Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

bleepingcomputer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 172 posts

Re: Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

#11

Post by MostlyStable »

Per the one tweet in the article that says they only bought one of these appliances because of the HA plugin: the lesson is don't buy smart devices that have cloud control. Whether or not they have local automation plugins (like HA), or just that have apps/cloud services, expecting those capabilities to remain for the life of the device is a fool's errand. We have a host of examples of cloud services being killed and open integrations getting taken down, and none of the examples where this hasn't happened have existed long enough for us to say anything besides "so far".

If you want smart functionality, it had better run entirely locally, or else you should not care about or depend on that functionality.

-edit- I also had to learn this lesson (somewhat) painfully. I chose the EVSE that I did for 2 reasons: it was on the list of devices my power company would help pay for and it had an HA integration. less than 6 months after I bought it, the company killed the API that the HA integration relied on.

Luckily for me, the HA integration wasn't that big of a deal, more of "nice to have", but I learned my lesson to never use non-local cloud functionality as a selling point.

Re: Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

#12

Post by agilob »

smolder wrote: post #10

This is like suing somebody for using chopsticks to eat a meal you sold them. Where is the financial damage? Do they sell their own automation products? Even if that's the case, and they're fork-sellers on the side in my analogy, there's absolutely no good to come from suppressing these plugins.

>Where is the financial damage?

They offered API that they don't want people to use. Maintaining APIs and uptime costs, but they only wanted their API to be used by their apps that collect data about you.

Re: Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

#13

Post by Tomte »

MostlyStable wrote: post #11

Per the one tweet in the article that says they only bought one of these appliances because of the HA plugin: the lesson is don't buy smart devices that have cloud control. Whether or not they have local automation plugins (like HA), or just that have apps/cloud services, expecting those capabilities to remain for the life of the device is a fool's errand. We have a host of examples of cloud services being killed and…

Philips Hue did run locally, and now they are rolling out updates where a cloud account is required.

Re: Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

#14

Post by mytailorisrich »

hansihe wrote: post #6

> We are writing to inform you that we have discovered two Home Assistant integration plug-ins developed by you [...] that are in violation of our terms of service > Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner, which is causing significant economic harm to our Company. > We take the protection of our intellectual property very seriously and demand that you immediately cease and desist…

IANAL, but this sounds like bullshit intended at scaring people into compliance. An individual cannot afford legal fees against a corporation no matter what. The usual.

Re: Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

#15

Post by MostlyStable »

Tomte wrote: post #13
MostlyStable wrote: post #11

Per the one tweet in the article that says they only bought one of these appliances because of the HA plugin: the lesson is don't buy smart devices that have cloud control. Whether or not they have local automation plugins (like HA), or just that have apps/cloud services, expecting those capabilities to remain for the life of the device is a fool's errand. We have a host of examples of cloud services being killed and…

Philips Hue did run locally, and now they are rolling out updates where a cloud account is required.

Yeah the second rule is: for anything that runs locally and for which your use doesn't require an internet connection: put it on a separate network without WAN access.

I also had to learn that lesson painfully when my network connected Brother printer got a (unasked for and unapproved) firmware update that disabled the 3rd party toner cartridge it was using. It's now blocked from the internet in my router, but it's unfortunately a case of shutting the barn door after the cows are gone.

Re: Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

#17

Post by MostlyStable »

Tomte wrote: post #7

Never heard of them. May the Streisanding commence.

You may not have heard of Haier but I'm pretty sure you've heard of GE Appliance and Hoover.

>Haier is a multinational home appliances and consumer electronics corporation selling a wide range of products under the brands General Electric Appliances, Hotpoint, Hoover, Fisher & Paykel, and Candy.

Re: Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

#18

Post by r0ckarong »

elkos wrote: post #3

I wish there would be an appliance manufacturer that would actually hire developers to create and maintain Home Assistant.

Ah hell naw. Walled garden much? If anyone dumps significant enough money into the project they're going to expect "a return".

Re: Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

#19

Post by joshvm »

Tomte wrote: post #13
MostlyStable wrote: post #11

Per the one tweet in the article that says they only bought one of these appliances because of the HA plugin: the lesson is don't buy smart devices that have cloud control. Whether or not they have local automation plugins (like HA), or just that have apps/cloud services, expecting those capabilities to remain for the life of the device is a fool's errand. We have a host of examples of cloud services being killed and…

Philips Hue did run locally, and now they are rolling out updates where a cloud account is required.

Hue bulbs and strips run fine on HA. For a couple of reasons, I have a completely offline system running in a Docker container with a ZigBee dongle (mainly I have no control over my LAN). I don't use the bridge any more. You don't get some of the scenes and other functionality that the bridge offers, but 90% of the functionality is there.

The bridge already has some weird requirements like refusing to work unless you connect an ethernet cable. As far as I know the update is to force you to use an account with the app, but the devices should still be compliant with other controllers.

Re: Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

#20

Post by supergeek133 »

elkos wrote: post #3

I wish there would be an appliance manufacturer that would actually hire developers to create and maintain Home Assistant.

Home Assistant users are small minority of many of these companies user bases (including ours), and these integrations being locally focused often poll HEAVILY causing an upside down ratio in API traffic compared to all other users.

The solution is to allow local interfaces (matter, HTTP, etc) but most company cybersecurity teams just freak out at this.

Oh, and the reason we don't have a full time team managing HA is like I said.. addressable market versus FAANG/Samsung.

It takes a full time person (persons) to manage Alexa, Google, Samsung, etc.

Post reply on HN