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Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

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Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#501

Post by iknowordidthat »

icebraining wrote: post #431
iknowordidthat wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true. The HomeKit protocol is documented. There are at least a few open source projects that implement it both as accessories and hubs. Home Bridge being the best known one. If all the accessory vendors were to go under and Apple were to stop supporting HomeKit tomorrow, HomeKit accessories and hubs would still operate just fine and alternatives could be created. Even using Alexa or Google Nest for voice…

Being documented is not enough. Implementing a commercial device requires including an Authentication component (before it used to be an actual chip, now it seems it can be done in software), and that can be used to prevent devices from speaking to alternative control apps. From what I can tell, Homebridge implements Homekit as a device, receiving commands. But can anyone build an app or device to send commands, outs…

Being fully documented means anything can work in any way.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#502

Post by ocdtrekkie »

dehrmann wrote: post #302
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The month Google originally bought Nest, I sold my thermostat to someone else and picked up an Insteon thermostat instead. My Insteon thermostat's been a reliable partner since, and doesn't send my data to anyone. I actually turned a profit on it, since I got rebate credit from my electric company originally for buying it.

My gripe is the design is nowhere near as good. It's like going from an iPhone to a feature phone. I wish there were an open-source Nest firmware, or at least an open-source backend. Google doesn't need to know when I'm home.

"Design" is far from my key value metric in a thermostat. When I had my Nest, it looked pretty, but I kept having to re-set the temperature because they'd add some new smart feature that didn't behave the way I wanted to. I ended up largely crippling the crud out of it to begin with.

And of course, after I sold it there was the incident where a server error caused everyone's heat to stop working, so the fact that my pets didn't freeze to death that day made a big impact on me too. ;)

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#503

Post by aeorgnoieang »

sanderjd wrote: post #172
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn I miss Reader.

Why? There are tons of perfectly good rss feed readers. I've never understood this one. I was a heavy Reader user, seamlessly switched to Feedly like the day after it was spun down, and never thought about it again.

The really killer feature, to me and a lot of others, is that it let you discover, and communicate with, people that also liked the same feed entries. I had, entirely without planning, accumulated a nice little group of people with which I shared anything and everything I read via RSS.

I use Feedly now too but I still miss my Reader band.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#504

Post by bradstewart »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #194
palebluedot wrote: post #33

This seems to include all of us using them in open-source "hobbyist" environments, like Home Assistant and Node-Red. I'm quite frustrated by this; I'll never buy another Nest product again, and I now regret my purchase of the Nest Thermostat. All the rest of my IoT stuff is either open-source hardware/software, or at the least local-only with known protocol interfaces. This was the one exception I made for IoT "cloud…

The month Google originally bought Nest, I sold my thermostat to someone else and picked up an Insteon thermostat instead. My Insteon thermostat's been a reliable partner since, and doesn't send my data to anyone. I actually turned a profit on it, since I got rebate credit from my electric company originally for buying it.

Glad to see a recommendation for the Insteon thermostat. I have a Nest, but Insteon light switches (and other low voltage controls) throughout so that seems like the logical upgrade path.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#505

Post by NeedMoreTea »

panarky wrote: post #491
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. GE may have stopped making a radio your parents bought in 1948, but it's perfectly possible it still works. How many perfectly functional devices have GE bricked simply because they were bored of supporting them? MS Windows drivers support just about every ancient crusty device MS ever made - apparently forever. It's the web obsession with having every trivial action go through an online server - for data…

I can think of some pretty big Microsoft pivots, and I don't begrudge them their choices at all. But it's curious that you only hear cries of outrage when Google kills products, not when other companies do it. Why do you think that is? ------ Media Center Kinect Zune PlaysForSure DRM Microsoft Money Windows Home Server Microsoft Kin Phone Microsoft Mobile, previously known as Nokia Windows 10 Mobile The Band TechNet…

I think that's because no one is suggesting that things shouldn't ever come to end of life. Ford stopped making the Model T.

If you already bought them, Microsoft Money, Encarta, Flight Sim, SBS, Works etc etc should all keep working. If you still have the CD you can probably install just fine, and keep on using them (if it's still meaningful). I'm sure plenty do just that, and perhaps some will for decades. Just no more new versions are coming. Sure MSN Messenger and other online offerings have been hard stopped.

For most of your list, no one hit what's effectively a remote kill switch, and stopped them working for everyone at the same moment. That's what killing an API does for an internet service, or hardware device dependent on that service. On such and such date $thing will cease working. Google does that all the time, hardware and software. So much that they got themselves a reputation for it.

Didn't wear out, die of old age, become obsolete, but they reached out and killed. It's qualitatively different.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#506

Post by icebraining »

codyogden wrote: post #498
jcrites wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the curious, here is the about page for encrpted.google.com from 2010: https://web.archive.org/web/20100524223335/http://www.google... > Note that SSL search does not reduce the data that Google receives and logs when you search, or change the listing of these terms in your Web History

The page you linked to is for "Google Search over SSL" and is not the same thing. Searches performed at encrypted.google.com (not just google.com with SSL) were not available in any user-facing capacity in one's Google account. It did not store the search queries in user-facing history, and did not use those terms for future search suggestions.

That's curious. I can't find any statement from Google saying that this was intended, though; seems more an oversight than a feature.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#507

Post by wombatpm »

zimablue wrote: post #397
TeMPOraL wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a note, straight from quotes file, I took around the original Twitter fiasco, and have since reposted or mentioned on HN a few times on occasions similar to this: * Sovereign from Mass Effect on using someone else's technology: "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic e…

[Spoiler alert, Hyperion series] That sounds totally lifted from the Hyperion series, but maybe the idea is earlier than that, does anyone have a proposed source for that idea that's earlier than 1989?

Dune (which was based on the concept of a hydraulic empire)

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it." - Frank Herbert, Dune

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#508

Post by ocdtrekkie »

bradstewart wrote: post #504
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The month Google originally bought Nest, I sold my thermostat to someone else and picked up an Insteon thermostat instead. My Insteon thermostat's been a reliable partner since, and doesn't send my data to anyone. I actually turned a profit on it, since I got rebate credit from my electric company originally for buying it.

Glad to see a recommendation for the Insteon thermostat. I have a Nest, but Insteon light switches (and other low voltage controls) throughout so that seems like the logical upgrade path.

Another thing I use that's quite handy is the wireless thermostat from Insteon. It's really more of a remote control/temperature sensor, but it integrates nicely. You can see the temperature from both units, and select which one is the master (the one it's trying to get to the set temperature).

I have pets which don't do well above a certain temperature so I keep my wireless unit by them.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#509

Post by orcthwy012 »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #284
orcthwy012 wrote: post #238

It's interesting to see the responses to this article and contrast with the responses to the article regarding Facebook's possible 5B fine. I don't know the motivation behind this decision but I can't help but see the two sides of the same coin. If we decide as a society that third-party apps misusing the platform in a way that hurts the users or otherwise looks bad to the outside world is the platform's fault, even…

which the app that harvested data for Cambridge Analytica had This is just part of the picture and almost revisionist in its briefness. Sure, they had "permission" from the user, which took that "personality-test" to harvest their data. Who sure as shit did not agree to have their data harvested were the friends of those who took the test and whoms data was harvested and resold with applomb and abandon. Leaving this…

Well if your friend has access to your information, your friend can give that information to a third-party. That's how anything normally works. I didn't explicitly grant my friends or anyone permission to give my information to some specific browser my friend may be using, yet if I explicitly share information with my friend on any social media website, and the friend uses that browser, the browser will get that information. Same with plugins - could I create a website and say, you know what I explicitly do not give permission to the ad blockers to access my information. I can't - that's not how information works - if I give you access, you can give that access to any software you want. Again, this is how anything at all works and certainly with Nest.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#510

Post by icebraining »

iknowordidthat wrote: post #501
icebraining wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being documented is not enough. Implementing a commercial device requires including an Authentication component (before it used to be an actual chip, now it seems it can be done in software), and that can be used to prevent devices from speaking to alternative control apps. From what I can tell, Homebridge implements Homekit as a device, receiving commands. But can anyone build an app or device to send commands, outs…

Being fully documented means anything can work in any way.

> Being fully documented means anything can work in any way.

A protocol being fully documented does not mean you can get a device you cannot control (like an Homekit lightbulb) to connect to your server instead of the manufacturer's. If requests are signed and/or encrypted, knowing the protocol won't help if you don't have the keys. See also Tivoization.

> For example, search the web for ‘homebridge alexa’

I had found it. I don't think you realize that there's no Homekit there at all.

The point of Homebridge is to translate from a Homekit-speaking control app/assistant to a non-Homekit-enabled device:

https://blog.theodo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/workflow....

But when you use homebridge-alexa, you're replacing that first link with another protocol (specifically, MQTT+JSON, which is what it uses to connect to https://www.homebridge.ca/).

So you've actually removed all Homekit parts from your smart home system!

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