Google’s outage meant some Nest users couldn’t unlock doors or use the AC | Hacker News Reader

Google’s outage meant some Nest users couldn’t unlock doors or use the AC

fastcompany.com

89 pointsspking34 comments

The first post from jDantastic https://twitter.com/jDantastic/status/1135282856085852160 was a lie (or at best a half-truth): you can just walk up to the Nest and turn the knob, and that works fine without a network connection. In the replies, Kelly Ellis (of Ellis v. Google fame) calls him out on this, and he says a) his Nest is behind a TV where he can't reach it, so he has to use the app, and b) the post was intended for his followers only, who would have understood this.

>his Nest is behind a TV where he can't reach it

Nothing like putting the thermostat behind a device that cranks out heat from its backside.

Only thing that would make sense to me is that he mounted his TV where the thermostat would be. I could see how a Nest would be useful here because you could use their temperature sensors that you can place anywhere in the house to basically ignore the sensor in the nest unit. If that's not the case I would think he may be spending a bit more on AC and power than necessary.

I got one better: the guy who installed a wireless modem inside a faraday cage inside our mechanical room, seeing as he worked for the telco.

> the post was intended for his followers only, who would have understood this.

Ive noticed this seems to be a theme for tons of Tweets that go viral unintentionally and their originators then have to explain a whole ton of stuff that all their followers understand.

Its like the Internet is peeking in on intimate discussions and grabbing bits and pieces to create drama out of.

Isn't it weird that people have intimate discussions on billboards next to massive highways and then get surprised when strangers pay attention?

Isn't this what private Twitter accounts are for?

(I mean, I wish Twitter had the option for private Tweets on otherwise public accounts, but they do have perfectly workable functionality for "my tweets are only intended for my followers.")

Dan Geer, in a recent keynote[1]:

>> The root source of risk is dependence, especially dependence on the expectation of stable system state. Dependence is not only individual but mutual, not only am I dependent or not but rather a continuous scale asking whether we are dependent or not; we are, and it is called interdependence. Interdependence is transitive, hence the risk that flows from interdependence is transitive, i.e., if you depend on the digital world and I depend on you, then I, too, am at risk from failures in the digital world. If individual dependencies were only static, they would be eventually evaluable, but we regularly and quickly expand our dependence on new things, and that added dependence matters because we each and severally add risk to our portfolio by way of dependence on things for which their very newness confounds risk estimation and thus risk management. Interdependence within society is today absolutely centered on the Internet beyond all other dependencies excepting climate, and the Internet has a time rate of change five orders of magnitude faster. Remember, something becomes "a critical infrastructure" as soon as it is widely enough adopted; adoption is the gateway drug to criticality.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbDEbfijxNY (plaintext: http://www.bsidesdc.org/history/geer.html )

What a great quote, thanks for this link. (I recommend reading the entire article).

A great example of how important gracefully failing is. Broken escalators are just stairs, and broken smart-locks should just be locks. If that isn’t the case, then they aren’t actually smart.

I think it is humorous that broken escalators is the go-to example of graceful degradation, when in real life I've observed multiple times that when an escalator is broken, they rope it off (this is not uncommon on London's tube).

Apparently when an escalator is broken the space between steps is uneven, and the escalator is metal and sharp, causing safety issues (although I've written other theories below in further comments).

If it's a safety issue when still, surely it's a safety issue while in motion?

Possibly? Maybe the issue is that it damages the elevator (uneven pressure on one side). Maybe people trip because they're subconsciously expecting the escalator to move. Maybe they're worried it'll start moving suddenly, and people will trip. Regardless, I've observed that they cordon them off.

In Penn Station (NY) they let people use broken escalators all the time. I think it's because it's so crowded, people would get angry if they cordoned them off.

I've only seen escalators roped off when someone is working on them. Usually I just see people approach the escalator, notice it's not working and take another one. Or step on the escalator, look confused for a moment, and then start walking.

But I don't live in London.

The parent is BS. You are almost always allowed to use stopped escalators in London.

They are sometimes blocked off but it’s unusual.

Washington DC's metro is famous for broken escalators, and yes they usually block them off.

Given the fact that nearly every single subway station has about 5 escalators I am not surprised there will be breaking from constant use.

In fact I found then quite reliable compare to my old college's elevators that saw less than half the use.

Same with BART in the SF Bay Area. When the escalators are working, they're usually working the wrong way (i.e. the only escalator is going down instead of up, making that escalator effectively useless except as a fitness machine).

From a post on Quora about why escalators are harder to walk up: "A stopped escalator IS indeed harder to climb than a fixed staircase of the same height. A typical conventional fixed staircase has tread risers (steps) that are ~7 inches high and 11 inches deep. The escalator is likely to have tread risers that are ~8 inches high and 16 inches deep."

People are more likely to fall climbing a stopped escalator than stairs due to the different stair height and depth.

I find this journalism suspect. These devices all have local control. You don't need the cloud to turn on the AC unless you want to do it remotely. Ditto for door locks.

Nest thermostats don't have physical buttons or touch screens?

edit: Alright, I'm convinced. Bad journalism. Flagging this post.

They do. You can turn them. Turns out this individual decided to mount his TV over his Nest[0]. So changing the temperature without the app requires removing the TV.

[0] https://twitter.com/jDantastic/status/1135313567346036741

My thought as well....and I'd assume the door locks still have keys? Power outages are a thing.

Regardless, I'm sure such physical access points will soon be removed in new versions and it will be hailed as "brave".

Yeah, they can be controlled at the thermostat. I was able to adjust mine locally but not via the app (or API in home assistant)

It is too bad that it has come to this. To me, a door that cannot be unlocked if it loses internet access or that I cannot change my heating or AC, is unacceptable.

I have some privacy concerns when it comes to Nest and similar services. But in the end, this is more important. This shows that if Google decides to pull the plug on Nest, or decrease functionality (as they already did), I cannot use (a part of) the device I bought.

The tweet is misleading. He mounted his TV on top of his thermostat[0]; and I'm sure he knew full-well that it meant he wouldn't be able to change the temperature without the app.

[0] https://twitter.com/jDantastic/status/1135313567346036741

doors can still be unlocked... this "article" is very misleading.

These are the kinds of things I want to tell the ISP repair guy when he comes to fix our internet. Dude it’s 2019, when the internet goes down, EVERYTHING goes down.

This is an article about three tweets.

I looked at just the first tweet by "Danny" who shortly after tweeted it was a joke. The third one by zeynep tufekci is a retweet of the "Danny" joke (with the context removed by the article).

The only real tweet seems to be Chris Weix complaining about using Nest cameras as a baby monitor (which is always remote/app).

It's indeed important to note whether these devices have local control, but it's also important to note there there's no reason that a smart device and a smart phone cannot authenticate one another and communicate over a LAN.

I would hate to rely on my phone to unlock my door, only to find that when Google has an issue my door is effectively a wall. I'd also hate it if the lock opened on a loss of connectivity.

An offline fallback would be the first thing I'd think about when developing something like that (same thing for those non-IoT locks that work normally when the power is out).

And looking at other comments it seems the people at Nest did too. I'd flag this.

Our filtered water dispenser at work will not give you water if it loses internet. There is no way to bypass this. Wifi goes offline, no water.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

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