6 ms·

It should be legally required for these products to allow for people to turn 'smart' features off if they want to. Unfortunately, it probably won't be any time

It should be legally required for these products to allow for people to turn 'smart' features off if they want to. Unfortunately, it probably won't be any time soon.

deepstack 4y ago
As consumers, we ought to demand that. I like IoT, however if this is how the manufacturers gonna play it, I would rather have old stove and fridges with no internet access. Let's vote with our money.
Doches 4y ago
I'd rather flip this solution on its head: why are our markets for consumer goods /so broken/ that there's no headroom for a startup making quality, 'not-smart' appliances to break in? Consumer home appliances feel like they ought to be a textbook case of innovator's dilemma, with incumbents moving up and to the right in complexity and opening up space at the bottom for new manufacturers. And yet...
- RL_Quine 4y ago
  The smart features of a TV subsidize its price. A "non smart" device manufacturer has to sell at a dramatically non competitive price because they aren't selling user data or flooding advertising into the content shown. Sitting on a shelf, who would buy a TV with less features for double or three times the price?
  - Doches 4y ago
    For TVs, absolutely, that's a hard value proposition to beat. But you can't tell me that there's anything like as much profit delta between 'dumb' and smart...refrigerators.
    - RL_Quine 4y ago
      There's a hot tub brand who include LTE radios in their hot tubs to ensure that they always have an analytics channel irrespective of what the user configures. Why on earth? It means they can target advertising for consumables and services. Same goes for fridges which need replacement filters, fresheners, whatever, you've just got to dupe the user into giving you internet connectivity, or accept the cost of putting a cellphone radio in your product.
      - Doches 4y ago
        That is amazing and bananas in equal measure, and I seriously hope it's true (in a sort of black mirror-esque way) -- it's just the perfect parody. And the perfect example! If I was choosing between two otherwise-equivalent hot tubs I would /definitely/ pay more for one without the ability to call home. Are there enough people who would also be willing to pay more, and pay enough more to make up the difference in lost advertising revenue? I guess...not?
      - dotancohen 4y ago
        > There's a hot tub brand who include LTE radios in their hot tubs Is there any disclosure that the device includes such a radio?
        RL_Quine 4y ago
        No idea, I saw it on a list of "product success stories" for a IOT cellular provider.
        c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
        I'm guessing you're referring to Particle?
        dolmen 4y ago
        Mandatory registration to the FCC?
      - petre 4y ago
        you can still damage the LTE antenna or put aluminium tape on it.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    If they also leave out the dsp, and settle on a standard form factor with no plastic clips and with standard mounts for all internal stuff. I'd buy in a heartbeat.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    To be honest that's what they want you to believe. Last time i opened a smart TV looked like the most expensive thing was the standing foot and the plastic frame. The rest was power supply (which was broken - planned - died just when warranty expired) and a cheap android computer. I think they cannot resist to the idea that if they have Android why not sell some ads.
    - rerx 4y ago
      Somehow I doubt the large OLED panel in my TV is cheaper than its little stand.
    - kasabali 4y ago
      Oh I really hate this meme because even folks at HN repeat it like a broken record though nobody even cared to back it with a real BOM analysis. Only source I've seen so far for this ridiculous claim is "an executive of Sony said so in an interview". Yeah, a really neutral source of information, indeed. 55" open cell panel costs less than $100 and this is by far the single most expensive component in a TV. So a $300 Walmart special Roku TV might needed to be subsidized a little, but doing the same on a fancy LG, Samsung or Sony would be purely out of greed.
      - thfuran 4y ago
        I think you're underestimating just how much money there is to be made after the sale. Vizio now makes more money on ads and data harvesting than on hardware sales.
    - dolmen 4y ago
      Netflix / Disney pre-installed on the smart TV are probably the features that allow the manufacturer to reduce the price thanks to subsidize from those subscription vendors.
      - rerx 4y ago
        Does Netflix (still) subsidize TV vendors to include their app? Or is it the case that TV vendors would not be able to sell their products if they didn't come with built-in Netflix? I read some representative from Nvidia Shield explaining that they were forced to add a Netflix button to their remote in 2019 because Netflix would no longer allow their app to be installed on devices without a dedicated button.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    I think you mean something like $20 more, and that's likely overshooting. Some smart TVs can milk money from subscription partnerships, but on a per-tv-sold basis it's not really that much.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    I've never seen any ads in my smart devices and I have a hard time seeing how the user data could be worth so much that dumb device startups can't even enter the market. Do you have any source with numbers on this? I mean, I can understand the value of user data from Facebook but a stove or a fridge? What exactly are they selling? Edit: realized now we're talking about TVs but still, is that data really worth that much?
    - thfuran 4y ago
      https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/328967-vizio-makes-2x-more-selling-ads-and-data-than-it-does-on-tvs https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/328967-vizio-makes-2...
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    > double or three times the price I'd like to see sources on that. Amazon's tablet is like $20 cheaper if you buy it with integrated ads. A TV will have a hard time showing so many ads through the day that it'll halve the price.
    - dagw 4y ago
      I'd like to see sources on that. I just checked a (Swedish) price comparison site and the cheapest 65" 4K TV currently available was literally less than half the price of the cheapest Not Smart TV. Also with Smart TVs I had a choice of over 200 different models, while with Not Smart TVs I had a choice of 2.
  - car_analogy 4y ago
    We don't know, because manufacturers made sure that doesn't happen. There is no equivalent, premium-priced privacy-respecting TVs sold next to "smart" ones. And they definitely don't advertise the user-hostile "smart" features, such as telemetry and forced ads, as prominently as the price. What we do know is that even the least price-sensitive consumers, that buy the most high-end TVs, aren't given the option: Buying a product knowing it has ads in it is one thing, but users on Reddit and elsewhere are understandably angry about ads suddenly being patched into their devices—especially in cases when these devices are multi-thousand-dollar 4K Sony televisions - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/google-pilot-program-puts-a-row-of-ads-on-the-android-tv-home-screen/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/google-pilot-program...
    - est31 4y ago
      The least price sensitive people are also the most valuable people to sell ads for.
- silisili 4y ago
  Probably solely costs. A handful of companies own all the appliance brands, able to create components for pennies and they sure aren't sharing them with you and I. Appliance companies seem to be barely making margins anymore, so it's not like they're robbing you blind, more that a startup would need to create a simple device that is also twice the price of everyone else.
  - Doches 4y ago
    Would you pay extra for not-smart appliances? Because I sure would -- and have, at every opportunity I get. It's frustrating that there's not a market for uncomplicated, well-built, totally-lacking-in-smart-features appliances. If I have to replace e.g. a dead microwave, I would pay considerably /more/ for one that won't call home or auto-install firmware updates or tweet at my wife when I re-heat a mug of tea. You'd hope that there's be enough of a delta in that "pay more", and enough folks who would do so, to make a market. Shame it seems like there isn't.
    - silisili 4y ago
      No I get it completely, I would. And probably a lot of readers here would. Though admittedly I'd wait to see if the brand existed in a year, so I could get parts. But the problem seems to keep coming up that people like us just don't represent enough market share for it to be worth everyone's time. See also: US made hand tools. Everyone seems to yearn for the old Craftsman days, but not enough people want to pay that premium. While Harbor Freight seems ever expanding...
      - Doches 4y ago
        Yep, hand power tools are another perfect case. We're just vigorously agreeing with one another now, but I would really like to see the economics behind e.g. smart washing machines. I mean, it's not like Samsung just likes violating their customers' privacy for the hell of it -- there must be (considerable?) profit in it somewhere. It's just distressing that there increasingly doesn't seem to be a market /at all/ for non-smart appliances. I'll probably never buy a television again, since it seems you can't buy a decent non-smart panel without crossing into the enterprise (and adding an order of magnitude in price). And I'm not alone! How is there not a single manufacturer making a single modern non-smart LCD TV? Hell, call it the "HNTV" and expect to sell no more than...20,000? At 200€ in margin that's a 4m€ product line, surely worth throwing off given that the R&D is just removing hardware from an existing model?
- bushbaba 4y ago
  There is, just on the ultra high end and ultra low end. The mid-range has decided to leverage 'smart' features to compete on cost or shift buyers over.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  What you need is a white goods equivalent of Behringer, mass-producing "reproduction" 1970s Tricity Countess cookers and Indesit L8 washing machines and such.
- dagw 4y ago
  The core principal of the innovators dilemma is that as you move "up and to the right" prices increase leaving a space for cheaper competitors. I spoke to a person working at a small company doing a fancy piece of kitchen equipment about this once. According to him anyway doing an app was actually easier and cheaper to manufacture since A) it was less moving parts and less complexity and B) finding people who know how to program a really nice app is cheaper and easier than finding people who knew how to design nice physical controls with buttons and knobs.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  - People expect appliances to live for years if not decades, and many are not willing to trust a new brand for a multi-hundred-dollar expense - Producing and especially shipping and storing huge and/or heavy appliances is expensive AF, which means you need a lot of upfront capital for inventory and warehouses - Getting onto Amazon is easy, but almost no one buys a fridge on Amazon - which means you have to establish a relationship with brick-and-mortar retail, and that is difficult: the retailers expect free demonstration units for each location or subsidy for advertising, as well as have ridiculously long payment schedules (depending on whose rumors you listen to, some chains want up to 1 year of time from product delivery to payment due date!). Basically, it boils down to the question on how and where to get money to disrupt an industry that has enormous cash requirements, low margins and an extremely niche target demographic. Your best bet is a benevolent billionaire willing to put up cash for decades.
- skocznymroczny 4y ago
  It's "so broken" from a perspective of a privacy advocate or a tech oriented user. For casual users of these devices, a TV that doesn't support Prime Video/Netflix/HBOGO out of the box is "broken".
- maccard 4y ago
  That ship has sailed with TVs now but you can still buy high-end non-smart kitchen appliances from most manufacturers, Samsung included. Smart kitchen appliances are outrageously expensive (the Samsung smart fridge range is ~30% more expensive than their highest priced alternative based on a quick Google) so it's not like you're being forced to buy one of these.
- rapnie 4y ago
  A company offering a range of dumb household devices with a modern design but the sturdy quality of many of the machinery from my granny's days? The stuff that lasts a lifetime. I would pay good money for that.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  The Innovator's Dilemma is absolutely not about creating higher quality versions of products.
DyslexicAtheist 4y ago
legislation is coming in Sept 2024 (RED directive) mandating a lot of security for IoT home appliance. If your device doesn't have (secure) OTA update, secure-boot, among other things it won't get CE certification. In Europe vendors are scrambling because the law is there but standards are still half-baked (ETSI/EN 303 645 etc). In the US the situation is the opposite: standards are solid but the law is still not clearly defined. There is a lot to be said about throwing whole classes of users under the bus (elderly, people with disabilities) when asking them to manage technology mostly because how these things are going to be implemented (e.g. the security vs usability dilemma).
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I'm a little annoyed at the requirement for secure boot on these platforms. As the device owner I want to get security updates, but I also want to be able to run my own software if I so choose. I don't think physical security is a problem that ready to be solved In legislation like this unless we're talking about a smart safe I welcome new legislation in this area but it seems to me that lobbyists are once again screwing over the general consumer by adding anti-features into these legislations. Luckily IOT-vendors are absolutely abysmal at protecting their devices so I doubt we'll see too many devices locked down that weren't already.
  - DyslexicAtheist 4y ago
    I agree on secureboot :( one thing: > Luckily IOT-vendors are absolutely abysmal at protecting their devices so I doubt we'll see too many devices locked down that weren't already. it is either compliance or no CE stamp (if a product does not meet safety requirements they have to remove connectivity or take it off the shelves). And either they are already scrambling because the cost of this has already sunk in, ... or they are in for a surprise pretty soon because becoming compliant isn't a one-off activity but means restructuring their entire processes (e.g. test automation to maintain that compliance)
dotancohen 4y ago
> It should be legally required Do you really want that level of government control over everything? I think that this is something "the market" should fix. Or, a soldering iron.
- paskozdilar 4y ago
  > Do you really want that level of government control over everything? Absolutely not. But I also don't want that level of company control over everything. I think "government punishing companies" is a much better alternative to "companies punishing people". > Or, a soldering iron. In this case, the wireless card could be just detached physically. But what happens when e.g. device requires network access to work, but also has some malicious feature? What if the malicious feature is baked in the hardware, e.g. DRM? Do we just pull out an electron microscope and a disassembler?
- baq 4y ago
  the market is smart (or dumb, depending on point of view). it won't price in externalities unless forced to. that's why we need regulations and enforcement in a free market environment - to make sure (raise probability) the price is fair to everyone, not just to manufacturers or just to consumers. it isn't possible to have a free market without regulation (anarcho-capitalists believe otherwise until the first time they get shafted.)
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    > price in externalities At what point should governments start pricing in exeternalities? Is the price of air pollution and global warming yet priced into the cost of gasoline?
    - thfuran 4y ago
      No it isn't, and that's a problem. Externalities would ideally always be priced in, though it's not practical to achieve that.
- strogonoff 4y ago

It should be legally required for these products to allow for people to turn 'smart' features off if they want to. Unfortunately, it probably won't be any time soon.

deepstack 4y ago

As consumers, we ought to demand that. I like IoT, however if this is how the manufacturers gonna play it, I would rather have old stove and fridges with no internet access. Let's vote with our money.

Doches 4y ago

I'd rather flip this solution on its head: why are our markets for consumer goods /so broken/ that there's no headroom for a startup making quality, 'not-smart' appliances to break in? Consumer home appliances feel like they ought to be a textbook case of innovator's dilemma, with incumbents moving up and to the right in complexity and opening up space at the bottom for new manufacturers. And yet...

RL_Quine 4y ago
The smart features of a TV subsidize its price. A "non smart" device manufacturer has to sell at a dramatically non competitive price because they aren't selling user data or flooding advertising into the content shown. Sitting on a shelf, who would buy a TV with less features for double or three times the price?
- Doches 4y ago
  For TVs, absolutely, that's a hard value proposition to beat. But you can't tell me that there's anything like as much profit delta between 'dumb' and smart...refrigerators.
  - RL_Quine 4y ago
    There's a hot tub brand who include LTE radios in their hot tubs to ensure that they always have an analytics channel irrespective of what the user configures. Why on earth? It means they can target advertising for consumables and services. Same goes for fridges which need replacement filters, fresheners, whatever, you've just got to dupe the user into giving you internet connectivity, or accept the cost of putting a cellphone radio in your product.
    - Doches 4y ago
      That is amazing and bananas in equal measure, and I seriously hope it's true (in a sort of black mirror-esque way) -- it's just the perfect parody. And the perfect example! If I was choosing between two otherwise-equivalent hot tubs I would /definitely/ pay more for one without the ability to call home. Are there enough people who would also be willing to pay more, and pay enough more to make up the difference in lost advertising revenue? I guess...not?
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      > There's a hot tub brand who include LTE radios in their hot tubs Is there any disclosure that the device includes such a radio?
      - RL_Quine 4y ago
        No idea, I saw it on a list of "product success stories" for a IOT cellular provider.
        c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
        I'm guessing you're referring to Particle?
      - dolmen 4y ago
        Mandatory registration to the FCC?
    - petre 4y ago
      you can still damage the LTE antenna or put aluminium tape on it.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If they also leave out the dsp, and settle on a standard form factor with no plastic clips and with standard mounts for all internal stuff. I'd buy in a heartbeat.
- hulitu 4y ago
  To be honest that's what they want you to believe. Last time i opened a smart TV looked like the most expensive thing was the standing foot and the plastic frame. The rest was power supply (which was broken - planned - died just when warranty expired) and a cheap android computer. I think they cannot resist to the idea that if they have Android why not sell some ads.
  - rerx 4y ago
    Somehow I doubt the large OLED panel in my TV is cheaper than its little stand.
  - kasabali 4y ago
    Oh I really hate this meme because even folks at HN repeat it like a broken record though nobody even cared to back it with a real BOM analysis. Only source I've seen so far for this ridiculous claim is "an executive of Sony said so in an interview". Yeah, a really neutral source of information, indeed. 55" open cell panel costs less than $100 and this is by far the single most expensive component in a TV. So a $300 Walmart special Roku TV might needed to be subsidized a little, but doing the same on a fancy LG, Samsung or Sony would be purely out of greed.
    - thfuran 4y ago
      I think you're underestimating just how much money there is to be made after the sale. Vizio now makes more money on ads and data harvesting than on hardware sales.
  - dolmen 4y ago
    Netflix / Disney pre-installed on the smart TV are probably the features that allow the manufacturer to reduce the price thanks to subsidize from those subscription vendors.
    - rerx 4y ago
      Does Netflix (still) subsidize TV vendors to include their app? Or is it the case that TV vendors would not be able to sell their products if they didn't come with built-in Netflix? I read some representative from Nvidia Shield explaining that they were forced to add a Netflix button to their remote in 2019 because Netflix would no longer allow their app to be installed on devices without a dedicated button.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  I think you mean something like $20 more, and that's likely overshooting. Some smart TVs can milk money from subscription partnerships, but on a per-tv-sold basis it's not really that much.
- Kiro 4y ago
  I've never seen any ads in my smart devices and I have a hard time seeing how the user data could be worth so much that dumb device startups can't even enter the market. Do you have any source with numbers on this? I mean, I can understand the value of user data from Facebook but a stove or a fridge? What exactly are they selling? Edit: realized now we're talking about TVs but still, is that data really worth that much?
  - thfuran 4y ago
    https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/328967-vizio-makes-2x-more-selling-ads-and-data-than-it-does-on-tvs https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/328967-vizio-makes-2...
- alpaca128 4y ago
  > double or three times the price I'd like to see sources on that. Amazon's tablet is like $20 cheaper if you buy it with integrated ads. A TV will have a hard time showing so many ads through the day that it'll halve the price.
  - dagw 4y ago
    I'd like to see sources on that. I just checked a (Swedish) price comparison site and the cheapest 65" 4K TV currently available was literally less than half the price of the cheapest Not Smart TV. Also with Smart TVs I had a choice of over 200 different models, while with Not Smart TVs I had a choice of 2.
- car_analogy 4y ago
  We don't know, because manufacturers made sure that doesn't happen. There is no equivalent, premium-priced privacy-respecting TVs sold next to "smart" ones. And they definitely don't advertise the user-hostile "smart" features, such as telemetry and forced ads, as prominently as the price. What we do know is that even the least price-sensitive consumers, that buy the most high-end TVs, aren't given the option: Buying a product knowing it has ads in it is one thing, but users on Reddit and elsewhere are understandably angry about ads suddenly being patched into their devices—especially in cases when these devices are multi-thousand-dollar 4K Sony televisions - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/google-pilot-program-puts-a-row-of-ads-on-the-android-tv-home-screen/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/google-pilot-program...
  - est31 4y ago
    The least price sensitive people are also the most valuable people to sell ads for.
silisili 4y ago
Probably solely costs. A handful of companies own all the appliance brands, able to create components for pennies and they sure aren't sharing them with you and I. Appliance companies seem to be barely making margins anymore, so it's not like they're robbing you blind, more that a startup would need to create a simple device that is also twice the price of everyone else.
- Doches 4y ago
  Would you pay extra for not-smart appliances? Because I sure would -- and have, at every opportunity I get. It's frustrating that there's not a market for uncomplicated, well-built, totally-lacking-in-smart-features appliances. If I have to replace e.g. a dead microwave, I would pay considerably /more/ for one that won't call home or auto-install firmware updates or tweet at my wife when I re-heat a mug of tea. You'd hope that there's be enough of a delta in that "pay more", and enough folks who would do so, to make a market. Shame it seems like there isn't.
  - silisili 4y ago
    No I get it completely, I would. And probably a lot of readers here would. Though admittedly I'd wait to see if the brand existed in a year, so I could get parts. But the problem seems to keep coming up that people like us just don't represent enough market share for it to be worth everyone's time. See also: US made hand tools. Everyone seems to yearn for the old Craftsman days, but not enough people want to pay that premium. While Harbor Freight seems ever expanding...
    - Doches 4y ago
      Yep, hand power tools are another perfect case. We're just vigorously agreeing with one another now, but I would really like to see the economics behind e.g. smart washing machines. I mean, it's not like Samsung just likes violating their customers' privacy for the hell of it -- there must be (considerable?) profit in it somewhere. It's just distressing that there increasingly doesn't seem to be a market /at all/ for non-smart appliances. I'll probably never buy a television again, since it seems you can't buy a decent non-smart panel without crossing into the enterprise (and adding an order of magnitude in price). And I'm not alone! How is there not a single manufacturer making a single modern non-smart LCD TV? Hell, call it the "HNTV" and expect to sell no more than...20,000? At 200€ in margin that's a 4m€ product line, surely worth throwing off given that the R&D is just removing hardware from an existing model?
bushbaba 4y ago
There is, just on the ultra high end and ultra low end. The mid-range has decided to leverage 'smart' features to compete on cost or shift buyers over.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
What you need is a white goods equivalent of Behringer, mass-producing "reproduction" 1970s Tricity Countess cookers and Indesit L8 washing machines and such.
dagw 4y ago
The core principal of the innovators dilemma is that as you move "up and to the right" prices increase leaving a space for cheaper competitors. I spoke to a person working at a small company doing a fancy piece of kitchen equipment about this once. According to him anyway doing an app was actually easier and cheaper to manufacture since A) it was less moving parts and less complexity and B) finding people who know how to program a really nice app is cheaper and easier than finding people who knew how to design nice physical controls with buttons and knobs.
mschuster91 4y ago
- People expect appliances to live for years if not decades, and many are not willing to trust a new brand for a multi-hundred-dollar expense - Producing and especially shipping and storing huge and/or heavy appliances is expensive AF, which means you need a lot of upfront capital for inventory and warehouses - Getting onto Amazon is easy, but almost no one buys a fridge on Amazon - which means you have to establish a relationship with brick-and-mortar retail, and that is difficult: the retailers expect free demonstration units for each location or subsidy for advertising, as well as have ridiculously long payment schedules (depending on whose rumors you listen to, some chains want up to 1 year of time from product delivery to payment due date!). Basically, it boils down to the question on how and where to get money to disrupt an industry that has enormous cash requirements, low margins and an extremely niche target demographic. Your best bet is a benevolent billionaire willing to put up cash for decades.
skocznymroczny 4y ago
It's "so broken" from a perspective of a privacy advocate or a tech oriented user. For casual users of these devices, a TV that doesn't support Prime Video/Netflix/HBOGO out of the box is "broken".
maccard 4y ago
That ship has sailed with TVs now but you can still buy high-end non-smart kitchen appliances from most manufacturers, Samsung included. Smart kitchen appliances are outrageously expensive (the Samsung smart fridge range is ~30% more expensive than their highest priced alternative based on a quick Google) so it's not like you're being forced to buy one of these.
rapnie 4y ago
A company offering a range of dumb household devices with a modern design but the sturdy quality of many of the machinery from my granny's days? The stuff that lasts a lifetime. I would pay good money for that.
marcosdumay 4y ago
The Innovator's Dilemma is absolutely not about creating higher quality versions of products.

DyslexicAtheist 4y ago

legislation is coming in Sept 2024 (RED directive) mandating a lot of security for IoT home appliance. If your device doesn't have (secure) OTA update, secure-boot, among other things it won't get CE certification. In Europe vendors are scrambling because the law is there but standards are still half-baked (ETSI/EN 303 645 etc). In the US the situation is the opposite: standards are solid but the law is still not clearly defined. There is a lot to be said about throwing whole classes of users under the bus (elderly, people with disabilities) when asking them to manage technology mostly because how these things are going to be implemented (e.g. the security vs usability dilemma).

jeroenhd 4y ago
I'm a little annoyed at the requirement for secure boot on these platforms. As the device owner I want to get security updates, but I also want to be able to run my own software if I so choose. I don't think physical security is a problem that ready to be solved In legislation like this unless we're talking about a smart safe I welcome new legislation in this area but it seems to me that lobbyists are once again screwing over the general consumer by adding anti-features into these legislations. Luckily IOT-vendors are absolutely abysmal at protecting their devices so I doubt we'll see too many devices locked down that weren't already.
- DyslexicAtheist 4y ago
  I agree on secureboot :( one thing: > Luckily IOT-vendors are absolutely abysmal at protecting their devices so I doubt we'll see too many devices locked down that weren't already. it is either compliance or no CE stamp (if a product does not meet safety requirements they have to remove connectivity or take it off the shelves). And either they are already scrambling because the cost of this has already sunk in, ... or they are in for a surprise pretty soon because becoming compliant isn't a one-off activity but means restructuring their entire processes (e.g. test automation to maintain that compliance)

dotancohen 4y ago

> It should be legally required Do you really want that level of government control over everything? I think that this is something "the market" should fix. Or, a soldering iron.

paskozdilar 4y ago
> Do you really want that level of government control over everything? Absolutely not. But I also don't want that level of company control over everything. I think "government punishing companies" is a much better alternative to "companies punishing people". > Or, a soldering iron. In this case, the wireless card could be just detached physically. But what happens when e.g. device requires network access to work, but also has some malicious feature? What if the malicious feature is baked in the hardware, e.g. DRM? Do we just pull out an electron microscope and a disassembler?
baq 4y ago
the market is smart (or dumb, depending on point of view). it won't price in externalities unless forced to. that's why we need regulations and enforcement in a free market environment - to make sure (raise probability) the price is fair to everyone, not just to manufacturers or just to consumers. it isn't possible to have a free market without regulation (anarcho-capitalists believe otherwise until the first time they get shafted.)
- dotancohen 4y ago
  > price in externalities At what point should governments start pricing in exeternalities? Is the price of air pollution and global warming yet priced into the cost of gasoline?
  - thfuran 4y ago
    No it isn't, and that's a problem. Externalities would ideally always be priced in, though it's not practical to achieve that.
strogonoff 4y ago