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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
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Thursday April 07 2016, @03:55PM
Do many people here really think that net-connected devices like this, dependent on a third-party, were ever a good idea. The same would have happened if they'd gone bankrupted, been sued for patent violations, their domain name lapsed, or whatever else that could possibly happen.
Working in schools, my bursars are keen to emphasise that lifetime guarantee are useless if the company itself goes bankrupt (and if the offer of a lifetime guarantee seems too good to be true, wouldn't that company be more likely to be offering the impossible and therefore liable to go bankrupt if they miscalculated?). It doesn't even matter that you have things on paper in that instance.
Thus things like cloud services et al are considered to have to be "replaceable". Their resilience and uptime is taken into account but we also need to be able to go "Oh well" and move to another provider, or even back in-house. This is especially true as businesses move towards SIP trunking, cloud services, remote backups, managed print etc. It's all very well having these companies take that facility off your hands, but you need to be able to cope if that company ups and leaves one day. In schools, for instance, we wouldn't be able to use a company if - say - the CEO was accused of child pornography or similar. There is an instance of a famous educational website used by lower-years (Years 1-4) which was owned by someone later discovered to be a convicted paedophile. We all stopped using it overnight because you are then supplying - however small - children's data to that guy, or at the least a company where that guy might have access. If parents get wind of things like that, we would suffer reputational damage if nothing else.
But outside of work, even as a geek, I don't want that kind of thing. I have CCTV DVR that I have control of myself. I have home-monitored house alarm - I built it myself from off-the-shelf components and GSM diallers and I control it, nobody else. If I wanted thermostats etc. then that's what X10 and the like are for, surely? Same functionality. Same cost. Same hassle. But under my control and only accessible by me.
That said, my most-geeky friend has a Nest thermostat and smoke alarm. I often discuss this and they don't see the problem. They have no other system, even if they have multiple units. So I guess it's not even just a "geek-thing".
I wouldn't want any one company having that kind of control. I mean, honestly, do I want some minimum-wage worker at, say, ADT or Yale knowing when my house alarm is / is not set and potentially letting them have control of it and/or ability to shut down calls from it? I can't see how that's "security" compared to having my own dialling unit with email and GSM alerts, that has no subscription beyond a Pay-As-You-Go SIM card, that texts me directly and lets me judge just the same whether to call the police or fire or not.
Honestly, as a geek, why do you have to have that third-party company in the loop AT ALL compared to some cheap junk off Amazon and wiring it up the way you want? It's pretty easy nowadays to tie all that kind of stuff in together. Hell, my car texts me if it moves and I can disable the engine remotely and track the GPS. And that's a £20 gadget off Amazon that does that, not the in-car systems where it was £400 for the option. And it texts ME, not the car manufacturer.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday April 07 2016, @04:12PM
The Soylentnews people isn't perhaps the group that falls for this? or even the greeny dot group. The problem comes likely when you have a big market of people that won't do due diligence even if their life depended on it. Add to that when you visit them the security cameras may be used by that minimum-wage worker so that he may show his friends that in turn upload to some video service.
Just to add to this mess. Most devices these days, don't come with any proper documentation.
(Score: 1) by Chrontius on Friday April 08 2016, @11:12PM
Your plugging of X10 suggests you never used it. In practice, X10 is prone to develop poltergeists - bad enough to completely destroy any wife acceptance factor they earned - slowly and with great difficulty - in a single weekend.
I’m inclined to suggest Z-Wave as a sufficiently-open replacement that … you know, has authentication.
I’m rather curious what kit you’re using and how you tied it all together, actually. I’m running on Wink kit, but the hub was free, and all the devices are hub-agnostic. I could run it all off a Raspberry Pi with a Z-Wave and ZigBee breakout board, if I was fed up with commercially available hubs, but I’m not entirely sure where to start rolling my own, even though I know it is, theoretically, possible.