It's good to move to Zigbee/thread/z-wave anyway because they're all better protocols for smarthome stuff. Plus wifi means you might be buying stuff that relies on cloud, which is a non-starter for anyone that doesn't like buying future paperweights.
But your criticisms are strange. You have more than 254 devices connecting (which implies a complex setup) but can't increase the subnet size? Or does your router just have an absurdly small default DHCP range?
I also don't understand the swap your router problem, unless you're also using default SSIDs and not changing it. Configure the SSID and PSK to be the same as before and everything will just work.
> there’s not good support for very low power devices that use WiFi
That's why we have Thread. Wifi just isn't a very efficient protocol for using with deep sleep. The radio takes more power to run, the overhead of connecting is higher, and the device needs a full IP stack. Even with power save mode (if supported by client and AP), the radio is on for hundreds of milliseconds to send a message.
Thread has "sleepy end device" profile built-in where the hub will queue messages and expects the device to be in deep sleep most of the time. And since it doesn't have so much overhead, the radio only has to be on for tens of milliseconds.
Thread is fine, but also wifi is fine. Sleepy end device doesn't work very well with wifi, as I understand it, (from trying to implement it using the ESP32 SDK), because Matter generally wants all devices to check in several times an hour at least.
Take a smart scale for example. Mine uses wifi and is in deep sleep almost all of the time. When you step on it, it weighs you, connects to wifi, and sends the measurement. This does fine on battery because it only gets used a few times a day max, and I think it may power up the radios to look for a software update once a day or something. If it had to power up the radios every 5 minutes though it wouldn't last a year on a charge.
Another example would be a water/flood sensor. The overwhelming majority of the time, it has nothing to report. Maybe once a day or so it should report the battery level and that it's still there. You can still get great battery life as long as you don't have to turn on the radio all the time, but Matter doesn't really let you do this, in my understanding, at least as of the current revision.
ESP32 has inherent sleep issues and before their latest chip (c6 I think) 'deep sleep' was really a gpio- or rtc- triggered boot followed by a power off. Doesn't mean it's impossible to implement wifi sleep efficiently, but if you do the math anything wifi based won't work off cr2032 for even a year unless daily updates is all you need. Motion sensors are supposed to fire more often, and with much less latency that can be done via WiFi, so it doesn't really work for battery powered sensors in the general case. You could probably use ESPNow and a custom gateway node but at that point it's just another custom RF protocol and you're better off with something standard like 802.15.4 or BLE..
You can put the ESP32 into deep sleep, and it can wake based on a timer, or it can run the ultra-low-power core which is a very slow, very low memory, very low power core. It's good enough to look at ADC or I2C devices and do a little math. This can be woken up fairly frequently to check a sensor, and say, compare against a previous measurement, and then wake up the main core if you need to process the measurement or do WiFi.
I think you're right that this won't work well with a CR2032, but if you're careful about using good voltage regulators it can last a long time on 4 AAs.
When I first saw the iPhone I remember thinking how silly it was that a device calling itself a "phone" only had the phone function as of many apps. Other phones had internet and other features, sure, but their "home" screen, so to speak, was a phone UI. You had to hit "Menu" or something else to see the other apps, which were clearly secondary to the primary phone function.
The iPhone felt more like a general portable computing device that happened to also function as a phone.
Even the Blackberry up to that point still felt more like an "email/phone device" primarily (though funny enough, I never had a Blackberry myself until after the iPhone came out).
The irony now, and I suspect many people are like this, is my "phone" is barely ever used as an actual phone. It's a computer with a data plan. I am way more likely to use some kind of internet-based voice/video chat than make or take a phone call.
My phone icon is still on my home screen, but only because it is something I want to be able to get at quickly in an emergency. I'm certain it's the least-used icon on the screen, though.
> Other phones had internet and other features, sure, but their "home" screen, so to speak, was a phone UI. You had to hit "Menu" or something else to see the other apps, which were clearly secondary to the primary phone function.
There were also other “phones” that only had the phone function as one of many apps.
Honestly, it's hard to feel too bad for people making the choices to use this stuff without considering an escape plan or safety net and then getting burned by it.
You choose to not get fire insurance on your house, your house burned down... like yeah, that sucks, I do genuinely feel bad that happened to you. But also, you took a risk presumably to save money and it bit you in the ass, and now you unfortunately have to pay the price.
Sometimes SaaS really does make the most sense. Having your people doing part-time, non-core operations of an important service they are not experts in can be a huge distraction (and this is a hard thing for us tech people to admit!).
But you need to go into SaaS thinking about how you'd get out: maybe that's data export, maybe it's solid contracts. If they don't offer this or you can't afford it... well, don't use it. Or take the risk and just pray your house doesn't burn down.
It sounds like you think I'm victim-blaming here and that's not my intent at all.
Part of being in business is anticipating risks and having a plan -- which could be deciding to accept the risk. What sucks is you're implicitly accepting the risk of anything you didn't think of, even if the seller is quite aware or even counting on it. It's a harsh lesson when something this happens.
Slack are leveraging their position and it makes them assholes (or capitalists, I suppose, depending on your point of view), but you can't control what they do. You can only control your choices.
> for example, I've seen N+1 problem sneak past because at the time the performance was good enough but once there was enough data it crumbled
This is a super-common problem I've had to help with many times. It generally happens with teams working on single-tenant (or single-database-tenant) products, and basically always comes back to the dev team working on a database with hundreds of things, and there's a handful of customers using 10,000+ things when it starts getting slow.
You acquire a bunch of small customers and everything is great, and it can months later before you really start to see performance impact. And often with these types of problems it just gradually slows down until finally the system hits a wall where the DB can no longer compensate and suddenly performance tanks. "It must be caused by something we just added, but it's weird, because this problem is in a totally different part of the system."
It's one of the things where I've found code review to be the most helpful remedy. If everything gets reviewed then N+1 queries can be rejected before they even hit the main branch. They're usually pretty obvious if you're looking for them.
I thought web3 was supposed to be some kind of decentralized compute, where rather than run on your own hardware or IaaS/PaaS you could make use of compute resources that vary wildly day-to-day in availability, performance, and cost, because they were somehow also mining rigs or something? But it's "decentralized" because there's not one entity running the thing.
There is not a mention of that in the article.
Is it actually supposed to just be microtranscations paid with cryptocurrency? Where's the "decentralized" part of that?
Anyway, instead the best I can see this article seems to be talking about how it turns out people aren't using blockchain for buying things, and makes the (apparently) shocking conclusion "the one thing people always wanted: money that just works."
I thought web3 was supposed to be some kind of decentralized compute, where rather than run on your own hardware or IaaS/PaaS you could make use of compute resources that vary wildly day-to-day in availability, performance, and cost, because they were somehow also mining rigs or something? But it's "decentralized" because there's not one entity running the thing.
Web3 is a rebrand of crypto scams. The 20018 crash exposed the crypto industry to how wide spread its scams were. So the industry rebranded to "web3". Nothing changed.
The scam message was that so many people got rich investing in web2.0 companies like Facebook. You can get rich too by investing in web3 (shitcoins & NFTs).
Web 3.0 was a synonym for the Semantic Web (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web), but the term was taken over by crypto folks as it dropped off after the mid-2000s.
Web3 was quite a cryptoassets sector buzzword, but the decentralized part of that is "cryptocurrency".
If we take the buzzword seriously, yes there was more to it than microtransactions with cryptocurrency, but without personal wallets on the blockchain capable of those transactions the rest of the ideas like NFT tickets, Decentralized Finance etc are impossible.
Stablecoins transferred $27 trillion in 2024 - more than Visa and Mastercard combined. This is right in the article.
Stablecoins operate using decentralized ledgers on e.g. Ethereum which use decentralized compute. This isn't mentioned explicitly because the target audience knows this already.
Visa / Mastercard have such large fees that they're mainly used for commercial payments like a coffee or couch.
If most of the Stablecoin transactions were for buying a coffee, I think it'd be fair, but the vast majority of stablecoin transactions are for shuffling money around, i.e. to buy and speculate on bitcoin, or to move money to an exchange to liquidate some crypto into cash.
I think the current use of stablecoin transfers is closer to a wire transfer.
SWIFT apparently deals with about $1.25 quadrillion/year, so ~50x the claimed amount for stablecoins in the article... though there's more than just SWIFT out there too.
idk, I don't really have a point, I'm both amazed stablecoins are such a big number, but also feel like the comparison the article's making with VISA is misleading for how they're currently used.
Aren’t stablecoins also backed by a central authority that guarantees it will always exchange the coins for a fixed amount of cash? That’s what makes them stable right? At least the major ones like Tether.
And by now we have seen many cases of stablecoins predictably crashing when trust in that backing authority dissolves. Most famously UST/Luna but it’s a long list.
I suppose they are useful for covert transfers, and the actual transfer mechanism is decentralized. But they are strictly worse than normal currencies for storing wealth, since the backing authority is a private company with virtually no oversight. And the utility for transactions would vanish if you were not confident that you can exchange it back and forth with cash immediately before and after the transfer.
Not exactly. Internet Computer or Akash Network would be more closely aligned with "decentralized compute" — smart contracts in the EVM world aren't really meant to decentralize "general" compute, but they do provide primitives for programmable transactions. Those transactions can include a "token" as well as abstractions on top of tokens (e.g. a vault)
To give you a real answer instead of just bashing crypto:
There is no real compute happening on the actual blockchain. The more instructions you have to execute, the higher the gas, the larger the fee the user will have to pay. The blockchain is used more as a database which the Web3 app can then query (for free) and use as a source of truth. It's not just currencies and microtransactions - game stats, property ownership, a users notes or todo list, anything you want. But you are definitely not doing any kind of major compute.
Web3 now refers to web apps that interact with a blockchain instead of a server API. They are mostly built with modern web technologies (React, Vue, etc.) Many are opensource and lots of communities participate in developing standards and in participating bodies. Uniswap, for example, is a website and underlying protocol for changing one coin into another, is now on v3 (UniswapV3) and many other projects and companies (SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, etc) take this frontend and the blockchain contracts to implement their own compatible offerings.
These API call's go through your wallet (usually a browser extension or app) which injects the JS needed into the website or handles it itself. The wallet will usually perform an RPC to a remote server to perform the actual blockchain communication. Most chains have default free RPC servers but you can also pay for a more premium/less latency/higher uptime RPC services. You can also run your own RPC infrastructure and handle that yourself.
User identities are tied to wallets. You do not have to sign up or join any Web3 app, you just "Connect" your wallet which is a free action which basically consists of signing a pre-generated message vouching you are joining which the Web3 app can verify.
Many standards have developed like Uniswap mentioned earlier. Interfaces for NFT's, delegated spending (to condense transactions and save gas fees), notifications, chat. Because all contracts are on a chain and every frontend is just a webapp, and many services ensure transparency by posting the source code for their contracts, it enables seamless integration of other APIs.
For example, another layer has been abstracted on top of UniswapV3. Since there is hundreds of swaps all supporting UniswapV3, you then had the development of apps called "routers" which would check all the swap sites and find you the cheapest rate. These routers can even swap between multiple token chains and assets to arrive at your end coins.
One more way this is more decentralized. If any of these web frontend's were to go away, the contract still exists and you can manually call it's functions to achieve your goal like withdrawing money, reassigning an NFT, or evolving your pet.
Furthermore, since all Web3 apps are just really calling contract's behind the scenes, it's easy to just send these actions yourself in a program. You can turn 20 clicks in some UI into a script that does the same interfacing with the blockchain directly.
One last point, but all this data is being stored on chain and is exportable and backed up forever by millions. I have personally had trouble with losing devices and having poor backup discipline. So, I have stored my personal notes and todo list in a custom (encrypted) contract I wrote a few years ago. I can lose access to every device or password I know and can still access it anywhere in the world because I have memorized my 12 word wallet mnemonic and every node has a copy.
And you're used to the weight of the glass, which you instantly recognize when you pick it up. If it was a different weight than you were expecting, you'd probably slow down and be more deliberate.
If you were to just do the exact same robotic "throw" action with a glass of unexpected weight you'd maybe not throw hard enough and miss, or throw too hard and possibly break it.
> It's so shitty and slow because it's a bloatware
Bloatware is unwanted software, usually pre-installed or otherwise not installed by the user, that slows down your computer and takes up space.
So if a user wants Office, it is, by definition, not bloatware.
Even if we do consider it bloatware -- pre-installed, unwanted by the user, and using up system resources -- that isn't an explanation of why Office itself is slow.
> As the neighborhood becomes denser, rents might go down, but land values will go up, since a given piece of land can now be used to build a more profitable apartment building.
You're taking about the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods, as they are, to be replaced with something else. The land value might go up, but the existing house value goes down, especially halfway through such a project. It's one thing if you're replacing low density multitenant buildings with higher-density ones, but it's a totally different story if you're replacing detached, single family homes. Usually the latter only happens after a decade or 3 of neglected, low value homes.
Higher density brings pluses and minuses.. more businesses, transit and other services, but also more traffic, crime, noise, etc.
But your criticisms are strange. You have more than 254 devices connecting (which implies a complex setup) but can't increase the subnet size? Or does your router just have an absurdly small default DHCP range?
I also don't understand the swap your router problem, unless you're also using default SSIDs and not changing it. Configure the SSID and PSK to be the same as before and everything will just work.