I disagree. Most of them are shit because they’re designed to serve the manufacturer, provide additional profit streams.

However there’s no reason they couldn’t provide useful functionality to the customer.

• it would be useful to receive fridge alerts if there was a problem
• it would be useful to receive a toaster alert on pop up, or on malfunction
• I really like using my phone as a tv remote, because I know where it is. I also like easy casting - I wish that wasn’t so broken. How did music manage to build something useful with Bluetooth streaming but the video equivalent has always been so broken?
• my oven is connected to the internet. It’s nice to be notified when it’s preheated and when the cooking is done. …… at the expense of the vendor portal and all it entails
• and yes I like to collect personal data, especially related to my health. If there were a private way to collect data from my mattress, I’d be Interested. You don’t have to be.

The most frustrating part is makers of smart appliances can save money by making them cheaper. Instead of a WiFi chip and vendor portal, just embed a dirt cheap Thread radio that simply exposes whatever is useful and let the customer take it from there, or not. Most smart appliances stuff people would find useful is monitoring and alerting, locally

The problem is it’s very expensive. Solar installers charge tens of thousands of dollars and has a long history of scams. They take the place of the old trope about scammy used car salesmen. They’ve created leases and PPAs in an attempt to make the initial cost easier but only succeeded in being scammy

It doesn’t help that we have tariffs and other barriers to low cost solar panel imports, yet insufficient support for domestic manufacturing to be competitive.

The math is hard. Everyone wants to know the payback threshold from the huge install cost up front but it’s not straightforward.

When I looked into solar I found

• lots of scammers, poor service
• I calculated a payback of 12 years from install cost given free energy, which is longer than I’m likely to own this house. But they claim 7?
• I only have sufficient unshaded roof for half my usage
• is it poor service or scamminess that it’s so difficult to get them to explain that?

A big part of it is being realistic about how often that would come up.

Especially for those with their own house, charging overnight at home (like you do with your phone) is more convenient. It is so nice never having to go to a local gas station!

Forget looking for discounts like Costco, charging from home is half (for me) the cost of gasoline. Everyone likes saving money

The only time this doesn’t work is road trips, where I need to stop for 20 minutes every 4-5 hours of driving. If I’m eating a meal, it’s going to take longer than that anyway.

So

• 90+% of the time an EV is more convenient and much cheaper
• on road trips where I would have stopped to eat, it’s equally convenient
• on road trips where I’m stopping more than I would otherwise and for slightly longer ……. That’s actually very rare

Edit: looking at my charging stats, it’s only been twice in the last year. One of those was a 1,200 mile road trip that did wonders to overcome my range anxiety

most Americans don’t want an EV with batteries at their current state.

That’s a risky assumption given how driven by propaganda this is. The reality is current state of batteries is perfectly fine for most Americans. What if they realize that? It does partly depend on charger availability, which is being rapidly built out despite the efforts of the current administration to block that. What happens as Americans realize how many new chargers are near them?

Definitely a bit ambivalent about this one. While this seems exactly the scenario why we need to chill out about immigration enforcement, show some empathy, it’s also what they voted for.

“Have the day you voted for” and I’ll try not to say “told you so”

I’ve been through river cleanups everywhere I ve lived. There’s always something toxic that corps got away with dumping for so many years and then just left it. Government on the hook for so many billions of dollars cleaning up the mess. Where’s that sense of personal/corporate responsibility we hear so much about?

“War” usually implies a cause and an opponent. This is just chaotic, and against everyone

Think of that but continuous. Sure there seems to be to be more environmental disasters than ever but each is a one off.

• Dead lakes and crumbling masonry from acid rain were continuous. For years
• BP having an oil spill eventually goes away, but rivers were toxic for decades, repeatedly starting on fire