Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

We moved the comments from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11423511 which had that title.

I read the box. It listed a bunch of cool features. I bought it.

Nowhere on the box did it say, "We will keep all of your video and there is no way for you to use this device without Dropcam.com acting as an intermediary." I'm sure if I'd read some reviews, it would have been more clear to me what I was buying. But, I've bought cameras in this category before (first one I bought was a Panasonic Petcam about a decade ago, which worked wonderfully for many years, and didn't have the ability to hold my data for ransom), and never had one of them be this...um...useless, without the service associated with it. My expectation as a consumer of these kinds of devices was not, at all, met by what Dropcam is.

So, yes, I was ignorant of how Dropcam worked; but that ignorance was fostered by omission of key information on the Dropcam packaging.

"With that said... after Nest acquired them, there's been no new meaningful features, no decrease in price, no new camera features, etc. I cancelled the "DVR" plan and will be finding an alternate system later this year."

So...we're agreed, then, that you are at their mercy. You just have a much more forgiving attitude about their practices than I do. I consider it unethical (particularly the misleading copy on their packaging, but the general case of a device being ransomware, as well). Obviously, I'm not in the majority, since Dropcam is well-reviewed, and well-liked by a lot of people. I can't make people care about privacy, security, device re-usability, longevity of devices, reducing e-waste, and being able to make my own decisions about how I can use my devices, but I do still care about those things. Ease of use does not require giving up consumer choice.

Clouds I trust: IPFS (interplanetary filesystem), Tor.

I store .5 TB in IPFS right now, and it just works. Nobody can stop me, nobody can "remove" my access, and it's permanent as long as a single copy on the internet still exists.

I also use Tor Hidden Services, where I get my own domain name [hash].onion . With a script I wrote for Linux,every program can handle .onion addresses natively. Nobody can stop this, or even detect it well. That means every node on my network is secure and anonymous in its location.

I'm looking for a 3rd piece: a way to run distributed applications across a pool of machines. Ethereum seemed to be a way, but the speeds are rated in instructions/second. Undoable. I want to add all my machines to a computing cloud and do work on all of them. That still doesn't look like it exists, yet.

> The fact is that I can fix the problem by purchasing a replacement device such as a Samsung SmartThings hub. (emphasis's author's)

No chance. Most'll never learn.

I wonder, how many hardware-driven-by-the-cloud businesses (home automation, "smart" routers, etc) have SLA contracts that require providers to actually maintain their service (including security updates etc) for any extended period. Guess, not many. Out of curiosity, I've tried to search for, say, "Google OnHub SLA" and found... nothing.