This is an interesting and more apt way to frame smart features.
One way I've found to avoid objects that come alive is to buy the commercial version.
- TVs aimed at commercial hospitality businesses let you avoid a lot of the bloatware and smart features that come bundled with it
- Commercial washer/dryers let you avoid bluetooth and wifi and other junk not needed to wash your clothes. These are available without the coin operated features
Commercial versions of consumer products are usually simpler, more durable, and don't have advertising and smart features.
It can also make sense to buy old/used versions of consumer products. For example: My parents have a washer & dryer from the mid 90s. They occasionally get a new belt, but besides that there's not much that can go wrong with them.
If you're looking at buying used stuff, it's important to research common failures for that specific product and what can be done to fix them. As long as it's popular enough that parts still exist, you should be good to go. You do pay a cost in terms of time, so it's important to pick your battles.
The most annoying thing to me is government-mandated smart devices. For example: In Washington state, all new water heaters must have a feature that causes them to reduce the water temperature if the grid is experiencing high demand.[1] There are no exemptions for off-grid installations. Everyone ends up with a more expensive, less reliable water heater. In my case I found a contractor who was willing to install a dumb water heater, but not everyone is as savvy. The state also mandates that new thermostats be programmable (no more simple bimetal thermostats), which is another electronic part that can fail.[2] Ideally governments would create incentives to encourage more efficient energy usage (such taxes & subsidies), but not require or ban specific solutions.
Part of me wonders if things are like this because the masses have been trained to see their abuse as a good thing, in a similar way to how the american worker sees themselves not as exploited but as a temporarily restrained exploiter
They are also likely to cost more and aren't normally directly available to regular customers, like you need either a business license of some sort and to contact a representative.
It is true commercial versions are slightly more expensive. But this is the tradeoff of buying something more durable and meant to be used continuously.
But it's not true that they are difficult to buy.
For my two examples: Commercial washer/dryer sets available through any appliance dealer. Commercial hospitality TVs and other commercial electronics are available via Grainger.
I'll add Oreck to the list! Their commercial vacs [0] are robust (the design is dead simple) and overall a refreshing packaging in a bizzaro land where lights and sensors are prioritized over weight and profile! Although I did hear they have fallen from prestige as result from an international buyout some-time ago. Leaving this here for the chance someone can provide an account! Mine from the mid 2000s is still a beast!
It appears personal devices were also impacted by this via Microsoft Intune. That app is presented to employees as a way to get their email/slack on their personal device without giving IT systems access to it.
IT systems around the country say that they have no access to your personal data and there they can only block access to Intune apps.
But the linked reddit thread[1] in this article notes personal devices getting wiped and locked out.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) MDM profiles typically don't allow personal data access outside of their sandbox, but they almost always include remote wipe capabilities.
iOS at least displays a very clear warning when you import the profile telling you exactly what it can do.
Not that this isn't awful, but it's good to be clear on what this can do when used within normal expectations.
Knowing InTune MDM setup, it has two modes, control a few apps or control entire phone. iOS will tell you during setup what's happening and I've been at plenty of companies where employees are told "It's just for our apps" but it's really full Device Control. $TwoCompaniesAgo tried that "It's just for our applications" but when I went to install it, iOS went "This is 100% full device control" and I rejected it.
Intune has two modes. Device registration and User registration. And two kinds of wipes, retire and wipe. Retire means only delete your work profile and is only available for User registration mdm. Sounds like Stryker didn't configure intune properly for byod to force users with personal devices to use User registration.
Beyond that there are so many other things in intune you can use to prevent this sort of thing. Short lived / JIT credentials with MFA, ip restrictions, multi admin approval, rbac (role based fine tuned permissions eg help desk can't wipe, only retire ) etc. sounds like there were some big misses here.
Also sounds like they were in the system long enough to exfiltrate 50+ TB of data without setting off alarm bells.
As I have heard from mid level managers and C suite types across a few dev jobs. Staff are the largest expense and the technology department is the largest cost center. I disagree because Sales couldn't exist with a product but that's a lost point.
This is why those same mid level managers and C suite people are salivating over AI and mentioning it in every press release.
The reality is that costs are being reduced by replacing US teams with offshore teams. And the layoffs are being spun as a result of AI adoption.
AI tools for software development are here to stay and accelerate in the coming months and years and there will be advances. But cost reductions are largely realized via onshore/offshore replacement.
The remaining onshore teams must absorb much more slack and fixes and in a way end up being more productive.
> The reality is that costs are being reduced by replacing US teams with offshore teams.
Hailing from an outsourcing destination I need to ask: to where specifically? We've been laid off all the same. Me and my team spent the second half of 2025 working half time because that's the proposition we were given.
What is this fabled place with an apparent abundance of highly skilled developers? India? They don't make on average much less than we do here - the good ones make more.
My belief is that spending on staff just went down across the board because every company noticed that all the others were doing layoffs, so pressure to compete in the software space is lower. Also all the investor money was spent on datacentres so in a way AI is taking jobs.
At a very large company at the momen: One of the things I've noticed is as translation has improved, C level preferences and political considerations have made a much bigger impact.
So we will reduce headcount in some countries because of things like (perceived) working culture, and increase based on the need to gain goodwill or fulfil contracts from customers.
This can also mean that the type of work outsources can change pretty quickly. We are getting rid of most of the "developers" in India, because places like Vietnam and eastern Europe are now less limited by language, and are much better to work with. At the same time we are inventing and outsourcing other activities to India because of a desire to sell in their market.
One of my consulting customers has been half India, half not for a decade. There is a real push over the last year to wind down the not India half and shift to mostly India.
India based folks cost 50-75% less. I realize that quality India hires would be closer to US rates, but management is ignoring that aspect.
If they're lucky they'll find one solid worker who's going to watch everyone else's hands. I've had one criminally underpaid unofficial[0] tech lead like that. He was herding a team of 11, where like four people at most really cared about the outcome of this project.
[0] Because otherwise a raise would be in order. Can't have that.
Many companies aren't selling anything special or are just selling an "idea".
Like liquid death sells water for a strangely high amount of money - entirely sales / marketing.
International Star Registry gives you a piece of paper and a row in a database that says you own a star.
Many luxury things are just because it's sold by that luxury brand. They are "worth" that amount of money for the status of other people knowing you paid that much for it.
It works. But for most it is not sustainable. It in most cases collapses eventually. But ideas and words and now pictures and videos do sell as in get pre-orders or pre-payments.
>Primarily because web search these days is so shitty but that’s besides the point.
Obviously there are a lot of reasons for this. But I think one of the most important reasons is that there is so few organic interesting content destinations anymore.
Sure there are some neat shopify stores, news sites, and a few dedicated souls keeping up blogs. But so much of the casual browsing that the web once was has been obliterated by the move to social media.
And what hasn't moved is now a mess of AI generated fluff or link farms.
I used to think Google made search worse to increase ad revenue. And maybe it's tangentially related. But the stuff I used to search for and find and get inspiration from has moved to walled gardens. Reddit is one of the few remaining open web destinations left.
Almost all tech CEOs think we want an AI button on every window, every app, every dialog. Always there no matter what to make workers more productive or need fewer workers or whatever.
The reality is that even the most ardent supporters of AI want it only in a single web page or in their IDE and that's about it.
And all of these outages happening not long after most of them dismissed a large amount of experienced staff while moving jobs offshore to save in labor costs.
One way I've found to avoid objects that come alive is to buy the commercial version.
- TVs aimed at commercial hospitality businesses let you avoid a lot of the bloatware and smart features that come bundled with it
- Commercial washer/dryers let you avoid bluetooth and wifi and other junk not needed to wash your clothes. These are available without the coin operated features
Commercial versions of consumer products are usually simpler, more durable, and don't have advertising and smart features.
reply