Our great sponsors
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Home Assistant
:house_with_garden: Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first.
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WorkOS
The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.
Today at least you have other options, you just need to look for them. Take a look at Home Assistant for example: a home automation system with focus on privacy and local control. It's got integrations with a huge number of devices and services. Granted, a lot of them run in the cloud, but some do run locally, and even using cloud services might not be so bad as long as you don't put all your eggs in the same basket. As a matter of fact, most of Home Assistant still works fine when internet connectivity is lost. Sure you won't get up-to-date weather information or email notifications, but you can still control your home (as long as you're not using cloud-only devices but something like ZigBee devices instead, which are easy to find) and this is generally what matters most. Going this way is obviously more involved than using some ready-made cloud service from one of the Big Companies (you don't get "freedom from the cloud" for free) but it's far from impossible, and you gain a lot in the process, most important for you maybe being your independence. Point being: you don't have to rely on Amazon for this stuff. Just look for alternatives, they exist.