Jibo, the $899 'Social Robot', Tells Owners in Farewell Address That Its VC Overlords Have Remote-Killswitched It (boingboing.net)

Reader AmiMoJo writes: Jibo was a "social robot" startup that burned through $76 million in venture capital and crowdfunding before having its assets were sold to SQN Venture Partners late last year. Earlier this week, reporter Dylan J Martin tweeted a video of a $899 Jibo robot bidding its owner farewell, announcing that the new owners of his servers were planning to killswitch it; the robot thanked him "very very much" for having it around, and asked that "someday, when robots are more advanced than today, and everyone has them in their homes, you can tell yours that I said 'hello.'" Then, the Jibo performed a melancholy dance.

Comments

What did you expect?

[r2kordmaa]

The entire project was bs from the very beginning, no surprises whatsoever here.

Re: What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up.

-BeauHD

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the Silicon Valley we call that living on the VCs money for free. Makes for a nice life style.

Re:What did you expect?

[Opportunist]

Get used to it. More and more things you consider "yours" are tethered to its maker. And only work as long as its master (and that's not you) allows them to.

Earlier, makers of appliances had to build their systems to last just long enough to make it through warranty, which is a gamble. The item may fail too early or, worse, too late. Now they can determine when it fails you.

Re:What did you expect?

[godefroi]

Ah, the always-connected world we dreamed of. It's a paradise.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really pretty simple, don't buy mickey mouse bullshit like a "social robot."

People with more money than sense buy these kinds of things. It's not an item anyone needs, it's a toy that anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together knew was going to be of very little to no utility. Every connected device is going to be shutdown sooner or later. They can't justify the costs of running the servers when it doesn't make a profit. That is business 101 logic. They won't release a patch or software to run your own server at home because they can't sell all of your private data and usage statistics unless it's all going through servers they control.

The only people who are surprised about this kind of thing are idiots who live in a bubble and don't understand capitalism and greed as it applies to technology. They likely still don't understand that all of these "free" services they use are selling every bit of data they can possibly collect on them in order to make billions.

What's worse are the morons spending $1200 for a new iphone, $1500 for a new Galaxy S10, or $2000 for the upcoming foldable phone that will stop getting updates in 2 or 3 years. Something that is actually useful and necessary in every day life but is cutoff from updates making apps useless and the devices extremely insecure when they are still in perfect working order otherwise. It would cost next to nothing for updates to be configured for older phones but they don't do it because it costs the manufacturer sales on new phones. The hardware in newer models may have a few new features and be more powerful and energy efficient but let's be honest it is mostly the same as what was in the phones built 3 years ago and it would be next to nothing to configure the updates to work with older phones.

I really don't know why anyone would be surprised about this stupid robot being shut down. If the company was decent they would release a package to run as many features as possible from a home pc. They won't because it was sold to a venture capital firm and those companies would sell their children as sex slaves if it would make a profit.

Re:What did you expect?

[AmiMoJo]

A little bit of good news though: companies have started offering refunds when they shut down vital online services. Microsoft did it with their band fitness trackers, and Sony is doing it with a game that was supposed to be free to play online "forever".

We need to keep pushing for this to be the norm. Make retiring services that products depend on expensive for the manufacturer. Make them think hard about committing to long term support before making features dependent on cloud services.

Re:What did you expect?

[jythie]

If one is going to buy products that depend on someone else maintaining infrastructure for you, then yeah, when the manufacturer no longer feels like giving you free services, that is gonna stop.

Re:What did you expect?

[phantomfive]

Get used to it. More and more things you consider "yours" are tethered to its maker. And only work as long as its master (and that's not you) allows them to.

It amazes me how many people seem used to that already and accept it as normal.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who says I have to get use to it?

Re:What did you expect?

[DarkOx]

I don't think this will accomplish what you think it will. Look at it this way. They are refunding at most the purchase price, probably less in a lot of cases. In the mean time they get to hold your money, and collect the interest / investment revenues. They also get to monetize having you connected however they do that. Maybe is showing ads, maybe its in app purchases that won't be refunded, maybe selling your data whatever..

They are not going to let you disconnect, they are just going to structure the deal financially for them such that it works like whole or most formulations of universal life insurance. They know they are mostly going to have to payout eventually probably even more than they will collect in premiums directly but the deal is structured such that most of the time they will be able generate enough revenue off the capital over time to be profitable.

Re:What did you expect?

[Opportunist]

Like that Outer Limits episode?

Re:What did you expect?

[stealth_finger]

Get used to it. More and more things you consider "yours" are tethered to its maker. And only work as long as its master (and that's not you) allows them to.

It amazes me how many people seem used to that already and accept it as normal.

It might be a really shitty situation but damn is it convenient.

Re: What did you expect?

[phantomfive]

Convenient because you can take advantage of those people? Or should I say, because you can offer them valued services?

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure I would say BS from the beginning. For one, it shows that people are wanting this type of technology. This opened the door for future development of such devices, while hopefully learning from past mistakes. I mean the project started in 2018 and lasted until now, so that's 5 years. Not so bad if you ask me.

I would definitely not recommend buying into this type of thing (Tethered to back-end servers) without there being some sort of recurring revenue, a subscription service for example. With some sort of recurring income, I think it's almost a given that the service will be discontinued at some point.

Would be nice though, if they would open source everything now that they are shutting it down, so others can work on an on-premise solution and/or replacement cloud service for those that want to continue using it. Otherwise, it's just a waste of materials. More crap for the recycling piles.

Re:What did you expect?

[Voyager529]

Get used to it. More and more things you consider "yours" are tethered to its maker. And only work as long as its master (and that's not you) allows them to.

It amazes me how many people seem used to that already and accept it as normal.

Because they've been doing it for years.

Look, you and I and plenty of the Slashdot crowd know how to fix our own computers and run our own servers. How many people have depended on you / the IT guy at work / the Geek Squad to keep their computers running? Most of them. To them, 'trusting someone else with their data' is, ultimately, all they've ever done. To top it off, in most cases they end up paying less and getting better services in the process. If they've been burned in one form or another over the years, that effect is even more pronounced.

You and me and the rest of the people who prefer self-hosted solutions are in the extreme minority because we see services come and services go, and we invest our time and our data into them. The Snapchat crowd sees data as transient, and backups too complicated and generally unnecessary. I mean, they'll realize in 20 years that they have no photos of their lives to show their children, but 'long term thinking' is not a favored mindset at this point in time.

With everything disposable and transient, 'everything-as-a-rental' and no concept of the value of ownership, the fact that few consumers insist on self-hosted solutions is completely unsurprising to me.

Re:What did you expect?

[HeckRuler]

Get used to it.

No. I refuse. I will fight back against that cultural momentum of corporations redefining what "ownership" and "sell/purchase" actually mean. I prefer products that are open and free. I try to self-host where possible. I void warranties. (And that bullshit sticker isn't legally binding anyway). I repair. I avoid products I can't repair. I don't own a 1984 wall-screen just so I can scream "play music". (Those things might be a useful product once they no longer need an internet connection. But until then, fuck no). And no I'm not going to rent a modem from the ISP, are you nuts? I advocate for the right to repair. I lament to others about the walled garden. I've annoyed all my family with the analogy of selling a suitcase with a brick in locked compartment. (and yeah I should stop that). I've written my rep and gotten a bullshit form letter back. I donate to the EFF.

Just stop buying this crap.

Now... I still buy a lot of this crap. I gave into Steam a while ago and yes, it absolutely infuriates me when I can't play a game because I'm offline. So now I veer towards GOG when I can. There's a sliding scale of how much a company respects the customers, and each string attached moves it over. Any competitor that can do the same thing, but also give me more respect gets my business.

Re:What did you expect?

[barc0001]

> Get used to it. More and more things you consider "yours" are tethered to its maker

So you're saying you're NOT going to be first in line to get the fantastic new disc-less, digital only, always online Xbox One?

Re:What did you expect?

[barc0001]

> We need to keep pushing for this to be the norm.

Or, crazy thought: maybe we should be demanding instead that a lot of these "smart" service devices don't rely on cloud systems that will one day be retired and render all the devices useless.

Case in point, I just jumped into the smart light tech pool at home. I went with the Philips Hue system instead of any of the many many many competitors out there that are way cheaper. My starter kit with 4 RGB lights and a Zigbee bridge was $200 CDN, compared to 4 wifi RGB wifi lights from an Amazon Favorite for $35 CDN. But here's the thing: those Amazon lights call home to a cloud server for every single action, when you use the app you're not talking directly to your lights from your phone, you're instructing the cloud service to tell them what to do. My Hue lights by comparison communicate with the local bridge. This means if my internet goes down, I can still control the lights. If Philips abandons the Hue product altogether, my system will still work with all the hardware I have.

On the other hand, if the maker of those Amazon favorite lights I mentioned goes tits up and shuts off the cloud service, or decides to discontinue it, your bulbs are worthless. Same with those $25 smart plugs people are buying in droves.

Re:What did you expect?

[cascadingstylesheet]

Get used to it. More and more things you consider "yours" are tethered to its maker. And only work as long as its master (and that's not you) allows them to.

It amazes me how many people seem used to that already and accept it as normal.

Well, it's not intrinsically crazy.

My mains power only works as long as it's "maker" allows it to. My magazine subscription only works as long as it's "maker" allows it to. My jam of the month club (OK, not mine, but you get the idea) only works as long as it's "maker" allows it to.

If you rent a TV, it only works as long as it's "maker" allows it to.

Just saying, it's not unheard of. If it works for someone, they do it, if not, they choose something else. If this model succeeds and becomes prevalent, it's because enough consumers want it to.

Re: What did you expect?

[phantomfive]

Your point is interesting. I think your last sentence though: it could work because customers are not forward thinking enough to know what could happen.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

My jam of the month club

that's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "story" is pure clickbait and misinformation unscrupulously written as an emotional appeal. This is really the message delivered by the device:

"While it's not great news, the servers out there that let me do what I do are going to be turned off soon."

*long pause*

Followed by the unit spinning around.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I still rip my own CDs and only buy games from GOG.com. That way I still truly own my stuff no matter what happens to any company or licensing agreement.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

besides all that, mom wants you to keep buying your robot oil from her.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

>_ maybe selling your data whatever...

Indeed.

Call me cynical, but it's only a deal: you get a product/service in exchange for your money.

The current "owners" are already at loss, supposing the deal had value for them; it may even be the case in which a similar product, developed as DIY, would bring a lot more value (e.g. in learning) -- but many just want to have a robot and not understand what makes them.

In the end, it's a good example of how "you don't get what you pay for."

Or...

[RobertNotBob]

Or, you could tell your future-self to have your new robot hack Jibo to refer to a virtual server spun up ad-hoc by the new unit instead of the long-dead remote servers. PRESTO, your new robot has 2 avitars instead of one. ( ok, one has a lot less capacity than the other. But a hack that was set up with a long-game of years is always worth doing)

Re:Or...

[supremebob]

Yeah, I'd kinda curious what Jibo functionality still works after the servers are shut down. For $900, you would expect this thing to have at least some sort of onboard processing power to do simple tasks.

It would be cool if the new owners of the companies IP gave existing Jibo owners the ability to connect the robot to 3rd party API servers that could restore some of the existing functionality or even add new features. That said, something tells me that they just bought the company for any patents it might hold. That way, they can be parasites and sue future AI/robot manufacturers for infringement in the future.

Re:Or...

[stealth_finger]

Yeah, I'd kinda curious what Jibo functionality still works after the servers are shut down. For $900, you would expect this thing to have at least some sort of onboard processing power to do simple tasks.

Doesn't it only do simple tasks anyway? Or, did at least.

$76 MILLION!!!11111

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we put it into open hardware or a "social" robot? ROBOT!

FML

Re:$76 MILLION!!!11111

[Megane]

In the CLOUD!

Re:$76 MILLION!!!11111

[Opportunist]

In my severance package. Duh.

Old robot under single-payer health care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the world of single-payer health care, where all health care decisions are made by a government-controlled group.

Just don't call it a "Death Panel".

Re:Old robot under single-payer health care?

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds better than some random dude at a company only looking at how much profit curing you would generate

Re: Old robot under single-payer health care?

[bistromath007]

If personal responsibility can be measured in dollars, the poor are justified in committing armed robbery.

Re:Old robot under single-payer health care?

[stealth_finger]

Welcome to the world of single-payer health care, where all health care decisions are made by a government-controlled group.

Just don't call it a "Death Panel".

No, you call it the NHS. Despite its current issues it works quite well thankyouverymuch.

Re:Old robot under single-payer health care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, as long as you don't have to use it, it's great!

WTF

[jf_moreira]

This JIBO just looks like an animated Alexa, that piece of hardware only stupid people buy.

Re:WTF

[alvinrod]

The summary tugged at the heartstrings a little, I'll admit, but then I watched the video. That thing had zero personality and if people had to choose between that thing being destroyed or a gnat getting crushed, I think most people would choose to spare the gnat. Hell if it were a choice between that thing being destroyed in hellfire and a gnat being mildly inconvenienced, I'd still bet most people would spare the gnat.

Re:WTF

[CaptainDork]

Maybe, maybe gnat.

This is getting out of hand

[thereddaikon]

It really is an internet of shit. Not everything needs to be connected to "the cloud". I actively avoid cloud based devices because I cant truly own them. Why would anyone spend close to $1k on something that could stop working at any time?

Re:This is getting out of hand

[geekmux]

...Why would anyone spend close to $1k on something that could stop working at any time?

Because like most other products, the non-cloud version (if available) would cost $15K, making the cloud version seem like a bargain.

That's why.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[fluffernutter]

You totally miss the point. It's not the consumer's problem that the non-cloud one would cost too much and that the cloud one is "a bargain" by comparison. If consumers don't feel comfortable buying it, then it isn't a bargain in a commercial sense.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[Ol Olsoc]

...Why would anyone spend close to $1k on something that could stop working at any time?

Because like most other products, the non-cloud version (if available) would cost $15K, making the cloud version seem like a bargain.

That's why.

That's the best description of cloudthink I've ever seen. Majick bits and bytes that for some reason only run on machines that have the special cloudsprinkles applied to them by a high priestess of cloudiness.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Itâ(TM)s not magic bit and bytes. In this case it is the high end voice recognition ML. You need a cluster of machines to run these ML models in real-time. Because the robot is not interacting most of the time you can share the expensive cluster of machines with other people and save a ton of money. Itâ(TM)s like how in order to fly though the literal clouds you donâ(TM)t need to own your own airplane, you just buy a seat for a single trip. So if you have space and money for a server rack next to your social robot that would totally work but really no-one wants that.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they don't care that they're trading security for ease of use.
They don't even care if they're really getting what they bought or not.
The battery one is crazy. People actually paid for the batteries, and they're lugging them around, but Tesla isn't giving people access to their own property.
Does anyone see the problem here?

People don't care about security, until a lack of it happens to them.
Is there even an option to NOT give Tesla remote access to your car?

Ease of use >> Tesla’s Over-the-Air Fix: Best Example Yet of the Internet of Things?
What did you buy? >>Tesla remotely extends range of vehicles for free in Florida to help owners escape Hurricane Irma
Security >> Team of hackers take remote control of Tesla Model S from 12 miles away

You might think RMS is a kook, visionaries often see things that aren't there. (Isn't that the definition of a visionary?)
Anyway read "Right to Read", it's over 20 years old, so a bit dated but very insightful. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/02/teslas-air-fix-best-example-yet-internet-things/
https://electrek.co/2017/09/09/tesla-extends-range-vehicles-for-free-in-florida-escape-hurricane-irma/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/20/tesla-model-s-chinese-hack-remote-control-brakes

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, they could prevent a bad experience like this one by installing a USB port on the thing, so that you could at least use a keyboard to communicate with it. I will never buy a robot that will just stop working one day because they temporarily leased to you the only way to interact with it.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair this thing is an ARM SoC, similar to a phone, so actually a lot of what it does relies on fast servers with hardware accelerated speech recognition and huge databases of knowledge to answer questions.

It's kind of interesting how back in the mainframe age science fiction assumed that there would be one massive all-knowing computer that everyone in the world could ask questions of via a terminal, and then when microcomputers came along it switched to everyone having a robot with the entirety of human knowledge in its positronic brain.

What actually happened is that we have a large number of specialist AIs shared between everyone, living in the cloud. Hopefully processing and storage will continue to advance fast enough to make having a local copy feasible.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't require a lot of computational power. Computers 20+years ago we able to achieve better than 97% accuracy in speech recognition without the internet or relying on keywords.

A raspberry pi can easily handle that.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Junta]

Inference of adequate recognition models is not so impossibly demanding that you need an expensive cluster of machines. In fact a raspberry pi can do inference of a voice recognition model.

An argument can be made about how 'connected' a device is to your data and how easy it is for a vendor to have to worry about a simplistic frontend in the edge device and thus be able to freely update the backend... But saying that you need gigantic clusters to do simple voice recognition is not accurate.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[GameboyRMH]

Why would it cost $15k for the manufacturer to provide the server software for a user to run locally, and add a way to point the device to a different server? The server software doesn't have to run on the robot itself.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the hardware was likely less than $200 and software development was minimal since the features it did have are all available from dozens of different companies and available for licensing. I would guess they actually made a small profit on actually selling them at $900 and all the data they could sell from users made them even more. If it wasn't profitable a venture capital firm wouldn't have bought them. Toys R' Us was a profitable company until a VC bought them and then cannibalized their assets while transferring mountains of debt to the company so they could declare bankruptcy and keep hundreds of millions for themselves.

This is what unregulated capitalism gets you. I'm fine with people making a lot of money and even becoming billionaires but there needs to be an effective system of checks and balances to make sure that it doesn't hurt consumers and day to day employees at the companies just so shareholders and executives can make enough money to buy a private island.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

We can tell by the phone recognition systems for the last 20 years that what you are saying is completely accurate.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[The Grim Reefer]

ItÃ(TM)s like how in order to fly though the literal clouds you donÃ(TM)t need to own your own airplane, you just buy a seat for a single trip.

Yes, but the plane doesn't just fall out of the sky because someone 5000 miles away decides to turn off the servers.

So if you have space and money for a server rack next to your social robot that would totally work but really no-one wants that.

That should be a choice for the consumer. If they want to kill a product that was purchased, then give the consumer the code to set up a server if that's what they want to do. I have an Escient FireBall connected to 3 DVD changers. Since the company went under years ago, I can't change anything. At least they had the decency to not brick the damn thing. But there are a lot of owners out there they would be happy to set up servers to take over for the ones the company shut down.

I would be interested in having a "smart speaker" if it didn't have to be connected to company controlled servers and I had complete control over it. But as it is, I find them creepy as hell. I guess I'm old. I remember when the population feared" big brother's eye in the sky" being forced on us. Now people not only desire this, they actually pay to have devices listening to them in their own homes.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Killall -9 Bash]

Sorry.... I didn't get that.

Lets try switching to touch-tone for the remainder of this call.


"Agent. Agent. AGENT!!!!!!"

Re:This is getting out of hand

[havana9]

These devices are a new incarnation of the thin client and the terminal connected to a central server or mainframe. The biggest difference is that the user doesn't see is connecting to a central server and the protocol is hidden. Even if the gadget was using an open protocol the end user doesn't notice it. So use the terminal to connect to another system is impossible and the end user doesn't even know that there is a phone number dialled.
Minitel was the retro thing most similar to these assistants. When the system was shut down was at the end of the life, and most users were gone. Not to mention that the system wasn't operated by a private entity but from a public telephone company that was foguse to give services to the population and not to slurp some VC money as fast it could.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[CaptainDork]

I embrace cloud-based devices. I can (and do) store data in my home, but that's a single point of failure. When a device bricks, I can recover (from home or cloud), but if my home suffers catastrophic failure, I'm fucked.

I live in Southeast Texas and hurricanes are apex predators. The power poles go down and I'm on evac. I want access to my data, both the shit that makes life easier and the stuff, like insurance papers, that I need.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[The Grim Reefer]

...Why would anyone spend close to $1k on something that could stop working at any time?

Because like most other products, the non-cloud version (if available) would cost $15K, making the cloud version seem like a bargain.

That's why.

It would be nice if that was an option. Some of us would rather spend $15K for some things now and keep them until we decide to replace them, or not. Rather than spend $1K now and again and again every couple of years because a company decides they're sick of keeping a server running, or the CEO blew all of the money on cocaine and hookers.

Obviously I'm in the minority these days, but a lot of stuff I buy I pay quite a bit more for with the expectation of keeping of for a long time. 30 or 40 years ago, I loved checking out every feature of a new product. Now, I just want it to do what I need it to. So I find it a pain in the ass when I have to figure out a new GUI on a new phone, computer, etc.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[stealth_finger]

...Why would anyone spend close to $1k on something that could stop working at any time?

Because like most other products, the non-cloud version (if available) would cost $15K, making the cloud version seem like a bargain.

That's why.

It's only cheaper because they cover it in ads.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[ceoyoyo]

BS. You can run a TensorFlow voice recognition model on a Raspberry Pi. Google just announced an $80 USB stick (or $160 RPi-like system) with a dedicated ASIC that's even more capable.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[nagora]

...Why would anyone spend close to $1k on something that could stop working at any time?

Because like most other products, the non-cloud version (if available) would cost $15K, making the cloud version seem like a bargain.

That's why.

Would it? Why? Voice recognition? I don't think in this day and age we need a warehouse of computing to do that. And if we did, then what was the business plan for success? A warehouse for every robot sold?

If your product needs to be connected to the magic cloud to work, it's not a real product unless you have a way of transferring the magic to the buyer.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[thereddaikon]

The cloud is just someone else's server. That's nothing you cant do yourself with just getting offsite hosting. Your use case is also a niche explanation that doesn't address the issue with these devices and services being required to use an online service that is ethereal. In most cases service can be terminated at any time just like with these "robots" and there is nothing you can do about it.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

It really is an internet of shit. Not everything needs to be connected to "the cloud". I actively avoid cloud based devices because I cant truly own them. Why would anyone spend close to $1k on something that could stop working at any time?

Nobody did. There's a reason the company went bust. The only people who had one of these were tech reporters and testers who got one for free. Plus of course a few rich kids who really don't know what to spend their money on. I'm pretty sure no lower or middle class families will suffer as a result of this.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[Luthair]

I doubt it was clearly disclosed to the buyers.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

People used to say this kind of thing about computers in general. Now, look at us.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

You need a cluster of machines to run these ML models in real-time.

I call bullshit. Speech recognition algorithms run just fine on consumer level PC hardware. Once the model is trained, the resource cost is minimal. The real reason is because startups with analytics and business intelligence components in the business model have a higher valuation multiplier than product companies.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Google just announced an $80 USB stick (or $160 RPi-like system) with a dedicated ASIC that's even more capable.

Do you have a link to this usb stick or remember what they called it?

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Google just announced an $80 USB stick (or $160 RPi-like system) with a dedicated ASIC that's even more capable.

Do you have a link to this usb stick or remember what they called it?

Never mind, found it. Coral

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Inference of adequate recognition models is not so impossibly demanding that you need an expensive cluster of machines. In fact a raspberry pi can do inference of a voice recognition model.

An argument can be made about how 'connected' a device is to your data and how easy it is for a vendor to have to worry about a simplistic frontend in the edge device and thus be able to freely update the backend... But saying that you need gigantic clusters to do simple voice recognition is not accurate.

Exactly.

In macOS' "Dictation" feature, you have had the option for several years now to Download the Speech-Recognition "Engine, Rulesets, and Dictionary" to your local Mac, making Speech Recognition totally autonomous. The entire package is only about 1.2 GB.

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/08/17/how-to-os-x-enhanced-dictation/

Something the size and power of a home-robot should be capable of the same thing.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[110010001000]

That's the best description of cloudthink I've ever seen. Majick bits and bytes that for some reason only run on machines that have the special cloudsprinkles applied to them by a high priestess of cloudiness.

 
I'm saving that. That is hilarious (and accurate).

Re:This is getting out of hand

[mikeabbott420]

One cloud advantage is when the client demand is occasional but intense. Rather than each client needing their own server resources to handle a peak capacity that is only required occasionally and transiently a pool of shared resources can handle things like voice processing.

It isn't just magic pixie cloud dust, there are use cases where a shared pool of resources is vastly more efficient and less expensive than having every client need expensive resources that sit idle 99+% of the time.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Ol Olsoc]

Itâ(TM)s not magic bit and bytes. In this case it is the high end voice recognition ML. You need a cluster of machines to run these ML models in real-time. Because the robot is not interacting most of the time you can share the expensive cluster of machines with other people and save a ton of money. Itâ(TM)s like how in order to fly though the literal clouds you donâ(TM)t need to own your own airplane, you just buy a seat for a single trip. So if you have space and money for a server rack next to your social robot that would totally work but really no-one wants that.

Tell me the standard applicatinos that will not work unless they are in the cloud. Office 365? Adobe Creative Cloud?

Re:This is getting out of hand

[tepples]

Why would it cost $15k for the manufacturer to provide the server software for a user to run locally

A license for the server software would cost $15,000 ostensibly to pay the pensions of the developers.

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Ol Olsoc]

ItÃ(TM)s like how in order to fly though the literal clouds you donÃ(TM)t need to own your own airplane, you just buy a seat for a single trip.

Yes, but the plane doesn't just fall out of the sky because someone 5000 miles away decides to turn off the servers.

As well, does word processing or the like require a person to have racks of servers? This argument he gives that we need a server farm to do fairly simple work is funny, sort of. We don't, and the whole cloud concet was never about that anyway. Cloud was about 2 things. Getting people to move to the subscription model, and getting rid of as many local IT staff as possible.

Individuals losing data or money is of no consequence when people believe that there is no other way to do work other than replicate the cloud in their place.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[Ol Olsoc]

To be fair this thing is an ARM SoC, similar to a phone, so actually a lot of what it does relies on fast servers with hardware accelerated speech recognition and huge databases of knowledge to answer questions.

Good Gawd, those people deserved to go out of business. Crippling the power of the device in order to require the cloud doesn't strike me as a good way to go.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I could buy a whole rack of servers for $15K and build my own dam cloud, this is a glorified smart speaker, you could build it out of a raspberry pi and some off the shelf bits.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[CaptainDork]

That's nothing you cant do yourself with just getting offsite hosting .

You mean like a cloud?

Re: This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me the standard applicatinos that will not work unless they are in the cloud. Office 365? Adobe Creative Cloud?

Why? Are you under an impression any of those things this robot did? Or that it was all the robot did? Or involved at all?

It seems stupid to restrict your question to "standard applications" when no one said those must be online. You know you can make up claims and argue with yourself offline too :P

The person you replied to gave one very good example of an application most would not want to run locally. In fact most people wouldn't even want to deal with the vast amount of hardware to do that or anything else needing that computation power. Most homes don't have the amperage to support it.

If you must have an example of a program that has nothing to do with the robot but must run online, OK how about a web server? or email server? The robot didn't do those either but those things can't do their intended job without being on a network.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[thereddaikon]

I want to prevent a misunderstanding and potential goal post moving in this discussion. I thought my point was clear but I'll lay it out to save us headaches. I am talking about closed down systems that rely on someone else's cloud infrastructure to work. They pull the plug and you are screwed. That is fundamentally different from purchasing your own hosting that you control. The third party host could potentially end service without warning but unless you have a really bad ToS you can usually get legal relief in that case. So no, paying for your own hosting is not the same as a locked down cloud. Ideally you should be in total control of all of the hardware and software but that isn't always practical. Especially if you need it to be hosted offsite. But last I checked these guys didn't give you the option of hosting your own server.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[geekmux]

I could buy a whole rack of servers for $15K and build my own dam cloud, this is a glorified smart speaker, you could build it out of a raspberry pi and some off the shelf bits.

You mean you could "build it."

The other 99.999% of society is too lazy to even attempt to try, and they're too cheap to care about privacy anymore. They'll vote for the bargain every time.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[geekmux]

You totally miss the point. It's not the consumer's problem that the non-cloud one would cost too much and that the cloud one is "a bargain" by comparison. If consumers don't feel comfortable buying it, then it isn't a bargain in a commercial sense.

Fair point, so let's root-cause this a bit more.

The real reason this problem exists is because people don't give a shit about privacy anymore. They'll comfortably sell their digital soul to get a $5 app for free. Billions of them do it.

If privacy was still important in society, cloud-anything wouldn't exist, and the concept of ownership would still be alive and thriving instead of dying.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[fluffernutter]

There are two different things, valuing privacy and valuing ownership. I think people are starting to come around to privacy, but now they lack alternatives.

Re:This is getting out of hand

[geekmux]

There are two different things, valuing privacy and valuing ownership.

They're becoming far more intertwined with products and services today. If you want to own a product free and clear (so to speak), then you will pay for that freedom by paying for the subsidies that reduce the price. Otherwise, you are the revenue stream that benefits from a reduced price in exchange for your usage data. Or your GPS location. Or your contacts. Or any number of private data points companies often use as revenue streams to justify a "free" offering.

Bottom line is people don't value either one of them for various reasons, but cost is certainly one of them. Spoil an entire generation with "free" services is like the drug dealer giving out free samples forever. They're hooked, and will happily trade privacy and ownership for it.

I think people are starting to come around to privacy, but now they lack alternatives.

And privacy advocates warned of that for years. The I told you so isn't even worth it at this point due to the impact on everyone.

When my dog died, it was not that pretty.

[Anonymous Coward]

So sorry I won't shed even a tear.

Planned obsolescence

[QuietLagoon]

If there is the ability for a company to turn it off remotely, it should not be a surprise when that ability is used.

Re: Planned obsolescence

[Anonymous Coward]

They must feed said robot what do robots eat exactly?

Re: Planned obsolescence

[Calydor]

eMutton.

Re:Planned obsolescence

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Windows XP was able to be completely turned off remotely. The most hacked OS in history and no one has found the ultimate kill switch. Is running scripts more profitable than being there with new "services" if 25% of china were to shutoff one night?

What's Inside It?

[bjwest]

Can it be hacked and Linux installed? Can it run Mycroft? Can I pick one up on ebay for ~$50 soon???

There are worse ways to go

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:There are worse ways to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse? I'd rather go you like that than how that complelety idiotic Jibo did.

Its toe-tappingly tragic!

[Anonymous Coward]

--zoidberg

LOL one letter away from "Kibo"

[Anonymous Coward]

kek

the image shall speak & kill any who dont wors

[Anonymous Coward]

For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.

Mystery Red of the Great American Eclipse
It has blood on it!
ABCNews: Eclipse makes pendulum wander
Sun researchers find strange eclipse reading

It doesn't looked that hot.

[ruddk]

The mechanics were cute but apparently the assistant part were lacking.
TERRIBLE $900 Party Trick – Jibo Review : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Linux just isn't that portable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you've heard about it being put on a toaster. So what? Do you have JTAG cables or a even hardware programmer?

Re:Linux just isn't that portable.

[PPH]

Do you have JTAG cables or a even hardware programmer?

You are aware of the Slashdot demographic? For a good number of people here, the answer to those questions may very well be 'Yes'.

Re:Linux just isn't that portable.

[bjwest]

Will this work? Like I said though, if the Jibo costs more than $50, it's not worth my time to tinker.

Re:Linux just isn't that portable.

[ceoyoyo]

You've got a UID under a million, so your post is understandable. Unfortunately, I have some bad news for you....

Re:Linux just isn't that portable.

[HiThere]

IIRC, it was BSD Unix that was put on a toaster. I saw it at a West Coast Computer Faire. I thought it an impressive example of total worthlessness...of course, that was long before the IOT.

Re:Linux just isn't that portable.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Slashdot demographic now is Rump (sic) supporters, Russian Trolls and AntiVaxxers, oh and that idiot that continually yells SPACE NUTTERS, so I suspect you are wrong, and the most technical thing they have are two flash cards, one saying breathe in, one saying breathe out...

Re: Linux just isn't that portable.

[ceoyoyo]

It's true, but a sadder trend seems to be the growing anti-intellectualism of that hostility. In the 90s you could be pretty sure that a random Slashdotter probably knew how to use a screwdriver, and might very well have a JTAG programmer on their desk. Today Slashdot is more of a political arguing forum, and technical contributions are mocked as pedantic or irrelevant.

Everybody's gotta get burned a few times

[Sloppy]

Everyone eventually has their own proprietary-software-abandoned/fucked-me experience. Some peoples' experiences are delayed, some people have it quick. Some people lose $20, some lose $200, some lose $2000. Some people get attached and then angry at the loss; some people shrug and let it go. Some people need simply a larger quantity of lessons than others.

It took me a couple decades, from about 1980 to somewhere around 1999-2002, before I finally had enough, so I'm not going to mock the people who threw away $900, I guess. But I would ask 'em, "Is that enough yet? Or do you wanna go for another round of abuse?" Whatever floats your boat, man.

Re:Everybody's gotta get burned a few times

[ceoyoyo]

No way man. My Apple II is still chugging away just fine. If it ever does break, I've got the circuit diagram for the motherboard.

Re:Everybody's gotta get burned a few times

[IMightB]

Personally, I had enough When I was an early adopter of a smart tv that 80% of it's smart features stopped working in about 3 years... I still have the TV, but it is no longer connected to anything but a RPi and previously a Roku... I'm so very very tired of being a product.

Re:Everybody's gotta get burned a few times

[PincushionMan]

Three years? You got double the expected life if the smart TV had some kind of Android in it. Android seems to require new hardware every one and a half to two years. If you're fortunate, you get updates within the first year, and security fixes for the next 1/2, then you are SOL.

Even if it was one of those Roku TVs, you could still have trouble. I heard one (one of the first) had an issue where it could not steam more than one show consecutively without the Roku requiring a reboot. Oh, and it would also reboot randomly. Roku branded LG, if anyone is curious.

Perhaps the TV makers could get together and make a TV card expansion slot, with a promise to support the slot for 5 to 7 years. Then again, that would make the cost go up. TV makers benefit financially when require us to get a new TV every 4 to 6 years.

There's the boot economic theory that says rich men can save money on expensive boots, but if the companies collude to make crappy boots, what happens then?

Re:Everybody's gotta get burned a few times

[Anonymous Coward]

The Amiga will rise again!

Any day now. Soon... very soon... *sob*

Re:Everybody's gotta get burned a few times

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until law enforcement demands Tesla and others allow them to brick a car remotely? For public safety of course. "We would never misappropriate this technology."

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe"

[Tablizer]

Robocide

before having its assets were sold to SQN Venture

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done, Slashdot "editors".
You take such pride in your work, it's great to see.

Lazy @#$%&s

Yet another reason I never buy cloud based things

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad humans continue to use tech for evil, but killing off an expensive item; atleast upload some basic software to it so it won't be a brick.

so disgustingly hartbreaking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Utter disgust i get from these kinds of posts.
It's a MACHINE, yet they always must try to play the human emotion with it.

Makes me WONDER WHY. ( i actually know, but do you ? )

Idea...

[Miamicanes]

First, sniff the robot's wifi traffic using Mallory transparent MITM proxy ( https://github.com/intrepidusg... ). Note that there might be better intercepting wifi proxies available now... possibly, based upon other platforms like ESP32, ESP8266, or RasPi. I really haven't kept up with it. I just remember that at the time I did it, using Mallory with a desktop PC and PCIe wifi card seemed like the obvious choice.

The last time I used Mallory (~5 years ago), it was somewhat straightforward to set up (with slightly above-average Linux experience)... AS LONG AS you used a wifi card with a supported chipset:

* It HAS to be a PCIe wifi interface, because the host PC needs realtime access to the bare-metal wifi hardware that USB just isn't suited for.

* Not all wifi chipsets have binary Linux kernel modules available that support the features necessary to fully implement a wireless access point. I think I remember that most/all Atheros-based cards were suitable, but only a select few Realtek-based cards were... and then, with major disclaimers and caveats. This situation might have gotten better OR worse over the past 5 years. I haven't kept up with it.

* Use EXTREME caution before buying a Linksys or Netgear interface card, based upon web reviews saying that it uses some specific (and supported) Atheros chip. Both companies have a really nasty habit of using Atheros chips for their first generation of a product, racking up glowing 5-star reviews and people praising it as the greatest product the company has ever made... then quietly redesigning later versions to use cheaper, less flexible chipsets. Sometimes, without even bothering to change the UPC... occasionally, without even mentioning on the packaging that it's a later revision. You might be better off skipping the brand-name card, and just hunting on eBay for a generic card that identifies its chipset by name. Generally speaking, Linux doesn't care about the brand or model number of the card... it only cares about the chip used to implement it. In theory, two cards built around the same chip COULD be wired up differently... but 99 times out of 100, companies in China that make generic cards just take the chipset vendor's reference design and copy it verbatim.

Anyway, once you have Mallory up and running, it looks just like a wireless access point. Connect the robot to it just like you'd connect the robot to a normal access point, and have Mallory begin capturing traffic WITHOUT decrypting it.

At this point, you'll know two things:

1. The hostname it's connecting to for its web service calls, and the protocol it's using.

2. Whether or not it's encrypting its traffic. If it's encrypted, you'll basically see a CONNECT followed by garbage. If it's NOT encrypted, you'll probably see straightforward http GET or POST requests in the log.

If it's NOT encrypting the traffic at all, you're in luck. Jump ahead to step 4.

3. Enable Mallory's decryption, and restart the robot so it will attempt to connect to its home server like it did before. If you're EXTREMELY lucky, it'll decrypt the traffic without a hitch. If you're unlucky, the robot will either hang, or give an error that's ultimately caused by an invalid TLS certificate.

If the Robot's software was written properly, it won't make it past this point, and you'll basically be out of luck absent some as-yet undiscovered exploit. HOWEVER, it's quite possible that it MIGHT just ignore the certificate error. There's literally a metric shit-ton of bad example code on StackOverflow and elsewhere that gives the impression that it's OK for apps to just ignore certificate errors, and I'd say that in the real world, probably 60-80% of "secure" devices that "use https" will completely IGNORE certificate errors. Why? Certificates are a royal pain in the ass to deal with during development, because the debugging needs of developers are more or less perpendicular to the demands made by robust security. More often tha

If they had any balls..

[Anonymous Coward]

They would have had it say "I'm scared, Dave" and start singing "Daisy, Daisy...".

Sounds great

[Anonymous Coward]

Used to be that tech like that was bought by businesses, then refined it, and when the capability to mass produce them at good quality for less five years down the road came about then they'd sell it to consumers.

With reliance on the cloud nobody will bother to go through that process and we'll end up with crap that lasts a handful of years until they pull the plug.

This is our legislator's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we need to start a petition to get the useless waste of space that is called our government to pass a law that states "If you are going to sell something that relies on phoning home to operate be it game or anything else, if you plan on turning off the server you must release the source code to allow it to be run by others who will host it for free or to use on personal systems.

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