this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
49 points (62.6% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27240 readers
2601 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Conveniences, automation, safety plans, etc. Everyone loves winging it and having piles of chores, but then they complain about life being hard, but then they don't change anything

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

For the majority of people, doing all that you described is a lot more work than just flipping a light switch. Let me explain with two xkcd comics, first:

https://xkcd.com/1319/

You say write your own program as if that was something everyone can do on a whim. Even experienced programmers might find relatively simple tasks can hold possible complications. So it's not as easy as just doing it. But most importantly:

https://xkcd.com/1205/

I have to get up to turn off the lights possibly once a day, most of the times I turn them on/off I'm already walking past the switch, but let's be generous and assume once a day I have to go out of my way to turn them off, and let's be extra generous and say it takes me 30 seconds to do it, so spending more than 12h trying to automate that is a waste of time because it would take me more than 5 years to gain the time I saved back. However, my Christmas lights are all plugged to a smart plug, because otherwise I would need to turn them on individually once a day and turn them off individually before going to bed, and buying a random smart plug I can control with my phone took me way less than that time, so it's worth it.

You seem to think automation is always worth it, but sometimes it's not. It depends on how much it costs (be it in money or time) vs how much you gain, and also you need to contemplate how much you lose. For example my Christmas lights are on smart plugs like I mentioned, technically someone might be able to hack them, so I wouldn't put my computer on one of them, even though it might be useful to measure power consumption, because someone might theoretically turn my computer off so the possible drawback outweigh the benefits of measure the consumption. Sure, I could design my own smart plug and use it, but that would take me a long time and I'd rather spend that time with my family.