7 ms·

How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice

71 points by sinak 11y ago

enraged_camel 11y ago
Not really related to the article itself, but I'm developing a serious aversion to the phrase "Internet of Things". It's part of the same trend that created the term "Web 2.0": full of hype and bullshit. Why not just call it "Internet" like we always have? Was it not made of "things" before?
- collyw 11y ago
  To me it implies putting a chip in it where it really wasn't needed. http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/ http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/
- liw 11y ago
  I maintain that IoT is short for "Insecurity of Things", not "Internet of Things". Makes the IoT hype so much easier to deal with.
  - isolate 11y ago
    Internet of Thrones :)
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Internet of Toilets. Fits well with Cloud-to-Butt extension.
      - Chris2048 11y ago
        Uh, Butt-to-cloud, surely? I might want to tweet my poops, naturally; but what data does my butt need?
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Was it not made of "things" before? Yeah, but of things like routers, PC, smartphones etc. Internet of Things is the BS idea of "internet of all the things" -- sensors and chips on your toaster, fridge, coke can, cat, hairpiece, ...
craigds 11y ago
IMHO IoT is a bad idea. Recently we had the choice of buying heat pumps with a standard infrared remote control, or heat pumps with wifi. You can control them from your ipad! As a bit of a hacker I'd love to play with this and see if I could attach them to temperature sensors and smarts around the house. Tempting, but then a colleague pointed out that it almost certainly comes pre-packaged with bullshit closed source software from a bullshit company, full of bullshit security holes and probably never gets updates. Your chances of plugging into it with a random python script are close to nil. If it ever breaks, you'll have to pay $100 for some technically illiterate heat pump repairman to try and diagnose the issues. Good luck with that, and no thanks.
- lowglow 11y ago
  I think this is a HUGE problem as well. I'm building Playa, and one of my big goals is to develop an open and friendly hacker ecosystem around next gen IoT/IoE/Robotics. Hopefully as I develop the platform I can raise more awareness and crowdfund appliances people actually want to build on.
- sdoering 11y ago
  The source of the problem I see here is not the IoT. It is the missing regulation, that forces companies to develop open standards and enable the so inclined to hack themselves to find security wholes or what not. And most of all to make sure, that they can easily switch vendors, because all devices are able to talk to each other. If I today chose one vendor to make my heating at home smarter, I am stuck with this vendor, even if others provide better interfaces or tools in the future. This cripples user friendly innovation and what not. So, because governments do not (or do not want to) understand (be it on their own or because of lobbying), we as customers are facing a very grim looking IoT. At least, if I try to look into the future.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    > It is the missing regulation Not just regulation - we also need proper liability. If the product you sell causes damage (for whatever reason - security vulnerabilities included) then the manufacturer need to be liable. Just like every other industry. Some people will complain this will make current software development practices impossible. I join with Dan Geer and PHK's considered reply[1]: Yes, please! That was exactly the idea. [1] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
fffrad 11y ago
Many years ago, I owned a Radio Hub from Westinghouse. It required an internet connection for it to work and I was totally fine with it. I got my weather info from it, set my calendar reminders, and it had a bunch of other small features. Pretty neat! One day they stopped supporting it, and the whole thing became a brick. I couldn't even play CDs on it because it used to get the CD info online. Today's IoT may barely work well on a good day, but wait for when a company drops support and you will be left with a brick.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >but wait for when a company drops support and you will be left with a brick. How many times do you think this happens before the public wises up and the market corrects the issue? My answer is "not many". One bricked item, or knowing someone with a bricked item, will change people's demands. Sort of like how it changed yours.
  - frik 11y ago
    I doubt that. Look at all these devices that rely on cloud connections. Be it your brand new burglary alarm system, your Tesla S, your new home automation system, your Samsung fridge with a display, etc. ...if the company stops the support or goes out of business, your device is more or less an expensive brick. And then there is planned obsolescence, given the internet connection such companies can turn on the kill switch or release updates that add new features but make the older devices so slow that you will have to buy a new one. There was a recent story on HN about first generation Samsung smart fridges that stopped working correctly after a software update.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    How many times SaaS startups have to disappear without a trace but a single post about their and yours great journey and founders being happy you helped them drink their drinks on a beach in hot summer, before people wise up? Answer: quite a lot apparently, since it keeps happening and people don't wise up, and it has reached the point where the behaviour described above is a standard practice (known as "exit"), and it's the reason many start a startup in the first place. Such people pretty much intend to screw their customers from day one, and apparently customers are happy to being screwed time after time. I don't see this changing for hardware.
coldtea 11y ago
Internet of Things is the proverbial solution in search of a problem. For those who thought that modern life wasn't easy or technology-filled enough without refrigerators that order stuff for you and thermostats you can control from your watch.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >For those who thought that modern life wasn't easy or technology-filled enough This trope has been around for hundreds of years.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >This trope has been around for hundreds of years. The same is true for this retort. The thing is, just because it has been said for "hundreds of years" doesn't mean it's always false when it's said. It could be that (always false), of course. But it could also be partly true, e.g. pointing to a real loss that we suffered because of the infusion of technology in everyday life. Here are some examples of technologically-caused issues that a lot of people, if not most, could do without: environmental damage due to modern mining, plastics, etc. Noise pollution. Cities designed around cars, that destroy the human scale and prevent the kind of relationships and urban life fostered by places like Manhattan, Vienna, Paris, etc. Technology as enabler of surveillance and loss of privacy. Military technology that can blow the world 10 times over. The same-ization of the world and the cheapening of cities due to global commerce, tourism, etc. Loss of quality time with friends and other people in the era of the smartphone. That one might point at improvements in other areas that offset these negatives/losses , doesn't mean there wasn't any loss in the first place. A last possible case, regarding the original complaint, is that while it might be said for "hundreds of years" it could be especially true now. Just because people might claim it's midnight from early morning doesn't mean that it wont eventually be midnight. And I'd argue that that's the case, myself. If somebody complained about the prevalence of technology in the eighties (and several people did), predicting that it will get to a point that we'll be so depended on it, as to have cpus in every damn thing, including our keys, shoes, microwaves, etc, they would have told him that he fell for the "slippery slope" fallacy. Well, the Internet of Thing is the actual realization of that slippery slope.
ekianjo 11y ago
>　every game console has its own game cartridge format It took me a while to realize the author was not living in the 80s, but talking about portable game consoles instead.
sanxiyn 11y ago
Matthew Garrett's article "The Internet of Incompatible Things" is topical here: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/37522.html http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/37522.html
frik 11y ago
"In the 1990s, Microsoft used a strategy it called “embrace, extend, extinguish,” in which it gradually added proprietary capabilities to products that already adhered to widely used standards." What about TypeScript? What about "class" syntax in ES6? (who lobbied for it?) Microsoft still uses the same tactics. They tried it with JScript. Now they open source their JS and TS compatible engine and VS Code (contains mainly TS code).
Perixoog 11y ago
Why can't we have the things without the networking stack, then plug them into something (upgradable and open source) with a networking stack?
teddyh 11y ago
Every sysadmin and programmer here has had problems with printers, right? Weird behavior, bugs, crashes, etc. Now expand this to every single electrical device you own. That is the Internet of Things.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  That's not the worst of it. Every user here had problems with printing experience - bullshit crap "management" software that bloats the system, expected lifetime of a printer being around one year, hugely overpriced cartridges that have absurd DRMs (chips that just have a decrementing "time to stop working" counter is pure evil). Now expand that to every single electrical device you own. That is the Internet of Things - fly-by-night SaaS startup's wet dream incarnate.
fcanela 11y ago
I do not know why so much hate against IoT. I have several devices which gives me useful data for quantified self proposes. I am also happy with my IP cameras and smart TV. Like others, I would love to see these devices better secured. I would love them to be less cloud-dependant. But being like they are right now, they provide value.

71 points by sinak 11y ago

Not really related to the article itself, but I'm developing a serious aversion to the phrase "Internet of Things". It's part of the same trend that created the term "Web 2.0": full of hype and bullshit. Why not just call it "Internet" like we always have? Was it not made of "things" before?

collyw 11y ago
To me it implies putting a chip in it where it really wasn't needed. http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/ http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/
liw 11y ago
I maintain that IoT is short for "Insecurity of Things", not "Internet of Things". Makes the IoT hype so much easier to deal with.
- isolate 11y ago
  Internet of Thrones :)
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Internet of Toilets. Fits well with Cloud-to-Butt extension.
    - Chris2048 11y ago
      Uh, Butt-to-cloud, surely? I might want to tweet my poops, naturally; but what data does my butt need?
coldtea 11y ago
>Was it not made of "things" before? Yeah, but of things like routers, PC, smartphones etc. Internet of Things is the BS idea of "internet of all the things" -- sensors and chips on your toaster, fridge, coke can, cat, hairpiece, ...

craigds 11y ago

IMHO IoT is a bad idea. Recently we had the choice of buying heat pumps with a standard infrared remote control, or heat pumps with wifi. You can control them from your ipad! As a bit of a hacker I'd love to play with this and see if I could attach them to temperature sensors and smarts around the house. Tempting, but then a colleague pointed out that it almost certainly comes pre-packaged with bullshit closed source software from a bullshit company, full of bullshit security holes and probably never gets updates. Your chances of plugging into it with a random python script are close to nil. If it ever breaks, you'll have to pay $100 for some technically illiterate heat pump repairman to try and diagnose the issues. Good luck with that, and no thanks.

lowglow 11y ago
I think this is a HUGE problem as well. I'm building Playa, and one of my big goals is to develop an open and friendly hacker ecosystem around next gen IoT/IoE/Robotics. Hopefully as I develop the platform I can raise more awareness and crowdfund appliances people actually want to build on.
sdoering 11y ago
The source of the problem I see here is not the IoT. It is the missing regulation, that forces companies to develop open standards and enable the so inclined to hack themselves to find security wholes or what not. And most of all to make sure, that they can easily switch vendors, because all devices are able to talk to each other. If I today chose one vendor to make my heating at home smarter, I am stuck with this vendor, even if others provide better interfaces or tools in the future. This cripples user friendly innovation and what not. So, because governments do not (or do not want to) understand (be it on their own or because of lobbying), we as customers are facing a very grim looking IoT. At least, if I try to look into the future.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > It is the missing regulation Not just regulation - we also need proper liability. If the product you sell causes damage (for whatever reason - security vulnerabilities included) then the manufacturer need to be liable. Just like every other industry. Some people will complain this will make current software development practices impossible. I join with Dan Geer and PHK's considered reply[1]: Yes, please! That was exactly the idea. [1] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt

fffrad 11y ago

Many years ago, I owned a Radio Hub from Westinghouse. It required an internet connection for it to work and I was totally fine with it. I got my weather info from it, set my calendar reminders, and it had a bunch of other small features. Pretty neat! One day they stopped supporting it, and the whole thing became a brick. I couldn't even play CDs on it because it used to get the CD info online. Today's IoT may barely work well on a good day, but wait for when a company drops support and you will be left with a brick.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>but wait for when a company drops support and you will be left with a brick. How many times do you think this happens before the public wises up and the market corrects the issue? My answer is "not many". One bricked item, or knowing someone with a bricked item, will change people's demands. Sort of like how it changed yours.
- frik 11y ago
  I doubt that. Look at all these devices that rely on cloud connections. Be it your brand new burglary alarm system, your Tesla S, your new home automation system, your Samsung fridge with a display, etc. ...if the company stops the support or goes out of business, your device is more or less an expensive brick. And then there is planned obsolescence, given the internet connection such companies can turn on the kill switch or release updates that add new features but make the older devices so slow that you will have to buy a new one. There was a recent story on HN about first generation Samsung smart fridges that stopped working correctly after a software update.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  How many times SaaS startups have to disappear without a trace but a single post about their and yours great journey and founders being happy you helped them drink their drinks on a beach in hot summer, before people wise up? Answer: quite a lot apparently, since it keeps happening and people don't wise up, and it has reached the point where the behaviour described above is a standard practice (known as "exit"), and it's the reason many start a startup in the first place. Such people pretty much intend to screw their customers from day one, and apparently customers are happy to being screwed time after time. I don't see this changing for hardware.

coldtea 11y ago

Internet of Things is the proverbial solution in search of a problem. For those who thought that modern life wasn't easy or technology-filled enough without refrigerators that order stuff for you and thermostats you can control from your watch.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>For those who thought that modern life wasn't easy or technology-filled enough This trope has been around for hundreds of years.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >This trope has been around for hundreds of years. The same is true for this retort. The thing is, just because it has been said for "hundreds of years" doesn't mean it's always false when it's said. It could be that (always false), of course. But it could also be partly true, e.g. pointing to a real loss that we suffered because of the infusion of technology in everyday life. Here are some examples of technologically-caused issues that a lot of people, if not most, could do without: environmental damage due to modern mining, plastics, etc. Noise pollution. Cities designed around cars, that destroy the human scale and prevent the kind of relationships and urban life fostered by places like Manhattan, Vienna, Paris, etc. Technology as enabler of surveillance and loss of privacy. Military technology that can blow the world 10 times over. The same-ization of the world and the cheapening of cities due to global commerce, tourism, etc. Loss of quality time with friends and other people in the era of the smartphone. That one might point at improvements in other areas that offset these negatives/losses , doesn't mean there wasn't any loss in the first place. A last possible case, regarding the original complaint, is that while it might be said for "hundreds of years" it could be especially true now. Just because people might claim it's midnight from early morning doesn't mean that it wont eventually be midnight. And I'd argue that that's the case, myself. If somebody complained about the prevalence of technology in the eighties (and several people did), predicting that it will get to a point that we'll be so depended on it, as to have cpus in every damn thing, including our keys, shoes, microwaves, etc, they would have told him that he fell for the "slippery slope" fallacy. Well, the Internet of Thing is the actual realization of that slippery slope.

ekianjo 11y ago

>　every game console has its own game cartridge format It took me a while to realize the author was not living in the 80s, but talking about portable game consoles instead.

sanxiyn 11y ago

Matthew Garrett's article "The Internet of Incompatible Things" is topical here: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/37522.html http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/37522.html

frik 11y ago

"In the 1990s, Microsoft used a strategy it called “embrace, extend, extinguish,” in which it gradually added proprietary capabilities to products that already adhered to widely used standards." What about TypeScript? What about "class" syntax in ES6? (who lobbied for it?) Microsoft still uses the same tactics. They tried it with JScript. Now they open source their JS and TS compatible engine and VS Code (contains mainly TS code).

Perixoog 11y ago

Why can't we have the things without the networking stack, then plug them into something (upgradable and open source) with a networking stack?

teddyh 11y ago

Every sysadmin and programmer here has had problems with printers, right? Weird behavior, bugs, crashes, etc. Now expand this to every single electrical device you own. That is the Internet of Things.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
That's not the worst of it. Every user here had problems with printing experience - bullshit crap "management" software that bloats the system, expected lifetime of a printer being around one year, hugely overpriced cartridges that have absurd DRMs (chips that just have a decrementing "time to stop working" counter is pure evil). Now expand that to every single electrical device you own. That is the Internet of Things - fly-by-night SaaS startup's wet dream incarnate.

fcanela 11y ago

I do not know why so much hate against IoT. I have several devices which gives me useful data for quantified self proposes. I am also happy with my IP cameras and smart TV. Like others, I would love to see these devices better secured. I would love them to be less cloud-dependant. But being like they are right now, they provide value.