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FTC Pushed to Crack Down on Companies That Ruin Hardware via Software Updates
- nickphx 2y agoI had a bose sound bar, just a week outside of warranty, brick itself with a forced update. Surprisingly, bose replaced the sound bar when I contacted them for support..
- CatWChainsaw 2y agoWe've lowered our expectations so much that common decency like that is now "above and beyond".
- AlexandrB 2y agoIndeed, I'm not sure why software gets so much leniency. If a Bose technician had broken in at night and desoldered the speakers' MCU I don't think anyone would be this generous with their expectations.
- christkv 2y agoThis is why none of my brand new appliances will ever be connected and allowed a firmware update.
- subhro 2y agoWell, sometimes updates are not for "new" features but also for fixing core stuff. Did I ever tell you, I "love" software engineers and their mentality of "ship first, fix bugs later"? /s
- John_Cena 2y agoHow can I push back against PMs and suits when they want stuff like this? I think whatever I think to say or have said is just talking past them; they don't seem to care about the ability of the product, just that it appears good enough to sell.
- photonthug 2y agoThe one and only way to convince management to be interested in quality is to convince them it will cost the company lots of money to ignore it, and to convince them the company will be able to easily attribute that cost increase to them specifically. Appealing to common sense, or morality/ethics, or a sense of professional responsibility or pride in the work, won’t help. Saying that crap work will tank the company won’t even help, because if attribution is missing, there’s no fear of punishment and a good chance of failing upwards. IOW, just assume that most adults will act like horrible selfish children most of the time and you’ll rarely be disappointed.
- ranger_danger 2y agoUntil it becomes a requirement.
- LeifCarrotson 2y agoIt's often a requirement to use any smart features. My SIL has a coffee maker that requires an Internet connection to program the delayed start. It still has all the buttons of the previous generation that ostensibly allow you to have your morning coffee ready when you get up, but blinked at her demanding an SSID before you could use the interface; now it can do whatever they want it to do. Ostensibly, you can set more options and set them more easily from a phone app over the cloud, but practically I just want the coffee to be hot and ready at 6:05 AM.
- rurp 2y agoAvoiding anything labeled "Smart" is a great way to massively reduce cognitive load and improve reliability around the house. I recently replaced my old cheap coffee maker that finally broke with a new cheap coffee maker. It took about 5 seconds to set the timer for the next morning and I'm confident that's the last I'll have to think about it for years to come.
- christkv 2y agoI’m talking my ovens, cooking top, washer and drier. It’s all Siemens and it works perfectly not being connected so i can only imagine downsides by connecting it.
- m463 2y agoThen it gets returned. "requirements" are a two-way street.
- roninorder 2y agoI started just sending broken products back to Amazon. My DENON smart speaker broke outside of warranty (1.5 years), so I bought a new identical speaker and returned the broken one. It's unethical but I am just tired of paying $$$ for products that break right after warranty ends.
- ToucanLoucan 2y agoI did exactly this with a busted ASUS monitor. Bought a 43" 4K display for my desk and it failed after barely 2 months of use. Contacted ASUS and their support said they'd be happy to fix it under the warranty, after I sent the item to their repair facility in Texas, on my own dime. A 43" monitor. Would've costed me $180. Fucking ridiculous. I ordered a second if for no other reason than to get back to work, and that one arrived broken! But, fortunately, the power supply was in-tact so I took them both apart, constructed a working one, kept it and returned the broken parts. If whoever's fulfillment can't even be fucked to check the ones they're shipping out to see if they're shattered, I figured it was long odds anyone would even care if I did it. And I never heard a thing about it. And an interesting side note, I received refunds for both purchases. I have no idea why, but clearly some folks working at either Amazon or ASUS aren't too on the ball. And the monitor I built still works too, so.
- roninorder 2y agoThis is becoming the most valuable benefit of buying on Amazon. At least I can always return a broken product and not just eat the cost of the ever-decreasing quality of consumer electronics.
- liminalsunset 2y agoFWIW, if this was somewhat recent, Gamers Nexus recently did a segment [1] on ASUS' warranty support and practices, and they say that they are making some improvements to the way warranty support is being handled. They claim that they retroactively reviewed, or will review, warranty cases for issues such as what you outlined like shipping being charged, high RMA fees, and so forth. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0ZoCYXmF0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0ZoCYXmF0Q
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41455273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41455273 Actual letter: https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/group-letter-ftc-software-tethering/ https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/group-letter-f... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41455726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41455726)
- swframe2 2y agoMS removed support for mixed reality in windows 11 24H2 which made all windows VR headsets unusable (except MS's headset). I wonder if that counts.
- notfed 2y agoJust speculating here but I assume law will answer this with one word: "intent". Did MS design this with the intention of planned obsolescence, or was it reasonable to impractical to avoid?
- subhro 2y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/sousvide/comments/1e6su45/anova_discontinuing_wifi/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sousvide/comments/1e6su45/anova_dis... Morons.
- bearjaws 2y agoI have been working to eliminate all my wifi IOT devices. Years ago I gave them a separate guest network / vlan to use, with only 5mbit of bandwidth. The only thing I have left is some ip cameras and my roborock vacuum. We seriously need a local first law that enables all these devices to work 100% on local wifi.
- ajsnigrutin 2y agoJust look at the ones that support Tasmota (or ESPhome). Those use opensource software, integrate nicely into home assistant, and well.. are "local first".
- simcop2387 2y agoFor lights and relays (haven't bought the others yet) i;ve been really hapoy with the quality of athom devices. Tasmota, esphome and wled support natively.
- iSnow 2y agoThanks, didn't know them but their products seem real good. I'll have to try them.
- cogman10 2y agoI really wish that what we got instead of "Hey, your device can connect to smart-things.com and do stuff, ain't that need!" we had "Hey, this device speaks Protocol 1.2.3 over bluetooth which you can import to smart-things.com or other services". There really is no reason why a phone couldn't, for example, have a home management app on it that manages all the IOT devices over bluetooth or other protocols directly rather than needing an internet connection.
- vineyardmike 2y agoThis exists, it’s “Matter”, and it’s a smart home local-first IP based protocol. It’s available through the SmartThings, AppleHomeKit, and GoogleHome apps, as well as other smaller companies (eg. Alexa). It can operate over WiFi/Ethernet, as well as thread and Bluetooth. Edit: the implementation is also open source, and you can roll your own
- Fauntleroy 2y agoGiven recent rulings by the US Supreme court, how much actual authority does the FTC have left?
- bluGill 2y agoA fair amount. They are more limited to the letter of the law, but they already had a lot of authority.
- aatharuv 2y agoThis reminds me of when Sony disabled their officially supported OtherOS support (used to install Linux and other os's dual boot) with an update. Of course without the update, no access to the Sony Store, games that require the latest Sony PS3 stopped working, etc...
- Matheus28 2y agoThey got sued in a class action lawsuit for that, which got dragged out for ~7 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS And in the end users who had used that feature and lost it got... $10.07
- brookst 2y agoClass actions are more about penalizing the company than making customers whole. I’m pretty sure the legal and settlement costs were enough to make Sony create processes to avoid that happening again.
- majewsky 2y agoYes, they made sure that there would never be a refuge from the walled garden to begin with.
- brookst 2y agoExactly. It's too risky.
- yencabulator 2y agoSony isn't going to change anything for a $3.75M slap on the wrist. The executive in charge of the business unit probably got an extra $4M bonus for managing to make the costs so low.
- brookst 2y agoDisagree. What was the revenue upside of the openness to start with? Probably less than $3.75m. $3.75m is tiny to Sony but probably quite large for the group responsible for the loss. I know I've seen serious trouble at Fortune 10 companies over $3m issues, when the 6-person group's annual budget is $500k.
- PaulKeeble 2y agoWe have been calling on laws to stop this practice for at least 2 decades now. Early examples include the bricking of PS3 Linux support and HP printer modules. This situation needs to change especially with so many cloud connected IOT devices. The law really needs to not just be about functionality loss or bricking remotely but also components that work without the cloud that can work locally.
- stanski 2y agoHello, HP!
- toss1 2y agoThe solution that would not require govt cost or enforcement is a legal change: A company introducing a product that requires a connection to their service MUST maintain utility and features at the same or better for at least 7 years after the hardware product is last sold at a retail establishment (equal or expanded features and lower cost). At whatever time they reduce features or increase cost beyond a faster level of inflation, they are required to release all related current source code, comments, documentation, test suites, etc. required to make usable all product features, into the public domain. At that point, all parties are also fully permitted to use any measures to reverse engineer or otherwise hack the source code and firmware. Simple: You maintain it, it's yours as long as you want. You stop maintaining it, everyone else can do it for you. Let the bean counters trying to cut this month's bottom line costs fight with the IP lawyers trying to hide everything forever. [edit: typos]
- janalsncm 2y agoI think this gets tricky if their source code uses other proprietary software that can’t be open sourced. So in practice open sourcing would not be an option. I could also imagine a common situation where there was some complex integration with various third party like OpenAI where it wouldn’t be that easy for users to handle themselves.
- toss1 2y agoFor sure, there will be edge cases and such as you describe. That is no reason to not do it. 1) resolve them in favor of the customers/users. If it is required to use it, release it, and anyone is free to hack. If it integrates with some 3rdPty service, they'll pretty quickly update their TOS to prevent such risks to their codebase, so it won't be an option. 2) it'll encourage corporations selling products to use modular and local-first design. If the product works by itself, local-first, and using a software package delivered with the product, and they sell an ADD-ON cloud-based service, they'll have zero problems. They can discontinue the ADD-ON cloud service at will, and people can still use the original product as sold.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
- dev1ycan 2y agoI'm scared for the next election, remember Ajit Pai in the FCC? If Lina Khan goes away the FTC will most likely get a corporate stooge and all the wins under her will be gone
- atum47 2y agoLG Smart TVs, for sure
- alphazard 2y agoWhat we really need are a variety of certifications enforced by the FTC, not blanket regulation. Like you can put a sticker on your product, which would be illegal for non-complying products to have. One seal could be for Open Source, another for Cloud-Free, Firmware Rollbacks, Telemetry-Free, E2EE, 10 years of replacement parts, etc. It's clear just from this thread that different people care about different things. And I'd rather see a certification that never gets used, than a whole kind of product removed from the market because the FTC got it wrong, and now it doesn't make sense to produce it.
- ok_dad 2y agoGood idea! Like a nutritional label for electronics. The FDA is very strict about nutritional labels, as they should be.
- paularmstrong 2y agomissing the /s Those labels don't mean much because companies have really worked around and lobbied to make it all a very murky label. "Organic" labels, for instance, don't mean they haven't used pesticides or other harmful things – just a certain list of them.
- brookst 2y agoWhat’s wrong with the nutritional labels that GP mentioned?
- ok_dad 2y agoNutritional facts labels, specifically, are very strict about the contents of the package. “Organic“ is not a nutritional facts label. I apologize for not giving the full, official name for that label. For decades, it’s been the go-to place to see what macro and micro nutrients you’re eating. I think an “electronics facts” label which was similarly rigorous and covered important areas that the OP mentioned would be great. https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-education-resources-materials/nutrition-facts-label https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-education-resources-mater...
- bokchoi 2y agoThe recent Synology update removed Video Station and HEIC support from Photo Station. I'm annoyed that they can arbitrarily remove consumer focused functionality in an update like that. There has been quite a bit of grumbling in /r/synology about this.
- shiroiushi 2y agoThis is a good reason to avoid proprietary solutions and instead build your own home server using open-source software.
- doctorpangloss 2y agoAre they growing to crack down on Apple? Or are they the only ones allowed to make money by limiting software capabilities?
- avmich 2y agoJudging by the URL, the full name of the article is "FTC pushed to crack down on companies that ruin hardware via software updates or annoying paywalls". Regarding annoying paywalls, it's ironic that the page says "Checking your browser before accessing this site.", "Please allow up to 5 seconds..." and then keeps showing the wait sign indefinitely. I guess Techdirt site could be a subject to FTC push?
- honksillet 2y agoI can’t help but this of my aging apple MacBook. I once had full functioning, non subscription versions of both windows office suite and Adobe photoshop and illustrator. Neither of those packages of software work now and the integral MacBook battery is swelling and a would be a total pain to replace.
- givemeethekeys 2y agoRIP OG iPhone SE that was rendered useless by a growing iOS.
- JansjoFromIkea 2y agotbf it's still a usable phone and still gets occasional security updates. I'd say the main way it has been rendered unusable is websites totally ignoring the possibility of screens that size. I notice even with my 12 mini there's been a big increase in websites with horizontal scroll bars
- givemeethekeys 2y agoI used mine for text messages and phone calls. Most everything else had been removed to make space for iOS updates. Maybe mine was the model with the smallest drive - 8 or 16GB.
- saagarjha 2y ago16 GB was the smallest size that iPhone SE was released in.
- ryandrake 2y agoThey need to crack down on companies that ruin hardware (or will one day ruin hardware) when they shut off their last cloud server. There's no excuse for an appliance to brick itself or lose functionality just because of the manufacturer's remote action. When I buy a device, I don't want a perpetual, tethered relationship with the manufacturer in order to work the device. I don't want it to ask the manufacturer for permission to run every day. I don't want it to be dependent on the manufacturer to keep it alive. I don't want to create an account. I don't want to log in to the manufacturer's servers. I don't want them to know my IP address or my home address. Leave me alone, I'm just not that into you! A hardware device should work on day 10,000 just as it worked on day 1. If you as a company can't do that, you should not be able to sell the device (EDIT: OR at least you should be required to prominently mark the devices as "dependent on the manufacturer's servers")
- a2128 2y ago> OR at least you should be required to prominently mark the devices as "dependent on the manufacturer's servers" Right next to the prominent label about causing cancer in the state of California, presumably. I feel a notice wouldn't work here because the average consumer wouldn't understand the implications of depending on the manufacturer's servers or what it even means, plus every smart doorbell or whatever would just include it so it's not like it'd affect any consumer's choice
- notinmykernel 2y agoCan't wait for Amazon to be held responsible for force-bricking Firesticks in order to drive new sales, alongside their paywalling of Ring devices, after not disclosing the multiple data breaches that occurred.
- lostmsu 2y agoWhat happened to fire sticks?
- notinmykernel 2y agoAmazon teams pushed bloatware that bricked older Firesticks, resulting in a boost in the sale of new Firesticks. People were promoted for it.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoMake blowing eFuses in devices illegal. The device no longer belongs to the manufacturer and they should have no power to physically damage it, nor to compel me to allow them to physically damage it as a condition for use. EFuses enable awful anti-consumer "features" like preventing firmware downgrades, blacklisting compromised cryptographic keys, and bricking devices remotely.
- nebula8804 2y agoThey also enable things like resettable fuses in a car (ie Tesla) such that you don't need to have some dumb fuse in the fusebox blow and then waste money/time buying replacements. Instead make them software resettable after a fault has been resolved and now you have eliminated a cost and made the system more efficient.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoI don't think we're talking about the same kind of eFuses. The ones I'm talking about don't serve a current-limiting function like a traditional fuse. They're features on chips to allow for non-volatile storage of a limited number of bits that, once blown, cannot be reset.
- Chihuahua0633 2y agoAKA how the Nintendo Switch prevents firmware downgrades - https://medium.com/hackernoon/how-the-nintendo-switch-prevents-downgrades-by-irreparably-blowing-its-own-fuses-884bd3b7a8ba https://medium.com/hackernoon/how-the-nintendo-switch-preven...
- nebula8804 2y agoYes I know about eFuses, they were used on the Xbox 360 console as well. As far as I know, they are similar types of eFuses on the Tesla that are capable of changing their state via firmware instead of one time blow (different application) but I could be wrong. Its just in this case the thing being controlled is not a checksum for what firmware can be installed, but a checksum to confirm if current should flow to a specific path. [1]: https://youtu.be/Hl1zEzVUV7w?t=3874 https://youtu.be/Hl1zEzVUV7w?t=3874
- nullc 2y agoI had a PS3 that I used 99.99% of the time running Linux (e.g. for Cell development). When portal 2 came out I thought it might be fun to play, ... the startup had some updates that it needed to run... and bam, my Linux install was inaccessible. WTF. But hey I got paid $10 for my trouble in a class action lawsuit.
- thot_experiment 2y agoI think what we really need is a mandate to open firmware for any hardware thats EoL. You should just have to pay an escalating fee, or at least be liable in a suit for damages when you EoL a product without opening up the hardware.
- Zuiii 2y agoFair enough: You don't want to support our stuff? Then let us support it ourselves.
- mbrumlow 2y agoThey need to force hardware makers to publish all the information needed to use the hardware with customer supplied software. This does not have to be a release. But at a trigger point. EOL announcement, or on an update that removes previously available features, or after 2 years after the first sale of the device. There should be zero exceptions. If a hardware provider can’t do this they should be forced a full refund of the device and any software components bought tied to said device.
- FMecha 2y agoI originally thought this might/could be an US portion of the Stop Killing Games campaign - until I read the "hardware" part of the title.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoThey need to go after Peloton with their new activating fee on used bikes. But I also see car manufacturers doing this (ruining hardware through software updates). For example I’ve now started receiving random ads popping up on my screen, which is needed for basic things like climate control, pushing me to activate a Sirius XM trial. I didn’t get those before until an update was forced on me - the car gave me three attempts to ignore the update and then said I am out of delay attempts and that the update will be installed when the car was stationary.
- shiroiushi 2y agoYou should name the car brand and model so others can avoid it.
- Zak 2y agoI think that everything that runs software should have an unlockable bootloader and sufficient hardware documentation for third parties to develop software. I'm not big on government mandates, but I might make an exception for this.
- hermannj314 2y agoSomeone wrote a letter to the FTC? Is this like some obscure government rule where the FTC can't do something until they receive a letter in the mail? What is this world we live in? Are they not aware of what is happening in the world? Do all government agencies enforce their mandates by mail order?
- ddingus 2y agoI will be frank: there are a ton of devices I have not purchased because of these potential risks and dependencies. Just not worth the hassle. I pretty much avoid newer cars for similar reasons. The ones I drive have no annoying screen. It is easy to setup a Bluetooth phone connection to either the factory radio, or an easily installed one. And I can do most repairs, need never talk to a dealer, they go for 100, often 200k miles after I buy them, get great fuel economy, and it goes on and on. I would be crazy to buy a new car. The rest of what one might need? Got a phone for that. In a pinch, an older car phone powered by a current phone hot spot works great too. Music? Got all the tunes I need on a storage device. Or pop a CD in. I like CD media, and this year it outpaced digital downloads. Good. I like vinyl too. I see people struggle with a lot of this stuff. No thanks. My life is nowhere near as enriched relative to the costs and risks.
- jldl805 2y agoSpotify Car Thing. Facebook Portal. I've been hosed the last few years by this (but at least got my money back from Spotify).
- n_ary 2y agoOh, this is just useless cloud (read “dream of perpetual revenue with additional “convenience services”) features from the era of IoT hype. Now things started integrating AI features which are more integrated into the whole system and needs more “cloud” access. Once the AI hype falls(either bubble bursting if glorious “auto-complete” marketed as novel thing or consolidated by few key uses similar to image processing, pharma etc) and these “AI” integrations are shut down as “unsustainable”, the devices will be also bricked. Cloud(read IoT fever) at least can be mitigated by somehow mocking the thing the device is looking for, the unpredictable AI mocking is …
- fluxeb 2y agoCall me old fashioned but who needs the FTC when you can just not buy the thing (or sell it) if you don't like it? Remove regulation and more competition will spring up to make every type of customer happy.
- fragmede 2y agoyou're old fashioned. that clearly isn't and hasn't been working.
- 7jjjjjjj 2y agoWho needs the FDA when you can just choose to buy the canned meat without maggots in it?
- namlem 2y agoIn this case the manufacturer is destroying the value of an item after you bought it. So you can't just not buy it and no one will pay you for it. I agree that regulation should be used sparingly, but I could see a justification for some regulation here. Or tbh perhaps this could be solved by deregulation: remove DMCA protection for drivers and firmware.
- benguild 2y agoGreat news for anyone who owns a “Smart TV”
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoI wonder if a severe crisis that makes it difficult to source hardware (such as a global war) would unfuck this issue. People would need to scrounge and fix what they have and will be rightfully outraged that these devices aren't truly "theirs." Today nobody cares (by nobody I mean average users) because it's trivial to just replace things.
- Juicyy 2y agocricut needs to be investigated for this.
- nullsmack 2y agoThere's a lot of stuff like this that should be very illegal and include excessive fines and jail time to stop it from happening. Buying something and then having the manufacturer take features away is a major bait and switch in the best case. It's fraud. Turning off cloud servers and abandoning hardware leaving it useless when it could be made useful if source code was released should be just as illegal. They need to start cracking down on these horrid business practices.