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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

#511

Post by iainmerrick »

jordanbeiber wrote: post #488
iainmerrick wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have the wrong end of the stick. Plenty of companies do that, sure, but Microsoft has always been a very, very aggressive mass-market player. Their software is used in enterprise, sure, but it’s by almost every enterprise, not just isolated niches. They’re competitive on prices too (although it’s tough when many of your direct competitors are free). Compare MS Office with something like Maya or AutoCAD, s…

You might be missing my point a bit. First of all I’m talking developer exposure. Many angry devs have sat in their cubicle swearing at MS & others product teams for changes made or products dropped. These products doesn’t necessarily have the visibility of google services. What I’m further trying to say is that it’s a culture thing. Times are changing and with it the business model of selling standardized crap to cl…

There’s probably room for us both to be right, as MS is such a massive company with zillions of products.

I’m coming at it mostly as a client-side developer, comparing to platforms like macOS, iOS and Android (and the web!) where things are constantly in flux, with new APIs added and old ones deprecated.

Compared to those, Windows and .NET are extremely stable; they add new APIs, sure, but old ones tend to stick around and keep working for a long time (some would argue too long).

That’s not to say I like Microsoft platforms and APIs; they tend to be badly-designed, buggy and fragmented. But in my experience at least, old MS APIs keep on working whereas old Google APIs get deprecated and shut down. It’s a very different developer experience, with different upsides and downsides.

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

#512

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…

Also I fail to see any actual privacy-related consequences of the Cambridge Analytica scandal - there's some fear-mongering over some targeted ads seen by some people but that is not a privacy breach nor a scandal. They broke TOS for Facebook API, but outside of that, what they eventually did with the data wasn't out of the ordinary. In other words, there may be concerns with the source data, but the source data was merely used to compute what is ordinarily considered non-sensitive information: a list to target given some political ad campaigns. Every single campaign does the latter, whether through email or direct mail. Hypothetically, if Zynga did this with Facebook API - to better target future potential customers, how much outrage would there be? Privacy-wise, it's exactly the same.

Marketers at nearly all large companies routinely do much worse with sensitive information. What personal information anyone cares about was used in a bad way here? Hypothetically, if there was an ad-platform that allowed you to specifically run targeted ad campaigns political opinions/leanings/etc as computed by the platform, this would not be an issue per se by the norms of the ad industry. It appears to me that what most people are upset about it has more to do: 1) how targeted advertising normally works and 2) that the political campaign of someone they don't want as president was helped by this. But targeted advertising is absolutely not illegal or anything and politicians you don't like still get to run campaigns. The actual amount of wrong-doing here is miniscule and the part that is attributable to Facebook is even smaller.

And the point is that any of this could absolutely happen with Nest. Nest does involve sensitive information and for instance, Nest cams don't have consent from every single person they happen to record either. I don't know exactly what nest API allowed apps to do but it would be hard to imagine that there's no possibility of scandal.

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

#513

Post by kristianc »

loudmax wrote: post #450
sokoloff wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. That risk is much lower than developing for the Alexa, Nest, Twitter, etc platforms. At some point, you’re forced to build on someone else’s platform(s), even if that platform is “Intel” or “AWS” as no one is doing the entire end-to-end value chain.

Or build on an open an open source stack. Don't like Intel? Switch to AMD. Don't like AWS? Switch to another cloud. Proprietary platforms lure developers to their stack by making development easy. Learning an open source is typically more difficult, but the reward is greater freedom. Believing you're forced to build on proprietary technology is a fallacy.

This is the kind of thinking that leads startups to build their own autoscaling for their pre revenue CRUD app. Trying to roll your own cloud infrastructure will kill you far quicker than AWS shutting down your service.

And you will always be relying on someone else's proprietary tech - whether it's laptops or power stations or cloud infra. The trick is deciding then to outsource and when to build your own.

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

#514

Post by stronglikedan »

The worst part is that Google Home is a complete shit-show so far. I constantly have to redo device setups for dvices that randomly disappear, recreate groups that lose one or more (and sometimes all) devices, and physically reset devices that randomly disconnect from wifi. It's been a terrible experience so far. I'd get rid of it completely if Alexa would let me like songs on Spotify, but that's another conversation altogether.

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

#515

Post by GoblinSlayer »

sokoloff wrote: post #395
krisgenre wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way or the other aren't most of us building for someone else's platform anyway?. Mobile, desktop, browser...

You can build alongside someone else's long-term demonstrated strategy (developing Microsoft desktop software) much more securely than developing a feature in someone else's closed garden. You can also spread your footprint. As just an easy-to-discuss example, Facebook and Twitter develop for many different someone else's platforms, by supporting multiple browsers [who in turn support multiple OSs], multiple mobile p…

Microsoft is all about cloud and web now. Clients are supposed to be web browser (asp.net) or mobile (xamarin), and they plan to add java, objc and swift interop to better target android and ios.

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

#517

Post by cwyers »

Zenst wrote: post #482
gergles wrote: post #22

> I’m a Works with Nest developer. Will I be able to access and control Nest devices moving forward? > No. The Actions on Google Smart Home platform does not provide open API access to Nest devices, so it cannot be used to access and control Nest devices. Instead, managing and controlling Google Home, Nest, and thousands of third-party smart home devices is done through the Google Home app and the Google Assistant. W…

Reading thru it, it is not as brutal as it sounds, more that the they merged it into the Google Assistant API, removing direct access permission to the NEST device (remember microphone-gate with NEST) and consolidating those permissions into Assistant. Whilst they are killing it off, they have a transition. However, as far as timelines go - August 2019 kill off date for the NEST API is brutal and not exactly the grac…

I am pretty sure that the main use case of Works With Nest is to tell the thermostat to go up and down. I don't believe you can do that with Works With Google Assistant.

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

#518

Post by McDev »

joenathanone wrote: post #26

Can I return my Nest for a refund? This is so stupid.

I contacted one of their support guys, eventually I was put through to a senior agent. After I quoted a bunch of consumer laws (at least here in the UK) he was adamant that their terms of services lets them change features as they wish so legal action is definitely going to be the only way forward.

From the follow up email: "Any product feature can be changed at Nests discretion under the terms terms of service. It is for this reason that I cannot refund the cost of your thermostat."

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

#519

Post by crankylinuxuser »

Klathmon wrote: post #422
kristianc wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wow, just wow. The entire non-Google Nest ecosystem evaporates overnight. Has it really, or does it simply mean that access is going to be through Google’s API going forward? It doesn’t seem super clear, but I can see why Google wouldn’t want to maintain two separate APIs.

From what I can see so far, there isn't any way to replicate 90% of the functionality through the assistant APIs, and even their FAQ and messaging seems to be reinforcing that they won't be adding it. For example, you can't grab images from a camera through the assistant API, you can't get notification of a doorbell ring, you can't get notified when one of the devices detects a person.

The owner of the device is definitely told all the data about the camera, facial recog and all.

You, who paid money and installed a device, aren't the owner. Google is.

You are a used. You aren't even qualified as a user.

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

#520

Post by User23 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #383
User23 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really glad I bought a pantelligent because it only cost me $40 to learn that IoT is a giant scam.

I think you'll find it's Western Capitalism that's the scam and that IoT is still a reasonable idea.

I haven’t found that at all. Why don’t you explain, because I’m curious which non-western non-capitalist system prevents IoT devices from becoming worthless without warning when the vendor ceases support or fails altogether.
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