As a programmer, if someone asked me to do this, I would walk out.
Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
361–370 of 478 posts
Re: Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
#362Re: Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
#363What a total waste. Apparel companies are starting to participate in the secondary market for their used gear, why can't Sonos do something similar? Examples: - Patagonia Worn Wear ( https://wornwear.patagonia.com ) - REI Used Gear ( https://www.rei.com/used/shop/gear ) - Arc'teryx Rock Solid ( https://rocksolid.arcteryx.com ) As it stands, Sonos is effectively buying their old speakers and then throwing them away. C…
It's not clear to me from the information here that Sonos themselves can't refurbish a device that's been put into recycle mode. This seems to be a technique to block third party refurbishers only.
It appears they can, but choose not to. This way they can ensure that less used units are available on the market, forcing people to buy a new unit instead.
Re: Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
#364What a total waste. Apparel companies are starting to participate in the secondary market for their used gear, why can't Sonos do something similar? Examples: - Patagonia Worn Wear ( https://wornwear.patagonia.com ) - REI Used Gear ( https://www.rei.com/used/shop/gear ) - Arc'teryx Rock Solid ( https://rocksolid.arcteryx.com ) As it stands, Sonos is effectively buying their old speakers and then throwing them away. C…
Patagonia are famously environmental and not really run on a capitalist basis...
I believe that Patagonia cares about the environment and wishes there was more they could do, but I think they are absolutely driven by the forces of capitalism, whether they like it or not, and it’s visible in their current practices. They run holiday ads and promotions, they open new stores, they release a new line each year. Yes they sprinkle in campaigns and messaging to not buy new unless you really need it and they facilitate recycling/reuse of their past products, but capitalism still forces them to seek growth, relevance, and sales to survive, which they do. Not faulting them for it, just wishing it wasn’t that way.
Re: Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
#365This could go very bad for Sonos. Imagine a virus that looks for Sonos devices on a network and bricks them all via "recycle mode"! The API probably isn't even locked down. I think it's unauthenticated SOAP/UPnP. An even dumber attack: guests with your wifi credentials can download the Sonos app and break your gear. It's entirely unauthenticated.
> Imagine a virus that looks for Sonos devices on a network and bricks them all via "recycle mode"!
This would be an incredible public service. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to do it so I won't.
Re: Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are literally doing exactly that. You can take your old speaker into a Sonos store or ship it (on Sonos dime) back to them. They then refurbish and resell, and you get a discount. This story is at best lazy reporting with many facts left out or unresearched. https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/certified-refurbished https://www.sonos.com/en-us/tradeup
I already replied to your other comment but in the interest of correcting this misinformation, you can neither ship your bricked device to Sonos nor bring it into a Sonos store. https://twitter.com/sonossupport/status/1179459927624036357?... https://twitter.com/sonossupport/status/1198204183335309313?... https://twitter.com/sonossupport/status/1196142002406133761?...
In Belgium, any electronics vendor has 'aanvaardingsplicht', the duty to accept your old device when selling you a new one. So sonos shops here have to accept them. In fact, you can bring in your old 20kg tube radio and claim your new sonos is replacing it.
Re: Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally the only "improvements" that are ever going to happen to audio in your lifetime will be a) internetifying it and b) adding more restrictions to how you use it. We've hit peak audio (best reproduction, no restrictions on usage) and it's only downhill from here. I look forward to my 2025 speakers that only work for an hour a day unless I pay for extra time credits. "Do you wish to play a) music b) music and l…
> peak audio Nah, there are plenty of other things, like positional audio. I remember (through a pleasant haze of nostalgia) my old A3D-based sound card in the 90s as being even better than modern EAX stuff. Potential improvement in that area can be both through simply adding speakers, and through tuning per-speaker output to forge better audio-cues. (To wit, Head Related Transfer Functions applied to headphones, pos…
Monster Sound A300 and 3dfx Voodoo 3000 FTW! That was peak hardware for my teens!
Re: Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
#368What a total waste. Apparel companies are starting to participate in the secondary market for their used gear, why can't Sonos do something similar? Examples: - Patagonia Worn Wear ( https://wornwear.patagonia.com ) - REI Used Gear ( https://www.rei.com/used/shop/gear ) - Arc'teryx Rock Solid ( https://rocksolid.arcteryx.com ) As it stands, Sonos is effectively buying their old speakers and then throwing them away. C…
Then they would have to continue supporting those devices, which isn’t part of the planned obsolescence business model. It would also dilute the luxury brand halo that Sonos has tried to cultivate. It’s more like Louis Vuitton getting into the secondhand market. They too would (and do) destroy merchandise rather than let it get sold at a discount and dilute the brand value.
It's worth noting that other than the physical controller devices (which were discontinued in favor of mobile apps but still given a generous lifetime), Sonos still supports all of their hardware from the very first speakers / amps that they released.
Not that this makes their current actions ok, but at least they had been trying until now. I think they are now realizing that having a product that doesn't have built-in planned obsolescence may be hurting their profits
Re: Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t say the same about other tech, but audio just doesn’t age at the same speed. People's ears have not changed, and the ability to reproduce sound has been nearly perfected. If you're not too picky/audiophillic, like most people, the requirements are even lower.
Literally the only "improvements" that are ever going to happen to audio in your lifetime will be a) internetifying it and b) adding more restrictions to how you use it. We've hit peak audio (best reproduction, no restrictions on usage) and it's only downhill from here. I look forward to my 2025 speakers that only work for an hour a day unless I pay for extra time credits. "Do you wish to play a) music b) music and l…
We had indeed excellent analog audio for many decades. But there are still very exciting things happening which are improving the audio quality a lot - expecially in the middle and lower range of the spectrum.
There are great pure analog setups, but they require a lot of very expensive and bulky technology, none the least, large speakers and a carefully set up room with good accustics.
Modern digital technology makes this so much easier and more. There are excellent digital power amps, where you have power amplification on one chip integrated with the DAC. Just looking at some of the features of a simple Homepod, there are exciting technologies involved, which could improve also higher end audio. First is driving the bass speaker in a feedback loop. In classical audio technology, you would have a power signal and have to rely on the speaker to transfer this into motion with as little as possible of distortion. Which required the speaker to behave like a perfect spring for different frequencies. So this is a very difficult task, making the speaker expensive and often imperfect. Homepods drive their bass speakers in a feedback loop, the desired position of the membrane is calculated and an electric circuit drives it into that position. It does no longer depend on the mechanical properties of the membrane, also allowing for much higher motion range than in a classical speaker. Also, the active monitoring of the room acoustics with several directional microphones is an improvement vs. classical set up amplifiers, even if they had a microphone input for set up.
So I don't see us hitting peak audio at all yet, that makes for exciting times for music lovers.
Re: Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
#370I was going to buy a Sonos speaker, but this changed my mind. I'm not buying a device that was built to be bricked. I would have bought a Sonos instead of an Apple Homepod because I thought they were more "open". But if the manufacturer can just make my device useless, I'm not interested. Audio and Hifi gear is extremely versatile and virtually everything is compatible. High end devices easily last for decades. This…
>I was going to buy a Sonos speaker, but this changed my mind. I'm not buying a device that was built to be bricked. I had a complete sonos setup that I rage donated after moving and accidentally connecting it to the internet at which point sonos wouldn't let me play my music until I "upgraded" the software with alexa enabled. Forget about recycle mode, sonos is one of the most intrusive privacy invading companies th…
All voice assistant service options are entirely disabled until you go into the settings and set one of them up. The update may well have made it possible to set up Alexa, but it would not have done so.