Nest plans to offer its smart thermostat to Irish consumers for free when they sign up for a two-year contract with Electric Ireland. Nest chief executive Tony Fadell said at the Web Summit in Dublin that the deal could put his company’s thermostats in up to 1.6 million homes, according to CNET, and claimed that similar deals would be announced for other countries in the future.
[...] Google is infamous for its ability to offer consumers products which are paid for not by their users but by the ads those users see. Its products are among the best in their categories, and when it’s free to use them, there’s little reason for consumers to pay for another service. Now Google is just applying that same logic to the real world — and it will probably work out for it just as well.
Even I’ve grown sick of hearing this sentiment, but it’s more relevant now than ever: If you aren’t the one paying for a service, you are the product.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:41AM
If you aren’t the one paying for a service, you are the product
And, if you are paying boatloads of money for the service (like Verizon wireless and their fat 33% profit margin [forbes.com]), you are still the product since Verizon will sell off your privacy by planting supercookies on your web traffic [soylentnews.org] for ad targeting. So, you can't pay your way out of getting screwed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by davester666 on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:42AM
and it's not just the 'big boys'
every fitness widget, mileage tracker for your car or other gizmo that connects to your phone, even though your phone is powerful enough to process and present you with the results immediately, instead, the device makers app helpfully forces you [otherwise, the widget does NOTHING for you] to create an account on their web site, uploads your data to their web site, and then promptly rents your data to every tom, dick and harry that happens to walk by with a dollar [of course, it is incompetently anonymized].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @03:06AM
Yeah, it turns out, even if you're paying, most services are selling your data, so unless it is a company like google that specifically doesn't sell your data, you're the product, even if you're also paying for a product or service too.
It is so funny that this gets trotted out whenever people see the name "google," since they are one of the only companies who aren't selling your data.
The problem with the cliche is that once it becomes cliche and you start repeating it whenever the situation comes up, by then you're not thinking in terms of the actual issue, and lose sight of if it even applies or not. He should probably realize that if he's sick of hearing something, he should just not say it, and say something intelligent instead. Or at least make an attempt at faking it.
How about, "unless the privacy policy says you're not the product, you are; even if you paid money." This one is so much more true, and doesn't falsely accuse everything that is free of lacking privacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:56AM
i really can't fathom why someone would want a 'smart' thermostat. just buy a programmable one. i can't imagine that a 'smart thermostat' can save more money than a smartly programmed programmable thermostat.
then again, smart cars and home appliances sound like 'sucker bait' to me as well. what is getting easier for me to imagine is a distant future where people do whatever the machines tell them to do. something along these lines...
egg sales are down or egg company needs to make a few more sales this month. egg company pays 'smart fridge company' to update their appliances. the update causes the refrigerators to suggest buying more eggs prematurely. not the end of the world, i know, but it pisses me off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:00AM
oh, and before anyone suggests that a 'smart fridge' could save a lot of money by letting you know what's inside without opening door...
how about a fridge with a transparent door? simple solutions are better than 'smart' ones.
(Score: 3, Funny) by sudo rm -rf on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:49AM
Transparent door? This would solve the fridge light mystery at last!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Geezer on Thursday November 06 2014, @01:22PM
This mystery was definitively solved in 1971 at the North Hall dormitory at the University of Redlands, when an asian exchange engineering student volunteered to be placed inside a functional refrigerator with the shelving removed (originally to permit pony keg cooling). Unlike Schoedinger's cat, said student survived the experiment and was rewarded in the prevailing fashion of engineering students of the era: beer.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday November 06 2014, @01:22PM
But aren't materials that are transparent to light also less good at heat insulation? And if only one surface is transparent you can't see what's on the other side of the fridge because things are in the way.
So, maybe little cameras in various positions inside the fridge are the way forward?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:24AM
i really can't fathom... i can't imagine...
Just because you can't, doesn't mean no-one else can.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mojo chan on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:40AM
i really can't fathom why someone would want a 'smart' thermostat.
Because it saves you money and makes your home more comfortable. It's like energy meters - you wouldn't think that simply having more data would make you more energy efficient, but it does. The fact that the thermostat learns and reacts to your behaviour means you don't need to fiddle with it, but still get energy savings and a nice environment.
It's all a trade off. I have a sleep monitor that uses an app on my phone to display data, and needs an online account. Now Omron knows my sleep patterns, but at least I sleep better. They don't seem to be spamming me either, so I'm okay with it for now. If they do become douchbags I'll use data protection laws to demand they remove my data. It's not perfect but it's more than worth it to me, to sleep better.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday November 06 2014, @09:49AM
Smart Thermostats are useful for three things mainly..
*) It allows the power company to scale back on power-usage if needed (heating has an awful high latency which makes it great to sacrifice in order to parry peak loads)
*) Most people don't like to program things (remember the humble VCR-clock) and just want something to plug in and forget.
*) Conflict resolution - you want a nice 20c, your s.o want a scorching 24c - a smart enough system would after a while notice what pattern that indicates that the s.o has left the house and the thermostat can be dialed down (even at irregular times)
But yeah, for people that enjoy optimizing things and doesn't mind programming things the smart therostat basically is just an overglorified motion detector.
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:12PM
1. If I want my heater on, I want my heater on. There are many electrical things I can wait until later to use, but the heater is not one of them. Also my heater is gas.
2. The VCR clock had no purpose. Everyone already had clocks. Most modern devices do not come with a clock. It was something to display on the display when there was nothing to display. On screen display obsoleted the clock. The thermostat has a purpose and from what I have seen people LOVE to play with the thermostat!
3. Maybe a good reason, but just not for me.
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(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:58PM
1) Since your heater is gas the notion of a smart thermostat is moot from the utility's point of view.
1b) Out of curiousity, just why would you want your heater on in the very moment your check on it? I mean, if you set it to maintain 22c (71.6f) would you really care that much if it occasionally dipped to 21.6c (70.88f)? (if your building has even passable insulation it will take quite some time for it to drop that much) This is the kind of "latecy" the utilities would fiddle with (imagine spreading it out over a couple of thousand households in a "rolling" pattern to handle a peak demand)
2) Mainly pointed it (VCR clock) out as an instance of something very simple to program that most people still didn't program (also it did have a function - preset time for recording). So far the only people I've seen that enjoy fiddling with their thermostats are people that reprogram their logic, other than that most people I've seen that adjust their thermostats does so grudgingly. (Also, the VCR clock had another function as well, as a clock to use when one didn't have the tv on - OSDs tend to have this nasty drawback of requiring a big display to be on)
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Thursday November 06 2014, @10:14PM
For the VCR clock, I bet it was actually harder to program than most programmable thermostats. And I was being flip about changing the thermostat... seems like someone at work is always complaining and changing the thermostat. I am really surprised they haven't put the plastic lock box on it. Maybe work needs this ultra smart thermostat!
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(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday November 07 2014, @12:39AM
I agree that a "max allowed deviation" would be a good feature, maybe some of them have it.
And well, I wouldn't trust too many with a heater either, but in my case it is because it simply tells too much about how I live.
Most VCR-clock was - and still is - simply flipping the cover for the fron control panel down, hitting the buttom that said "clock" (or had a little clock-symbol) and then hit the chan up/down and tracking up/down (one was inc/dec, the other was change field, on some "enter/ok" or "play" was the "change field")..
Your workplace would benefit from a smart thermostat only in case people was prevented from adjusting it, a much better method would be to simply set it to something sane (say 70F) and then have an online-voting-system that is polled each hour (allow the workers to set a "prefered target" to allow automation of voting) if it should be increased a degreed, stay the same, or lowered a degree.. People in groups can not be controlled with altering anything that effects the whole group.
And I must ask, just how does one manage to freeze the pipes at 55F? (with an improper setup that allows for evaporative cooling I can see how, but with a proper setup?)
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Friday November 07 2014, @05:55PM
Here is what I meant about 55F freezing pipes. I wouldn't have thought it could happen, but then I realized that I think it did actually happen to me once. http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=4723&cid=113610 [soylentnews.org]
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(Score: 1) by SacredSalt on Thursday November 06 2014, @06:22PM
I have a friend that takes frequent trips to Thailand -- at times these can become extended trips. He figured, well, no one in the house, I can just set the heat to kick on at 55 and go about my business. It was the last day of fall of when he left. Then we had a pair of the most bitter cold winter weeks we have had in 30 years (stuff Canadians wouldn't whine about, but when you get in the -17 to -20F range and don't have stuff like engine block heaters ... because you never needed one before ... yeah, its an issue!). More typical winter is 25-50F at that time of year. His pipes exploded in his house as that low of a kick on was too low to protect is pipes. The resulting damage was over 20K to his home.
I'm pretty sure he would now think "bitchin'! I can control this from my phone/internet!" is worth a few dollars per month.
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Thursday November 06 2014, @06:58PM
So far I am in agreement with OP that it seems like a solution in search of a problem. Thermostats were a solution to a problem. Programmable thermostats were a solution to a problem.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by novak on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:48PM
Because your house is not at 55F everywhere, and the pipes usually explode under the floor or in a crawlspace or in a place where it is colder than where your thermostat monitors it.
A lower tech solution to this problem is called "having friends check your house." Much less automated, much less snazzy, probably cheaper, and doesn't involve you with spy companies.
novak
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Thursday November 06 2014, @10:09PM
There was an argument about who last touched the heater. 2 of us thought we had set it to 50-55 and figured someone else must have turned it off completely. The other roommates said they didn't touch it. Never occurred to any of us that we could have had frozen pipes with the heater set at 55, but that might explain how that happened.
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @03:01AM
The technique for preventing pipes freezing is to leave the faucet dripping when it gets that cold. The pipes are under the house, and are not heated. The area under your house has to be vented to prevent moisture build-up, if your heater was heating that area your whole house would be cold even with the heater on max when you hit those types of temperatures. The solution for preventing pipes freezing during extended trips is to have the right sort of pipe insulation for your climate, and to install cold-weather insulated panels over the vents during winter.
It sounds like even after experiencing frozen pipes, your friend didn't learn about... frozen pipes. If it gets just as cold again, his pipes will still freeze. Frozen pipes isn't a special thing that happens when people are away, it happens just as likely if you're home. It only costs a few hundred dollars for the insulation to do it yourself. Of course, he didn't do any of it himself and lives in a giant multi-million dollar mansion, and also over-paid the plumber, since he spent 20k on frozen pipes. So maybe 5k for insulation. Still cheaper.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Friday November 07 2014, @04:35PM
I'm planning to network my thermostat and a bunch of other appliances when I buy a house in a year or two. No way in hell am I buying one of these NEST devices -- I'll build my own system with a Raspberry Pi -- but I can think of a couple interesting uses for putting it online.
One example: Programming it based on external data, like the weather. It may be 50 degrees when I wake up, but if it's going up past 70 before I get home, you can shut the heat completely off while I'm at work. On the other hand, if it's 50 degrees out and getting colder before I leave, you should probably turn it on and maintain the current temperature. Won't be a huge difference, but might save a bit of energy.
A better, but less interesting example: Programming it based on my actions, rather than the clock. I work in a performance testing lab that runs 24/7. So some days I'm working 7am-3pm, other days I'm working 3pm-11pm. Sometimes my shifts switch with less than 24 hours notice. Sometimes they switch more than once in a single week. So with a smart thermostat, my phone can send it a message when I arrive at the office to turn it down, and send another message when I leave the office to turn it back up. With a programmable thermostat, I'd need to reprogram the thing once or twice a week!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Thursday November 06 2014, @11:30AM
How does this thing connect to the internet.? If it's the homes wireless network, can't you just block it from accessing the internet.?
I do this with my "Smart" TV. It can see my NAS storage and access my files, but it has no access to the outside world.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday November 06 2014, @11:58AM
The two most frightening words in English: IT'S FREE.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 1, Troll) by mtrycz on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:08PM
"It's free" was Poetttering's argument for systemd in that video.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @11:58AM
... and will save you quite a lot of money in heating and cooling costs, so you will quickly recoup your investment.
Just be sure to purchase one that works for the kind of heater and cooler you actually use - oil furnace, wall-mounted gas heater or what have you.
Just today I was deeply dismayed to visit a bank website, and firefox asked me for permission to pass my location onto the banks web server. I clicked the No button, then the bank's page presented a map that displayed all the branches close to where I was at the time. I puzzled over that at first then realized that the bank had geolocated my IP when firefox didn't provided my location.
Just now I realized I could defeat that by installing a proxy on my Xen server that's in a data center in Silicon Valley. I live in Vancouver, Washington so anyone who tries to geolocate me would be eight hundred miles off.
I didn't used to worry so much about disclosing my location online but the last time I did give permission, the website pinpointed me to within roughly thirty feet to where I actually was.
Look, I'm a generally law-abiding citizen. It's not like I'm trying to hide from anyone, but being geolocated on the web, or as that other article has the British MP wanting law enforcement and intelligence to be able to follow cell phones around, I just don't want to be followed.
Consider that stalking is a felony, even if you never, ever come close to your victim. If you don't believe me, try following someone _wherever_ they go. Even if you never set foot anywhere that the general public isn't completely welcome, keep that up for long and you'll be doing hard time in the pen. How is it any different when online advertisers and the government stalk me by geolocating my IP to thirty feet?
(Score: 1) by SecurityGuy on Thursday November 06 2014, @05:41PM
That's your browser, actually. I've written code to do this, and you simply request the browser hand over the location data. If the user grants it, you get a lat, long, altitude, and precision. IIRC, when I did it my test browser didn't report altitude, and there were a bunch of other optional parameters that weren't implemented such as heading and speed. Accuracy just depends on how good a GPS fix your device gets. On the bottom floor of a 2 story building, I'd often get 100+ meters. Outside with a clear view of the satellites, I'd often get less than 7 meters, which is on par with your roughly 30 feet.