In an alternative universe...

I fucking hate Internet of Things, I think that it's a ridiculous idea to connect things, that work perfectly fine, to the internet.
The 'convenience' you get is minimalistic and most of the time non existent.
It is also often insanely insecure and expensive. The burdans it brings with it most of the time just outweigh the positive sides of it.

Now today happened something that made me hate it even more. Today was the First Lego Lego (Lego competition with ev3 robots, etc.) and one part of the tournament is to find a solution for a given problem. This year the general topic was hydro-dynamics and so the problem was how you can reduce water usage and 'save' water.

Our idea was to make reusable coffee cups and give them to the local coffee shops. One time use paper cups use take around 400ml water when produced) Basically you buy a cup once for 5 bucks and you get your coffee served in it. After drinking the coffee you return the cup to a local cafe and get a chip as pawn. When you buy your next coffee, you give them your chip and get it served in another reusable cup. The are at the moment already around 1000 cups going around the city.

Now this was our idea and we got ranked third. I am not too mad about our rank but what really drives me fucking mad is the team who ranked first.

Their idea was to make a pump (using an arduino) and a humidity sensor which you stick into a plant and the pump pumps water when the plant is too dry.
However (you probably guessed it already) they went a step further and connected it to the internet. They also made a web 'interface' for it so you can control the pump with your smartphone / computer / smartwatch / tv / whatever the fuck is connected to the internet nowadays 'thanks' to the iot 'revolution'.

So it is a pump that waters your plant when it is too dry BUT it is also connected to the internet.

WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS HAVE TO BE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET.

"Oh look it is connected to the internet, wow awesome, oh it is also 'smart'. oh cooool. Nice I don't have to water my plants anymore"

A funny thing is that one of my friends built basically the same thing without connecting it to the internet. He built a small box with a pump and a humidity sensor that measures if the dirt is too dry and then waters the plant. It checks every few hours and the also is a small 16x2 LCD and a knob that you can turn to control how much water it should give the plant each time it waters it. He built it and I programmed it for him. Works perfectly fine and I don't see any reason why there should be any need to connect something like this to the internet.

Anyway we got ranked third, they first. I guess we should connect our coffee cups to the internet in some way ...

On a completely unrelated note......Love Death and Robots is on Netflix and shit is sooo good it ain't funny.

10/10 would recommend.

Stolen but so funny:

QA Tester walks into a bar:

He orders a beer.
He orders 3 beers.
He orders 2976412836 beers.
He orders 0 beers.
He orders -1 beer.
He orders q beers.
He orders nothing.
Él ordena una cerveza.
Il commande une bière.
He orders a deer.
He tries to leave without paying.
He starts ordering a beer, then throws himself through the window half way through.
He orders a beer, gets his receipt, then tries to go back.
He orders a beer, goes to the door of the bar, throws a handful of cookies into the street, then goes back to the bar to see if the barmaid still recognizes him.
He orders a beer, and watches very carefully while the barmaid puts his order into the till to make sure nothing in his request got lost along the way.
He starts ordering a beer, and tries to talk the barmaid into handing over her personal details.
He orders a beer, sneaks into the back, turns off the power to the till, and waits to see how the barmaid reacts, and what she says to him.
He orders a beer while calling in thousands of robots to order a beer at exactly the same time.

I'd write witty comments for the A.Is to say, everyone loves funny robots.