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Sony Outage Disables DASH Devices, No ETA On a Fix
New submitter Jack Greenbaum writes: In 2012 Sony closed the developer site for the DASH, their version of the Chumby platform. Sony never officially killed off the product, and they kept the back end servers on line, until recently at least. About two weeks ago DASH owners started seeing their devices fail with a cryptic error message "Unable to download the Control Panel (No download information available). Please restart your dash to try again." Sony acknowledges that the issue is at their end, but no ETA for a fix has been provided. The passionate DASH community is not pleased that Sony is being so quiet about a fix. One user even overslept for work because they depended on the alarm clock feature. Now every DASH is dead until Sony decides to not abandon its walled garden.
would it have hurt the submitter to have informed readers that this is basically a cross between a tablet, alarm clock and digital photo frame? We aren't all familiair with every old, niche, discontinued product from every major electronics company you know!
Because it's yet another warning to "consumers" that if you buy anything "cloud connected", its useful lifetime is limited entirely by the service provider's whims.
Reminds me of Niven's _The Magic Goes Away_ - where at one point the protagonists are using a magically-stiffened-and-driven cloud for cross-country transport and are concerned about what happens to them if they hit a place in the sky where the "mana" is used up...
"Where are you on a cloud when the magic goes away?"
Where are you on a cloud SERVICE when the magic goes away?
Perhaps a few incidents like this will start people wondering why you would ever use a cloud service for something mission-critical - or for anything -in the first place?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Side story: I'm actually shopping for a new fridge right now. I saw one where they integrated a Keurig machine into the fridge, next to the ice maker and water dispenser thing.
At first blush, I thought that was clever. Then, I realized that it will break, and instead of just buying a $100 coffee maker to replace it, I'm paying $450+ for a guy to come out and fix that stupid thing, or have a permanently broken thing on my refrigerator.
No thanks, I'll continue using the coffee maker I already have.
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