click170

This.

File a polite complaint that they are excluding members of the community unnecessarily, and that alternatives like meetup.com exist so you don't even need to run your own web server.

I worry for all the unmaintained but still available gems.

As Nest demonstrated time and again.

Their thermostats had a defect at one point (not sure if it was ever actually fixed) where if your heating or cooling system caused a surge in your wiring, your nest would get stuck with both heating and cooling at full blast, or something equally silly. The Nest thermostat was certainly not designed to fail safely or sanely.

Give them the power? No that's not how it works in the USA.

Companies have free reign to do what they will, its up to us the people to demonstrate why / decide what they are doing is illegal and demand laws around it.

I think the question is why aren't more people pissed off about this? Some would say its apathy, I would say its simple lack of knowledge and understanding. Nobody wants to be spied on.

And they wonder where their subscribers are all going...

Though I haven't confirmed that this was fixed in new models, when I was first reviewing the Lockitron I contacted their support folks with my concerns about paying a one time fee for something that waa easentually a service and about being able to run my own server and (one of) the founder emailed me back and explained that in the next version my concerns would be addressed. That gave me hope for their next iteration but I haven't been back to them yet. I look forward to checking them out again.

I wouldn't have such a grudge against fitbit if they would make it easier to log to your own server. Even if I had to hijack DNS to accomplish it, I wouldn't mind. Its not like many people would take advantage of the option.

But the fact that they force you to use their servers to store your data so that they can turn around and sell it, frankly I hope they get sued for something. Anything.

There should be a law against selling customer data without the expressed consent of the customer whos data is being sold, per purchase. Even if the company is acquired.

Unlocking my front door? That has to work without internet access.

Turning my lights on and off? That has to work without internet access.

Logging my heart rate et all, ala fitbit? Nope, I should be able to use a server of my choosing, requiring that I use cloud servers for something I paid a one time fee for is an instant deal breaker.

A service that logged all of my access times and determined whether or not I was home based on the result? I would prefer that be run from my own server even optionally with a DNS hijack, but I would understand the need for the cloud in this situation.

What bugs me is how many companies these days want to include reliance on the cloud for features that don't require it at all, in the interest of gaining access to more customer usage data, but then when they turn the servers off the product becomes useless.

This has become a key thing that I look for when buying new products. If the product relies on the cloud for a feature that I think should be entirely offline, the product will be immediately returned and a negative review will be left on the resellers site.

A perfect example was the early version of the Lockitron device. It required cloud access but had a one time payment. Based on that information alone I could not justify the purchase to myself even just to play with because it's a bad business model.

These shenanigans by Google and the numerous reports of the problems with Nest and their smoke detectors have basically guaranteed I don't include Google devices in my home automation setup. I would rather manually muck around with a raspberry pi and some random sensors bought online than rely on a Google product at this point.

There's a lot of room for a vendor to come in with open products, a pledge to maintain that open-ness, and decent integration to really take over the home automation market. I really feel like all the existing products are too proprietary to be of any interest to us home automation geeks.

I would prefer if they made it easier for people to verify the gpg key fingerprint for those of us who want that extra level of security. You don't have to verify the fingerprint if you don't want to but at least give me the option.

When that stopped working is when I went with DDG full time for my searching needs at home and at work. And I don't yet regret it either.

We should really be verifying the fingerprint of the key itself, even if it is served over HTTPS.

What bugs me is how prevalent that has become.

I'm looking at you Jenkins![0]

[0] https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Installing+Jenki...

To clarify, posting data that you exfiltrated crosses a line and you shouldn't do this. Publishing a proof of concept for the exploit instead is widely considered acceptable especially when the publisher attempted to contact the vendor and got a wall of silence.

Companies being generally unreceptive to this kind of feedback is partly why full disclosure is so necessary. If they won't treat a security incident with the importance it deserves its time to elevate it to a PR incident by posting to full disclosure.

You could remove your accounts and move on but that does nothing for their other customers.

Depending on how much time you've given them this sounds like a perfect candidate for the Full Disclosure mailing list, just post anonymously.

Neither did I, I just filled in a company name at one point in the purchase process and that apparently flagged me as a business. This lead to further complications because their consumer support department couldn't even find the order as a result.

The Dell Latitude E7250 works pretty well, Debian Jessie is missing some drivers and things (eg for Wifi) but Linux Mint (ugh, I know...) works wonderfully well. I haven't tried Ubuntu but I would expect the same experience or better. I was worried about the trackpad being horrible, but I'm actually quite impressed. It's not an Apple trackpad but it's actually pretty decent. (The Disable-Trackpad-While-typing option is almost a requirement though)

Edit: I would emphasize though, if you're going to purchase with Dell, do it as a business (Just pretend you are a business, dont buy it through work). Dell consumer customer support is f#$&ing atrocious. I'm still fighting with them to rectify a problem from an order back in Nov 2015 that I never received. I can't overstate this enough, Dell consumer support is f$#&ing HORRIBLE.

It seems more likely that they let you buy a ticket but not board the plane, but that's a guess. Can anyone confirm?

Frankly the knife cuts both ways.

Microsoft has a long way to go before they get the benefit of the doubt from me due to their decades of Embracing Extending and Extinguishing.

This is partly why I do not buy that they've given up on Embrace Extend Extinguish.

They have another decade worth of good behaviour owed before I'm willing to consider giving them the benefit of the doubt. But that's me.

So long as I have root over my own machine, "they" don't get to force anything.

I'm curious about how you found yourself in a position of both hating a piece of software and having to defend the decision to use it.

Why did you have to defend something you hated? Where I work if something doesnt have an advocate, it stops being a product offering.

I've been pondering this myself recently, and decided to explore setting up my DNS-level adblocking in Bind using RPZ instead of my hosts file.

It was quite easy, and I now even use nsupdate to block new ad domains that show up so that I don't have to restart my DNS server to add new names to block.

I pondered making my server publicly available but had concerns about bandwidth, and other potential legal shenanigans. That said I couldn't put my finger on what exactly I'd get in trouble for if I made it public, so perhaps it's just FUD?

As long as they're not trying to roll their own crypto, the concern is significantly lessened. I need to be convinced that this new app doesn't just rot13 everything and call that 'advanced new encryption'.

Just explaining which established crypto you're using and where you're using it goes a long way. (And please don't let Marketing write this part - specifics matter)

To provide some insight into the mind of someone who does care about their privacy:

When I see an app or product that touts some security claim, I check around their website to see what they offer to back that claim up. I do not file support tickets asking for clarification unless I really really want the product.

People like me probably note that the product mentions end to end encryption and simply move on if there is no more information provided to explain this.

My thinking behind this is: When vendors are proud of their security they flaunt it. When they don't flaunt it, you should be concerned about why they aren't.

From my perspective anyway. Just my 2c.

I don't mean to diss your experiences clearly softlayer worked for you in your environment but I'm honestly shocked to see Softlayer suggested here at all.

We just finished trying to set up some servers in softlayer and it was thee biggest pain in the ass we've had to deal with in a LONG time. Everything required a support ticket.

And that's if you're willing to overlook their reputation. Just Google "softlayer spam" and you'll see what I mean right away.

Glad that it worked for you. But wow... Never again.

I completely agree but what happens when some startup produces a product with serious flaws and is then sued out of business before they're able to fix the product. Who's liable for fixing the product then?

IMO the people who lead the corporation that released the product should be held personally liable but I realize that's an unfavorable opinion. Otherwise the government ends up footing the bill, which means WE foot the bill, and we're back to being in an unfair situation.

I wouldn't agree that it's hard to outlaw, but I would agree that when the original encryption export laws were written nobody had OCR in mind.

It seems like it would be quite easy to outlaw this, the only question is what collateral damage would result from the process.