Nest Thermostat Goes From 'Internet Of Things' Darling To Cautionary Tale

from the benefit-of-dumb-devices dept

Back when the Nest thermostat was announced in 2011, it was met with waves of gushing adoration from an utterly uncritical technology press. Much of that gushing was certainly warranted; Nest was founded by Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, both former Apple engineers, who indisputably designed an absolutely gorgeous device after decades of treating the thermostat as an afterthought. But the company also leaned heavily on the same media acupressure techniques Apple historically relies on to generate a sound wall of hype potentially untethered from real life.

Courtesy of marketing and design, Nest slowly but surely became the poster child for the connected home. Over the last year or so however things have changed, and while now Alphabet-owned Nest remains an internet of things darling, the unintended timbre of the message being sent is decidedly different. For example, Nick Bilton recently wrote a piece in the New York Times noting how a glitch in the second generation of the supposedly "smart" product drained the device battery, resulting in numerous customers being unable to heat their homes just as a cold snap hit the country:

"The Nest Learning Thermostat is dead to me, literally. Last week, my once-beloved “smart” thermostat suffered from a mysterious software bug that drained its battery and sent our home into a chill in the middle of the night. Although I had set the thermostat to 70 degrees overnight, my wife and I were woken by a crying baby at 4 a.m. The thermometer in his room read 64 degrees, and the Nest was off."

Again, that's the poster child of the so-called "smart" device revolution failing utterly to complete a task thermostats have been successfully accomplishing for a generation. Other tech reporters like Stacey Higginbotham reported the exact opposite. As in, her Nest device began trying to cook her family in the middle of the night, something Nest first tried to blame on her smart garage door opener, then tried to blame on her Jawbone fitness tracker (Nest never did seem to pinpoint the cause). Her report suggests that an overall culture of "arrogance" at Nest shockingly isn't helping pinpoint and resolve bugs:

"One Nest partner, who declined to be named to preserve his business relationship with the company, said that Nest being quick with the blame didn’t surprise him, citing a culture of arrogance at the company. When something went wrong during integration testing between his device and Nest’s, problems were first blamed on his servers and team."

And fast-forward to last week, when researchers putting various internet of thing devices through tests found that the Nest thermostat was one of many IOT devices happily leaking subscriber location data in cleartext (with Nest, it's only the zip code, something the company quickly fixed in a patch). Granted Nest's not alone in being an inadvertent advertisement for a product's "dumb" alternatives. In 2016, smart tea kettles, refrigerators, televisions and automobiles are all busy leaking your private information and exposing you to malicious intrusion (or worse).

It's a fascinating, in-progress lesson about how our lust for the sexy ideal of the connected home appears to be taking a brief pit stop in reality, where sexy doesn't matter if the underlying product, person or device remains inherently dysfunctional. As a result, dumb and ugly technology is poised to make a dramatic comeback.

Filed Under: internet of things, iot, nest, reliability, security
Companies: alphabet, nest

Destructive DRM Strikes Again: Creative Professionals Blocked From Using Adobe Products For Days

from the defective-by-design dept

Last week, if you were a creative professional who relied on Adobe's products, you may have discovered that you were totally screwed over by Adobe's DRM, which made it impossible for lots of people to use the apps they were paying for. Considering how many designers rely on Adobe apps, this basically shut down an awful lot of creative work late last week. MacUser (the link above) has pretty comprehensive coverage of how far reaching the problems were. It initially appeared to be that Adobe's Creative Cloud offering was down, but the impact went much further, blocking even people who had installed desktop apps. This was true even though Adobe insisted that the DRM in those apps only needed to check in with a server once a month.

The biggest problems, though, were faced by users who couldn’t launch apps. Along with many others, Stefan Goodchild wondered: “Can @Adobe explain why all my Creative Cloud apps are all disabled when their login system has an outage? What about when I’m on a deadline?”

Their confusion was understandable: Adobe had categorically assured users and journalists, when replacing Creative Suite with Creative Cloud in May 2013, that apps only needed to check in with the server every 30 days, telling MacUser in a written reply that products would continue to work for 99 days in the absence of a server connection.

The @AdobeCare account seemed to have been given the same information, telling user Robert Lewis at 18:13 on Thursday: “Your apps should launch without checking w/ server.” But Lewis was far from being alone in finding this simply wasn’t the case. “Since I can’t sign in, it won’t let me use my photoshop right now,” complained photographer Linda Watson Nkosi, among many similar tweets.

The MacUser article also noted that Adobe avoided providing workarounds (even as there were a few), insisting that there was nothing that could be done. This was either out of ignorance, or standard corporate fear of revealing basic workarounds to dodgy DRM. Adobe eventually (after more than 24 hours) got things working again and posted a rather weak apology.

Of course, this kind of mishap was exactly what many people feared would happen when Adobe ditched basic software licenses to go with a forced "cloud" setup, whose main benefit (to Adobe) was that it acted as DRM.

This all took place just a few weeks after the official day against DRM and Mozilla's decision to accept DRM in Firefox. Many people still don't seem to realize just how destructive and dangerous DRM can be, but perhaps last week's events will get a few more folks in the design community to recognize the serious problem.

Filed Under: cloud, creative cloud, designers, drm, online service, reliability
Companies: adobe

How Do You Manage The Performance And Reliability Of Web Apps And Services?

from the we-want-to-know dept

For providers of online apps and services, great success equals great responsibility. As users come to rely on something, the consequences of it failing become dire, and the importance of maintenance and performance monitoring grows.

So Techdirt and our sponsor New Relic have a question for all the developers, entrepreneurs, technicians and others out there: how do you tackle this challenge? Not only does a growing user base make it more important to closely track the performance of a web app, it makes it more difficult too. How do you make sure your service is running smoothly? How do you identify major failures or performance issues as they happen? What are the biggest challenges therein, and what tools do you use to overcome them? We're also interested in any feedback you have on New Relic's own performance monitoring tools.

We're opening these questions up for your feedback on the Insight Community. Remember, if you have a Techdirt account, then you're already a member and can head on over to the case page to submit your insights.

In exchange for your insights, we're offering some perks. Firstly, anyone who signs up for New Relic and installs the service will receive a free Nerd Life t-shirt. The basic account is free and comes with a 14 day trial of the pro service, and there's no commitment or credit card required.

Additionally, one best response chosen by New Relic and the Techdirt editorial team will receive a free one-year Watercooler subscription on Techdirt (regular price $50). The subscription includes access to the Crystal Ball and the Insider Chat, plus five monthly First Word/Last Word credits, and can be applied to your own Techdirt account or gifted to someone else.

The case will be open for four weeks, with the best response announced shortly afterwards. We look forward to your insights!

Filed Under: apps, insight community, performance, reliability, services, web apps

Instead Of Suing Each Other Over Who Can Claim 'Most Reliable' Why Not Invest In Making A More Reliable Network?

from the wasting-money dept

Ah, for the love of puffery. A few years ago, we were among those who noticed that pretty much every mobile operator in the US had commercials making some sort of claim about how they were the "best" network out there, whether it was "most reliable," "most powerful," or "fewest dropped calls." The whole thing is a joke and I doubt anyone takes those sorts of claims very seriously. But soon afterwards, the lawyers got involved, and lawsuits were filed over who could claim what about their networks in commercials. Even the Better Business Bureau felt the need to weigh in.

Now, it looks like a similar battle is playing out up north. Rob Hyndman points us to the news that there are a series of lawsuits in Canada over similar claims concerning broadband internet access, with one company being upset that another company has commercials claiming to have the "fastest and most reliable" broadband offering.

Here's an idea: rather than wasting money suing each other over these sorts of claims, why not invest some money into actually improving the network?

Filed Under: advertising, isp, lawsuits, networks, reliability

Great Timing: USPTO Gives Amazon Patent For 'Reliable Ratings'

from the that-would-be-an-oops... dept

theodp writes "Do bad patents bring bad karma? Less than 24 hours after a hacker identified as 'Weev' claimed he exploited a feature for reporting inappropriate content to wreak havoc on Amazon's product ratings (Amazon blamed a "glitch"), the USPTO issued Amazon.com a patent for the Automatic Identification of Unreliable User Ratings, an 'invention' which - you guessed it - purportedly prevents Amazon's product ratings from being gamed by providing a feature for reporting inappropriate content ('Section 244 also contains a link 254 to a display (not shown) where customer CCC can report that item review 222 contains scandalous or inappropriate material')."

Filed Under: patents, ratings, reliability, uspto
Companies: amazon

ES&S E-Voting Machines Gave Votes To A Totally Different Election

from the i'd-say-that's-a-whoops dept

You may recall last year that when we had a series of posts about the fact that e-voting companies refused to let independent security experts review their machines, we had a representative from e-voting firm ES&S show up in the comments and repeatedly berate us for not knowing what we were talking about. That individual insisted that the machines were perfectly well tested. He also insisted that elections using e-voting machines were "extremely scrutinized and very reliable." Of course, we haven't heard from that individual lately -- not since an independent review of ES&S's machines found that security was seriously lacking leading various states to quickly decertify many ES&S machines. Oops.

Reader Jose Luis Campanello writes in to point out a story we missed from last week, about how some ES&S machines used in a state primary in Arkansas didn't just screw up counting the votes, it assigned votes to a totally different election -- and those "lost" votes changed the result of the election. No one seems to have any idea how this is even possible, let alone how it happened. Somehow, I get the feeling that no representatives from ES&S will show up this time to tell us how their machines are perfectly reliable and don't need any kind of independent review. Luckily, in this case there was a voter-verified paper trail (which some insist are a bad thing), which allowed election officials to backtrack and figure out what had happened and correct the mistake. Without the paper trail, there would have been no way to have even realized this mistake happened.

Filed Under: accountability, arkansas, e-voting, reliability
Companies: es&s

ATMs Aren't So Secure Either

from the transparency dept

Back in March, I responded to the common argument that since automatic teller machines are widely used and seem to be secure, secure electronic voting must be doable as well. I pointed out a couple of problems with this argument, but I took as a given that ATM machines are in fact, secure. But Matt Blaze recently discovered that ATMs aren't that secure either. When Blaze tried to withdraw cash from a Philadelphia cash machine, he encountered a bunch of problems. The information on the screen was screwed up, the machine gave him $10 more than he'd requested, and the machine failed to give him his receipt. Even more worrisome, when he went into the bank to suggest that they check out the machine and see what might have been wrong with it, the assistant manager actually argued with him, assuring him that the machine was working just fine and Blaze must be imagining things. Incredibly, when he tried to show her a screenshot he had taken with his cell phone, she cut him off by pointing out that photography isn't allowed in the bank.

Obviously, part of the problem here is a bank employee who has a bad attitude. But it also illustrates a couple of additional problems with the "ATMs work so why can't e-voting?" argument. First, people have a habit of trusting machines more than people. When elections are conducted with pencil and paper, everyone understands that some of the human beings might have hidden agendas and need to be watched closely. In contrast, people tend to assume that machines are completely objective and unbiased, and so they're less likely to notice problems with machines even when (as in the case of this bank manager) the evidence is staring them in the face. Second, if it turns out that the ATM screwed up, Blaze will at some point get a statement from his bank telling him how much money the bank thinks he withdrew, and he can object if it differs from what he actually got. There isn't (and due to voter privacy concerns, can't be) a similar process for e-voting. If a paperless voting machine screws up, there's no way to double-check the results after the fact.

Filed Under: atms, reliability, security, verification

How Reliable Are Industry Announced Piracy Statistics?

from the depends-on-your-definition-of-reliable dept

Eric Goldman sent in a link to a recent research paper that aimed to look at the reliability of industry-released reports on piracy. That sounded interesting, as we've spent plenty of posts picking apart why almost all of their released numbers are bogus. In particular, we've pointed out how incredibly bogus the BSA's statistics are. So, it was somewhat surprising to have the study say that the BSA's were the most reliable, when compared to other groups like the RIAA and MPAA. If anything, though, that really just suggested that the RIAA's and MPAA's stats were even more bogus (remember, things actually got so bad for the MPAA that it had to admit how bogus its own stats were). That actually seems likely, as the BSA is the most upfront about the methodology used.

However, reading through the actual report, it does little to vindicate the piracy numbers that the industry reports always trumpet. That's because the report actually focuses on the rate of unauthorized use, rather than the cost or impact of that unauthorized use -- which is the key point to come out of these reports. The rate of unauthorized use is fairly meaningless, so it doesn't matter that much who is the most accurate. It's the impact that matters. While reports used to do silly things like count every unauthorized copy as a lost sale, most have stopped that, and now use a multiplier. Some have started using a questionable ripple effect that counts the same loss multiple times and ignores the "ripple effects" in the other direction that benefit the industry. So, yes, perhaps the BSA is the best of a bad bunch, but even if the rate of unauthorized use is somewhat accurate, that has little bearing on the actual impact of those unauthorized copies.

Filed Under: copyright, impact, piracy stats, reliability
Companies: bsa, mpaa, riaa