I'm not against manufacturer stopping support for their Internet Of Shits devices, but there should be a law making it mandatory for them to release source code, protocol specs and whatever is needed so that a man of the craft could be able to do what is necessary to continue using the product that he bought.
I'd rather a law mandating that all devices include an 'offline' option for any hardware features that could conceivably support one.
I don't want to create an account for my toaster, nor have my lightbulb send updates to an analytics server, nor have my washing machine cease to function when my wifi goes down.
A ban on products tying hardware features to an internet connection would fix all those problems in addition to giving them theoretically eternal life.
I think the problem with this argument is that this is rarely the case.
99% of the time (including incident) they are not requiring an account for your toaster, or lightbulbs or your washing machine ceasing to function when your wifi goes off.
The issue is that you have a washing machine that you bought with a feature that you can watch the inside of the machine while it's running over wifi from anywhere in the world. Then the company "kills" their cloud features (like Belkin is doing wiht Wemo cloud features) and you no longer can watch your 4k stream of the washer working. Not even locally, not remotely, nothing. It's a feature you paid for, and 2 or 3 years down the line it's gone.
Some times the whole functionality of a device is a cloud connectivity, like a bridge or something, or a device that has 0 physical controls (for some design or ascetic reason) then yeah. Those devices would "cease to function"
Aside from really really maliciously designed products, most "smart" products I know of function perfectly fine as their dumb counter parts. The vast shocking majority of smart lights, smart switches, smart outlets, smart locks, and smart toasters I have seen all work as regular "dumb" version. But that's not why you paid the extra $40-$200 on it. Like a regular LED lightbulb is $4 and a Lifx wifi one is $30. It works fine as a regular lightbulb, you never need to do anything to it and you'd never know it has wifi in it.
There are definitely many products that need no account or cloud functionality at all, but still make you sign up for an account. Philips Hue did this recently for their app, when the bulbs only need local WiFi or ZigBee, but then decided to force you into an account “for your convenience” to sync minor things that don’t matter. The bulbs still work without the app, but you can’t control or update the firmware without an account (or some other system like Home Assistant)
My Bosh ebike display can't set the clock unless I make an account with theminstall tje app, and agree to a huge, incomprehensible legal thing. It is a lousy time keeper, loosing 20 minutes over a year.
It will display a zillion fancy useless things to me, but my speed and the time are the only things I care about. I installed a speedometer next to it, which costs €10, looks ridiculous, and works.
"Must be fully operational as described in the brochure without an internet connection. Any features that require an internet connection must be priced and sold as optional enhancements."
In lieu of a law, a class action against Bellingham that publicly states “we will settle for $1 in exchange for you publishing all protocol docs, device firmware source code, and any private keys used to authenticate firmware installed for these devices, so that competitors can pick up where Belkin left off” would absolutely hold their feet to the fire on this.
Really just an extension of the "Stop Killing Games" initiative, "Stop Killing Everything Else", even the Belkin devices that will survive through HomeKit are tied to an iOS device with a limited support period! Buy a new everything every 5 - 10 years or your stuff might get bricked or left to fend for itself without security patches. The whole tech industry needs to change.
It's almost like that in the absence of proper government regulations corporations are free to screw up consumers. And of course they do, why wouldn't they?
This is why I'm buying "smart" things only if they either work fine without the internet or if they are part of a standard.
My washing machine tells me when it's done, and that's handy, but if it goes away I can still wash clothes. My smart bulbs work with anything that supports Thread/Matter.
I want to shout out to https://usetrmnl.com for showing folks how to actually handle the situation of ensuring that your IoT device will never be bricked.
They released and sponsored open-source servers for their e-ink display in multiple languages: https://github.com/usetrmnl .
I have never seen a better run, community focused IoT hardware company.
I've got Sonos' least smart speaker. No microphone.
Can't stream to it, can't connect to it at all since they trashed the app, said app is mandatory. It's a doorstop, living on as a reminder that I should have rejected it the moment it refused to run without a phone attached.
I haven't bought for a long time, are these required to run the car? Or is it just prohibitively obscure to disable it (smash the antenna or connect it to ground, for example).
Probably not intended to be required, but some implementations are buggy. IIRC when 2g was killed off some Subarus had a problem where they'd keep trying and failing to connect to a 2G tower until the battery died
It is as "easy" as that. My assumption is these are mostly optional things we think we "need" so a little friction finding something that doesn't suck isn't the worst thing. Reigns in our consumerism a little bit too.
For any smartphone I guess, can any one provider cut you off from using it? For Apple and Google Pixel phones that might be true, but not for all smartphones out there.
There are lots of custom Android running phones that you can truly own.
I have a couple of shades with Somfi motors, and got one of those Bond bridges with it, to connect it to Home-Assistant.
Except you cannot add stuff to that bridge without registering the device to your account. The resale value of the device drops to zero once their server dies, as you cannot add it to a new account, or add new devices to it.
The 1 redeeming factor is that you can control the devices that you have set up in an offline manner.
But I'm still on the lookout for a fully-functional ZWave to Somfi bridge.
And articles like this actually show that I was right in returning my ceiling fan that was Home-Depot-Data-Collecting only. Now I have a more expensive, but HomeKit capable Hunter (which is absolute hell to set up).
This all started with software and because we didn't stop it there it'll keep happening to software that runs hardware.
There was a popular game called "Rocket League" that Psyonix company sold and ran the infrastructure for for many years. But then Epic corporation bought Psyonix for Rocket League's playerbase to bootstrap their proprietary game delivery service. 6 months later everyone who had bought the game for Mac or Linux could no longer play. Epic just stole it from them. No recourse. Not even outrage beyond the effected. It was just accepted as a standard business practice.
Its less bad that they offered refunds, but why would it that make it ok?
If you buy a car, and the company lights it on fire and then offers you a refund is that ok?
You'll still have the burnt husk if you choose not to take the refund
It's hard to take this comparison seriously because Rocket League is a (mostly) online game for which an active connection to active servers (and thus a cost to the developer). Also, there is no burnt husk.
It's like you paying to get lifetime access to a club, the club closing and reimbursing you.
Since when are companies required to run servers for multiplayer? There is always other ways to play multiplayer. At least there used to be but not any more. It is just a thinly veiled excuse to be able to shut it off.
> It's hard to take this comparison seriously because Rocket League is a (mostly) online game for which an active connection to active servers (and thus a cost to the developer).
This is a different situation, but if this was the stop killing games initiative, the answer would be that when you shut down the game you release the server software.
> Also, there is no burnt husk.
The burnt husk is the program on your computer that opens to the menu and then falls over unable to play. That's what you're left with if you don't take the refund.
> It's like you paying to get lifetime access to a club, the club closing and reimbursing you.
That makes it sound like they merely shut down a rocket league hosting service and someone else could provide the same service. They arranged it so they're the only possible way to play rocket league, even though the game runs on my computer using my resources.
I have tried to keep the Psyonix wikipedia article true to reality if you look at the change history but there are people working for Epic heavily whitewashing it and I didn't want to force (wiki) arbitration or cause a disturbance after the first couple edit/revert battles. The Rocket League one is even harder to keep true.
Basically, they said they were stealing the Mac and Linux Rocket League versions because they wanted to go full directx 10 instead of 9. But the fact that the PS3 is still a first class client running Directx 9 even today shows this is/was a lie. Epic lies quite a bit. In fact when they bought Psyonix they loudly announced there would be no changes, it'd stay rocket league. But of course that lie only lasted 6 months. And now they re-write the wiki pages to pretend it was always the plan.
Anyway, I didn't want a refund. I wanted to keep playing rocket league. And now I cannot play. That's wrong. They bricked my game. And everyone thinks that's A-OK. Just like when they'll brick your modem, or your fridge, or maybe your car. Frankly, having any software in a $thing is a huge risk these days given the status quo.
The Sony playstation 3 was another example where it let you run Linux and then people found a way to use the hardware to its fullest (the coprocessors were locked in Linux) and Sony pulled support. Took some court cases but customers got partial refunds then too. HP also lost a lawsuit on blocking ink jet cartridges too.
I think this law needs to move to basic consumer protection and under the protection of a quango and they have a lot of companies to go after now.
I'm not against manufacturer stopping support for their Internet Of Shits devices, but there should be a law making it mandatory for them to release source code, protocol specs and whatever is needed so that a man of the craft could be able to do what is necessary to continue using the product that he bought.
I'd rather a law mandating that all devices include an 'offline' option for any hardware features that could conceivably support one.
I don't want to create an account for my toaster, nor have my lightbulb send updates to an analytics server, nor have my washing machine cease to function when my wifi goes down.
A ban on products tying hardware features to an internet connection would fix all those problems in addition to giving them theoretically eternal life.
I think the problem with this argument is that this is rarely the case.
99% of the time (including incident) they are not requiring an account for your toaster, or lightbulbs or your washing machine ceasing to function when your wifi goes off.
The issue is that you have a washing machine that you bought with a feature that you can watch the inside of the machine while it's running over wifi from anywhere in the world. Then the company "kills" their cloud features (like Belkin is doing wiht Wemo cloud features) and you no longer can watch your 4k stream of the washer working. Not even locally, not remotely, nothing. It's a feature you paid for, and 2 or 3 years down the line it's gone.
Some times the whole functionality of a device is a cloud connectivity, like a bridge or something, or a device that has 0 physical controls (for some design or ascetic reason) then yeah. Those devices would "cease to function"
Aside from really really maliciously designed products, most "smart" products I know of function perfectly fine as their dumb counter parts. The vast shocking majority of smart lights, smart switches, smart outlets, smart locks, and smart toasters I have seen all work as regular "dumb" version. But that's not why you paid the extra $40-$200 on it. Like a regular LED lightbulb is $4 and a Lifx wifi one is $30. It works fine as a regular lightbulb, you never need to do anything to it and you'd never know it has wifi in it.
There are definitely many products that need no account or cloud functionality at all, but still make you sign up for an account. Philips Hue did this recently for their app, when the bulbs only need local WiFi or ZigBee, but then decided to force you into an account “for your convenience” to sync minor things that don’t matter. The bulbs still work without the app, but you can’t control or update the firmware without an account (or some other system like Home Assistant)
My Bosh ebike display can't set the clock unless I make an account with theminstall tje app, and agree to a huge, incomprehensible legal thing. It is a lousy time keeper, loosing 20 minutes over a year.
It will display a zillion fancy useless things to me, but my speed and the time are the only things I care about. I installed a speedometer next to it, which costs €10, looks ridiculous, and works.
The last projector I bought would not function until I signed in to a Google account.
One word: Juicero
I love this idea. But “ features that could conceivably support one.” is going to be the tricky bit to regulate
"Must be fully operational as described in the brochure without an internet connection. Any features that require an internet connection must be priced and sold as optional enhancements."
Done.
Rather than regulating features, I'd start with a dependency list.
So a smart plug might have a list saying:
- Functionality requires 2.4GHz WiFi, Internet access, access to whatever.vendor.com, and a vendor.com account.
- Provisioning requires the above plus BLE and Vendor's app.
A smart washing machine might be more complex:
- Express wash requires nothing special.
- Regular wash requires 2.4GHz WiFi, Internet access, access to whatever.vendor.com, and a vendor.com account.
- Heavy Duty wash requires the above plus a vendor-supplied detergent cartridge.
In lieu of a law, a class action against Bellingham that publicly states “we will settle for $1 in exchange for you publishing all protocol docs, device firmware source code, and any private keys used to authenticate firmware installed for these devices, so that competitors can pick up where Belkin left off” would absolutely hold their feet to the fire on this.
Sadly in most countries we don't have "class action".
Really just an extension of the "Stop Killing Games" initiative, "Stop Killing Everything Else", even the Belkin devices that will survive through HomeKit are tied to an iOS device with a limited support period! Buy a new everything every 5 - 10 years or your stuff might get bricked or left to fend for itself without security patches. The whole tech industry needs to change.
It's almost like that in the absence of proper government regulations corporations are free to screw up consumers. And of course they do, why wouldn't they?
This is why I'm buying "smart" things only if they either work fine without the internet or if they are part of a standard.
My washing machine tells me when it's done, and that's handy, but if it goes away I can still wash clothes. My smart bulbs work with anything that supports Thread/Matter.
It’s often impossible to tell before you purchase if connecting it to the internet is optional or not.
I want to shout out to https://usetrmnl.com for showing folks how to actually handle the situation of ensuring that your IoT device will never be bricked.
They released and sponsored open-source servers for their e-ink display in multiple languages: https://github.com/usetrmnl .
I have never seen a better run, community focused IoT hardware company.
I've got Sonos' least smart speaker. No microphone.
Can't stream to it, can't connect to it at all since they trashed the app, said app is mandatory. It's a doorstop, living on as a reminder that I should have rejected it the moment it refused to run without a phone attached.
Do not buy stuff you do not own.
Rules out any vehicle for sale in the US today with a built-in cellular connection.
I haven't bought for a long time, are these required to run the car? Or is it just prohibitively obscure to disable it (smash the antenna or connect it to ground, for example).
Probably not intended to be required, but some implementations are buggy. IIRC when 2g was killed off some Subarus had a problem where they'd keep trying and failing to connect to a 2G tower until the battery died
In parallel, learn to modify stuff you don't own so that you do own it.
It is as "easy" as that. My assumption is these are mostly optional things we think we "need" so a little friction finding something that doesn't suck isn't the worst thing. Reigns in our consumerism a little bit too.
Google or Apple phones also?
For any smartphone I guess, can any one provider cut you off from using it? For Apple and Google Pixel phones that might be true, but not for all smartphones out there.
There are lots of custom Android running phones that you can truly own.
I have a couple of shades with Somfi motors, and got one of those Bond bridges with it, to connect it to Home-Assistant.
Except you cannot add stuff to that bridge without registering the device to your account. The resale value of the device drops to zero once their server dies, as you cannot add it to a new account, or add new devices to it.
The 1 redeeming factor is that you can control the devices that you have set up in an offline manner.
But I'm still on the lookout for a fully-functional ZWave to Somfi bridge.
And articles like this actually show that I was right in returning my ceiling fan that was Home-Depot-Data-Collecting only. Now I have a more expensive, but HomeKit capable Hunter (which is absolute hell to set up).
This all started with software and because we didn't stop it there it'll keep happening to software that runs hardware.
There was a popular game called "Rocket League" that Psyonix company sold and ran the infrastructure for for many years. But then Epic corporation bought Psyonix for Rocket League's playerbase to bootstrap their proprietary game delivery service. 6 months later everyone who had bought the game for Mac or Linux could no longer play. Epic just stole it from them. No recourse. Not even outrage beyond the effected. It was just accepted as a standard business practice.
Via Wikipedia:
> The developer offered full refunds to the game for macOS and Linux owners regardless of how long they had the game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_League#Free-to-play_tra...
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/rocket-league-ending-mac-an...
Its less bad that they offered refunds, but why would it that make it ok? If you buy a car, and the company lights it on fire and then offers you a refund is that ok? You'll still have the burnt husk if you choose not to take the refund
They broke something after they sold it
It's hard to take this comparison seriously because Rocket League is a (mostly) online game for which an active connection to active servers (and thus a cost to the developer). Also, there is no burnt husk.
It's like you paying to get lifetime access to a club, the club closing and reimbursing you.
Since when are companies required to run servers for multiplayer? There is always other ways to play multiplayer. At least there used to be but not any more. It is just a thinly veiled excuse to be able to shut it off.
> It's hard to take this comparison seriously because Rocket League is a (mostly) online game for which an active connection to active servers (and thus a cost to the developer).
This is a different situation, but if this was the stop killing games initiative, the answer would be that when you shut down the game you release the server software.
> Also, there is no burnt husk.
The burnt husk is the program on your computer that opens to the menu and then falls over unable to play. That's what you're left with if you don't take the refund.
> It's like you paying to get lifetime access to a club, the club closing and reimbursing you.
That makes it sound like they merely shut down a rocket league hosting service and someone else could provide the same service. They arranged it so they're the only possible way to play rocket league, even though the game runs on my computer using my resources.
Brutal.
Like the repo man leaving you a tip.
I have tried to keep the Psyonix wikipedia article true to reality if you look at the change history but there are people working for Epic heavily whitewashing it and I didn't want to force (wiki) arbitration or cause a disturbance after the first couple edit/revert battles. The Rocket League one is even harder to keep true.
Basically, they said they were stealing the Mac and Linux Rocket League versions because they wanted to go full directx 10 instead of 9. But the fact that the PS3 is still a first class client running Directx 9 even today shows this is/was a lie. Epic lies quite a bit. In fact when they bought Psyonix they loudly announced there would be no changes, it'd stay rocket league. But of course that lie only lasted 6 months. And now they re-write the wiki pages to pretend it was always the plan.
Anyway, I didn't want a refund. I wanted to keep playing rocket league. And now I cannot play. That's wrong. They bricked my game. And everyone thinks that's A-OK. Just like when they'll brick your modem, or your fridge, or maybe your car. Frankly, having any software in a $thing is a huge risk these days given the status quo.
The Sony playstation 3 was another example where it let you run Linux and then people found a way to use the hardware to its fullest (the coprocessors were locked in Linux) and Sony pulled support. Took some court cases but customers got partial refunds then too. HP also lost a lawsuit on blocking ink jet cartridges too.
I think this law needs to move to basic consumer protection and under the protection of a quango and they have a lot of companies to go after now.
HN discussion from yesterday's announcement:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44524063#44527939