SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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, 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.