
Nest Protect is a terrible buggy product - somerandomness
https://plus.google.com/115863474911002159675/posts/bpUvi6BBubm
======
jrockway
I saw this last night and admit that I've watched the video a couple times.
It's a fascinating view into what users are really doing with your product.

<spoilers follow>

And, I'm really impressed with the filmmaking skill exhibited in this short
video. The transition between walking with the camera and setting it down to
rip the smoke alarm off the ceiling is perfect, and the framing there is
great. As the film proceeds, Brad's breathing becomes more apparent and
faster, as the tension builds to a climax of automatons screaming "emergency"
and "can't be hushed here, can't be hushed here hushed here". I also
appreciate the exposure as Brad walks into the garage to find an improvised
grave for his machine overlords; completely black, and out of the blackness
comes an insulated water cooler, perfectly sized for the smoke alarms.
Finally, I like how the anger, tension, and action escalates progressively
through the film. It starts off with some walking around, and gradually
becomes more violent. The timing is just perfect.

Perhaps not intentional, but it's just so wonderful. This should be submitted
to a film festival. It's the most fascinating "home video" I've seen in ages.

(Edit to add one more thing: I think the real genius is the computerized
voice, not quite speaking with casual American English rhythm, telling the
user that they can't do the exact action they requested by physically pressing
a button. Obviously, Stanley Kubrick beat Brad to the punch by a few years,
but it still works. And this is real life, not fiction.)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
I concur regarding the film. It almost has an atmosphere of a dystopian sci-
fi. Can't say whether that reflects poorly or not on the early stages of the
IoT.

~~~
jrockway
I think it's an uncanny valley thing. When your computer says "Compiler Error
42", it's acting like a machine, which is fine. When it starts saying
"Emergency: this alarm _can 't_ be hushed here," then it starts getting human.

I realize the Nest announcer might be a better GlaDOS than GlaDOS. (But not a
better HAL than HAL.)

~~~
raldi
It's _exactly_ like HAL, calmly telling the human that the thing they want to
do is forbidden, without explaining why, how to seek an exemption, or what
they should do next.

~~~
jrockway
HAL explains why: "This mission is too important for me to allow you to
jeopardize it."

~~~
yellowapple
"This alarm tone is too important for me to allow you to hush it."

~~~
sneak
"Our lawyers refused to accept the liability involved in us shipping a product
that actually obeys your wishes, because we must assume that you are a moron
who will indicate the wrong thing and then sue us."

------
brendanr
Nest did a great job with their thermostat, but the Protect leaves a lot to be
desired. I was vacuuming which triggered the sensor. The alarm went off, and
it was really loud.

I looked at how to hush it, and couldn't figure out how. My alarm was too high
up to safely climb up and press the button -- I had paid for somebody to
install it safely before.

So I called their support, and they told me they couldn't legally add a
feature to turn it off. Which is a bit bewildering, considering that wave-to-
hush had been a launch feature (albeit removed for apparent reliability
issues). So I had to dangerously climb up high and remove the alarm and take
out the battery.

But the worst thing? It never alerted my phone.

I have my own theories about why this happened. I had recovered my iPhone and
not logged back into the Nest app, which I think is required for notifications
to start flowing again.

But the support guy thought Nest engineering would be back in touch with me to
discuss this crucial flaw within two weeks. Months later, I've not heard back.

Nest had a ton of options after the thermostat. It feels like they put a
smaller B team on the smoke detector, despite it being a critically important
safety device. It's really bewildering how the Protect turned out this way.

More generally, the lesson is that the Internet of Things is going to be
fraught with complications.

~~~
bgentry
Apparently "dirty" power is a major trigger for the wired Nest Protect's false
alarms. It's not surprising that your vacuum cleaner was enough to trigger
this.

CloudFlare's CEO was ranting about his ~daily false alarms about 6 months ago:
"dirty power common on PG&E SF causes small blips in light emitter. Nest
interprets as smoke."

More detail here:
[https://twitter.com/search?q=%40eastdakota%20nest&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=%40eastdakota%20nest&src=typd)

~~~
brendanr
Actually mine just runs on batteries. I think they have an optical sensor
which can be triggered by dust. I was told by support that they used to
recommend blowing the debris out, but it wasn't good for customer confidence.

~~~
engi_nerd
When your troubleshooting procedures remind your customers of their (erroneous
but widely practiced) methods of making NES cartridges work, you might have a
problem.

~~~
yellowapple
I don't know about NES, but at least with the N64, I swear by blowing into the
cartridge. Works at least 75% of the time, and the other 25% by wiggling the
cartridge a bit in the hopes of getting it to reseat better.

~~~
engi_nerd
It _works_ \-- but what you're really doing is fixing an intermittent
electrical connection by introducing moisture. Over the long term that's a
recipe for corrosion.

~~~
jdmichal
We used q-tips with alcohol in my house to avoid this very issue. Cleans the
contacts really good with no corrosion issues.

------
Animats
If the smoke detector function is having false alarms, this should be reported
to Underwriters Laboratories, the tech arm of the fire insurance industry.
Here's the report form.

[http://ul.com/offerings/market-surveillance/](http://ul.com/offerings/market-
surveillance/)

The NEXT smoke detector has UL approval number UTGT.S25414. That means UL
actually tested the thing. But they may not be testing adequately for
electrical noise on the power side, because, until now, smoke detectors were
simple electrically and insensitive to power problems.

So report problems to UL. They take fire safety device failures very
seriously.

------
jmenter
I purchased a Nest thermostat and installed it as per the instructions. Set it
to 69°F before going to sleep. I awoke at 3AM with the temperature at 83°F and
no way to turn it off.

I had to rip it from the wall. It was one of the most frustrating technology
experiences I've had in years, and I'll have to see something REALLY
compelling if I'm ever to try home automation again.

~~~
engi_nerd
Nest pretty much says that you and I were doing it wrong.

It worked just fine for heat -- although I later found out that every time it
turned on my heat pump it was activating the emergency heat. I tried finding a
way to get the unit to be okay with ramping up the temperature over a longer
period of time, but that setting was not exposed in their UI. All I wanted was
to say "I don't really care what temperature the house is while I'm gone so
long as it never goes below 55F or above 80F, but I want you to make sure that
when I arrive home at 6PM the temperature has reached the point I set".
But...alas, the unit never figured that out. The "learning mode" never
actually did anything, no matter what I tried.

Fortunately I was able to get a full refund on the devices from Amazon.

~~~
ashark
I used to own a house equipped with a heat pump, and in heating mode the
cheap-o thermostat would display "e heat". Maybe it's just common to use the
same control circuit for that, that might otherwise be used for some sort of
actual emergency heating device?

It just said "heat" when the furnace was on.

~~~
engi_nerd
You have a point -- I don't know for sure, but my extremely high electricity
bills (even during two relatively mild months) are my reason for believing
that the Nest was activating the emergency heat.

EDIT: corrected that whole last sentence. It made no sense.

~~~
ckinnan
We had the same issue and had a pro service call, in our situation the Nest
was calling for emergency heat.

~~~
engi_nerd
I wasn't willing to pay more money for a professional service call. I was hot
and angry and frustrated. I de-installed the units and hooked up the old
Honeywells.

------
Sanddancer
I'm wondering how much testing Nest did with the photoelectrics in the smoke
detector. A teardown [1] seems to show a rather simple design for the led and
photodiode beam path, as well as both of those components having places for
light to potentially leak in around the diode bases. Other detectors [2], [3],
seem to have much more complicated beam paths, with baffles and such, as well
as better shielding to ensure the sensitive components are well-protected.
Given this, I can see how all the differences in tolerances can lead to gaps
which lead to lots of false alarms.

[1]
[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Protect+Teardown/20057](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Protect+Teardown/20057)
[2]
[http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/publications/educatio...](http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/publications/education/photoelectric_smoke_detector.png)
[3] [http://st-nso-
us.resource.bosch.com/media/us_product_test/05...](http://st-nso-
us.resource.bosch.com/media/us_product_test/05_news_and_extras_1/product_news_1/06_productnews_fire_1/automatic_fire_detector_420_series_1/explodedview440.png)

~~~
raldi
> A teardown seems to show a rather simple design

Don't you usually want lifesaving devices to have simple designs? For example,
scuba breathing regulators are famously reliable in part because there's very
little to them. Same goes for the AK-47, though I suppose I'm getting off the
"lifesaving" track now...

~~~
Sanddancer
I'd argue overly simple. The nest, and the other detectors, both have baffles
in them to block out light from the outside world. However, the Nest negates
some of the benefits from this by having the LED shine against a piece of
plastic at an angle fairly close to the photodetector. If that piece of
plastic happens to be especially reflective, or if the photodiode and/or LED
happen to be misaligned, it would be more likely to trigger false alarms. The
baffles in the other detectors, on the other hand, are also used to ensure
that the light from the LED gets nowhere near the photodiode unless light's
being scattered by smoke. The Nest design works great in the lab, but when
assembled en mass, hits a bunch of tolerance issues that leads to a more
jittery product.

~~~
raldi
That's a reasonable possibility. I'm looking forward to seeing a teardown of
the next release.

------
raldi
"If Nest Protect detects emergency levels of smoke, it will sound an alarm
that can’t be hushed, by regulation."

[https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-
can-I-...](https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-
silence)

(Yes, I know the smoke detection was a malfunction, but occasional
malfunctions like that are a fact of life. My ire is directed at regulators
forbidding users from silencing their own smoke detectors without physically
incapacitating them -- what were they thinking!?)

~~~
brudgers
There's a reason that smoke detectors operate the way they do. That reason is
that people die when they don't.

The issue I have with the Nest smoke detector is that it is sold as a luxury
consumer product. That puts it in the class of "the customer is always right"
sales. The Venn diagram of that and things that are designed to save people's
lives regardless of their tendency to statistically evaluate the risks and
rewards of rare but deadly events inaccurately is disjoint.

If Nest did not comply with the regulations, they could not market their
product as a smoke alarm.

~~~
raldi
Actually, people die when they incapacitate their smoke detectors because of
false alarms that can't be silenced any other way.

Citation: [http://www.nfpa.org/research/reports-and-statistics/fire-
saf...](http://www.nfpa.org/research/reports-and-statistics/fire-safety-
equipment/smoke-alarms-in-us-home-fires) which says that 60% of people who
died in a housefire were in a building that had no operating smoke alarms. A
few more quotes:

 _" Surprisingly, the death rate was much higher in fires in which a smoke
alarm was present but did not operate than it was in home fires with no smoke
alarms at all."_

 _" Smoke alarm failures usually result from missing, disconnected, or dead
batteries. People are most likely to remove or disconnect batteries because of
nuisance activations."_

~~~
tomsthumb
Pulled the battery from my kitchen fire alarm after it went off three nights
in a row while making dinner. Nothing was smoking or even boiling, much less
actually burning. It's an electric stove to boot.

~~~
takeda
You are contradicting yourself, if the alarm was triggered when making dinner
then it must have generated a smoke, how would the detector even know you are
making dinner.

With the nest, the alarm turned by itself for no reason, you don't cook in
bedroom, he even said that he got notification when he was at work.

Two different reasons, your situation was that smoke alarm was too sensitive,
perhaps you placed it close to the oven, here the alarm fires for no reason,
and it is not the kitchen one, but bedroom one where normally you don't have
smoke.

~~~
dredmorbius
The alarm was triggering _during a non-alarm situation._

That is, in fact, a false alarm.

The behavior described by cowsandmilk is _highly_ predictable: provide false
alarms, and people will almost _always_ disable or bypass the alarm.

------
jmspring
I continually come back to the thought that typical consumer software
practices - be it games, apps, cloud services, etc - where you iterate quickly
and don't always work out the bugs or design scales well to things like Nest
protect, etc. For me, anything that ends up in a consumer home device should
be solid from the time it is purchased and not require software updates to
work right.

This leads to another concern of mine -- are places like fb, apple, Google,
etc. capable of creating stable v1 products for the home.

With Nest, the initial thermostat seemed to work well. Original Dropcam works
well. There have been questions since the acquisition of both companies.

~~~
smoyer
I agree ... I was an embedded engineer for many years and we knew that once we
released a product to production, it would kill the company if 100k of them in
the field had to be replaced.

~~~
jmspring
One thing I've noticed with embedded code bases, some can be quite elegant and
tight, have a level of fail safe/resiliency, etc. Some, reboot the device on
error is your friend.

It is always hard after spending time in larger systems going back to and
doing some code archaeology to see if something that seems off is the right
thing or just what it seems like -- needs cleaning up.

------
InclinedPlane
In case anyone isn't aware, Brad Fitzpatrick isn't just a google employee he
also invented and created memcached.

~~~
mholt
And Go's net/http package.

~~~
kentonv
And LiveJournal.

~~~
dsymonds
And Gearman.

~~~
vhost-
And OpenID.

------
tdicola
I don't think it's just Nests, I bought a First Alert smoke alarm a year ago
and it just recently started giving me random false alarms. Battery is fine
but something is setting it off (not fire or smoke, and yes it has both atomic
and photoelectric sensors). I went searching for a good smoke alarm without
lots of false alarm complaints and unfortunately every smoke alarm on Amazon
has complaints about false alarms.

I think in recent years manufacturers have become paranoid about missing an
alarm and being sued so they probably default to fire the alarm if there's
absolutely any potential reason, real or imagined, that a fire might be
occuring.

~~~
Spooky23
Usually the culprit for lots of false alarms is an ionizing in the kitchen and
poor placement.

~~~
tdicola
No these were false alarms at completely random times with no cooking,
dusting, or other activity going on. A couple were late at night well after
2am and were pretty nerve rattling.

------
Terretta
I run five of them, three powered and two battery. One of them "falsed" twice
in one week about three months after installation, and not at all in the four
months since. So I think it wasn't false, I think there was something
triggering it. I've had zero other issues.

Note these were all purchased before Nest turned off the waving, but have been
updated with e firmware that ignores the wave.

I also run nine of the original batch of thermostats with no issues, and any
minor complaints (e.g. turning off heat when in direct sunlight) have all been
addressed over the years of updates.

------
oloboWd
One experience like this would be enough to put me off of home automation for
about 10 years. I think its unfortunate that Nest chose a target so fraught
with safety implications for their second device. A lot could be done to
ameliorate problems like this if the consequences of a false negative were not
so catastrophic.

------
cxseven
There's a general pattern of trying to dumb things down to a simple,
inflexible interface, too often with half-baked "AI" bolted on. Good products
still need attentive human supervision.

I installed Insteon motion detectors and webcams after a robbery, but the
included software was such undependable and inflexible garbage that I replaced
it all with a simple Misterhouse-based Perl script that sends texts via email.

If I see another tech product ad aimed at millenials featuring bright easter
colors and indiepop music pitched by Steve Jobs wannabes who are unable to get
any angry nerds to make their products actually work, I might snap.

By the way, the other HN article about dumb smart homes is a good
accompaniment to this. (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043524)
)

------
TrainedMonkey
As per twitter discussion problem seems to be with insufficiently filtered
input power:
[https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/566075097568391168](https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/566075097568391168)

~~~
bradfitz
I now believe that conclusion to be false, after talking to more people.

~~~
engi_nerd
Can you share what you found?

~~~
bradfitz
I'll be sharing more but not yet. Still gathering information.

~~~
engi_nerd
Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

------
kennywinker
I was a huge fan of the IDEA of the Nest Protect. The reality? Not so big a
fan. I think they oversold it. It's still better than my old smoke detector in
that the pre-alarm warning is fairly gentle, but I'm still getting on a chair
to tap the "shut up" button. Wave-to-turn-off never worked for me even before
they disabled it.

My brother bought one, while I was still in the honeymoon period of mine. His
false alarmed constantly, and has since been removed.

------
pimlottc
"Can't be hushed here"

I've never used Nest Protect so I was curious about this. Why is it location-
dependent? The Nest site has some info[0]:

 _Hushing works differently during an emergency. If Nest Protect detects
emergency levels of smoke, it will sound an alarm that can’t be hushed, by
regulation. However, you can hush the other Nest Protects in the house by
pressing the button on the Nest Protect that detected the problem. So, when
you press the Nest button on the Nest Protect in the bedroom, it will continue
to alarm, but the Nest Protect in the living room will quiet down. We designed
Nest Protect to hush this way so you can more easily communicate with other
people in the house during an emergency while still being able to locate and
address the source of the problem._

0: [https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-
can-I-...](https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-
silence)

~~~
raldi
The idea is supposed to be that if you accidentally told your basement smoke
alarm that it was in the bedroom, you'd wake up hearing "Fire in the BEDROOM"
and then you'd look around and see there's no fire in the bedroom and push the
hush button and go back to sleep and meanwhile your basement is on fire.

So networked smoke alarms require you to visit the one that's detecting the
fire and disable it locally.

Now, why they would ever make the regulations such that you _can 't_
temporarily silence the alarm, even when you're in direct physical contact
with it, is beyond me.

~~~
bradfitz
And despite me silencing the master bedroom one, the other four didn't shut
off. That's my major complaint.

------
milesf
My guess is Portal 3 will have these everywhere, with GLaDOS repeatedly
uttering "can't be hushed here".

~~~
kubiiii
I was looking for a portal reference. Definitely reminds me of glados & stupid
turrets.

------
300bps
You don't get a second chance with a product like this.

~~~
tdicola
The problem is if you have too many false alarms people will rip the smoke
detector down and disable it. There's a fine balance.

~~~
recursive
I assume he means the product doesn't get a second chance to make a consumer
impression because any sane person will abandons the product after a mishap
like this.

------
brandon272
Wow, that's a lot of alarms! I've got a 3000 sqft. house and it's only got 3.
I guess you can never be too safe.

~~~
CamperBob2
The video looked like a preview for a new game where you run around Hogwarts
collecting smoke alarms in a bucket.

~~~
stock_toaster
Do you get extra points for finding the golden NEST?

------
jms703
I wonder if one if his neighbors is messing with his nest. Maybe someone has
figured out a way to set off nest alarms.

------
mrbill
It seems like the majority of people who had problems with the Nest Thermostat
in these comments had it hooked up to a heat pump system.

Mine is a first-gen, bought the instant they were available to the public, and
it's been rock-solid for the past 3+ years. However, I only have a standard
central air and central heat (gas furnace) setup here in Texas. Nothing
complicated.

I've been debating the Protects myself, the battery operated ones.

~~~
snsr
I've had a couple of battery-operated Nest Protects in the house for the past
year or so - no problems or false alarms so far (thankfully no accidental
fires either).

------
metoosorta
In other news, talented hacker Brad Fitzpatrick now available for hire.

~~~
thesomelioma
Sorry, Google doesn't work that way.

You're probably thinking of Apple.

~~~
aniket_ray
Not sure why you were downvoted as opposed to OP but this thread is full of
people who don't realize that Google is truly a place where employees are
encouraged to speak up when things are bad. Frankly, organizations would never
be able to fix their mistakes if their employees are censured when they speak
up.

~~~
divegeek
(Googler here)

You're not wrong, but I think you overstate the case. I wouldn't say employees
are _encouraged_ to publicly trash the company's products. Not at all. But the
company does respect employees' right to speak their mind in public, and it
does encourage thoughtful internal dissent.

I often tread pretty close to the line on what I say in public, and have even
been reined in by Google legal counsel in a couple of cases. I found the
experience of being told to cool it to be surprisingly affirming and
liberating, and a powerful confirmation of the true commitment to openness in
Google culture, because of the reasons for which it was done and the way in
which it was done. Specifically, in both cases I really had crossed a line
which could be potentially troublesome for Google in court, and in both cases
the attorney who contacted me was respectful of my opinions and my rights to
speak them to the point of being very apologetic about telling me to shut up.
It was very clear to me that Google really didn't want to silence me, and did
it only because they truly had to. I think that's awesome.

Based on my experience, I have zero concern for Brad's job, and wouldn't be
surprised if he gets some mild and unofficial kudos.

~~~
thesomelioma
Also Googler. If anything, this should reinforce the fact that G is far more
tolerant of Googlers' expression than most companies would be.

I have friends at Apple (and _formerly_ at Apple) who can attest that not all
companies are that way.

------
yoda_sl
Here is my personal experience with Nest Products overall:

\- Own 3 thermostats: 1 at home and 2 at my wife Business

\- 6 Nest Protect spread in different part of our home (aka master bedroom,
hallway, kitchen,...)

The thermostats work fine and usually the only issues I have encountered were
with Comcast or AT&T (wife Business) going down and the thermostat not every
time able to reconnect automatically... Not a huge deal and overall happy with
those. And checking our bills, over time I see some savings in electricity
cost... And the big big plus is really being able to trigger the A/C during
the summer hot days when our dogs are staying home, and we are not with them.

The Protect overall have been working as expected with the one in the kitchen
kicking in often when we are cooking (previous smoke detectors in the kitchen
have been doing the same so no surprise). At installation time one of the unit
couldn't register, and after reaching out to Customer support got a
replacement unit quickly which worked fine. 3 weeks ago out of the blue the
Nest Protect in our master bed room started to do exactly the same thing as
shown in the video but the alarm after a minute will end and the app was
reporting the level of smoke going down... Except there was never any smoke at
all... Since it did happen 3 days in a row and on the third day, I was there
to witness it, I tried a few things without luck... Ended up removing the
battery and again contacted a Nest support (glad that I know a few folks there
so I didn't have to go to any phone diagnosis), and 2 days later got a
replacement unit. Installed since then and problem didn't happen and the bad
unit was returned.

My conclusion: the thermostat is almost rock solid except for flaky internet
and doesn't always reconnect. The Protect are definitely more a v1 with still
some glitch but still happy customer. I am not a huge fan that Google did
acquire Nest and still have preferred Apple but I don't have too many
complaints.

I do have too a bunch of Dropcam and again not really happy that they ended
under Google control, but their camera are good.

~~~
rsync
Your thermostat should not require internet. Fact.

~~~
yoda_sl
It is only required when I used it remotely... Manual works even with internet
down

------
moe
I can not believe someone went out of their way to put a spoken "Can not be
hushed" response into those things.

Just what you need in a panic situation with a fire in your house; your smoke
alarm playing the smart-ass, at 85 decibels.

~~~
icebraining
Like others have pointed out, it cannot be hushed _by law_. So what is it
supposed to do? Simply not reacting to the button press seems even worse to
me.

------
gibsonje
I have multiple battery nest protects. I replaced "False alarm" alarms with
them when my smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector had multiple 100%
false alarms. The protects have not been activated by anything so far. The
humidity that would set off my smoke detector before does not set off my
protect. I've had no problems with my protects.

------
barney54
I have a Nest thermostat and s Nest Protect. I'm s big fan of both. The Nest
Protect has not been buggy for me. It has done the one thing I bought it for--
not give us false alarms from the shower down the hall. Out previous smoke
alarm would go off all the time from steam, but the Nest Protect hasn't. As
the video shows, maybe we are just lucky!

------
liyanage
That's some harsh language directed at his coworkers...

~~~
bradfitz
They can take it. Or they can build better products.

I don't put on kid gloves when a product is this bad.

I'm nicer when it's a beta or unreleased. But I paid $500 for these, for a
final product. This is unacceptable.

------
vinceguidry
I'm going to buy a condo here in the next year, I plan on rolling my own
automation with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. It's the only way to do it right.

~~~
Grazester
You are going to build your own smoke and fire detector and "do it right"?

~~~
CamperBob2
Apparently Nest can't, so why not try?

~~~
bicknergseng
Imminent danger of death? I want a Nest (that works, though this video is
anecdotal and seems staged-ish) as much as the next person, but I have to
silence a standard smoke detector once every never. It's inconvenient when I
do, but less inconvenient than waking up to find my house is on fire or not
waking up at all because I died in my sleep from carbon monoxide or smoke
inhalation. Even if I trust my own build and code, do I trust the build/code
quality of an arduino and whatever half assed, 3rd party smoke detecting
shield I can find over a device designed and built by people with the life
saving responsibility in mind? I'd still trust a Nest over any arduino shield.

Being alive >>>>> rare inconvenience.

~~~
ashark
Personal risk aside, have fun trying to get your insurance money if something
goes wrong, even if it's not the fault of your home-built fire detectors or
Raspberry Pi thermostat or whatever. I'd be surprised if that didn't cause
problems, should you have to make a claim they find out about your tinkering.

~~~
CamperBob2
I'd be inclined to keep the minimum required complement of cheap detectors
around, for just that reason.

------
hartator
"unhushable pieces of crap" I won't be happy to make a check to an employee
that speak of the company work this way.

~~~
59nadir
> In case anyone isn't aware, Brad Fitzpatrick isn't just a google employee he
> also invented and created memcached.

> And Go's net/http package.

> And LiveJournal.

> And Gearman.

> And OpenID.

Working at Google and having done these things, I don't think he has to worry
about it. They weren't comp products either, since he spent his own money on
them.

------
tacojuan
Hahaha, oh my god the last 2 minutes of that video is fucking hilarious. Looks
like a mega64 skit.

------
Shivetya
if meme, kill it with fire, wasn't more appropriate I don't when it would.

I do not use the nest protect but have had the joys of interlinked fire alarms
where one suffered a bad battery but all of them decided to complain about it.

this was a wonderful video, wonder if its hit reddit yet. Silliness abounds
there and its not the exposure you want your product to have. Reminds me of
the story earlier today about smart homes

------
Steko
G-bots flagging it off the front page... that's HN for you.

~~~
jrockway
Seems unlikely. The author is a Google employee and mentions it in the post.

~~~
Steko
What is the alternate explanation of the points / time / rank then?

And the upthread point about this being a Google employee seem to miss the
actual content which is highly critical of Google. And there's absolutely a
history of threads highly critical of Google getting flagged down on HN.

~~~
jrockway
I think there is a small faction of anti-Google readers on HN, and then a
larger set of people that don't care one way or the other, taking each story
at face value. I know there are quite a few of the anti-Google faction that
follow me around on HN and try to drag me into arguments about Google in
completely unrelated stories. That's why I don't comment much anymore.

With that in mind, and given that HN's ranking algorithm is secret, it seems
unfair to accuse a hivemind of intentionally messing with the algorithm to
suppress commentary about their employer. Maybe it's a bug. Maybe it's working
as intended.

Could one of the HN admins comment? Do you guys notice a lot of Google-related
stories getting flagged?

~~~
dang
> Do you guys notice a lot of Google-related stories getting flagged?

Not particularly. Controversial stories reliably get lots of upvotes and
flags. As far as I can tell, one could replace "Google" with "*" and the same
statements would hold.

I'm going to detach this subthread as off-topic now.

~~~
raldi
Ooh, that's a nice trick!

------
aerovistae
Jesus how fucking big is that dude's apartment

~~~
raldi
I'm gonna blow your mind here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House)

~~~
aerovistae
I laughed

------
ericfrederich
Nobody mentioning the fact that he works for Google which owns Nest?

~~~
gk1
That's the point of his disclaimer:

> "Disclaimer: I am a Google employee. I paid for these myself. So I speak as
> myself.﻿"

------
Rapzid
So this guy pretty much publicly admitted he knew his companies useless smoke
alarm was going off at his home, but couldn't be bothered going home to sort
it out? Poor neighbours indeed.

