I got it home, opened the box, thinking I had a new watch!
Nope. You have to connect it to the internet and let it phone home first. It would not tell time, permit you to manually set the time, or let you explore that watch at all, until it spoke with it’s mothership.
I put it back in the box, and tossed it in the closet, and it’s still there, and now it’s completely unusable because the company collapsed.
[0]https://developer.pebble.com/blog/2017/04/04/transitioning-u...
If that counts as crazy, then lock me up, because I'm crazy too. I'll second everything you said, but I'm not so sure it's entirely ignorance - I believe a large number of people just don't care (which is ignorance of another kind).
Ok seeing we talking IoT what standard: of the top of my head mqtt, coap, http/rest, soap? Those are just communication protocols. Now we still need to standardize the application data layer jsonschema, swagger/openapi, wsdl? and most of the time the vendor wants to own the application for their benefit. Also the classic xkcd of standards leading to more standards is so true.
As you mentioned the problem lies with the general public, don't care attitude. Hopefully there is enough that will try to educate and help their peers.
But a lot of us is going to learn the hard way how criminals used our iot devices against us to rob us blind and only then change will truly start to take place.
The general public doesn't care about freedom of press. Let's take that away. The general public doesn't care about elections. Let's take that away.
People use these self serving assumptions of ignorance to empower themselves. You have a ton of devices and things you use in your everyday life. Why should a doctor or civil engineer need to understand the details of software and hardware technologies to get value from it? Do all software folks understand the details of medical stuff or their home construction?
That's why you need regulations, so vague terms like the 'general public don't care' are not used to abuse them.
I wouldn't argue so much for standards of technology, as for standards of conduct. It's funny you mention doctors and civil engineers, two professions with high ethical standards precisely because they went through the same painful growth the software industry is going through now.
The 'general public', quite frankly, is ignorant about a great many things. And let's be honest: it is very rare indeed to be the kind of person with the aptitude, time and willingness to become a polymath to the point that you'll never be scammed in any field, ever. It is incumbent upon us, the knowledgeable and ethical practicioners of our field, to hold not just ourselves, but our whole industry to a higher standard. Thus, discussions such as this one on HN where we point out that IoT devices could cause a world of hurt because of all the make-a-quick-buck hucksters who couldn't be arsed to do due diligience.
High ethical standards enforced by a court of your peer professionals, who can ruin your career if you break the code of conduct. The last part is, unfortunately, crucial, because ethics can quickly go out of the window when people face monetary pressures.
> It is incumbent upon us, the knowledgeable and ethical practicioners of our field, to hold not just ourselves, but our whole industry to a higher standard. Thus, discussions such as this one on HN where we point out that IoT devices could cause a world of hurt because of all the make-a-quick-buck hucksters who couldn't be arsed to do due diligience.
I strongly agree. And I feel there should be loud naming and shaming of companies with anti-consumer practices like these.
One thing I feel we can teach the general public, though, is the distrust towards the cloud and SaaS model. IoT devices can, and should, communicate point-to-point or in your LAN. If a device needs an Internet connection to work and doesn't have a damn good reason for that, one should avoid it.
"By visiting my front door, you agree to Doorbird's privacy policy"
Speaking of planned obsolesence, it would be nice to be able to take a working 40yo. fixed camera and tell it it's a barcode reader and scheduled wildlife counter, or otherwise to take a power profile change, if not also distinct (llvm, CoolWave, Bluetooth 4.1 profile) promise or callback schema. Maybe tell the shakeweight that you're putting it in the closet in a manner than shaking is no excuse to dissipate more than 21mW. Certainly get (MSDS-ish # circumstance) links from devices that deal in goober or tree nut oils or PVC with flame retardant adjuvants, etc. maybe or maybe not explicitly asking things to McGuyver themselves into a bootstrap industry they don't belong to.
Currently I have a bunch of cheap WiFi cameras, all made by D-Link. The thing I like about D-Link cameras is that when you put them on a WiFi network that isn't allowed to access the internet they still work as expected.
The cameras themselves have all of the smarts to do motion detection and email short recordings, they can also FTP images somewhere or you can use something like Zoneminder to handle things. None of this requires them to phone home or make use of some kind of cloud service.
Of course, D-Link does have a cloud service, but it's not required. To me it seems like the best of both worlds - the easy-to-use cloud service for those who want it, plus the ability to work standalone for those who don't want to use their service.
Why doesn't someone build a video doorbell that works like this? D-Link keeps making and selling these cameras, so clearly there's some kind of market for products that have a cloud service but don't require it.
When the vendor stops updating the app that goes with a 5-yo product that they no longer sell, at some point that app will no longer work under the new version of your mobile OS (iOS 16? 17?), and you'll have to give up on it.
There's a huge amount of obsolescence coming down the pike in 5-10 years.
I think that's okay, overall. These things should all be considered prototypes and shouldn't be expected to last forever. [I also think a certain about of obsolescence is sensible and even good given the potential upsides to maintaining people or teams capable of designing, manufacturing, and supporting specific products or services.]
Not all technological changes are advances.