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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."
I bet there are a lot of people who would have bought NEST thermostats and controller, but because Google bought them, they didn't want Google to track when they're in the house. Google's privacy invasion issue affects everything they make. I won't touch a Google self drive car, because I know that Google will data mine the f*ck out of it.
Even their Android radios have this problem:
http://mashable.com/2015/10/06/2017-porsche-911-android-auto/#MtZZYvWFOOqL
"A report from Motor Trend indicates that, in order to program Android Auto — Google's version of its mobile OS for in-dash infotainment systems —for the iconic Porsche sports car, the German automaker would have to turn over a mountain of data. The information required ranges from vehicle speed, throttle position, oil and coolant temperature, and engine rpm, to name a few — every time the car is turned on. "
So Porsche told them to fuck off, and I like Porsche more because of it. And Nest? Don't want it.
"Lifetime" in a commercial sense is shorthand for "as long as we care to support the product" rather than "as long as the product works." The FTC, for example, lists 3 different interpretations of the term.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Wait till their short attention span runs out and your 8 year old Alphabet car gets bricked rather than maintained. We need less of this fly by night tech in critical and long term installations.
More accurately, don't buy a self-driving car by a competitor of Google that Google will buy out.
Unfortunately there aren't very many Google products that *didn't* originate elsewhere. There's search... but what else? It's not as if Glass or Voice or Maps actually started inside Google, much as they sometimes try to bury any pre-Google history.
#DeleteChrome
All the "same laws" that apply to all other consumer products are pretty well useless. Read a cell phone contract or any so-called "warranty" carefully on any "consumer" product and you'll realize you have f-all rights. Manufacturers and vendors are continually chipping away at "consumer rights" with the willing assistance of their well-paid Congress, Senate and SCOTUS critters.
Try to take a broken toaster back to any big box retailer and get your money back: Unless they really want your repeat business they will make you suffer in a long line to get a "reconditioned" replacement that won't last a week.
The real advantage of F/OSS is that it gives you no warranty or promise of any kind, but that it DOES give you the capability of fixing it yourself and making the system do what YOU want. As long as your software is controlled by a vendor or any other third party that does NOT have your interests at heart, you remain at their mercy. And they will only act in their best interests, not yours.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
That's why I'm still using X-10 home automation products. Maybe not as "gee whiz" as all the IoT stuff, but no cloud component, no phoning home, just control signals sent through the house wiring (and wireless remotes sending signals locally to a receiver).
Gonna be interesting when the software -- bugs are the user's problem -- mentality collides with the automotive strict liability world. Presumably the entertainment components can work (or not work) like the crap we are used to. But if your autonomous car runs over a kid on a tricycle I think that software vendors are going to find themselves in a whole new legal world.
Popcorn time ...
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
It's really disingenuous to say that people did this to themselves. After the repairs were complete, the phone worked perfectly fine, meaning that as far as they knew they had done the job correctly. What happened is that a later update came around and bricked the device if somebody had repaired it.
But that's not even the worst part, the worst part was that Apple refused to unbrick the devices, and basically forced everybody to come to their repair shops. Why is that bad? Because right to repair is actually codified in US law, meaning it's illegal for a manufacturer to create countermeasures for you doing self repairs and/or going to third parties for repair.
Furthermore, the whole argument in favor of that brick was absurd. Is somebody really supposed to steal your iphone, swap their own fake fingerprint sensor in it, and then put it back as if nothing happened? That sounds like a cheesy plot to a mission impossible movie.