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Nest Halts Sales of Smart Fire Alarm After Discovering Dangerous Flaw
fructose writes: "The Nest Protect has a flaw in its software that, under the right circumstances, could disable the alarm and not notify the owners of a fire. To remedy this flaw, they are disabling the Nest Wave feature through automatic updates. Owners who don't have their Nest Protects connected to their WiFi net or don't have a Nest account are suggested to either update the device manually or return it to Nest for a full refund. While they work out the problem, all sales are being halted to prevent unsafe units from being sold. There have been no reported incidents resulting from this flaw, but they aren't taking any chances."
Just goes to show, there's no such thing as enough SQA...
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Is this a flaw in something being handled responsibly? I'm not really sure, because I've never seen that happen. I'm not surprised they pulled it, etc, but I am kind of surprised about the option "bring it back for a full refund."
Some things are important enough to
a) keep simple, and
b) keep offline
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
A smoke alarm with software seems like it's not as simple as possible.
I think a fire alarm is an instance where I'd like something to have as simple and foolproof a mechanism as possible. I suppose a smart alarm could perhaps call the emergency services or something... but I'd still probably combine it with a bog standard fire alarm.
How could someone think the idea of waving your hand to silence a fire alarm would be a good idea? That could easily happen when groggily being woken up, waving, then dropping back into a deep sleep and suffocating - not a very well thought out idea IMHO
Keep it simple, stupid.
They did a test of that thing on the news the other day; it detected carbon monoxide and smoulder-type fires just fine.
What it failed to do was detect an actual fire that didn't produce much, if any, smoke.
Maybe they should just relabel it as the "Nest Toxic Chemical Detector."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
doubleplus one. today we spend a bunch of money on new stuff that duplicates the functionality of old stuff. recently I spent $15 on an LED bulb and $15 on a dimmer lamp socket so I could have a dimmable lamp, something we had with the first electric lamps 100 years ago, and something we've had with oil lamps for 300 years.
Completely agree. This is somewhat along the same line: I don't want a smart fridge - someone might hack in and turn up the temp just enough so I don't notice but enough to cause me to get food poisoning from the warmer temp. Of course they'd disable the temp alarm in the process. I don't want someone turning on my smart toaster and burning my house down, or causing my dishwasher or washing machine to flood the house. That's the problem with the internet of things - it will never be 100% secure.
So if you are running down the hallway waving your arms as you escape the building during a fire, you might disable the alarm before it warns other people.
today we spend a bunch of money on new stuff that duplicates the functionality of old stuff. recently I spent $15 on an LED bulb and $15 on a dimmer lamp socket so I could have a dimmable lamp, something we had with the first electric lamps 100 years ago, and something we've had with oil lamps for 300 years.
And the new stuff does the same thing while needing about 1/5th as much power as the old stuff.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Some things are important enough to
a) keep simple, and
b) keep offline
While that's true, it's also flying in the face of Progress We must strive to make things as complicated and feature rich as possible (and also shiny).
See, it worked, it detected the fire by melting. Success!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nothing is preventing you from using old stuff, especially if you don't see the benefit of the new stuff. The ban on old light bulbs was stupid. The right way to get people to be more energy efficient is to charge people the true cost of energy, but that kind of talk doesn't win votes, even with supposed pro free market people.
...they discovered a fatal flaw. What, they discovered the downside to their protection racket deal with Intellectual Ventures? To me, that seems like THE fatal flaw to end them all - just like paying the mafia to prevent your business from 'accidentally' being the victim of an unfortunate and preventable mass gang attack with firebombs.
Waving your hand to accidentally turn off the alarm is mild in comparison.
Fix that shit first - then worry about your products.
Don't over-complicate the shit that has to just work.
Seems like smoke-detectors were doing just fine before this really bad idea came along.
Then Google sees an opportunity to gather more intelligence on its products via home surveillance and suddenly people line up for these things. Some people are their own worst enemies.
I can see why they would do this, if they feel the alarm might not go off in some cases.
But they should only dose if they detect a significant cumber of linked alarms.
I was thinking about getting one of these for the kitchen, but I've had several false alarms from cooking incidents over the last few years. I cannot have an alarm in the kitchen I cannot disable in that case, and real fires can still be detected by all of the other alarms in the house even if the Nest did not go off.
You might say you can just leave the house for a while, but what if you have a lot of pets? And you can't leave the house with windows wide open anyway.
It's not a great idea to have any kind of alarm you cannot override which is what the Nest has now become.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And yet people are still willing to trade security for convenience... Driving to work will never be 100% secure.
Even if some people were actually killed by fires caused by smart appliances (which I am not aware of any), the convenience of being able to turn up my thermostat an half an hour before I come home outweighs the danger, in the sam way that the convenience of driving my car to work outweighs the danger.
Nothing is 100% safe. And this is an impossible standard to meet. Everything we do in life is a calculated risk. I think fixing safety issues as they are discovered is a perfectly reasonable course of action.
Yes connecting to the internet allows the possibility of my smoke detector to be hacked. It also allows me to be alerted if it goes off when I am not at home. I think the benefit of scenario 2 is worth the risk of scenario 1.
friv games
benten games
This is something software engineers should have learned in school. Sometimes a software failure can kill. Did they make *you* study the Therac-25 incident? I bet they didn't, much less to do when confronted with a project which puts lives in danger.
It must have seemed like a no-brainer to go from making thermostats to fire alarms, but I would be very, very reluctant to work on such a project. There's something ethically questionable about replacing a simple, highly effective device that saves lives with a more complex replacement. Even -- or perhaps especially -- if the replacement offers conveniences that simple device doesn't.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
We have a store in my area that sells overstocks or damaged returns from places like Target (among other retailers). They had a Nest Thermostat at 40% off. I had been trying to talk myself into buying one for a long time, but the price was too good to pass up so I grabbed it and started trying to install it when I got home.
I followed the instructions, went to the website, ticked off the appropriate boxes as requested, but the website suggested that I might need more specific information. It asked me to take a picture of my current system, e-mail it to support and they would get back with me in "one business day". As this was a Saturday night, I figured I might have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to install my new system. That didn't sit well with me and the printed instructions seemed to make enough sense, so I wired it up as they suggested (and made my best guess about one wire), plugged the dial in and...
It threw an error.
But the error had a URL attached! I visited the URL, it suggested moving the same wire that I was unsure about, and when I plugged the dial back in to the base, it worked!
If the story ended there, I would have been thrilled enough with my purchase to suggest it to everyone I met -- but I still had an open support ticket! Less than 24 hours after I opened the ticket, I receive an e-mail from Nest Support with a customized wiring diagram! On a Sunday! I mean, I've long suspected that I am the most important person on the face of the planet, but it's nice to see a company recognize that...
Seriously, though, they seem to be going the extra mile for a product that they really believe in. I like giving money to companies like that, and once I can afford it, I plan to expand the system with the fire alarms and whatever else they release.
https://xkcd.com/937/
And to think, if only the lamp manufacturer had built an LED lamp in the first place, they could have designed in a system for you to control the light (with a far finer degree of control than is possible with an incandescent bulb), for probably a tenth what you paid.
Instead, they don't bother because you don't even know enough to demand it.
Actually, it's welcome to the silicon valley, venture capital backed, google always in beta Internet of Things.
Honestly, if Honeywell or some other non-SV-VC-Google-Facebook-Cisco-Apple company released something similar, the turn out would be more like: the UI crash again, but the basic function (detecting a fire) still works fine.
Given the absurd and idiotic behavior reported by users of the NEST and NEST 2 thermostats, I took one look at this smoke detector's webpage, saw who made it, and basically said "nope" and closed the page.
Thermostats that generate enough of their own heat during operation that they sense the temperature being up to 10 degrees warmer than the room, multiple reports of them not coming on at all in 'vacation home' mode where owners will use them to keep pipes from freezing, oddball lockups that leave houses baking/freezing, etc.
This is in addition to the cloud-only BS way of changing settings.
PISS poor quality control is the only answer I have for the thermostats' behavior.
I can't wait for the smoke detector to just decide not to work, to detect everything as smoke and alarm constantly, or to detect the licking flames as a handwave and disable.
It is not a good idea to put a carbon monoxide detector in or near a kitchen. The cooking residue in the air fouls the carbon monoxide detectors causing them to not function properly. Also, generally CO detectors only last a few years. My last one timed out at 7 years to the day and ceased to operate because that's how long until the sensor is no good anymore. Granted there are different kinds of sensors and I don't know what the Nest uses, but generally the longer lasting sensors don't respond as quickly, which is something you really need with CO. So, unless they use a replaceable cartridge or one of the not quick sensors, you're going to have to replace your whole nest in 5-7 years when the CO detector goes out. This is wasteful for the smoke detection which doesn't have such limitations (or the electronics for that matter).
And while I'm at it, waving your arms to disable the alarm is silly. My 'chained' (when one goes off, all go off) smoke alarms have two buttons... One to test the battery and one to silence the alarm. Good old button! Actually, I guess I really don't get the whole nest smoke alarm thing at all. I have about 10 detectors in my house chained together so that if the one in the hallway for example detects smoke, the alarms in all the bedrooms go off, too... That would be like $1300 of nests to do the same thing and I'm not sure the software would even let it do the same thing. I don't see why I would want to trade this critical alert function away to know remotely my house was smokey.
horribly overpriced toy is not a good fire alarm. A standard fire alarm is very very simple FOR A REASON, it has an incredibly high reliability.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah, great Idea having your house connected to the internet. Nothing bad ever happens on the internet. Right?
And 30 times the price.
I know, over the projected lifetime it costs less. Some of us don't see the value in instalment loans though. I'll gladly pay more over 15 years if it means less out of pocket all at once.
Or don't put it in your kitchen. 99% of the homes do not have a fire alarm in the kitchen. the proper place it to put them on the ceiling in the bedroom above the door if you have bedroom doors closed at night, otherwise they belong outside the sleeping area near the bedroom doors.
http://www.nfpa.org/safety-inf...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And some things are important enough to network. If the guy in the apartment next door to me sets fire to his meth lab, I appreciate the fact that my fire alarm is supposed to go off too.
If you did raise the cost of electricity, where would that extra money go? Giving more money to the power company isn't going to reduce climate damage, it would just make the executives and shareholders richer.
Just look at oil. There are already ridiculous markups on oil (and obscenely rich Arabs) but it doesn't stop people from driving gasoline cars.
The only way you could raise the price of electricity to match it's "true cost", while actually paying back the environment, would be to put the extra money into environmental restoration or renewable energy projects. That would require a new tax however, and the people currently in charge of the government are a bunch of tax-hating climate change deniers.
My 'chained' (when one goes off, all go off) smoke alarms have two buttons... One to test the battery and one to silence the alarm.
I have chained smoke alarms too (though with a single button that either silenced or tests the alarm). The problem is, when it goes off it's too high for even tall person to reach - we have to drag over a chair. It would be very nice to silence it with a simple wave.
I also wondered about the CO2 module needing to be replaced, I have other detectors I replace every few years.
As for the networking, that aspect is nice when you are traveling away from home, especially if you have pets. Then you can be sure at least the house has not burnt down.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The reserve parachute makes skydiving reasonably safe too. But it would be proposterous to think others would feel the same way and everyone would endorse it.
Different people are different. What you accept doesn't have to be what they accept. In a free world, this should be the norm and we need to understand that. I personally do not want those internet of things because i don't want my appliances sending information to anyone at all. The NSA already listens in on our phone sex. They don't need to know that i eat crackers in bed or how often i wash my socks.
And costing 10 times as much. a 50cents lightbulb can be dimmed with a 5$ dimmer
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Almost all the reasonable suggestions I've seen for internet-connected things (coffee in the morning, lights as I come in, etc) have already been solved with timers (coffee, thermostat, etc) or motion sensors (lights). Most people who complain about motion-sensed lights are doing it wrong anyways. CFL's (what most people use now thanks to various laws) burn out really fast if they are turned on for less than 15 minutes (it's the actual time duration, NOT just the number of cycles), so they just need to adjust the timer for longer durations and you can still have an override switch if you want it.
But seriously, we don't need everything connected to the internet. In the case of fire alarms (like in this article), wire them in with battery backups and connect them to the phone line (outgoing only), that's ALL they need.
Lots of advantages in having things online, or at least connected to a home automation controller. If there's a problem (fire, burglary, water leak) the system can take action and / or notify you. And sometimes there are good reasons to add a few features (adding complexity).
With that said, most home automation enthusiasts recognize that these systems are not as reliable as their more simple counterparts. Current best practice for stuff like this is to use standard smoke detectors wired into a conventional alarm panel, then hook up the alarm panel to the home automation controller. I have some smart-ish smoke detectors, they are regular detectors with a wireless (Z-wave, not WiFi) chip bolted onto the connection meant to go to an alarm panel. That means I'll be notified when it goes off, but if the HA system fails for whatever reason, the detector will still beep is there's smoke.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Were people actually *replacing* their existing fire alarms with this instead of just supplementing them? I would think that "return for a refund" would also mean "and buy some damn tried-and-true smoke detectors".
It doesn't have to be a tax. Requiring scrubbers on coal power plants has raised the price of electricity. Placing limits on the amount of carbon they're allowed to emit would raise it more.
Look up "revenue-netural carbon tax". There's a few different ways it could be implemented, but the general theory is that you want to price the externality of carbon without making goods more unaffordable for poor people.
I made a similar comment on the story about NEST first releasing their smoke detector. And yes, I did have to study the Therac-25. Software, physics and biology.
The list of things I do not like and the list of things that should have taxes put upon them correlates fairly well.
Pay for people to do what you want. (Quit working and have\abort babies.)
Tax what you want people to do less. (Make money, Drive, Smoke, Drink)
Put people in prison for what you do not want them doing. (Murder (of people living over 3 minutes), paying for sex, trading stocks when you know for a fact the will go up or down, ratting out the government)
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Would you rather it
A) always go off and everyone notice the VERY loud noise it's making from the other side of the wall.
B) probably go off and alert you as well.
Most new appartments (that would have something like this in the first place) already have analog (very simple, no internet) interconnected fire alarms that can even phone the fire department automatically.
I didn't say the cost of electricity should be raised. I said we should charge the true cost of electricity. *If* the true cost of electricity is higher than what is being charged, it could mean a few things.
It could mean that somewhere someone is getting subsidies or we are polluting the environment, and raising the price of electricity would offset the need for those subsidies.
It could also mean that producing the electricity involves some kind of externality like pollution/co2 that we as citizens of the earth are actually paying, and setting the price of electricity to the true cost would involve forcing the producers to mitigate the pollution and co2 and pass that cost on to consumers.
So no it doesn't have to be a tax. It can be removal of subsidies. It can be more strict pollution laws. It can be requiring carbon offsets (e.g. planting trees, etc) for energy producers.
Almost all the reasonable suggestions I've seen for internet-connected things (coffee in the morning, lights as I come in, etc) have already been solved with timers (coffee, thermostat, etc) or motion sensors (lights).
Timers only effectively control things that need to happen at the same time everyday. I don't want my heater to come on at the same time everyday. I want it to come on 30 minutes before I get home, which is different depending on what happens during the day.
I would actually much prefer an alert that goes over the internet to my phone than an actual phone call. For one thing, I don't actually have a landline. For another, I usually let phone calls go to voicemail.
Nest sounds cool. I like the remote off, with no remote device. Could be voice activated instead and that might solve the problem.
This has the potential for a lot of very interesting things. It is a platform for sensors. ...
Smoke
Fire
CO
CO2
Humidity
Temperature
Air Pressure
Motion Sensor (earthquake)
PA/mic
Camera
WiFi extender
Put one outside too. Network and log the data.
Then for people who want to participate, send the data to the weather bureau folks for collecting some seriously large aggregates of data on the environment.
Also useful for businesses. e.g., monitoring processing work rooms, refrigerators and freezers.
There is so much potential here. And if they are manufactured in sufficient quantity it will drive the unit cost down which will lower the price which will increase market penetration so we have nests in everyone's nests.
Right now I have too many different devices all serving these functions. I would rather have several nests around. Then, sure, one will fail but I'll just move a less vital one to it's location while I get a replacement (2 days on Amazon Prime). Hmm... Stick them to the ceiling or wall plate with a magnet. I use magnets for things like this all over the place - works great.
And yet people are still willing to trade security for convenience... Driving to work will never be 100% secure.
Driving drunk is still more convenient than calling a cab or bugging a friend. Driving drunk will never be 100% secure.
Nothing is 100% safe. And this is an impossible standard to meet. Everything we do in life is a calculated risk. I think fixing safety issues as they are discovered is a perfectly reasonable course of action.
Non-Falsifiable statements convey no useful information. I can respond to any mishap or failure with the same verbiage and have no more or less a valid point.
Whether it is "driving drunk" or "driving sober to work" neither activity is 100% secure.
Yes connecting to the internet allows the possibility of my smoke detector to be hacked. It also allows me to be alerted if it goes off when I am not at home. I think the benefit of scenario 2 is worth the risk of scenario 1.
The hell it is. If a fire starts when your away chances are your still looking at significant/total loss from fire and or water damage from efforts to stop the fire.. by time monitoring company farts around with your contact list, finally calls the fire department and fire department arrives.
Shit can be replaced (e.g. filing insurance claim) people not so much.
In most areas the cost of electricity is heavily regulated, and in Minnesota and Wisconsin (xcel energy), the actual production costs are broken down in detail on every single monthly bill. We pay X cents per KwH for the power plant, and Y cents for the lines, and Z cents for administration, etc. and when the power company wants to change their rates they have to get approval from the state. I don't know about other parts of the country, but here atleast, they aren't selling below cost
You say that now, but after a couple evenings having to smell burning whale-oil while eating dinner I think you'll be ready to pony up a bit extra for modern lighting.
It won't get me killed, because I'd have for every Nest protect, the older nearby simple detector detected hardwired to the building fire alarm.
See.... I don't trust any one smoke detector. Always install two in a room -- in pairs and test weekly.
Driving drunk is still more convenient than calling a cab or bugging a friend. Driving drunk will never be 100% secure.
I guess it could be depending on how drunk you are. If you are so drunk that the likelihood of killing other people or yourself is significant than those sorts of consequences make things decidedly less convenient (given that death is pretty inconvenient).
Non-Falsifiable statements convey no useful information. I can respond to any mishap or failure with the same verbiage and have no more or less a valid point.
When I say "A is possible" it does not imply "A always happens"
What I am advocating is to use judgement rather than an absolute rule to accept no risk, or extreme risk, which you did not seem to understand.
Falsifiable claims (i.e. scientific/empirical claims) are not the only statements that convey useful information. Logical arguments (which is what I was making), do not need to be falsifiable.
I could say "If all unicorns are purple, then if you find a unicorn, it will be purple". That's not really a falsifiable claim. There is no experiment you could (or should do) to verify this. It's a logical claim.
Maybe you just learned the term "falsifiable", if so I will offer you some advice that you are using it wrong.
Whether it is "driving drunk" or "driving sober to work" neither activity is 100% secure.
So now all the people who think driving drunk is safe can stop worrying about things that are not as dangerous as drunk driving.
The hell it is. If a fire starts when your away chances are your still looking at significant/total loss from fire and or water damage from efforts to stop the fire.. by time monitoring company farts around with your contact list, finally calls the fire department and fire department arrives.
I didn't say that the benefit was immense. I said it outweighed the risk of hacking.
Are they factoring in carbon offsets and the costs of mitigating the pollution they cause?
actually to be fair, I had a devil of a time finding dimmer sockets on the market. maybe now that everybody is using CFLs there's no demand for dimmers? Best I found was Amazon had one for $13.00. A cheap-looking one at that. There's an amazon affiliate called 1000Bulbs that has a wide variety of really nice looking dimmers, but they all have $10 shipping fee each!
or, I already have lamps that I like and do not feel like buying new ones.
I'm sure we will see more problems with the internet of things. Just wait until lulz kids figure out how to make smart smoke alarms beep continuously., so people disable the power, or turn the heat up to 100 and then down to 10 ( Fahrenheit). There's not shortage of psychos who like to screw with people (see: webcam hacks and 'slaves'). So it's a matter of time.
Critical life safety devices like Smoke detectors should be a local loop only. You can interconnect, but don't connect to the internet or phones.
If you want a smart one, make it redundant and in addition to the local only alarms. Hook it up to something outside or your alarm company.This is to call the fire department when no one is home. I.e. this is for saving your property.
And control devices like your thermostat should have a local override switch that disables, in hardware, all smart features and turns it into a dumb device
And 30 times the price.
I know, over the projected lifetime it costs less.
The problem is you're not looking at the overall cost of electric demand at 5x less efficiency.
Multiply that across a billion or two people, and the "cost" massively eclipses your rather selfish mentality of having to spend a few more dollars out of pocket.
Well, guess what? Great news! The same thing could have been done with your exact same lamps! Without an extra socket, because it IS possible to build an LED bulb with a built-in dimmer. Heck, they can do it while adding a remote control and color-change options, a simple dimmer switch? Not very expensive.
You only had to spend as much as you did because they could take advantage of you simply not knowing enough to demand a more cost-effective solution, not because of any real costs involved.
Don't feel bad about it though, it's hard to know everything and sometimes you just get screwed because you don't know enough to know better.
They're not really mutually exclusive though. You can have a fancy automated house and still have a $5 smoke detector as well.
I mean, I assume Nest devices won't send out predator droids to destroy competing products. Maybe that's an unsafe assumption.
Even without the waving, the ability to actually silence the thing is why I love the nest.
It has a nice big button that you push, and actually shuts them up. I've had my hearing abused
by several other alarms that just wont accept a manual bypass at all.
BALLZ PROGRAMMING
The outgoing phone line is to the alarm company, not your cell phone.
>> I know, over the projected lifetime it costs less. Some of us don't see the value in instalment loans though. I'll gladly pay more over 15 years if it means less out of pocket all at once.
Huh? That just means you're short sighted though.
No, it means i'm cheap and don't want to spend 10% of my weekly gross pay at minum wage just to have a dimmable lamp.
You can say that makes those people short sighted but i say it makes them practicle.
I'm not concerned with the oversl cost of electricity when the cost of a lightbulb is or two is ten percent of the weekly gross pay for a low wage/ minimum wage worker.
But i guess those selfish people don't matter in your ideal world. In the rest of reality, 15 or 20 bucks at once is a hell of a lot more than 3 bucks for 4 bulbs.
What happens if the fire destroys the internet router before the alarm goes off? Or in case the fire shuts down the power first? ...
No, it means i'm cheap and don't want to spend 10% of my weekly gross pay at minum wage just to have a dimmable lamp.
You can say that makes those people short sighted but i say it makes them practicle.
That's because you're short-sighted. You pay that price one time, while the incandescent bulb will hit you for its power costs every month and you'll be replacing it far more often.
Nothing practical about it, it's Sam Vimes's theory of socio-economic injustice repeating itself.
Some of us don't see the value in instalment loans though. I'll gladly pay more over 15 years if it means less out of pocket all at once.
I see the value in installment loans, as long as I am the lender, AND I receive interest that more than offsets my cost of lending after taking into account risks.
It is best to pick the high upfront cost option and irrational to buy the lower upfront cost option that requires more payments; if the higher upfront cost option is sufficiently less expensive over the next 15 years ------ in fact.... if the difference is big enough, it may be rational to take the higher upfront cost option and fund it using a bank loan or credit card: in case you don't have the liquidity in the near term to take the deal.
... BUT: after discounting the payments from the "pay more over 15" years option to present value, AND discounting both choices according to considerations such as risk and fragility.
The higher cost unit usually has greater risk associated with it --- since there is more value tied up in it, AND it can unexpectedly break early or become obsolete, before its intended lifetime.
The risk associated with buying a regular incandescent lightbulb is minimal ----- one of them can go out well before it's expected lifetime: they are cheap, however, and therefore: the impact amounts to very little in monetary lost.
On the other hand.... a LED bulb can short out one day, randomly. There goes your ROI/preference in picking LED, for at least a few years worth.
The outgoing phone line is to the alarm company, not your cell phone.
So you want to pay $30 extra a month for a 3rd party monitoring company, instead of using the existing internet connection to directly send the message to your smartphone?
Nothing is 100% safe. And this is an impossible standard to meet. Everything we do in life is a calculated risk. I think fixing safety issues as they are discovered is a perfectly reasonable course of action.
No... it's not a reasonable course of action. When safety issues are "discovered" the hard way, lives are lost.
It is a true, but a useless fact that nothing is 100% safe.
Do you really think you can compare the "safety" of Driving to Work, against the "safety" of connecting a thermostat or smoke detector to the internet?
Traditional smoke detectors are highly reliable life protecting devices. Making them microprocessor-controlled and wiring up to the internet transforms the detector from a robust device you should be able to bet your life on, even during the apocalypse -- come hell or high water, into this fragile piece where one misplaced line of code, or one n'er'do'well who hacked in --- can put your life at risk: due to reliance on a safety device that doesn't work.
You want to get notified your smoke detector went off? FINE. Don't connect the smoke detector to the internet ---- use a smoke detector that provides optically isolated Dry contacts. Connect your contact closure monitoring device to the internet. No excuses for making safety systems fragile!
It's an unequal tradeoff in the first place: so you drive to work. The "next best thing" to driving to work, is likely to have tremendously greater cost, or force you to move house.
Not having an internet connected thermostat, most likely means -- just enduring a few minutes of discomfort, while you have to manually kick on your A/C unit.
YES! I have a brain and half a clue.
You'd rather save $30 and risk your life to some script kiddie.
I'd rather pay the cost and watch your house burn done.
This is why people like me write software for medical devices and people like you don't, and should be banned from making any decisions that effect others.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You'd rather save $30 and risk your life to some script kiddie.
No. It's not necessary, because you are just lumping on additional requirements --- most people will not pay the costs to get a certified central system professionally installed with a 24x7 monitoring company watching their alarm, AND this is not required or recommended for the average residence anyways. It's quite possible to design a smoke detector so that it has a monitoring module that is completely isolated from the alarm and has no ability to interfere with the action of the alarm, BUT can use a network connection to give you a remote heads up about the status of the alarm when you are not at home.
It's this little piece of marvelous technology, you have apparently never heard of called a Dry contact relay output. Which can provide an isolated digital input to a monitoring module, which you connect to the internet.
Of course an alarm monitoring company can also quickly call the fire department for you, before you notice you have a message from the 'alarm app' if you want, BUT you are not at home (Or else you would hear the audible alarm).
The point of having the remote notification is to keep you more informed when you otherwise wouldn't be, of alarm conditions when you're not there, BECAUSE most people don't get certified central alarm systems installed: you wouldn't know about an alarm when you were not at home, anyways.
No... it's not a reasonable course of action. When safety issues are "discovered" the hard way, lives are lost.
I'm not sure how you think safety problems could be fixed *before* they are discovered. Not only is fixing safety problems *after* they are discovered reasonable, it's really the only possibility. How soon you fix these issues after they are discovered is what makes the difference.
It is a true, but a useless fact that nothing is 100% safe.
It is useful to people who refrain from doing certain things they might benefit from because they are *not* 100% safe. Sometimes people need to be reminded that nothing is 100% safe, and that everything entails a risk.
Do you really think you can compare the "safety" of Driving to Work, against the "safety" of connecting a thermostat or smoke detector to the internet?
I already did. And in fact lots of people die everyday driving to work. I am not aware of a single case of someone dying due to their thermostat or smoke detector being hooked up to the internet. One might say the reason these 2 things are not comparable is that driving to work is much more dangerous. I however recognize that there is risk with both.
Traditional smoke detectors are highly reliable life protecting devices. Making them microprocessor-controlled and wiring up to the internet transforms the detector from a robust device you should be able to bet your life on, even during the apocalypse -- come hell or high water, into this fragile piece where one misplaced line of code, or one n'er'do'well who hacked in --- can put your life at risk: due to reliance on a safety device that doesn't work.
Well I hope you don't drive a car made in the last 10 years. Those are controlled by microprocessors too.
It's an unequal tradeoff in the first place: so you drive to work. The "next best thing" to driving to work, is likely to have tremendously greater cost, or force you to move house.
You are about 14 times as likely to die in a car accident as a house fire. Every day you drive a car is as dangerous as going 14 days without any smoke detector at all. You've made a calculated risk to drive your car. I have made a calculated risk to connect my thermostat and smoke detector the internet. Maybe I will die in a fire and you can say "I told you so". Maybe you will die in a car accident and I can say "I told you so". It's all about balancing risk vs. reward. I want my house nice and toasty when I come home.
So the software you write is vulnerable to script kiddies?
I'm not sure how you think safety problems could be fixed *before* they are discovered.
Through defensive design. By requiring that system design promotes safety; therefore, there are unlikely to be serious safety issues. The key is to design systems that are anti-fragile, AND that are robust such that random safety issues aren't emerging after product release.
Not only is fixing safety problems *after* they are discovered reasonable, it's really the only possibility.
This is not a valid excuse for designing and releasing or using systems with inherent vulnerabilities that are therefore likely to have safety impacting issues later, and therefore: incurring this extra liability.
It is useful to people who refrain from doing certain things they might benefit from because they are *not* 100% safe.
As you mentioned.... the benefit is minimal or uncertain, BUT the risk is real. Everything that there is a risk of happening, eventually happens given enough time!
Most people drive their car less than 2 hours a day, BUT rely on their smoke detector to help protect their lives 10+ hours a day.
The fact that your automobile is very dangerous, is no reason for engaging in reckless behavior, in other areas: however --- it just adds to the probability of random death.
You are about 14 times as likely to die in a car accident as a house fire. Every day you drive a car is as dangerous as going 14 days without any smoke detector at all.
This assumes you are an average driver. But perhaps I am a far-safer-than-average driver driving a far-safer-than-average car.
Maybe your roads aren't as dangerous as the average. There is plenty of room for outliers here.
You can't possibly be sure that you are X times as likely to die in a car accident.
You claim to have calculated risks which are actually impossible for you to have calculated, which is the reason, that I know your claim about the relative likelihood is definitely false (That which cannot be true due to an absolute condition, is guaranteed to be false.).
Maybe you will die in a car accident and I can say "I told you so". It's all about balancing risk vs. reward. I want my house nice and toasty when I come home.
The Idea "I want my house to be nice and toasty when I come home; even if there is this substantial chance that some Chinese hacker can kill me"; is a bit of a depraved notion. The fact is it's not possible to calculate the "risk" part of risk/reward. The fact is any danger of incalculable risk is not worth it, if the danger is great enough. The reward has to be such that: the absence of the reward is as bad or nearly as bad as the maximum potential negative impact of potential hazards that may exist.
Through defensive design. By requiring that system design promotes safety; therefore, there are unlikely to be serious safety issues. The key is to design systems that are anti-fragile, AND that are robust such that random safety issues aren't emerging after product release.
This is an example of things never becoming issues in the first place. And you cannot rely on the fact that you will simply have a 100% perfect design from the start and not worry about any issues that pop up after release. So I will reiterate, that it is reasonable to fix the issues that pop up after release as you discover them.
This is not a valid excuse for designing and releasing or using systems with inherent vulnerabilities that are therefore likely to have safety impacting issues later, and therefore: incurring this extra liability.
Obviously I was not advocating designing systems with inherent vulnerabilities.
Most people drive their car less than 2 hours a day, BUT rely on their smoke detector to help protect their lives 10+ hours a day.
And even given this fact, there are 14x as many people dying in car accidents as in house fires.
This assumes you are an average driver. But perhaps I am a far-safer-than-average driver driving a far-safer-than-average car.
It also assumes you are an average home owner. Perhaps I am extra safe when it comes to making sure my electrical work is up to code and I never leave the stove unattended.
You claim to have calculated risks which are actually impossible for you to have calculated, which is the reason, that I know your claim about the relative likelihood is definitely false (That which cannot be true due to an absolute condition, is guaranteed to be false.).
So what you are saying is that unless I have calculated the risk with absolute accuracy, I can not do a proper risk/benefit analysis, I am supposed to just assume it is as deadly as anything can be?
The Idea "I want my house to be nice and toasty when I come home; even if there is this substantial chance that some Chinese hacker can kill me"; is a bit of a depraved notion.
And yet this has literally never happened. I'm not saying it can't happen, but I don't think it's reasonable to be so worried about something that is so rare, that not only do I know of any cases, I can't even find any cases of it happening on the internet.
The fact is it's not possible to calculate the "risk" part of risk/reward. The fact is any danger of incalculable risk is not worth it, if the danger is great enough. The reward has to be such that: the absence of the reward is as bad or nearly as bad as the maximum potential negative impact of potential hazards that may exist.
Bullshit. You can't calculate risks with absolute accuracy either. You're just estimating like I am. Pretending you know which risks are incalculable and which risks are calculable, and exactly what they are, doesn't make you any more safe. At least I am honest that I don't know, and I am just making an estimate about the level of risk for everything in my life.