Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 6:58 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #112

profeta wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just because the car owner allow search of his property, it does not make your property available. and i am also pretty sure even a bad lawyer could get you a criminal kidnap case out of this.

Hah. Has anyone been able to uphold a "You agree to being abducted" in a terms of service before?

It's not, legally, abduction when you are in an airliner and the pilot reroutes because of a security incident; why would it be in a single passenger commercial automated vehicle?

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

#312

Post by qb45 » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 7:34 AM UTC

syntheticnature wrote: post #42

darkclarity wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the public will eventually notice that gadgets and appliances that rely on apps and internet access are a risky investment. Even multinational appliance manufacturers give up on the smart features in their TVs after several years. Forget the high end products with their fancy features and instead stick with reliable basic/mid range products that will last for decades rather than years.

What's "amusing" to me is it seems that all except the very lowest end TVs come with "smart" features, now. The good news is that it's not really a differentiator, the bad news is that a poor integration can cause your TV to "boot slowly" -- my current TV, purchased for other reasons but with smart features included, won't let you use the input selection button until about 30s after being turned on from standby.

> my current TV, purchased for other reasons but with smart features included, won't let you use the input selection button until about 30s after being turned on from standby.

Just about on par with those vacuum tube TV sets of the past millenium.

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

#313

Post by iofj » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 8:00 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #309

iofj wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked on "smart" hardware, this can't be done. For the reason of regulation. Essentially, the law demands that no matter what you do with the software, the product won't malfunction (not just "not explode", it needs to work). Obviously that means no software that isn't made by the same engineering team ... also once the hardware is out that means no changes to the software unless someone does make their fridg…

This makes sense into you throw OTA updates and cloud services into the mix. I'm not sure how those would even be allowed by the "the software must not change" rule. But even if you interpret it generosity, shutting down the service or pushing an update that bricks the device is very clearly an update that breaks functionality. Wouldn't that be forbidden by the above rules as well? Also, there are "hackable" products…

Yep I would agree that breaking updates are a risk. In the case of a cloud service though, I'd bet the contract would specify a minimum maintenance duration very clearly spelled out, and that's going to be a few years, no more.

OpenWRT routers have been in the legal clear zone for a while (due to FCC exception for the WiFi bands), but that's changing [1]

[1] http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/07/27/new-fcc-rules-may-pre... (FCC page https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/kdb/forms/FTSSearchResultPage.cfm... )

People are somewhat confused about this. For instance you can change the firmware of smartphones, no ? Well, no, you can't. You see, what people call a cell phone contains a 100% locked down actual cell phone, and a PDA that's completely independent (and in some cases, more than one locked down system. E.g. NFC is it's own locked down system as well). These are fun things, they're smaller and smaller. In the last 2 years the actual cellphone, everything except the antenna fits in 0.5cm x 0.5cm x 0.1cm package that actually contains multiple chips. These things are connected to the audio devices of the phone, and therefore have sole control over what comes out of the speaker and where the microphone goes. They also have a serial network interface these days for 3G/4G, and the sim connects directly to these chips.

So technically android (or ios, or windows phone, or blackbery, ...) does not run on cellphones, it runs on the PDAs that we insert into cellphones. Therefore it does not need approval.

It also means that Android/IOS do not actually control (for example) the audio on smartphones, or whether a call is answered. Or whether, when asked for the location of the phone or the contents of SMS'es, or to call out and send out the audio the microphone receives, whether those requests are answered. Android/ios would never see those requests (though you may find the microphone suddenly doesn't work anymore in apps). And yes, this works even when there is no sim in the phone.

Whilst there are cellphones that don't provide law enforcement (I wonder if it's only law enforcement though) with these features, they're older models and are getting phased out. If you read this site, I bet your phone has these features. And like all features you don't control, you wouldn't like them if you knew what they were.

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

#314

Post by croon » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 8:59 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #270

Gustomaximus wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often these people are very personable when they want to be. They use this trait to manage up but only those below them, and without the power to make changes, see the real person. This is why and exectutive team needs to be themself spending time at the working level or have eyes/ears there.

That honestly sounds like psychopathic behaviour...

It is: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-som...

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

#315

Post by kuschku » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 9:53 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #150

kuschku wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in most European countries, water is considered a human right: No one can turn off your water, your debt will just increase.

Then the problem would seem to be illegal cutoffs, not the method with which they're performed.

Before, they had to get a court order just to get into your house to turn it off – now they can turn you off remotely, and you have to go to court to contest it.

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

#316

Post by specialist » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #121

x0x0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long, as a practical manner, is google required to run these servers? Until all the devices die? 3 years? 5 years? Don't get me wrong, I'm with you. I think 4 years from sale is reasonable though. Whatever the commitment is, it should be on the packaging, and it would be nice if the various state and federal consumer protection laws were applied here.

I think the business model of "selling things" may be out-of-date at this point, and instead we'll see companies giving away hardware that requires that you subscribe to a monthly service to use it. A number of old-economy businesses already do this, eg. razors, printers, car leases, apartments. Kinda ironic that this comes on the heels of the "ownership society" though.

Long time coming.

I read The Goal and its sequels in the early 90s. The struggling fictional businesses were turned around by transitioning from production towards service oriented business models. Very out of the box thinking at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)

I really enjoyed the books at the time. Not great literature. But very thought provoking.

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

#317

Post by scrupulusalbion » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 3:53 PM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #188

SwellJoe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the Dropcam fiasco, I wondered if there would be a market for secure smart devices with an open API. To me, it's an obvious benefit and one that I would buy (whereas I won't buy the cloud-based devices of this sort), but I suspect the ease of use of something like Dropcam trumps all of the other considerations. I even considered doing a Kickstarter to build something in that space; the technical side, both hard…

The problem with taking these things out of the cloud is that you're then a hardware provider rather than a service provider. Your revenue would come from selling increasingly inexpensive hardware and/or trying to sell your software to run in a consumer environment where you have very little control. Very few companies can make money that way. Smartthings is backed by Samsung (800 lb gorilla). They appear to be playi…

Perhaps a hybrid business model could be achieved by setting the hardware to talk to a central server of the user's choice. The server software would be open source and be manageable via a web interface, which is mobile-friendly. The company would simultaneously offer a cloud-based alternative for a monthly fee, so that the user could avoid having to setup his/her own server. As a third option, each device could be managed individually; this is likely most appropriate if the user only has a single device.

So long as the company does not go rogue and purposefully brick the devices, then the company could shutdown and the devices could still be usable. Further, other companies could provide remote management services for these devices. Being IoT devices, though, would make them still susceptible to security issues, but at least being able to use them on a segregated network could limit that from happening.

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

#318

Post by SwellJoe » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

fludlight wrote: post #166

SwellJoe wrote: post #19

I bought a Dropcam when they were a new thing. When I realized they did literally everything via a cloud service and would be a brick without that service, I was furious. The incredible arrogance of a company making a webcam that sends your video to their servers, and provides no means to use the camera in a secure/local fashion, was astonishing to me. I still can't believe something like Dropcam is such a huge succe…

Welcome to your next fridge.

Yeah, I made some cheesy jokes about this on April Fools Day: http://thingmin.com

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

#319

Post by elevenfist » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 8:12 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #305

flashman wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is a lot more subtle. They just don't give a damn about the performance of older devices. The iPhone 5 runs iOS 6 much faster than iOS 9[1]; Apple is clearly more interested in having people upgrade to a faster phone than optimizing software for older ones. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYQgn8J6zbU

Bullshit. El Capitan and iOS 9 both substantially improved the performance of older devices, compared to the previous version. Apple's not "subtle". They are actively working in the opposite direction from what you are claiming. That's why my 9-year-old iMac still works like a charm. That's why iPhones are still able to run the latest software YEARS after the competition has ceased to have any updates. Apple is inter…

My tinfoil-y suspicion is they make my 3-yr-old mac feel slower right before a major OS upgrade. Then i download the new version and am so happy about how snappy everything is for a while. ;)

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

#320

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #234

the_unknown wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... then I would fully expect that I can replace their software with that made by others. Then feel free to make a business decision that part of the original product is no longer profitable and you're leaving the marketplace for sw/support - I still won't like it but at least the consumer has options to live with their not-fully dead hardware. As a consumer - "hey too bad you didn't want to make a business of this b…

I agree that it's annoying when a company sunsets any product (HW, SW or other), but why is it so much more annoying when it's a hardware product? Is it because you still have the physical thing? Most SAAS products have upfront/monthly costs, and when they fold consumers lose these sunk costs, but nobody is writing medium articles about that...

> but why is it so much more annoying when it's a hardware product?

Because applying SaaS business model to hardware is simply fucked up. Also, for many of those products one has to expend significant effort to make them not hackable by end-users, so if a company decides to make a proprietary, cloud-dependent device that then gets bricked when they move on, it only shows they actually worked hard to fuck their customers. Not to mention that in many of those products the cloud is not needed for any sensible reason and is in fact bad engineering - it's included only to make more money off people.

Sadly, as long as customers play ball this nonsense will continue - the market sells what people buy.