alt Hacker NewsA humidifier needs network capability incase someone discovers a new version of water, or for the manufacturer to be able to patch remote exploits.
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It's becuase Xiaomi integrated it just like all of it's other smart home products with Mijia - Xiaomi's smart home mesh [0].
In Asia (but arguably the same in the West given the proliferation of Ring and smart home hubs), consumers have less of an aversion to smart home and connected products in general.
Keeping IoT devices on a separate segmented network with strict DMZing, turning off unused features, and not sharing passwords would provide enough security for most home users. I recommend reading James Micken's essay "The World is Ours" [1] on the diminishing returns of certain security features at the expense of user experience. I also agree with it as someone who used to do edgy stuff with SHODAN as a teenager.
HNers tend to be the minority amongst consumers, which is assuming the opposite of the HN herd mentality tends to be a fairly successful strategy.
[0] - https://www.mi.com/global/smart-home/
[1] - https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf
Hah! How exact
Xkcd for everything as always
I'm all for KISS.
But in a rare instance, xkcd is missing the point here. People do not live in their rooms 24/7, but they do want to be able to, e.g., turn stuff on or off remotely, or based on environmental conditions (turn on/off based on outside sensors or the current electricity price...) or to get status alerts ("tank empty, refill").
Now, I do that via Home Assistant and keep anything "smart" on a highly-restricted vnet ... but not everyone is a geek. While the standard implementation (some cloud service) comes with a bouquet of problems, it basically acts as a simplified Home Assistant, and ultimately as a necessary crutch. Preferably we'd be in IPv6-land, where ISPs would not NAT everything to death and we could talk to our devices remotely without an intermediary ... but well ... it cannot be helped.
"You're not going to need it" and "In my time, we just flipped a dumb switch" is paternalistic hogwash, not clever social commentary. Back in my days, we also didn't need satnav (just read a paper map), or cell phones (write them a note, leave it on the fridge, nothing is so important to demand imminence), or dishwashers (just do your dishes by hand)
“Smart” is useful in many ways:
— you get notification on a phone when water is low;
— you can set automations for stuff like lower speed (noise) at night;
— make it turn off once the desired humidity is reached based on the other sensor (internal one is always off by 8-10% compared to a reading even 1m away).