Smart Home Graveyard Keeps Growing

The 'smart home graveyard is getting crowded' thread captures sustained frustration from people who invested in home automation. The core complaint: the marketplace feels like a minefield, devices get bricked when companies shut down, and promised features get converted to subscriptions after purchase. One commenter describes being 'naively bullish' on smart home until every purchase decision became a risk assessment about company survival.

This connects directly to the older Ask HN FCC thread on IoT security regulation, where commenters specifically flagged manufacturers using ongoing device access to remove features or convert one-time purchases to subscriptions. The IoT thread also surfaces the tension between regulating security updates and burdening open source developers.

The pattern here is that consumer trust in connected hardware is eroding because the business model of connected devices is fundamentally in tension with the consumer expectation that purchased hardware stays functional. Every shutdown is a data point that reinforces the distrust.