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Garmin CEO at al must be reading this impatiently, looking for some clever-magic clue, which is not gonna arrive, I am afraid. Meanwhile Garmin watches users (
by piokoch 6y ago
Garmin CEO at al must be reading this impatiently, looking for some clever-magic clue, which is not gonna arrive, I am afraid.
Meanwhile Garmin watches users (like me) are wondering how it is that syncing my watch that I have bought with an application on my smartphone that I have bought requires presence of some distant online service.
I can understand that some parts like "social" stuff might depend on some central service but, hey, something simple like syncing ones excercise achievements between phone and watch? Really? Who has designed that?
- pengaru 6y agoObviously there's a business incentive to maximize gatekeeping. Even if the gate's left wide open (for now), having control of a gate is of tremendous potential value. Just imagine how much more $$ one can elicit in an acquisition if potential buyers may add tolls to an already established and well-traveled gate.
- wlll 6y agoWhat's the backstory for this?
- latchkey 6y agoPart of the backstory is that in 2010, they fired all the Garmin Connect staff [0]. More recently, they've been shut down [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196996 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926289
- dehrmann 6y agoI forgot about 0. I had to double check, but a high school friend was on that team.
- rectang 6y agohttps://www.garmin.com/en-US/outage/ https://www.garmin.com/en-US/outage/
- prennert 6y agoIt is surprisingly difficult to make synchronisation work between two devices that might run different hard- and firmware and even potentially software versions. Cloud based APIs as middleware is soo much easier in comparison. I am completely with you conceptually, but from experience I can tell you that even if there is a commercial incentive to allow for local communication it takes a few days to get it working with the cloud and months to do it locally only. And you really need to know what you are doing to make it safe and reliable in all eventualities.
- reaperducer 6y agoAnd yet everything from Palm Pilots to iPaqs were able to do it a quarter of a century ago with just a beam of light.
- eatingCake 6y agoMy understanding[1] was that these types of devices sync by sending a blob over bluetooth to the paired cell phone, and then the cell phone uploads this to the cloud to be decrypted. What kinds of devices are you talking about? [1]: https://hackaday.com/2017/12/29/34c3-fitbit-sniffing-and-firmware-hacking/ https://hackaday.com/2017/12/29/34c3-fitbit-sniffing-and-fir...
- nradov 6y agoFIT files aren't encrypted. You can copy them directly to your computer are parse them easily.
- johannes1234321 6y agoLast time I checked they hid the format description behind an NDA ... aside from that no issue indeed.
- causality0 6y agoI never understood how that works. All it takes is one person to post it publicly and then everyone has it.
- yread 6y ago“A distributed system is one that prevents you from working because of the failure of a machine that you had never heard of.” Leslie Lamport
- matsemann 6y agoOver two days now, and almost radio silence from Garmin. I can sympathize with their issues, but not keeping us informed at all about what's going on is quickly leading people to become angry on various fitness forums I frequent. Not a good way to treat us customers.
- balladeer 6y ago10 hours ago they linked a ridiculous and ridiculously short FAQ in this tweet https://twitter.com/GarminFitness/status/1287101514750754816 https://twitter.com/GarminFitness/status/1287101514750754816
- ultrarunner 6y agoI wonder how many people Garmin has working on this. It seems like there’d be someone in an English speaking country that could come up with a statement and answer some questions. Do they have their marketing team busy negotiating with Evil Corp or something?
- yencabulator 6y agoAnd the link now leads to a 404 not found page.
- Kenji 6y agoMeanwhile Garmin watches users (like me) are wondering how it is that syncing my watch that I have bought with an application on my smartphone that I have bought requires presence of some distant online service. You really wonder that? I'm sorry, how stupid are you? It's obviously to harvest data and control users. We've been warning and educating people about this for decades. When are you guys starting to wake up and voting with your wallet? Open services! Open software! Open formats! Own your data! Own your devices! Your life will be full of such disruptions if you keep using products that let corporations dominate you.
- atdrummond 6y agoThis reply strikes me as an uncharitable interpretation of OP’s statement. It’s also rude.
- marcus_holmes 6y agoyeah. I kinda agree with the sentiment, but being rude doesn't help the cause
- jlgaddis 6y agoApparently the "friendly" warnings of the last few decades have largely went ignored. Unfortunately, a much stronger tone is often needed in order to to get people to pay attention.
- ithkuil 6y agoOr to stop paying attention, as when you avoid listening to that crazy person shouting in the subway
- andrewcooke 6y agothe garmin data actually is in an open format. i've written software to decode it using publicly available documentation. the software is free to use. you can copy the (.FIT) file off the watch over USB.
- JohnTHaller 6y agoA Fitbit won't even sync with the app on your phone unless it has internet access and can connect to Fitbit's cloud servers. Without them it's basically a paperweight.
- jvehent 6y agoWait until this happens to your car...
- buran77 6y agoOr your pacemaker...
- M2Ys4U 6y agoThis attack on Garmin has already grounded aeroplanes.
- rckoepke 6y agoHas it? Private pilots are reporting no operational impact. Not sure if larger airplanes are somehow more impacted? https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/hx22o5/garmin_services_and_production_go_down_after/fz3rvsh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/hx22o5/garmin_servi...
- jbj 6y agoI never really liked the fact that I need an internet connection to sync the fit files from my activities from my watch via my smartphone to a database, in order to then download it from the web to see it. Fortunately the watch appears as a usb device when connecting with a charging cable. So it is possible to get data out without relying on accounts and social features.
- xwdv 6y agoBefore this incident I was thinking about getting a Garmin, but now I think I’ll just wait for Apple Watch 6, which will probably be better in every way except battery life.