd just reset the network name and password and such when you move in.

That's the vision I want for my future. Where my TV is smart enough for me to make it play the latest episode of Yellowjackets by asking with my voice, but also where it doesn't automatically share everything I watch with Samsung so they can sell it to Palantir for $0.08.

This is possible. There is no technical impediment to doing this. Hell, you can set up something not entirely unlike this today; but you need a lot of expertise to do so, and the experience sucks. But both of those things are only because the manufacturers make it that way, and they only make it that way because capitalism demands they squeeze every possible profit out of us and prevent - or at least don't even think about - any use that would be unprofitable for them.