11 ms·

Ah, that reminds me of my Westinghouse Radio Hub, an Internet connected radio, cd, weather, etc. I was excited to buy it on sale, then packed it in a closet and

Ah, that reminds me of my Westinghouse Radio Hub, an Internet connected radio, cd, weather, etc. I was excited to buy it on sale, then packed it in a closet and forgot all about it. A long time later, I accidentally stumbled upon this puppy right there in the closet. Took it out of the box, and to my first disappointment, it wasn't wireless. You had to plug an Ethernet cable. Hit the power button and the screen lights up with the word, initializing. When you have waited long enough, the screen changes to Network error. I tried plugging it in directly on the modem to no avail. I tried to debug it by analyzing the network, the domain it pointed to was no longer resolving. No internet feature for me I guess. At least I still had a Radio and CD player.... Let's tune in to the radio. Automatic station search. Apparently, that requires the internet. So after you wait long enough, Network Error. Well let's go with CDs then. When you insert a CD, it looks for the album info online. Oh you have no connection? Network error it is. Left it on my desk as decoration for a couple years before I threw it in the garbage.

lucasverra 7y ago
That's the "smart" appliance past, present and future. Big NO from me. Less is more
- manaskarekar 7y ago
  Not sure why the future should be this way. The issues mentioned are all bad design decisions. For it to work in the future, they just need to be executed well.
  - danaris 7y ago
    Unfortunately, at least for a lot of manufacturers, the decision process is going to go something like, "Should we make sure this can operate even if that domain goes offline?" "Nah, if that happens, the company will be belly-up, so why should we care?" (And yes, that is assuming that they'll never accidentally—or intentionally—fail to renew their domain name...)
    - lainga 7y ago
      Like coyotes, each one too clever by half until the entire Smart Potrzebie market vanishes from under their collective feet
  - TuringNYC 7y ago
    Because people keep falling for it, so manufacturers do not build independence features.
    - dasil003 7y ago
      For now, because it still sounds cool and futuristic, but if the whole audience of HN is already rejecting smart devices wholesale, that's a bellwether the industry might want to consider before the attitude percolates out to public at large.
      - bigtunacan 7y ago
        The public at large does not care what we think.
        dasil003 7y ago
        Of course not, but they care when the stuff they buy bricks within a few years.
        TuringNYC 7y ago
        Sadly, unless we as engineers, or ideally some broader body promotes some standard of device independence -- customers will eventually reject all such devices regardless of where they reside on the spectrum of cripple-able <---> independent.
      - OnlineCourage 7y ago
        Or...there are engineers who realize this regardless of hacker news and push better design factors by communicating customer needs and impact on branding. Hacker news is not as influential as we may believe.
  - blincoln 7y ago
    IMO, it's because most manufacturers' main goal with "smart" devices isn't making better products; it's designing products that are less expensive to manufacture, but bring in at least as much revenue. A device that's controlled using the owner's phone (or a web application, etc.) is cheaper to produce in bulk than one that has a built-in interface to interact with. A security camera system that stores all its data in cloud-hosted storage is also cheaper to produce in bulk, because it doesn't need to include storage hardware of its own. That has the added benefit (to the manufacturer) of tying the customer into ongoing service fees. In other words, while I agree with you that they're bad design decisions from the consumer perspective, they're good design decisions (at least in the short term, which is all most corporations care about now) from the manufacturer's perspective.
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    For many of these products it was a very deliberate design decision, both in order to lock-in the user and also to be able to collect the data on them.
mhb 7y ago
The future of Sonos?
- VLM 7y ago
  The future of all non-FOSS electronic equipment. And all things that use electronics, like cars.
  - dangus 7y ago
    While I agree with your general sentiment, this is also a huge overstatement, especially when it comes to cars.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Cars aren't currently like that, but if the manufacturers could build in adware, prevent resale, and trigger obsolescence, do you think they wouldn't?
      - angrygoat 7y ago
        You only have to look at John Deere to see what manufacturers will do without sufficient regulation in favour of consumer rights. https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repair/ https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repa...
        randallsquared 7y ago
        Not to worry: once there is sufficient regulation in a given product category, said regulations may eventually mandate that products refuse to work without server connections and kill switches. You know, for consumer safety. Or to combat wrong information. Or whatever it is that decade.
        allovernow 7y ago
        I acknowledge that this is a huge problem, but I can't help but feel like this is a massive opportunity for a competitor to charge a premium for a saner, more consumer friendly business model. So it might take a couple years but I'm not convinced yet that regulation is necessary - especially considering said regulation in the long run can have unintended side effects and chances are because of lobbying and regulatory capture it won't actually benefit the consumer much, if at all. Legislation is much more difficult to overturn than shitty market forces if consumers are savy and willing to vote with their wallets.
marketingfool 7y ago
I'm making a smart home device. Is there a solution to the domain/IP problem? I'm not the embedded guy on the project but my thought was to use a domain name and have it check a DNS every hour. That would solve it?
- airstrike 7y ago
  Make it offline-first. And allow a local connection to edit config files, letting users point it to an arbitrary IP. That might solve it.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    To add to this, a good idea would probably be either a physical "allow access" button on the device (think like the clicky button on top of the Philips Hue hub), or a secure random password physically printed on the device that's the default access password.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Don't make the network a hard dependency. The device should work as fully as possible even if offline.
  - aliveupstairs 7y ago
    Not only should it be offline-first, but it also should have fallbacks options like self-hosting.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    Also, if it supports any outside protocols (for example: Airplay speakers) those should still work on a totally isolated network out of the box.
- anon463637 7y ago
  Think carefully and lock-it down (not as an afterthought), because unsecured IoT can be exploited to cause devastating harm. Phoning home should be disclosed and disable-able because you're opening up an attack surface and a privacy risk. And, if there's no clock synchronization, it will be impossible to check the validity of X.509 certificates used in https:// https://. You should support APIPA and Zeroconf. Bonus points for Bluetooth to allow configuration from a mobile app. The mobile app should also be able to securely download and send a firmware update. ZigBee is also low-power and mesh oriented, but will need a bridge/gateway to the internet to be connected. Device pairing like NetVue cameras having QR barcodes and/or Bose headphones with NFC might be Good Ideas™ too.
artursapek 7y ago
Wow, that's the epitome of ungraceful failure right there! :D
dangero 7y ago
Tesla cars are in this category too
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  I was extremely skeptical of this, so I googled it. Seems like Tesla owners have had no problem starting their cars without an internet connection, though obviously the internet dependant features don't work.[0] This doesn't seem comparable to a CD player that won't play CDs without an internet connection, it's more like a CD player that gracefully degrades to not showing the extra info it would get from the internet while still playing the local media. [0]: https://forums.tesla.com/en_AU/forum/forums/can-you-disconnect-tesla-internet https://forums.tesla.com/en_AU/forum/forums/can-you-disconne...
- revscat 7y ago
  So that’s a lie. I drove through Arizona and Colorado on a hiking trip last year, and frequently camped in places with no service. Worked just fine.
  - aliveupstairs 7y ago
    It is not a lie. The idea is that Tesla would go out of business and a vulnerability in the car would be found and exploited to kill you in the absence of security updates. Similar to how the article says: > We're guessing a Charter alarm would still be able to make loud noises when someone breaks into a house, but that doesn't mean it'll work with an alarm-monitoring service.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - revscat 7y ago
      That’s a lot of assumptions. The point stands that Tesla’s perform just fine in the absence of a network.
      - 7y ago
gettingsnarky 7y ago
Sadly, I've worked with too many devs who would shrug their shoulders at the mention of something needing to have at least basic functionality w/out a network connection. They see it the same was as when a db fails, you just panic and stop. That's cop out programming mentality.
OnlineCourage 7y ago
I literally just did a search for "Westinghouse radio hub" and other variations and this post was the first thing that came up, the rest was all about 1940s Westinghouse electric tubes and things like that. Westinghouse effectivly went out of business effectively in 1995 as they were bought by CBS, when the Gopher protocol had more users than the WWW. This just sounds like such an outdated argument or example it does not make any sense. Sure, network connectivity has disadvantages but refusing all connected products because of oulier examples is extreme paranoia.
- ShirtlessRod 7y ago
  https://westinghouse.com/electronics/ https://westinghouse.com/electronics/
WalterBright 7y ago
The same thing happened to my Turtlebeach Audiotron.
ancarda 7y ago
>to my first disappointment, it wasn't wireless. You had to plug an Ethernet cable I've had the exact opposite where devices that could easily have had Ethernet (i.e. enough space on the device) were Wi-Fi only >:( For stationary devices, Ethernet seems perfectly fine to me. Why force me to use Wi-Fi?
- lallysingh 7y ago
  Who's got it wired throughout the house?
  - JshWright 7y ago
    I've run drops to any place where I have a static device (a couple desktops, several Chromecasts, etc).
  - mrr54 7y ago
    Pretty much every house built in the last 25 years does at least.
    - lallysingh 7y ago
      Not in the houses I've been looking at. Out of dozens I looked sty built within the last 10 years, only 1-2 had it. And the current owners weren't using it. AFAICT, They're built with the presumption of wifi.
      - mrr54 7y ago
        That's weird. It's not expensive to wire houses, and you can't get gigabit fibre speeds with ethernet. You certainly couldn't get anywhere near it 5-10 years ago, but gigabit fibre was available then.
    - jnicholasp 7y ago
      Not true in my mid-sized city in the Pacific Northwest.
  - 7y ago
milankragujevic 7y ago
Huh, I saw this comment 5 days ago, and noted the name "westinghouse". Today I was researching an "ACME.eu" "cloud" camera, discovered it contacts ubia.cn, which is specified in a listing on the FCC website by Southern Telecom for a "Sharper Image" camera that is my exact model just with a different brand name. Apparently, Southern Telecom has bought some American brands and sells spyware "cloud" devices to end-users. You can see the list here: https://southerntelecom.com/brands/ https://southerntelecom.com/brands/ I still haven't found a way how to watch the camera stream without the app. It's possible, but it's a UDP protocol that I do not understand. It works with or without Internet, so I'm sure I could watch it without giving it Internet access...

lucasverra 7y ago

That's the "smart" appliance past, present and future. Big NO from me. Less is more

manaskarekar 7y ago
Not sure why the future should be this way. The issues mentioned are all bad design decisions. For it to work in the future, they just need to be executed well.
- danaris 7y ago
  Unfortunately, at least for a lot of manufacturers, the decision process is going to go something like, "Should we make sure this can operate even if that domain goes offline?" "Nah, if that happens, the company will be belly-up, so why should we care?" (And yes, that is assuming that they'll never accidentally—or intentionally—fail to renew their domain name...)
  - lainga 7y ago
    Like coyotes, each one too clever by half until the entire Smart Potrzebie market vanishes from under their collective feet
- TuringNYC 7y ago
  Because people keep falling for it, so manufacturers do not build independence features.
  - dasil003 7y ago
    For now, because it still sounds cool and futuristic, but if the whole audience of HN is already rejecting smart devices wholesale, that's a bellwether the industry might want to consider before the attitude percolates out to public at large.
    - bigtunacan 7y ago
      The public at large does not care what we think.
      - dasil003 7y ago
        Of course not, but they care when the stuff they buy bricks within a few years.
        TuringNYC 7y ago
        Sadly, unless we as engineers, or ideally some broader body promotes some standard of device independence -- customers will eventually reject all such devices regardless of where they reside on the spectrum of cripple-able <---> independent.
    - OnlineCourage 7y ago
      Or...there are engineers who realize this regardless of hacker news and push better design factors by communicating customer needs and impact on branding. Hacker news is not as influential as we may believe.
- blincoln 7y ago
  IMO, it's because most manufacturers' main goal with "smart" devices isn't making better products; it's designing products that are less expensive to manufacture, but bring in at least as much revenue. A device that's controlled using the owner's phone (or a web application, etc.) is cheaper to produce in bulk than one that has a built-in interface to interact with. A security camera system that stores all its data in cloud-hosted storage is also cheaper to produce in bulk, because it doesn't need to include storage hardware of its own. That has the added benefit (to the manufacturer) of tying the customer into ongoing service fees. In other words, while I agree with you that they're bad design decisions from the consumer perspective, they're good design decisions (at least in the short term, which is all most corporations care about now) from the manufacturer's perspective.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  For many of these products it was a very deliberate design decision, both in order to lock-in the user and also to be able to collect the data on them.

mhb 7y ago

The future of Sonos?

VLM 7y ago
The future of all non-FOSS electronic equipment. And all things that use electronics, like cars.
- dangus 7y ago
  While I agree with your general sentiment, this is also a huge overstatement, especially when it comes to cars.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Cars aren't currently like that, but if the manufacturers could build in adware, prevent resale, and trigger obsolescence, do you think they wouldn't?
    - angrygoat 7y ago
      You only have to look at John Deere to see what manufacturers will do without sufficient regulation in favour of consumer rights. https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repair/ https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repa...
      - randallsquared 7y ago
        Not to worry: once there is sufficient regulation in a given product category, said regulations may eventually mandate that products refuse to work without server connections and kill switches. You know, for consumer safety. Or to combat wrong information. Or whatever it is that decade.
      - allovernow 7y ago
        I acknowledge that this is a huge problem, but I can't help but feel like this is a massive opportunity for a competitor to charge a premium for a saner, more consumer friendly business model. So it might take a couple years but I'm not convinced yet that regulation is necessary - especially considering said regulation in the long run can have unintended side effects and chances are because of lobbying and regulatory capture it won't actually benefit the consumer much, if at all. Legislation is much more difficult to overturn than shitty market forces if consumers are savy and willing to vote with their wallets.

marketingfool 7y ago

I'm making a smart home device. Is there a solution to the domain/IP problem? I'm not the embedded guy on the project but my thought was to use a domain name and have it check a DNS every hour. That would solve it?

airstrike 7y ago
Make it offline-first. And allow a local connection to edit config files, letting users point it to an arbitrary IP. That might solve it.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  To add to this, a good idea would probably be either a physical "allow access" button on the device (think like the clicky button on top of the Philips Hue hub), or a secure random password physically printed on the device that's the default access password.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Don't make the network a hard dependency. The device should work as fully as possible even if offline.
- aliveupstairs 7y ago
  Not only should it be offline-first, but it also should have fallbacks options like self-hosting.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  Also, if it supports any outside protocols (for example: Airplay speakers) those should still work on a totally isolated network out of the box.
anon463637 7y ago
Think carefully and lock-it down (not as an afterthought), because unsecured IoT can be exploited to cause devastating harm. Phoning home should be disclosed and disable-able because you're opening up an attack surface and a privacy risk. And, if there's no clock synchronization, it will be impossible to check the validity of X.509 certificates used in https:// https://. You should support APIPA and Zeroconf. Bonus points for Bluetooth to allow configuration from a mobile app. The mobile app should also be able to securely download and send a firmware update. ZigBee is also low-power and mesh oriented, but will need a bridge/gateway to the internet to be connected. Device pairing like NetVue cameras having QR barcodes and/or Bose headphones with NFC might be Good Ideas™ too.

artursapek 7y ago

Wow, that's the epitome of ungraceful failure right there! :D

dangero 7y ago

Tesla cars are in this category too

blotter_paper 7y ago
I was extremely skeptical of this, so I googled it. Seems like Tesla owners have had no problem starting their cars without an internet connection, though obviously the internet dependant features don't work.[0] This doesn't seem comparable to a CD player that won't play CDs without an internet connection, it's more like a CD player that gracefully degrades to not showing the extra info it would get from the internet while still playing the local media. [0]: https://forums.tesla.com/en_AU/forum/forums/can-you-disconnect-tesla-internet https://forums.tesla.com/en_AU/forum/forums/can-you-disconne...
revscat 7y ago
So that’s a lie. I drove through Arizona and Colorado on a hiking trip last year, and frequently camped in places with no service. Worked just fine.
- aliveupstairs 7y ago
  It is not a lie. The idea is that Tesla would go out of business and a vulnerability in the car would be found and exploited to kill you in the absence of security updates. Similar to how the article says: > We're guessing a Charter alarm would still be able to make loud noises when someone breaks into a house, but that doesn't mean it'll work with an alarm-monitoring service.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - revscat 7y ago
    That’s a lot of assumptions. The point stands that Tesla’s perform just fine in the absence of a network.
    - 7y ago

gettingsnarky 7y ago

Sadly, I've worked with too many devs who would shrug their shoulders at the mention of something needing to have at least basic functionality w/out a network connection. They see it the same was as when a db fails, you just panic and stop. That's cop out programming mentality.

OnlineCourage 7y ago

I literally just did a search for "Westinghouse radio hub" and other variations and this post was the first thing that came up, the rest was all about 1940s Westinghouse electric tubes and things like that. Westinghouse effectivly went out of business effectively in 1995 as they were bought by CBS, when the Gopher protocol had more users than the WWW. This just sounds like such an outdated argument or example it does not make any sense. Sure, network connectivity has disadvantages but refusing all connected products because of oulier examples is extreme paranoia.

ShirtlessRod 7y ago
https://westinghouse.com/electronics/ https://westinghouse.com/electronics/

WalterBright 7y ago

The same thing happened to my Turtlebeach Audiotron.

ancarda 7y ago

>to my first disappointment, it wasn't wireless. You had to plug an Ethernet cable I've had the exact opposite where devices that could easily have had Ethernet (i.e. enough space on the device) were Wi-Fi only >:( For stationary devices, Ethernet seems perfectly fine to me. Why force me to use Wi-Fi?

lallysingh 7y ago
Who's got it wired throughout the house?
- JshWright 7y ago
  I've run drops to any place where I have a static device (a couple desktops, several Chromecasts, etc).
- mrr54 7y ago
  Pretty much every house built in the last 25 years does at least.
  - lallysingh 7y ago
    Not in the houses I've been looking at. Out of dozens I looked sty built within the last 10 years, only 1-2 had it. And the current owners weren't using it. AFAICT, They're built with the presumption of wifi.
    - mrr54 7y ago
      That's weird. It's not expensive to wire houses, and you can't get gigabit fibre speeds with ethernet. You certainly couldn't get anywhere near it 5-10 years ago, but gigabit fibre was available then.
  - jnicholasp 7y ago
    Not true in my mid-sized city in the Pacific Northwest.
- 7y ago

milankragujevic 7y ago

Huh, I saw this comment 5 days ago, and noted the name "westinghouse". Today I was researching an "ACME.eu" "cloud" camera, discovered it contacts ubia.cn, which is specified in a listing on the FCC website by Southern Telecom for a "Sharper Image" camera that is my exact model just with a different brand name. Apparently, Southern Telecom has bought some American brands and sells spyware "cloud" devices to end-users. You can see the list here: https://southerntelecom.com/brands/ https://southerntelecom.com/brands/ I still haven't found a way how to watch the camera stream without the app. It's possible, but it's a UDP protocol that I do not understand. It works with or without Internet, so I'm sure I could watch it without giving it Internet access...