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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
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.
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.
I did not RTFA in depth but I am surprised that they did not have a mechanism to fix it remotely via updates of something.
Straight from the summary:
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
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
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.
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