Alphabet's Nest To Deliberately Brick Revolv Hubs

Nest, a Google-owned company, will deliberately break one of its own products come May 15. The company has announced plans to disable Revolv, a hub that allows customers to electronically control lights in their homes. Entrepreneur Arlo Gilbert raises some important questions: Google/Nest's decision raises an interesting question. When software and hardware are intertwined, does a warranty mean you stop supporting the hardware or does it mean that the manufacturer can intentionally disable it without consequence? Tony Fadell seems to believe the latter. Tony believes he has the right to reach into your home and pull the plug on your Nest products. [...] To be clear, they are not simply ceasing to support the product, rather they are advising customers that on May 15th a container of hummus will actually be infinitely more useful than the Revolv hub. Google is intentionally bricking hardware that I own. That's a pretty blatant "fuck you" to every person who trusted in them and bought their hardware. They didn't post this notice until long after Google had made the acquisition, so these are Google's words under Tony Fadell's direction. Revolv was acquired by Nest in 2014, and it is believed that all Nest wanted from the acquisition was talent and workforce. An older version of Revolv website reveals that its hub was marketed to have "free lifetime service subscription," "free monthly updates for additional device support," and "free future firmware updates to automatically activate new radios." James Grimmelmann, a professor of Law, tweeted, "I didn't realize that Revolv promised free lifetime service. That makes the shutdown a deceptive trade practice as well as an unfair one." Aaron Parecki, co-founder of IndieWebCamp, wrote, "Your friendly reminder that without open standards, you're not "buying" smarthome hardware, you're renting it."

Comments

Put Lifetime in quotes

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found that "lifetime" warranties are often for the product's lifetime, not the life of the owner.

So a lifetime warranty on a dishwasher might be 10 years. Not sure how they get away with that, but I've seen it more than once.

Re:Put Lifetime in quotes

[Registered Coward v2]

I would imagine (hope?) that at the very least the "lifetime" period is specified in the fine print somewhere.

From their FAQ:

The Revolv Lifetime Subscription, which is included in the $299 you pay for the solution, enables GeoSense automation and remote updates that allows your Revolv to work together seamlessly (and continually update) with the products you already own; for the lifetime of the product.

It would appear they have decided to euthanize the product an thus it has reached date end of its lifetime.

The question, as I see it, is given the vague definition of lifetime in the FAQ, and absent any clearer one in the TOS that everyone reads in great detail too be sure they understand what they really are getting and not just click "Accept" does Google's EOL'ing of the Revolv constitute a breach of the promise of lifetime service? The products are still serviceable except for the lack of a server, so should there be a remedy for the people whose live once revolved around home automation but are now at a standstill due to Google's actions?

Re:Put Lifetime in quotes

[AmiMoJo]

In the UK the expected lifetime of a product is determined by courts. For something like a laptop computer, it's typically 5-6 years, for example. It depends on the cost of the product, how it was marketed, what a "reasonable person" (legal term) would expect etc.

We actually have really great consumer laws covering this. If something breaks during a manufacturing/design defect within it's reasonable lifetime you can get a fix or partial refund. For example, if a laptop expected to last five years broke in year four due to a flawed cooling system you could get a 20% refund.

I don't even know what exactly this thing is supposed to be, but it's some kind of home control system so courts would probably lump it in with stuff like light switches and consumer units. Reasonable lifespan of 10 years or more. This seems to be very much a design flaw (can be remotely bricked by discontinuation of the service) so you could probably take the vendor to Small Claims Court and win.

It's the vendor that pays out, not the manufacturer. That's why Amazon had to partially refund that guy whose PS3 had the "other OS" feature remotely deleted by Sony.

Re:Put Lifetime in quotes

[Areyoukiddingme]

Not that I need it, but how well does X10 work?

Simultaneously great and not great. I've been using X-10 components every single day since 1999, and 99.9% of the time, they Just Work. The other 0.1% of the time, I have to fiddle with it. Sometimes I can just retry a command. Other times, I have to change antennae positions because the radio environment in the neighborhood has changed. So X-10 works great, but it's always a little bit marginal. It doesn't take much to tip it over the edge into not working. And of course there's zero security of any kind, so if the neighbor kids knew what X-10 was, they could turn my lights off on me.

Specifically, I wonder about the North American practice of wiring houses as two separate 110 volt "buses" 180 degrees out of phase. Doesn't that mean that an X10 controller on one "bus" can't talk to a device on the other "bus" unless a 220 volt device like a clothes drier or electric stove happens to be running?

Correct, the two legs are generally inaccessible to each other. I have a receiver on each one, in consequence.

Re:Put Lifetime in quotes

[HexaByte]

And yet I have Sears Craftsman tools that I bought 25 years ago, and return for a new one when it breaks. Some companies honor their lifetime warranties.

“Intentionally Bricked”

[Aaden42]

TFA & other stuff I’ve read on this accuse them of taking an affirmative action to destroy the hardware, IE “intentionally bricked.” Reality is that they’re turning off servers that the hardware needs to function. Net effect to the consumer is the same, but the inflammatory language is inaccurate.

If Google sent down a kill packet or firmware update that was intended to ruin a piece of hardware that would otherwise continue to function as-is if they hadn’t done so, that’s “intentionally bricked.” If they shutdown a server farm that consumers aren’t paying any on-going fees to make use of, that’s a different thing. Google has an obligation to not destroy something you bought, but they’re not obligated to keep providing you free server time.

”Google bricked my RSS reader when they shutdown Google Reader.”
”Google bricked my email client when they stopped giving email on Google Domains away for free.”
”Google bricked my IDE when they turned off Google Code.”
”Google LITERALLY killed me when they discontinued Google Health.”

Basically what I’m trying to say is read the fine print and check your entitlement. You chose to pay money for a product that was dependent on someone else’s charity to keep working. You backed the wrong horse.

If you can’t smash everything it needs to work with a hammer, you don’t own it.

Re:“Intentionally Bricked”

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Basically what I’m trying to say is read the fine print and check your entitlement. You chose to pay money for a product that was dependent on someone else’s charity to keep working.

The not-so-fine print at the time of purchase actually said "Free lifetime service subscription." That sure sounds like an a liability the parties would have had on their radar when valuing the acquisition. In fact, after the acquisition was complete, Nest reiterated the commitment: "For existing customers, the service will continue to be available and we will continue to offer customer support."

Reasonable people thus might well view the ongoing service as something more along the lines of a contractual obligation rather than an "entitlement" or "charity."

Re:Nest biggest problem is Google

[Godai]

You realize that was debunked, right?

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1...

I mean, it's great because it fits the assumed narrative, but there's actually no evidence to back up the claim.

That doesn't apply to this Revolv thing though; I have no idea what the hell they're thinking here at all.

I have had X-10 since 1979.

[jabberw0k]

"In 1978, X10 products started to appear in RadioShack and Sears stores." (X-10 history). N.B. profanity does not help your case.

Re:You're running Linux I presume?

[CanadianMacFan]

No thanks. Did that for a decade and I go tired of running multiple OSs. I have nothing against Linux. I was even a system administrator for Linux for a few years looking after the servers for a government website. My preference for the desktop is the Mac and I've moved onto doing development for the iOS and Mac environment.

That being said I do have a nice Synology NAS at home where I run my own file server, DNS, mail server, web server, and BitTorrent Sync client. It's also connected to the Internet via a VPN and all my computers on my home network use it as a proxy. I have my torrent client running on there. There are plenty of other options that can be added such as media servers. It's a really nice box and saves me from looking after another machine. All I had to do was install the drives, turn it on, and configure how I wanted the RAID set up. Yes, I paid for the convenience but I've had it 4 or 5 years and not had a problem with it, except my drives filling up.

Re:Don't Be Evil

[Chrontius]

First, I don’t think you’re familiar with the way secure cryptosystems are designed to operate. They simply don’t work unless they’re configured into a fail-deadly state.

No, what they’re protecting against with this approach to repair is okay, they’re protecting you against several attacks. The first and most likely is phone theft. An AppleID locked phone is stolen. Someone takes it to a launderer, who opens the phone and swaps the TouchID cable over to a special device that spoofs the TouchID to the secure enclave. It sends the all-clear, and the secure enclave unlocks the phone. This lets you jailbreak, which lets you bypass the rest of the phone’s security, turn off Find My iPhone, and wipe the device to factory new (un-jailbreaking in the process, and hiding the evidence of the theft). They put the TouchID cable back, screw the display back in place, and have just unbricked your phone. Smartphone thefts were so rampant before activation lock that a noun was coined to describe it - “Apple picking.”

Second, there’s identity theft and fraud. Steal the phone of someone, and use it to crowbar your way into their bank accounts and credit cards.

Third, there’s industrial espionage - steal the phone belonging to someone who works at the company you’re targeting, and steal their VPN credentials before they can report their phone missing.

Fourth, there’s nation-state attacks - think of people like Bashar al’Assad, and how he might like to get into dissidents’ phones, and since “dissident” is described as “anybody not in the army” and dissidents are all fair game for assassination or airstrikes, well Finding out where people live would be a priority for him.

You don’t need to give them their phone back once you have a malicious TouchID or spoofing device - you’ve already got the keys to the kingdom.

That the cryptosystem only checks for compromise at OS update and not at boot is bad - it lets people think their phones are actually fixed when they’re not, and it lets devices go compromised for quite a while if someone does have a malicious TouchID sensor, which do exist - many third-party knockoff TouchIDs just sent the same fingerprint image that was stored in ROM every time they were touched, so as to fool the user into thinking that TouchID was working. On the other hand, anybody else could stick their dick on the sensor, and it’d say that it was definitely your thumbprint.

So yes, actually, that thing you blew off as:

a cheesy plot to a mission impossible movie

is exactly how things work these days.

Welcome to the future, cyberpunk.