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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

What a terrible move. If I had bought it I would definitely want a full refund, no discount.

This is really disappointing because I used to love Logitech the company, am friends with the founders and in general always thought of them as an example of a business done right.

I'll mail Daniel to see if I can persuade them to put the emergency brakes on this decision, I can see a very bad PR debacle happening if they do not undo this decision.

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> What a terrible move.

The more terrible thing is the whole system's design made this actually possible. An electronic soap dish lying under the TV should not depend on internet access to just do its work. Though nobody thinks about it nowadays and everybody is happy to switch songs played by music centre with their iPhone.

Home automation suffers from the same problem. I'm hard-pressed to find a home automation hub that doesn't require "the cloud." You mean to tell me turning on the lights 5 feet away requires I go through some North Carolina data centre some 800 miles away? This frustrating trend is over-engineered and insecure.

Lutron’s wireless offerings work off local ISM bands. No cloud required.

I wasn't able to find a cloud-less home automation solution. Ended up going the semi-DIY route and installed Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi. It's not plug and play, but it beats having to rely on some cloud solution that'll disappear whenever the manufacturer feels like it.

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