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Customers need to stop buying "connected" smart home devices, but more importantly, legislation needs to prevent this bullshit; I still remember the story of S
by alias_neo 3y ago
Customers need to stop buying "connected" smart home devices, but more importantly, legislation needs to prevent this bullshit;
I still remember the story of Sonos intentionally bricking up-traded speakers that were perfectly functional so they couldn't be sold on, and some other company (I now forget who) bricking their remote with a firmware update because they no longer wanted to support it.
Force anyone who wants to release connected products like this to put the code in Escrow and if they go belly up without a plan, it goes public.
Communities across all disciplines have reverse engineered defunct products since forever, imagine what we can do with the source.
- anigbrowl 3y agolegislation needs to prevent this bullshit When are engineers going to understand that the bullshit corporations buy the politicians that write the laws? They don't need to buy all of them, just slightly more than half. They're fine with some rebel types who submit noble-sounding bills for the EFF or whoever to rally around that never go anywhere.
- midasuni 3y agoWe have fairly strong consumer rights in the UK, and the law does get better in these areas in response to public opinion.
- alias_neo 3y ago> When are engineers going to understand that the bullshit corporations buy the politicians that write the laws? Never. Because as engineers we're optimists, if I just resigned to this fact, there'd be no hope left. It's not that we don't understand, it's that we don't accept. Many of us also aren't capitalists, so we can't believe that the "free market" will resolve it either. We build things, somewhat in isolation to the "human problem", some of us (I speak for myself) because technology, machines, are better? easier? more consistent? predictable? reliable? quantifiable? than humans. We can solve technical problems, we can't solve humans being completly greedy, selfish pricks; those corporations buying those politicians are just humans. Engineering is _easy_, compared to people and people problems.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> Because as engineers we're optimists I think real engineers are actually pessimists. Software developers are optimists; that's most of the difference between software developers and engineers.
- vic-traill 3y agoWhich brings to mind the old chestnut: The optimist believes the glass is half full. The pessimist believes the glass is half empty. The engineer says the glass is twice as large as it need be.
- ohgodplsno 3y agoIt was Google, because Sonos has a patent on playing music synchronously on all your devices in the home. Note that Google turned it off worldwide, all because the USPTA is a bunch of fucking morons.