
Nest Reminds Customers That Ownership Isn't What It Used to Be - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/nest-reminds-customers-ownership-isnt-what-it-used-be
======
acidburnNSA
_> In an ideal world, Hub owners would be free to point their devices at a
different central server, run by a third-party competitor or a trusted friend,
or even run such a server on their own. They would likewise be free to
collaborate on improved software that would unlock the potential of the Hub
hardware or purchase such software from a competitor to Nest._

This ideal world exists, and it is glorious. I somewhat recently set up a
Raspberry Pi 2 with [https://home-assistant.io](https://home-assistant.io) and
a cheap z-wave USB stick. The interface is through a webpage (not an app), and
I access it remotely using a OpenVPN server on my router.

It's interfacing with door sensors, motion sensors, wall switches, cameras, my
stereo, HUE lights, etc. It can email me or send me SMS for notifications.
When I wake up and walk past a motion sensor, the lights come on in a dim
scene. When I come home and open the door, the lights turn on. I have tons of
rules and it's super fun. Totally self-hosted, and the main server is
completely open-source (written in Python3).

I haven't set it up with a thermostat but lots of other people have.

~~~
zongitsrinzler
I don't think you can compare anything Raspberry Pi with a polished consumer
product. The ideal world does not exist for those who already spent $300 on
the hub.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Unfortunately, this is a huge market gap nobody's currently filling. "I want
an open source platform, but I don't want to put together my own wiring" is a
surprisingly open field. I saw an advert for ONE such device that claimed to
be fully open source, but you can't buy it yet, so that doesn't really mean
anything yet.

~~~
rimantas
Maybe that's because this demand is much lower than you imagine? Nobody cares
about open source.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
We already have huge widespread popularity for things like the Raspberry Pi
and the Arduino. The former is nearly a household name, even if people have no
idea what to do with them. And even if you don't know what open source does,
is, or means, the benefits of such a product will prove itself over on it's
own.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, Open Source / Open Hardware in IoT is a step back in the direction of
how things always were and how they are supposed to be - you buy the device,
you own it. People understand that. They expect their washing machines and
microwave ovens to work until the hardware itself breaks (let's forget for a
moment about the sick practice of planned obsolescence). They expect to be
able to repair them or find a third party that can.

People don't have to understand "open source". They will understand the
concept of "works until hardware dies", or "can be taken to a repairman for
fixing", or "I can go to a mall and buy an extension from some random vendor
and it will work".

~~~
tamana
People do NOT expect to repair their home appliances anymore. Repair costs
more than replacement.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
This is doubtful. Nobody buys a new furnace when it has a problem. Ovens,
fridges, and dishwashers are all generally far cheaper to repair with a local
repairman than replace.

A lot of house or condo sales now come with "home warranties", where a flat
fee guarantees your appliances for a year, and repairs only cost a $100
deductible.

Computers in most cases, even, are now appliance-like. They get replaced less
often, and it's often more affordable to repair them than replace them.

------
altitudinous
This is illegal in Australia. A customer can reasonably expect that if they
pay $300 for an electronic thermostat then it will function for a reasonable
amount of time, otherwise the manufacturer will repair or refund/replace. The
reasonable amount of time in this case, particularly for a $300 thermostat,
would be at least 5 and probably at least 10 years.

There was a case that passed through the courts yesterday, Steam tried to
exclude these warranties. They didn't get far with that. Source :
[http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/03/australian-federal-
court-f...](http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/03/australian-federal-court-finds-
valve-guilty-of-misleading-steam-customers/)

~~~
lucb1e
Same in the Netherlands. Not sure there is legal precedence but warranty law
says a product should keep working as long as 'reasonably expected'. This
means you don't get 1 or 2 years of warranty, but potentially fifty if that
would be reasonable. If the seller (they can't forward you to the manufacturer
or anyone else, either) refuses however, I suppose there is little short of a
lawsuit that will help you through.

~~~
ascorbic
I believe that's the same for the whole of the EU. The fact they were still on
sale 18 months ago would make this pretty open and shut, as there's a
mandatory 2 year warranty. The question is whether these were sold in the EU.

------
tobyjsullivan
This whole saga serves less as a warning to customers and more as a warning to
businesses. Be careful about acquiring other companies - liabilities come in
many forms.

It may have seemed like a great deal when Nest bought Revolv - after all, we
know acquihires are usually based on the fact that the acquired company was
going under anyways. Pay a minimal amount for a failing company and get some
great engineers.

But it sounds like they didn't anticipate the brand problem they would
ultimately face for ending support for a product that was inevitably going to
disappear in either case. Something early messaging (say, at the time of the
acquisition) could have helped soften.

Nest didn't build this product - Revolv did. And they banked their company on
its success and lost. Nest might be alive and healthy but it doesn't seem
right to say they somehow acted dishonestly just because they picked up the
pieces of a failed company but didn't want to prop up a product which nobody
wanted.

~~~
studentrob
> it doesn't seem right to say they somehow acted dishonestly just because
> they picked up the pieces of a failed company but didn't want to prop up a
> product which nobody wanted.

Agree with all of your comment except except this part.

Had Nest acquired the company _after_ Revolv independently announced it would
discontinue its product, then customers wouldn't have reason to be unhappy
with Nest.

M&A is risky and research is important.

This case seems like a catch 22 for Nest. Acquire the assets early and inherit
the legacy product burden. Don't do that, and risk losing access to the same
assets. I'm sure they did their research.

What is not known at this point is the cost of keeping up the systems that
enable Revolv's product. Were they more open about that, I might be more
sympathetic. As it is I'm not sure what could be done to right this other than
give Revolv customers a refund.

~~~
abraae
This is the key point indeed.

Some of us probably have a mental image of a large ec2 instance plugged into
an Oracle RDS instance, nicely monitored, disaster recovery plan tested and
ready, chugging away just fine. Maybe a few $10Ks per year to keep it running.
Why would they piss their customers off just to save a few thousand bucks?

But in reality, maybe the back end is a teetering pile of doggy do, running on
old bare metal machines in a couple of racks, backups not trusted 100%, lots
of humans involved in keeping it running and answering customer support
inquiries - so more like many $100Ks per year (indeed some companies would be
able to spend $1Ms). In this case it would be crazy to try and keep it
running, since there is no new business coming from it.

Likely the truth is somewhere in between.

Some transparency here from Nest would be a PR win.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The solution is to deploy new Nest firmware on the Revolv hardware, not axe
your customer base. Then you at least get to exchange the loss of features
with entree into the current Nest ecosystem. The message now is that all
Alphabet supported hardware can't be trusted. Ha ha sucker. You just blew $300
on a fancy doorstop.

~~~
pmontra
Yes, I can't help to compare this to what happened with Parse. They are
shutting down but they released the backend as open source and customers could
keep going on.

I think that companies should be more careful at offering "lifetime
subscriptions" or similar stuff. You shouldn't be allowed to take back that.
Can the people in their boards be sued for damages even if the company closes?
I don't know about the USA but in other countries board members are personally
responsible in some cases, for example frauds.

------
sqldba
What I love is the number of people who keep espousing cloud services of every
other nature. "Everything is already there! They're better at security than
you!"

And then history shows services close down, change ownership, prices
fluctuate, and there are inside and outside attacks and data loss.

You try to tell people that though and they just close up and repeat the same
argument.

This is why I think repeatable installs / setups of infrastructure is
important, and tested on self hosted infrastructure before bubbles pop.

~~~
chaostheory
Sadly with home automation, most of the commercial turnkey products are cloud
based and they can't run locally. Wink, Smarthings, Kasa, Homekit, Hue, Onhub,
Nest, Mama... nearly everything relies on the cloud.

Hopefully open source can provide a good substitute.

~~~
Semaphor
How does hue rely on the cloud? It doesn't even need internet access unless
you want to update the FW.

~~~
chaostheory
You're right. Hue doesn't require cloud access. Neither does MiCasa or WeMo.

------
barney54
As the owner of a nest thermometer, a couple nest cams, and a nest fire alarm
I sure hope that nest reverses their policy on the Revolv hub. I have been
pretty happy with my nest products so far, but this makes me seriously
reconsider buying any more.

~~~
losteric
I was considering upgrading to a nest smart home, but this has shown they
don't care about customers. They have lost my trust and gained animosity... I
won't give them a penny and I will discourage anyone from buying their
products.

~~~
darkclarity
Just stick with basic thermostats and controls. Using these over-engineered
devices will be a nuisance if you decide to sell your property or temporarily
hand over control to someone else. Never mind the problems with cloud based
vendor lock-in.

------
zik
Surely this is illegal? If a Nest tech turned up at your door and when let in
to do "service" he took a hammer to the device destroying it, people would be
suing left and right for property damage. Surely this is just the same?

~~~
StephenConnell
Are they actually damaging the devices or are they just turning off the remote
servers that the devices rely on?

~~~
gherkin0
The devices were sold with the implicit promise that the servers operated by
the manufacturer would remain in service, so I don't think there's much of a
real distinction between bricking a device by shutting down servers vs.
hitting it with a hammer.

That said, they probably tried to weasel themselves out of any obligation via
the EULA.

~~~
victorhooi
The company, Revolv sold this product to people - then nearly went bankrupt in
2014:

[http://recode.net/2014/10/24/nest-acquires-home-
automation-h...](http://recode.net/2014/10/24/nest-acquires-home-automation-
hub-revolv-but-will-stop-selling-it/)

Another company swooped in, and bought them in 2014 - they immediately stopped
all sales of Revolv products, but decided to keep the Revolv service running
for nearly two years afterwards, for the older customers.

However, eventually, they seem to have decided to pull the pin - perhaps they
knew it'd just keep bleeding money. After all, Revolv never made money, and
they haven't sold any units in nearly two years, so they have zero revenue to
show for it.

Either way - how exactly do you see it as reasonable that they should keep
them up ad infinitum?

I mean, say Revolv had just gone under, and nobody had swooped in to save
them, and keep them on life-support for two more years.

Would you still be yelling about the EULA means a bankrupt company should
still keep paying it's server bills?

I somehow doubt Jeff Bezos is coming to leap in and be like, "Gee, you're
bankrupt. Don't worry, here's a couple million dollars of AWS credits, to keep
your servers running for two years. And don't worry, in two years, I'll give
you a few million dollars more, cause I'm just a nice guy. Oh, and here, let
me load you five of my software engineers, and a couple of my site reliability
engineers, in case it crashes."

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Yeah, right because this company that swooped in to do the saving did it out
of the goodness of their hearts and did not see any benefit to doing so
whatsoever.

Well, if this company happens to be a publicly held company then its investors
should be mad about this habit of going in and buying companies that are not
of value to them.

But I bet they did see a value, but where there is value there can also be
liabilities and you have to assume both of them. You don't get to choose just
the value.

~~~
victorhooi
I never said they did it from the goodness of their hearts.

I said, they swooped in - then ceased all sales of Revolv products. I have no
insight into why - but perhaps they figured Revolv nearly went bankrupt
selling these damn widgets, why would we keep selling them as well. But then
instead of shutting the servers down right then, decided to pay to keep them
running for nearly 2 years.

I'm sure they had rational reasons for buying Revolv, even if the product
never took off.

And perhaps they had reasons for delaying the shutdown for two years.

See, that's the thing I don't get - the company basically failed - somebody
comes in and buys it up, and keeps the lights on for two years, possibly to
avoid exactly the nerd rage we're seeing now. But then the nerds rise up and
rage anyway =).

Hell hath no fury like a nerd with a grudge...haha.

Seriously, some of the things that we as a company get up in arms about - if
you actually talk to mainstream people, they're like, huh?

~~~
andrewprock
The picture you paint is confused at best. It's clear that the company had
some assets that made it worthwhile to "swoop in" instead of allowing the
company to shutter and to buy the assets in a fire sale during bankruptcy.

But it appears that those assets were not it's products, and not it's
customers. So, now that they own the company, and the relationships with the
customers, they decide to not honor their product with those customers.

I suppose that's fine. But you should not be surprised if people read that as
a signal that Nest will do the same thing with any of their other products.

------
astebbin
From The Verge, "Nest says it may offer 'compensation' to Revolv users for
disabling smart home hub:"

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11374358/nest-revolv-
smart-...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11374358/nest-revolv-smart-home-
hub-disable-user-compensation)

~~~
studentrob
Now we know they will give back something but are not sure how much.

The Nest/Revolv situation is reminiscent of when Netflix raised prices in 2011
[1]. It was a great product, and despite being the industry leader, customers
disappeared overnight. Then Netflix made the correction and recovered strong
as ever. In that moment Netflix was touch and go and needed money. Fortunately
for consumers, they survived.

[1] [http://www.cnet.com/news/netflixs-lost-year-the-inside-
story...](http://www.cnet.com/news/netflixs-lost-year-the-inside-story-of-the-
price-hike-train-wreck/)

~~~
chris11
Netflix just hiked their prices up 60%. That's definitely high. But Nest
bricked hardware that customers have already paid for. I have less sympathy
for Nest here.

~~~
studentrob
I'm talking about the price hike years ago when Netflix was still building
steam. These days Netflix is more widely used and they have more money in the
bank. Nest today is still building steam and could be hurt by negative PR.

~~~
throwaway_xx9
studentrob: > Netflix was still building steam.

Netflix's stock price went down, but they already had a huge streaming
business and were not distressingly low on cash.

In fact, raising prices generated record revenue.

So your comments don't make any sense to me.

However, if you had said, "Hollywood could rape Netflix any time they wanted
on licensing fees," then that is actually true and the reason Netflix is a
sketchy investment, and why they are creating their own content.

~~~
studentrob
> So your comments don't make any sense to me.

What I meant was, before the price hike, Netflix's future looked bright. After
the price hike, the future looked a lot less bright. The drop in stock price
shows that investors agreed.

> Netflix's stock price went down, but they already had a huge streaming
> business and were not distressingly low on cash.

I agree not distressingly low, thanks for the correction. In 2011 they had
$376 million [1]. That's still low given your point that they needed to
generate their own content. This year they plan to spend $6 billion on
creating their own content [2]. That's an expenditure that didn't exist
previously.

In 2011, Netflix's streaming business was huge and competitors were popping
their heads up. Hastings' job seemed to be on the line and there was some
light talk about whether they could be acquired or taken over [3]. That was
unthinkable six months earlier.

> In fact, raising prices generated record revenue.

Raising prices may have generated revenue in the short term. They also lost a
lot of customers by doing so. Long term, they felt they were better off
building a stronger user base first. The low stock price probably did hurt
their balance sheet.

Bringing this back to Nest, I see this as a pivotal point for them. I could be
wrong, that's just my opinion.

> throwaway_xx9

Do you really need a throwaway to discuss Nest and Netflix? ;-). You make some
great points. Even if you were the one who decided to do the Netflix price
hike or Nest/Revolv retirement I wouldn't fault you. You never know how users
will react. I don't agree with all of your points but I'm not an analyst, just
a programmer. The trick is not to stress over the past. It's to understand the
past, assess what's happening today and react, and consider the future.

[1]
[http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/19/technology/netflix_cash/](http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/19/technology/netflix_cash/)

[2] [http://www.ew.com/article/2016/01/17/netflix-too-much-
tv](http://www.ew.com/article/2016/01/17/netflix-too-much-tv)

[3] [http://fortune.com/2011/12/14/if-netflix-is-for-sale-who-
sho...](http://fortune.com/2011/12/14/if-netflix-is-for-sale-who-should-buy-
it/)

------
StreamBright
It is kind of funny that we discussed here a service few weeks back with life
time usage granted to the users and my argument was that I cannot take
anything like that seriously from a company that was not around 10+ years at
the very least. This move from Nest/Google just confirms that we cannot trust
these companies with "lifetime" promises.

------
nkrisc
Time to buy a new car because Google no longer wants to support yours.

The wonders the future holds.

~~~
smrtinsert
You're thinking Apple. Android 2.x still has 2 or 3 percent of users just
fine.

~~~
thejosh
Ah yeah, Google never ditches or turns off products.

------
dclowd9901
To me, the solution to this is simple: if you eol a product that renders it
useless, open source it. Allow someone else to support it and perhaps at a
profit. The same would happen if a phone or cable company decided to drop and
unprofitable area.

~~~
vlasev
Wouldn't this be a little tricky if such a step can expose proprietary parts
in the closed-off products, given that one can expect a reasonable rate of
reuse?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Given that Revolv's server software was presumably running before Nest
acquired them, and from all rumors, not improved since, what possible
proprietary Nest code could it have?

~~~
sirclueless
The really hairy stuff is usually not the first-party proprietary stuff (e.g.
"This stuff is so important to our business we need to keep an exclusive
license.") It's usually possible to make an argument to the right business-
person that the cost is not so high when compared with the extra brand
goodwill and free maintenance.

Rather it's the third-party proprietary stuff. Someone else owns proprietary
code you deeply rely on but doesn't share any of your business goals and
needs. And when dealing with hardware, there is a whole raft of firmware and
drivers that could be licensed this way.

------
fiatjaf
More eletronic devices, more broken devices.

More smart devices, more devices infected by viruses.

More IoT devices, chaos.

The only people who are able to use smart devices are the ones who projected
them. There's no point in trying to sell to the large public a lot of things
they will not understand, this will only make them dependent.

~~~
FilterSweep
> There's no point in trying to sell to the large public a lot of things they
> will not understand, _this will only make them dependent._

That's the goal (added emphasis).

------
visarga
This kind of behavior is reverse piracy: instead of people pirating Big Corp's
music and movies, it's Big Corp that's leaving people without the use of their
products. So, the internet gods requested two sacrifices: privacy and
ownership. Did I miss any?

~~~
chopin
Security

------
cm2187
I think it is more generally a warning to anyone relying on the cloud.

If you develop an app that is hosted in one of the main cloud providers, not
the sort of app you have a team developing actively, rather the sort of app
you develop once and forget. The cloud is a living thing and doesn't guarantee
stability.

First there is always a small risk that they may terminate your account as a
result of whatever change of policy.

But mostly the technologies on which your app rely (web framework, storage
API, cache API, etc) will likely be retired on a short notice. Outside of a
VM, the cloud is not the right place to host something you want to run for 10
years without having to take care of it.

------
unclebucknasty
The fact that software drives everything now means that we never quite own the
product we initially purchased. I remember thinking this a year or two ago
when Samsung dropped from my Smart TV an app for a streaming service that I
used quite a bit.

While this Nest situation is an extreme case, we're now always one update away
from products being altered in ways that make them very different from what we
originally purchased.

~~~
profmonocle
At least many of these IoT devices still _work_ if their Internet service goes
away. An unsupported smart TV still works as a dumb display for a more modern
streaming stick. An unsupported smart fridge still keeps food cold. my smart
scale can still weigh me even if it can't upload the reading. I'm not sure if
a Nest thermostat can work offline indefinitely, but I sure hope it can.

The question is, what will most consumers do when they discover their smart
device is no longer smart simply because it's "old"? Considering the lifespan
of the dumb versions of these products, I'm guessing the owner's definition of
"old" will differ from the manufacturer's. Not many consumers would consider a
15 year-old refrigerator to be old, but it's hard to believe Samsung will
still be maintaining the software on their 2016 smart fridges in 2031.

Will most people say "well, that was nice while it lasted" and keep using it
as a dumb device, or will they be so used to the smart features that they'll
go out and get the latest, supported model - deciding that a thermostat or a
bathroom scale is now something that needs to be replaced regularly like a
phone or a PC?

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _Considering the lifespan of the dumb versions of these products_

And what's ironic about that is that in theory the lifespan of the product
should be longer, given that that it can theoretically be "enhanced" OTA vs in
a pure hardware situation. But, of course, there's no financial incentive.

We may start seeing more paid software upgrades for new features.

------
mwsherman
Similar to another commenter’s note about Raspberry Pi, this seems like an
argument that an well-supported, and ideally open, OS is the way to go for
devices. Android comes to mind, even iOS would be unlikely to leave customers
in a lurch.

~~~
PeCaN
Yeah, if only there was a well-supported open-source OS that is generally
regarded as reasonably secure and has been ported to pretty much everything
under the sun. It would be nice if it ran the GNU userland for easy
development and had a fast and portable kernel.

~~~
eclipxe
GNU/Windows

~~~
ceejayoz
You joke, but...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux)

------
tomc1985
It is amazing that so many are so desperate for shiny new tech that they're
willing to put up with this kind of stuff. I used to consider myself an early-
adopter, but its clear they're being played for fools...

------
exabrial
Ok, I was thinking about buying a Nest, definitely avoiding it like the plague
now! My home is a long term investment!

------
cmdrfred
I was going to buy a nest, but now I'll just rig myself something up with a
Raspberry Pi. Lower cost and I know it will still work in a few years.

~~~
jmaygarden
Be careful doing that. A smart thermostat isn't exactly trivial, and doing it
wrong can be bad.

~~~
hueving
if temperature > max(desired_range):

    
    
      activate_ac()
    
      deactivate_heat()
    

elif temperature < min(desired_range):

    
    
      deactivate_ac() 
    
      activate_heat()
    

else:

    
    
      deactivate_heat()
    
      deactivate_ac()

~~~
ryandrake
Code review #1: You're going to want to add debounce logic, or you're going to
be erratically turning on and off your heat and ac when the temperature is
exactly equal to the ends of desired_range.

~~~
rwjwjuwjudf
Also you can decouple the handling of ac and heat, and check the current state
to prevent a redundant transition into the current state.

    
    
      if (temp > max + error)
        if (off (ac))
          turn_on (ac);
    
      if (temp < max - error)
        if (on (ac))
          turn_off (ac);
    
      if (temp < min - error)
        if (off (heat))
          turn_on (heat);
    
      if (temp > min + error)
        if (on (heat))
          turn_off (heat);

~~~
will_hughes
If in between samples you go from above max to below min you'll have both heat
and ac on.

The take-away is that like programming lift controllers[0] it's not quite as
simple as it might first seem - many many edge cases.

[0] [http://play.elevatorsaga.com/](http://play.elevatorsaga.com/) (for
example)

~~~
rwjwjuwjudf
I think that's wrong, because all 4 if-statements are evaluated for each
sample.

But yes agreed, in general there are lots of edge cases. I actually wrote a
finite state machine specification for an elevator in a logic class once.
Without having really thought about it much, it looks like the biggest
problems with thermostats are dealing with scalars, sampling frequencies, and
sampling error.

------
milesf
Remember when Google's guiding philosphy was "Don't be evil"?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Alphabet's is currently "Do the right thing". But anyone who knows anything
knows that the people claiming the most they're doing the right thing, are
usually the ones doing the opposite.

~~~
userbinator
It's more like "Do the right thing to make the most profit."

------
a3n
>customers who reasonably expected that the promised "lifetime" of updates
would enable the hardware they paid for to actually work,

That would be the functional lifetime of the device. "All these on this list
are dead." Promise fulfilled.

------
mattlutze
We're buying products whose core functionality, or for which bricking
functionality, relies on software outside the device that costs money to
maintain.

If you're buying stuff that relies on the cloud to run, you're just buying the
plastic and silicon, not the actual capabilities those deliver.

Maybe the law needs to define what "lifetime" means, and whether a company
that buys another company inherits the lifetime of their products. Maybe Nest
should have spent some time and money updating the services so that things
would run off of existing Nest cloud services and turn these Hubs in to weird-
colored Nest devices.

But, the bigger issue is thinking that we're buying capability when we're
buying just the plastic and bits through which the capability arrives.

If we want to buy the capability, we need to start demanding that again.

------
13of40
I didn't catch it in the article, but I assume they're turning them off
because they have a back end service that's going to do nothing but cost them
money if they continue to run it. Does anyone know if that's the case?

------
gerbilly
> Lifetime support

Silly consumer, not _your_ lifetime, the lifetime of the product.

BTW, we just declared your 300$ gadget end of life. kthxbai...

------
frogpelt
We better get used to hardware-as-a-service.

Cars will soon be all-electric, self-driving and pretty much unrepairable.

IoT and smart devices will push everything to subscription model.

Your television and the Internet will no longer be the only place you are
served ads. When you reach into the fridge for your store brand dairy product,
the fridge will say, "Start living healthier now with almond milk! It's
currently on sale! Just tap OK on the screen to order a gallon!"

------
elcapitan
Maybe a stupid question, but is there a follow-up/replacement to the product
they are turning off, and why didn't they contact their customers and propose
free replacement? Would be such an easy way to completely avoid this customer
relations nightmare.

------
awesomerobot
There's no reason cloud devices can't have a limited fallback service. This is
just lazy software.

We're creating a culture where it's ok to throw fully functional hardware into
a landfill because of bad code.

------
WalterBright
So my thermostat stops working when the internet connection goes down? No
sale.

------
johnm1019
It's always nice to see the author of such serious articles is in fact human.
Can we use this as a way of detecting the robot writers? (is being actually
fun hard for AI?)

> 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. (To be fair, the Revolv
> Hub design resembles HAL from Space Odyssey: 2001, so perhaps someone saw
> this betrayal coming).

------
tombert
This is the frustration I have with "cloud" devices, and why I try to avoid
using them.

Sure, they're convenient as all hell, but if it points to a webservice that I
don't/can't control, it inherently has a shelf-life.

The issue is that while _I_ totally could figure out how to set up a self-
hosted home-automation thing, I'm not sure that the average non-technical user
could, which means these cloud-devices are here to stay.

------
ed_blackburn
Pretty sure this would be illegal in the EU. Seems a bit flying by the seat of
your pants to me.

------
ehudla
Related article at:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11429829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11429829)

------
chris_wot
I was interested in Nest devices, but will now never buy one.

------
awinter-py
If you excavate any square yard of ocean you'll find a bunch of sharks' teeth
in the sediment. They're like tree rings for ocean paleoclimatology. They're
'high tech' (in the sense that an apex predator uses them), effective and
constantly being replaced.

Now do the same thing with a landfill and you'll find generations of silicon
doodads in the strata.

My point: we shouldn't be too surprised when things are disposable. Sharks'
teeth aren't useful after they fall out. Companies can't be supporting ten
generations of gadgets.

~~~
ralmidani
What makes Nest's actions deplorable is not just that they don't want to
support and maintain the product; they are also deliberately destroying pieces
of hardware purchased and owned by customers.

~~~
awinter-py
nest is doing the world a favor. we need to learn the lesson of closed
hardware sooner rather than later.

~~~
voltagex_
The only people talking about this are people who already know the risks.

------
tempodox
Nest should be sued into oblivion over this. If they get away with this, it
will destroy a whole market.

------
kahwooi
That is google.

------
incepted
> It used to be that when you bought an appliance, you owned it, and you could
> take it apart, repair it, and plug in whatever accessories you wanted
> without the manufacturer's knowledge or permission.

That's some glorious equivocation the EFF is pulling here.

You can still do this today. Nothing stops you from taking apart, repairing
and tweaking devices you buy.

What you can't get today and that you could never, ever get before either, is
the guarantee that the company you bought that device from will keep its
servers alive for any given period of time.

Anyone who thinks that open source is the way out of this dilemma needs a
reality check.

The fact that the source is open gives you exactly zero guarantees that a
company will keep paying for servers that runs this code. Zero. If you're
lucky, someone will pick that source up and deploy servers to run it, but
again, no guarantees.

> 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.

Then they were naïve customers. If the terms of service don't include such a
guarantee, then you don't have it, period. It doesn't matter if the source is
open or closed or if the company that provides the device is worth billions or
just an angel funded startup.

> In an ideal world, Hub owners would be free to point their devices at a
> different central server, run by a third-party competitor or a trusted
> friend,

They can do this today, the world doesn't need to be "ideal", there just needs
to be a financial incentive for a company to run such software. That's what
happens in a free trade economy, supply and demand rule. This economy gives us
a lot of benefits but you need to be ready to face the reality that sometimes,
it won't give you what you want.

> But there's another way to push back against untrustworthy devices, and
> that's refusing to buy electronics and software that prioritize the
> manufacturer's wishes above your own.

What a great idea. Now, can you give a few examples of alternate devices that
give us the kind of guarantee you are advocating?

I would certainly love to hear about them.

Sometimes, I wonder if the EFF lives on the same planet I live on.

~~~
slantyyz
>> You can still do this today. Nothing stops you from taking apart, repairing
and tweaking devices you buy.

Well, the law can stop you from repairing your own John Deere tractor.

[https://theamericangenius.com/business-news/farmers-cant-
leg...](https://theamericangenius.com/business-news/farmers-cant-legally-fix-
their-own-john-deere-tractors-due-to-copyright-laws/)

~~~
kinsho
You're misrepresenting your case here. The law stops you from tinkering with
the software of the tractor. You can tweak, repair, replace, or light on fire
any part of the tractor you want, so long as you do not reverse-engineer the
software inside the tractor. So technically, the law does not stop you from
repairing any of the mechanical parts of your tractor.

I'm not saying I agree with John Deere's attempt to prevent people from
playing around with its tractor software, but I am saying that you're
exaggerating here.

~~~
slantyyz
I wasn't attempting to misrepresent the case, I was just bringing up an
example of a headline I remembered using the first link I found on Google.

I don't disagree that my link may not be the best story to illustrate the
point.

Having said that, here's some additional context to the same story:

[http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-
deere/](http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/)

>> a neighbor, Kerry Adams, hasn’t been able to fix an expensive transplanter
because he doesn’t have access to the diagnostic software he needs. He’s not
alone: many farmers are opting for older, computer-free equipment.

[http://boingboing.net/2015/05/13/john-deere-of-course-you-
ow...](http://boingboing.net/2015/05/13/john-deere-of-course-you-ow.html)

Has a scan of John Deere's response to the Wired story above.

Paraphrase: John Deere is opposed to a revision to the DRM law that "would
allow owners of equipment, including Deere competitors or software developers,
to access or hack Deere's protected software to repair, diagnose or modify
vehicle software".

I get that most simple repairs to tractors might be just mechanical parts, but
when you're dealing with add-ons (transplanters?) or fine tuning issues like
emissions systems (ahem, Volkswagen), I am guessing you usually need access to
the diagnostics systems or computer to see and/or understand what's going on
before being able to fix it.

~~~
kinsho
Ah the Wired article presents your case in a much better light. If the
software in the tractor prevent you from replacing a broken mechanical part,
then that can lead to the law blocking you from literally repairing any part
of your tractor.

------
facepalm
I think the lesson is more "don't promise your users a lifetime subscription",
because it is unlikely that you will be able to make good on the promise.

End of life is pretty common for software products. My Wii doesn't support
multiplayer anymore. Most smartphones don't get updates anymore after two
years. Sure, we can keep using them, but the reality is it would probably be
better to switch them off rather than walk around with countless security
issues.

~~~
TillE
Diablo II is still running after 16 years, with no end in sight. There was a
tiny patch just a few weeks ago.

It may not bring in any money, but the cost of running it (servers plus a
little time from a few employees) is a drop in the bucket to any major
company.

------
capote
I feel like this is all a bit dramatic. It's not too big a deal to deactivate
something that isn't supported anymore. Can't security issues arise from
unsupported hardware/software after all? There must be some reason.

Also, nobody's walking into anyone's house... these comparisons are so over
the top. Even if it is unfair (and I see the point, it is somewhat irritating)
can we stop with the rampant and out of control use of slippery slope
arguments? I feel like that's all I read anymore—slippery slopes happening
everywhere with everything.

Also, why has nobody asked or investigated as to _why_ they want to brick
hardware intentionally? Let's figure that out before we go crazy about this.

~~~
davorb
I understand that you feel that way, but do me a favour. Go back and look at
some of the stuff RMS wrote 10-15 years ago, and _then_ tell me to stop with
the slippery slopes.

What they are talking about is a pretty big deal, it's a huge deal. What we're
going through now is a quiet redefinition of the concept of ownership of
property, and that is quite frankly something that we should be having a
public and very open debate about. And we need to have it now; in a few years
it will be too late.

~~~
petra
It's not new. Just look at printers, keurig, routers and wifi sharing, who
controls your car computer,windows 10 shenanigans, iPhone software updates,
etc, etc.

~~~
capote
All these things you mentioned are fine. Cars aren't crashing by being
disabled remotely, Windows 10 is decent, I have no issues with my iPhone, I
have Keurig coffee at work every now and then and haven't gotten sick or died.

Some platforms are open and some are closed. Some are being remotely disabled
by their manufacturer (have we bothered to find out why nest is doing this?)
and we simply can stop buying products from them.

