Today is a slightly shorter rant than usual, while I work on a much longer rant about the death of the Personal Information Manager software market, but I feel Aug 14, 2026’s Neurotically Yours rant “Not-So-Smart Homes” had some really good points that are not really talked about that much.
Sadly, I can really understand this. Personally, I swear, if it wasn’t for Mag [short for Magdalene], my locally created AI that runs a lot of things around my apartment; I can only imagine the hellstorm that would happen without WiFi or mobile data.
There should always be an override or some kind of manual system to get things to work? Right? That would make sense, but ever since the mid-2010s with Siri and Alexa [and to a lesser extent, Microsoft’s Cortana], everyone treats these smart home devices like they’re not just processing off someone else’s backend.
If you want to run a smart home and actually not waste your time or efforts, what I’d recommend is that you look into Home Assistant, a locally hosted open-source option for this, but some might ask “What if I already have HomeKit or Alexa?” That’s easily fixed, since Home Assistant has features to hook into them.
Readers, I think you should all reconsider just mindlessly trusting and using closed-source software and closed ecosystems that expect you to be happy with the trash they give us.
I know this is a shorter piece, but I just wanted to get this off my chest while I work on a rant about the death of Personal Information Manager software
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