
Inside Andy Rubin's Quest to Create an OS for Everything - cpeterso
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-andy-rubins-quest-to-create-an-os-for-everything/
======
Duhck
This is a serious hype piece. The problem is stated clearly: the smart home
industry is expensive, fragmented, and complicated. This isn't news to anyone
at all but there seems to be a lack of a viable solution.

Simply connecting every gadget to some variety of interfaces has already been
done dozens of times over (e.g. Crestron, control4, smartthings)

I'm in the camp that one company should make all the devices versus an open
standard. That's the only way to guarantee quality.

Candidly, I don't think everything in the modern home will look like Andy's
home. Instead our homes will have a few key devices like lights, speakers,
locks and HVAC that make sense to interconnect.

Once we agree that not every fridge or microwave needs an internet connection,
you'll see how ridiculous his vision statement becomes.

My 700sqft apartment doesn't benefit from any of this "innovation" and doesnt
suffer from the mess of gadgets that don't talk to each other.

This is a wealthy persons problem and a tinkerers desires.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
In a decade every electrical appliance will have a chip linking it to a
central controller much as cars work now. Sensors allow the automotive
computer to minutely control every detail of the car's functions. In the same
way, house functions will become more efficient and automated.

I am not at all a fan of this future, but it is coming on fast. Those of us
opposed will be like people now stubbornly driving older, less complex autos.

~~~
robolange
Yup. My 1987 Toyota pickup contains no digital computer whatsoever. It's so
mechanically simple. I'm pretty sure I could do or have done any major repair
(e.g., full transmission replacement, major engine overhaul) for less money
than the cost to replace a just-out-of-warranty computer module in a newer
vehicle. I realize that computers enable better fuel efficiency, but I just
don't see how all that added complexity is worth it in a gasoline-powered
vehicle. I'll willingly part with it only when all-electric becomes
economically viable.

~~~
dboreham
If it has a carburetor it isn't mechanically simple.

~~~
nikofeyn
lol. when i bought my first motorcycle, i explicitly avoided any motorcycle
with a carburetor and only looked at fuel injected engines. there's no point
in not having FI.

and modern cars aren't just mechanically "complex" for the sake of being
complex. they are safer in crashes, safer when driving, more comfortable, and
are some of the most reliable machines we make. you basically change the oil
often and tires every now and then, and that's your maintenance. i drove my
last car for 13 years and well over a 100,000 miles (not a lot really), and
yet basically zero problems with that maintenance. that's pretty insane
reliability for something used everyday.

~~~
lultimouomo
I have nothing against FI, but on my previous motorcycle I could (and did)
take apart the carburetor, fix whatever needed to be fixed (old sealings in my
case) and put it back, just by reading some stuff on the internet. It is not
something very complex.

I don't think I could do anything like that with my current fuel injected
bike. But then again, I never needed to, because it is objectively more
reliable.

There is a lot of charm in a computer-free car or bike, but I think most of
the aversion people have to electronics is due to the fact that vehicles went
through an "uncanny valley" of computerization, where reliability was not
substantially better than previous models, yet repairability was substantially
worse. I would say we've bridge that already.

------
jpm_sd
Who is all this engineering effort for?

How many people live in fortresses of solitude where they need to
automatically track the cars that come down the driveway?

How many Silicon Valley billionaires need a computer to tell them what to wear
today? (t-shirt and jeans again?)

Why is it useful to have automated control of the lights in every room?
Turning lights on and off, using a plain old mechanical switch, is about the
easiest, most mindless task I perform on any given day.

~~~
Jyaif
Light is not just on/off, it's a million different shades and intensities,
some more appropriate depending on the time of day.

> Who is all this engineering effort for Everybody.

Sure right now philips hue cost hundreds of dollars, but that price is going
to drop seriously. The price of smart-everything is going to drop.

Try to imagine a house where there's a thousand different machines just there
to make your life nicer.

~~~
leeoniya
> Light is not just on/off, it's a million different shades and intensities,
> some more appropriate depending on the time of day.

remarkable! how did people ever live without this before?

but i'd still be stuck having to chew my own food? oh wait, soylent!

~~~
booleandilemma
I'll bet in the 90s you were saying what's the purpose of sending email from
your phone if you can already send email from your computer.

~~~
khedoros1
If I _can_ send e-mail from my computer, I will. My phone is for those rare
times where I have a pressing need to e-mail someone, but don't have any other
way to do it.

I could see some use in smart-home devices to do things that "always" need
done, and that don't need a connection outside of the home. Like "if anyone's
home, keep it between 65 and 80 degrees, depending on humidity and delta with
the outdoor temperature".

But I've never seen an example of something that I'd call anything more than a
minor convenience, at best. Will I use it when it's ubiquitous in society?
Meh, probably. But I don't feel the same excitement about it that others seem
to.

------
bryananderson
It's funny that the article mentions a past Rubin startup that got the timing
wrong on the early side - this one seems to be on the late side. Most people
have realized by now that most of these smart home gadgets are solutions in
search of a problem. They're fun for people like Rubin and myself who like to
tinker, hack, and customize, but they don't deliver a compelling value
proposition for consumers. Most people simply do not need Internet-connected
doorknobs or a ton of cameras all around their property. Household chores take
up a lot of time that people would rather spend otherwise, but the IoT smart
home industry has addressed virtually none of that. It's the laundry that
takes up too much of my time, not getting up to turn on the light switch.

------
debt
I think we need a programming language for everything not an operating system.
Certain language primitives should be connected devices themselves.

Only because a language is more efficient then just another set of SDKs and
libraries being cobbled together to access the nearest HomePod for instance.

I assume Apple's HealthKit is in line with the operating system of IoT, as I
would assume most connected things would be read-only, and we'd only be
reading things like battery life, air quality, lock status, speed, etc from
devices. I wouldn't want to be able to for instance turn on the turn signal
for my car by accident running some script I wrote.

------
smacktoward
_> Here's some free advice: Don’t try to break into Andy Rubin’s house. As
soon as your car turns into the driveway at his sprawling pad in the Silicon
Valley hills, a camera will snap a photo of your vehicle, run it through
computer-vision software to extract the plate number, and file it into a
database. Rubin’s system can be set to text him every time a certain car shows
up or to let specific vehicles through the gate._

This just makes me wonder how far you could get if you took a piece of
cardboard the size of a license plate and wrote the plate number of Rubin's
car on it in magic marker...

~~~
jerrylives
[https://hackaday.com/2014/04/04/sql-injection-fools-speed-
tr...](https://hackaday.com/2014/04/04/sql-injection-fools-speed-traps-and-
clears-your-record/)

~~~
2_listerine_pls
This is fantastic

------
arnaudsm
Ambient OS looks like the Microsoft Windows of smart-homes. We need an open
protocol for smart-homes, like TCP/IP for the Web. Something you have control
on, that encourages competition and that can't be bricked by the company.

Never forget : [http://uk.businessinsider.com/googles-nest-closing-smart-
hom...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/googles-nest-closing-smart-home-company-
revolv-bricking-devices-2016-4)

------
balls187
> Here's some free advice: Don’t try to break into Andy Rubin’s house.

Seems like that is just asking to have people break into his house.

~~~
backtoyoujim
I wonder if he is using wireless cameras because I have an uneducated theory
that I would like a smart person here to destroy. So please forgive my lack of
knowledge here.

If I made a device that amplified the RF signal from a wifi router ... made it
like it had the rf signal power output would that device be capable of
"drowning out" other wifi transmitters ... making a wifi camera incapable of
seeing its base station ?

~~~
ac29
RF signal jammers are a thing.... they also are illegal. Certainly if you had
a RF source blanket the WiFi spectrum at 1kW, you'd knock out WiFi cameras
(legal operation in the WiFi spectrum is limited to 1W, and is often used at
less). The same idea would apply to anything using a radio, like cell phones,
GPS, etc.

Again, this is completely illegal though.

~~~
backtoyoujim
Thank you. I'm not trying to make one. I am just trying to get a better handle
on how RF is used. Thanks again.

------
mmjaa
I'm turning my house, built in the 70's, into a smart-home: I'm going solar,
its got an amazing garden, we have access to deep water reserves, and we're
going off the grid.

The hoops to jump through for all of this really are quite insurmountable in
some aspects. There really is a need for it - and where I think this is going
to be of great benefit to the broader public, is when we get smart-houses
going through the same Moores-law iterations that computers went through.

Hell yeah I wanna know how much energy I harvested from the sun and wind and
rain this month. No, I don't want it available on the cloud, to anyone else.
Yes, I do want a system I can maintain and control myself - definitely I don't
want to have a system in my house which is closed off in order to protect the
self-interests of other entities.

Its a huge new realm for computing, this off-grid stuff. I really hope the
grid'ists don't fuck it up.

------
throwaway47861
I am surprised nobody mentioned this guy's failure to deliver the Essential
Phone in time (whether it's essential is a huge argument point by itself).

Cynically speaking, to me that's a paid article to keep hype around the
persona since he's losing a lot of PR points lately.

I am not taking such a "visionary" seriously unless he manages to ship the one
consumer-level product he promised.

And yes, many of his ideas are COMMON SENSE, I can't for the life of me
understand the praise.

~~~
flamedoge
I feel like a lot of those common sense ideas could still use streamlining to
put in homes. Why can't I live like Rubin? Why should these devices be only
for the rich? Hook up a hydrometer and switch and sell it to me as relative
humidity aware fan controller.

~~~
civilitty
Nitpick: Hydrometers measure the specific gravity of liquids and are mostly
used for beverages such as to calculate a liquid's sugar or alcohol contents.

You're thinking of hy _g_ rometers, which measure relative humidity using
capacitive, resistive, or gravimetric methods.

------
briandear
This is all well and good, but installing all of this stuff is the substantial
blocker for me. I live in a big old house made out of stone with walls that
are impenetrable without a very serious drill.

Unless someone solves the installation question, I’m going to have to sit this
one out. Even running Ethernet wire to just the next room is a massive
undertaking.

Completely wireless home automation that is simple to install – that would be
a game changer for me. I shouldn’t have to practically hire an architect to
plan the install for some of this stuff.

------
miguelrochefort
The secrecy of this project will ensure its failure.

The fragmentation of data and UI affects a lot more people than the
fragmentation of smart home products. The solution to both is not a
proprietary interface built on top of an aggregator, but a completely new
language and communication paradigm.

I'm sure he thinks he's ambitious, but this article failed to demonstrate he's
doing anything novel.

------
baybal2
Andy Rubin is an engineer, not a hip-startup visionaire director by his
nature. "Visionaire directors," are not smart people in their prevalent
majority, and Rubin is just to high on intellectual ladder to be one.

And his phone... he believed that hole in the screen is a "smart idea"... That
was super disappointing

------
zakki
Hasn't Linux become OS for everything?

------
lanius
>If by some miracle you were to make it all the way to the front door, you’d
never get past the retinal scanner.

I thought iris scanners were superior?

------
ShabbosGoy
This read like a puff piece to me.

Andy Rubin will be judged on execution, not by the quantity of positive news
article that are written about him.

------
mycall
> or to let specific vehicles through the gate

Put a fake license plate on a drone, watch his gates open, then fly away.

------
cairo_x
How does this even warrant an article?

