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posted by takyon on Thursday April 07 2016, @11:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the daily-reminder dept.

An article at The Electronic Frontier Foundation goes over a recent decision by the home automation company Nest to disable some of its customers' devices in May:

The Hub debuted in 2013 and was discontinued after Nest acquired Revolv in late 2014. One selling point was that the one-time payment of $300 included a "Lifetime Subscription," including updates. In fact, the device shipped without all of its antennas being functional yet. Customers expected that the antennas would be enabled via updates.

Customers likely didn't expect that, 18 months after the last Revolv Hubs were sold, instead of getting more upgrades, the device would be intentionally, permanently, and completely disabled.

The article also highlights the legal grey area for customers who attempt to keep their own hardware functional, due to "conflicting court decisions about the scope of Section 1201" (of the DMCA).

The EFF article links to a medium.com posting which goes over the experience of a user of the hardware in question:

On May 15th, my house will stop working. My landscape lighting will stop turning on and off, my security lights will stop reacting to motion, and my home made vacation burglar deterrent will stop working. This is a conscious intentional decision by Google/Nest. [...] Google is intentionally bricking hardware that I own.

Originally spotted at Hacker News.

Previously: Google Shows us the Future of Cloud-Dependent Home Automation


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2016, @12:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2016, @12:36PM (#328438)

    Purchased a device which:
        1. requires a web service outside user's control to *operate*, not only for updates
        2. runs opaque, proprietary software.

    Manufacturer eventually discontinues said web service required for device operation because reasons (out of business, acquired, whatever).

    Yeah, making and selling such a device is a dick move on the manufacturer's part, but that's sadly not at all new or surprising.

    OTOH, to the person complaining: WTF did you expect ? Did you not see this coming ? Did they actively hide from you that the device required an external service for day to day operation ? If not, I'm sorry, but it sucks to be you. You can't really expect a third party to run a service forever just for you, regardless of what some sales brochure promised you a long time ago.

    If that's all true, claiming they "intentionally bricked" your hardware is a bit disingenuous. They simply stopped running a service, they didn't actively send a self-destruct sequence *into* your device. I rather feel you fell for an obviously flawed design requiring services and components you didn't control and couldn't replace, which while it still sucks is quite a bit different than "they bricked my perfectly good working hardware".

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2016, @01:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2016, @01:13PM (#328456)

    That sounds like Android