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Sometimes you can have a thing that isnt a computer. Sometimes you can just have a glass door. I promise it's okay.
When I walk through my house I have sweet motion activated lights and doodads that I have spent hours tweaking and I enjoy thoroughly.
In the bathroom I use a switch.
Not everything needs to be "smart"
I have my bathroom fan turn on if the lid has been open more than 45 seconds ... some things you just don't (yet) know you need to be smart :-D
For me, all of our lights are smart (some bulbs with smart switches that talk to the smart bulbs and some just smart switches), but, everything needs to be able to function like it's dumb ... nothing needs an app to function. The wall switches will function as expected ... home assistant adds additional functionality, voice commands add extra functionality, but, it all works as you'd reasonably expect it to if you just go and hit the wall switch.
Okay I'll admit the fan thing is clever..
In tech, SMART is an acronym. I shit you zero nots, this is for real.
Self Monitoring And Reporting Technologies
Fuck SMART everything. I am fundamentally at odds with telemetry, what is it up to half our mobile data plans are lost to advertisers? W.t.f.
That SMART acronym is for internal computer drives, has been in use since about 1995, and is a wonderful thing - the drive keeps track of how many errors it encounters reading, how many bad sectors on the drive, how many hours it's been powered on, and a whole bunch of other stats.
And then, you, the user (/sysadmin) can, while sitting at the computer, get a report of all these stats and notice if the drive is starting to fail so you can plan a replacement instead of it just dying unexpectedly.
Someone might have made an acronym for "smart" light bulbs, but it would be completely unrelated to the internal computer drive acronym.
Hey thanks for fleshing that out for me. That takes me back, makes me think of sitting in my room listening to RATM I just downloaded and burned off Napster and defragging the computer.
I miss the Internet of old. Before everyone got on it. We had hope then
Same, I'm running homeassistant. Things that are out of the way like PC under desk get WakeOnLan from HA, or chandeliers, and grow lights for my wife's indoor trees get smart treatment. Kitchen lights are switches, because if I'm in the kitchen I will be by the switches and opening phone to launch HA app and scroll to a smart light button would take much longer.
But think of the ads we can’t play! THE ADS!
Have they tried subscriptions? I've heard it's the next big deal after ads.
Good. What an awful concept. A whole bunch of extra screwing around trying to keep products aligned with what's on screen along with maintenance and running costs; just so you can piss off your customers with a worse experience and waste more of their time with advertising nobody wants.
If it helps, they also lock a lot of product, requiring employees to come and help customers directly.
https://eurweb.com/2025/walgreens-theft-prevention-struggle/
It's like they made their stores as hostile as possible to shop in.
The only reason i go to Walgreens at all is for my medication. I'd gladly go somewhere else but they strangled out the competition. It's literally the only place that consistently has my medication.
the only place that consistently has my medication
is there a Costco near where you live? if so, you might give their pharmacy a try (you don't need to pay for a Costco membership if all you're doing is getting a prescription)
I had similar challenges finding a pharmacy that consistently has my ADHD medication in stock. a few months ago I tried Costco based on a recommendation from my doctor, so far they've been able to fill my prescription every month no problem.
It’s like they made their stores as hostile as possible to shop in.
I saw a tweet that called it a "weird deodorant museum" and that phrase is now permanently etched into my brain. it's such a perfect description, similar to "private taxi for your burrito" for Doordash etc.
And money! Customers pay for these atrocities.
Comedy gold, except for everyone who has to try and shop at a Walgreens.
I imagine it's less fun for employees.
They just keep finding interesting ways to fail!
Ads are the cancer of Humanity.
i’ve got an ad-blocking DNS on home network and my phone, i use youtube revanced, i’ve even got a fucken apk patcher to strip ad shit out of mobile games. it’s WILD to me how tolerant people are of ads. like anytime someone’s showing me a video on their phone and an ad plays, i have to do a little mental math on whether it’ll be annoying or mutually beneficial to just start playing the video on my phone instead.
and it takes such little effort to get rid of them! i’m constantly offering to teach people how to use patchers or revanced, folks are just like “nah it doesn’t bother me” MAN, HOW? sponsorblock alone is a goddamn godsend, sometimes more than 30% of a video is just ads and self promotion! how does anyone happily throw away their time like that‽
People value their time far loo low. You've only got a limited time on the planet. Don't waste it listening to people telling you what you need to buy.
I love what Sao Paolo in Brazil did: banned all outdoor advertising. I'd love to live in a place that did that. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/
I feel this so hard. Ads and PtW are slowly becoming the only business model because we have stone-age-level impulse control. Hopefully, someone like the EU eventually unfucks it and we switch to micropayments to cover server costs.
The only way it could get worse is if they started banning anyone too poor to properly whale.
Things like this move me to imagine a world completely devoid of ads. "But how would you discover a product you didn't know you needed?" I don't care. I would go without that product. That is preferable to me.
The Walgreens closest to me had those installed for maybe a month before they went back to glass doors. Fucking hated those things. Completely annoying when they're working as expected.
I don't really understand how Walgreens is still in business. I only go there when I need something that the grocery store pharmacy section doesn't carry and I'm not willing to wait 1-2 days to have it shipped from Amazon. Every time I go, its a ghost town with more employees than customers.
It's honestly the corpse of a retail store being dragged along by a perfectly healthy pharmacy. Every rx sold, regardless of what the customer pays, nets Walgreens the full value of the script. So when grangran runs to Wallygreens to pick up her no cost diabeetus meds, walgreens gets the full 1000+$. And that's every script sold, every hour of every day.
Oh, that sounds like a sweet deal. I should have been aspired to be a corporation instead of a normal person.
No, it's the opposite. The pharmacy doesn't make a ton of money, that's why they expanded to have all the other stuff.
I was a certified technician in that pharmacy for 5 years. I can tell you with confidence that is patently false.
Look what they own and look what assets are being held. They're what I like to call a shell company
I live in a very small city with a Walgreens and 2 CVSes, all within a mile or so of each other, and they all seem pretty busy. We also have a Walmart, a medical supply store, and a small neighborhood pharmacy, as well as two grocery stores. I think how busy your local drug store is is pretty variable. We do have a college in town and also a pretty active main street with a lot of shops and restaurants that bring in a lot of tourists and people from neighboring towns and bigger nearby cities.
But like, we have kind of a lot of CVSes and Walgreens around here and they all seem to do well enough. I don't think it's just that we're in a college town. Though, again, we do have a lot of colleges in general.
We live in Idiocracy.
You can thanks capitalism for poisoning our cities, towns and soil with an extremely dangerous neurotoxin (lead).
FUHHK YEWW ahm GATORADIN’
Hahaha fucking weasel dumbasses, hope your ad revenue will cover your service contracts!
You love to see it
Tech bros when I show them a revolutionary new peice of technology that allows people to see through it (its called glass):
You know what else they could have done, as a compromise? Make the ad screens partially transparent, by stippling the pixels, or by having glass sections, or by turning the LCD completely transparent for part of its refresh.... there are many ways to not be anti-consumer garbage meant only to jump in front of eyeballs.
But how do I serve real time ads?
Project it onto the glass
A source close to both companies says the word that trickled down from Brewer’s team was blunter: “Why do our stores look like an effing casino?”
Because everyone loves GaMiFicAtIoN!!!!
I hope the company goes out of business.
Hilarious.