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Comment by akerl_ | Hacker News Reader

If what you want is a basic thermostat, there are any number of models you can buy. They're physical objects without network connectivity and they last basically forever.

But if you buy a Nest, you're buying a network-connected device. A decade replacement cycle for network-connected computing devices is not crazy.

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> A decade replacement cycle for network-connected computing devices is not crazy.

Sure it is, and it’s why we desperately need consumer protection laws mandating lifetime security updates for IOT devices.

My grandparents had a 100 year old home - some of their light switches were well over 30 years old. Why should I be forced to replace a smart light switch before its useful life is over? Because some company wanted built in obsolescence so they could sell more product?

Edit: and to be clear, I’m potentially fine if the vendor takes the approach of open sourcing all firmware as a way to allow lifetime updates if they need to get out of the product for some reason and can’t maintain it themselves. “Reasonable accommodation”?

> But if you buy a Nest, you're buying a network-connected device. A decade replacement cycle for network-connected computing devices is not crazy.

It should be, though. Okay, I get spare parts not being available after 10 years, particularly the "smart" chips simply don't get produced any more. But firmware and API support? How fucking hard can it be for a company raking in 90 fucking billion dollars in a single quarter of a year to keep a dozen people on payroll to keep the old servers, APIs and build tooling for the firmware up to date?!

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-stock-rises-after-it-b...

To add that Nest team probably isn’t doing a whole lot. It’s mostly bug fixes it says which is probably just open source dependency management.

Aquire a new tech, shart the sales team, say everyone should get one, shart the development staff and only have a single maintenance engineer, who is moonlighting, suck up all the profits, and then with the stroke of a pen from the brain addled director, killyhe product completely. Let them eat cake.

https://hackaday.com/2019/02/27/hack-my-house-raspberry-pi-a...

Let them piss off a netizen. They will have it opensourced and a better product, by Monday. There may even be a better product already!

> A decade replacement cycle for network-connected computing devices is not crazy

What's your reasoning behind that belief? A device being "modern" doesn't automatically mean it has to be user hostile. That is a choice.

Hypotheticals are useful, but here we have facts we can discuss. A smart device released in 2010 was already using the REST api and HTTPs over WiFi. A brand new smart device will communicate exactly the same way. So it is just Google’s decision to deprecate the device. And even if some of these protocols were deprecated, Google could just release a hub to keep the legacy devices online.

If this was the 90s or early 2000s I might agree more. But these days I really can't. I have network devices over a decade old, they still work great and are useful, and my computer itself that I still play modern games on is also over a decade old. Sure there is newer faster stuff, but I don't need or really have much of any use for that. A thermostat isn't gaining anything useful with faster networking or processing or any of that because what it already had was already way beyond any use case.

After a year, CarOS™ 25 has reached end of life and will not be updated.

To maintain security and guarantee continuing safety, CarOS™ will now drive you to your local showroom where you can purchase updated hardware.

This is why I will most likely never own an EV, and most likely never own a car newer than 2015 or so (depending on model).

The entire world offerings are moving to this type of model under the part guise part reality of tech dependencies that just don't exist in a stand alone product.

Stand alone products are disappearing more and more every year that passes. It is certainly no accident.

I had no expectation that the device I wired into my wall was going to stop working at an arbitrary moment in time. I certainly didn’t sign any sort of agreement to that affect.

> A decade replacement cycle for network-connected computing devices is not crazy.

The crazy part is that consumers are allowing the idiotic product lifecycles from the IT industry destroy products that, otherwise, had long and predictable lifecycles. It's shocking how the IT industry is successfully conditioning people to think it's normal to throw away otherwise working gear because "upgrades". The industry should be held to account before they take any more consumer goods hostage.

Local boring thermostats are still for sale. So are boring locks (even local-only electronic locks).

It feels like your actual beef here is that the majority of consumers are interested in buying cloud-connected gear that degrades when the vendor moves on, but you're framing their choice as "crazy".

> It feels like your actual beef here is that the majority of consumers are interested in buying cloud-connected gear that degrades when the vendor moves on, but you're framing their choice as "crazy".

My concern is that consumers don't know what they're buying. They don't know what "cloud connected" means. I don't care if people but this stuff, I care that they know what the bargain is that they're making.

How old is your cell phone?

How old is your toaster?

My homelab server and workshop laptop are both over a decade old so that seems a bit crazy to me.

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