"Works with Nest is winding down"
May 10, 2019 11:30 AM Subscribe
Google has announced that Nest will no longer be an independent division, and that the devices will become "Google Nest" products, requiring a Google account and subject to Google's privacy and data sharing policies. Ars Technica: The Nest ecosystem is dead. Nest accounts are dead. Nest's privacy firewall is dead. Almost all third-party integrations ("Works with Nest") will stop working on August 31.
As usual, the Internet of Shit twitter account has your IoT snark needs covered. (Nest, previously: 1, 2, etc.)
As usual, the Internet of Shit twitter account has your IoT snark needs covered. (Nest, previously: 1, 2, etc.)
Another one for Our Incredible Journey.
posted by foxfirefey at 11:41 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by foxfirefey at 11:41 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Nest is a bad product.
posted by Nelson at 11:51 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 11:51 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Nest is a bad product.Why do you say that? They seem to be pretty popular with owners - the main complaint being that they stagnated around the time Google bought them.
posted by adamsc at 11:56 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I dunno, it's seemed like the Nest people couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag for a long time now, so I'm reasonably unsurprised. The Nest acquisition was moronic in the first place, so why not just continue making terrible decisions?
More broadly, IMHO, this (Google constantly launching and killing things) is fundamentally the fault of Google's terrible promotion system -- you get promoted solely for "impact" (there are of course other hoops to jump through, but that's the real yardstick) and you get zero points for being a conscientious maintainer, so ambitious people are pretty much required to launch Big Things and then promptly drop them. It's just a remarkably stupid system, and the consequences are utterly predictable.
Nobody who is any good wants to get stuck on maintenance; they all fight to be the ones adding new features, new products, new initiatives, which they are then highly incentivized to drop as soon as practicable (I.e., in about two years, when they are able to go up for their next promotion with any chance of making it -- there are procedural hurdles that make it extremely tough to be promoted again before a minimum two years.)
...compare that per-person timeline to the resulting promo cycles of a the initially-responsible team, and you've got a pretty good match for the Google kill cycle. They kill things when most of the originators are gone, and there's a new set of people who need to make their own Big Impacts.
posted by aramaic at 12:00 PM on May 10, 2019 [40 favorites]
More broadly, IMHO, this (Google constantly launching and killing things) is fundamentally the fault of Google's terrible promotion system -- you get promoted solely for "impact" (there are of course other hoops to jump through, but that's the real yardstick) and you get zero points for being a conscientious maintainer, so ambitious people are pretty much required to launch Big Things and then promptly drop them. It's just a remarkably stupid system, and the consequences are utterly predictable.
Nobody who is any good wants to get stuck on maintenance; they all fight to be the ones adding new features, new products, new initiatives, which they are then highly incentivized to drop as soon as practicable (I.e., in about two years, when they are able to go up for their next promotion with any chance of making it -- there are procedural hurdles that make it extremely tough to be promoted again before a minimum two years.)
...compare that per-person timeline to the resulting promo cycles of a the initially-responsible team, and you've got a pretty good match for the Google kill cycle. They kill things when most of the originators are gone, and there's a new set of people who need to make their own Big Impacts.
posted by aramaic at 12:00 PM on May 10, 2019 [40 favorites]
I was put off of Nest with the whole firmware glitch bricking the device thing. I live in Minnesota—you can't gamble on your thermostat not working.
posted by koucha at 12:08 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by koucha at 12:08 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Wow, aramaic -- that sounds like the exact problem with infrastructure and other civic planning projects here in the U.S. No politician wants to be the one stuck with maintaining over long years -- but would love to be the one who cuts a ribbon.
posted by knownassociate at 12:10 PM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by knownassociate at 12:10 PM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
>>Nest is a bad product.
> Why do you say that?
I have a Nest thermostat and it's overloaded with "smart" features that make it much worse than a normal, "dumb" thermostat. Here's a good example: it contains a motion detector and (by default) will turn off your heat if it doesn't detect motion. This is delightful when it's the winter and you have only one Nest. If you're not in that room, well, I hope you enjoy freezing to death. They "fixed" this by having it network with their smoke detectors (which also have motion sensors). So the "solution" to a bad feature is to make you buy more of their products.
Within a week of buying a Nest, I had disabled all of its features and now it's just a pretty thermostat that cost a lot of money.
posted by riotnrrd at 12:18 PM on May 10, 2019 [21 favorites]
> Why do you say that?
I have a Nest thermostat and it's overloaded with "smart" features that make it much worse than a normal, "dumb" thermostat. Here's a good example: it contains a motion detector and (by default) will turn off your heat if it doesn't detect motion. This is delightful when it's the winter and you have only one Nest. If you're not in that room, well, I hope you enjoy freezing to death. They "fixed" this by having it network with their smoke detectors (which also have motion sensors). So the "solution" to a bad feature is to make you buy more of their products.
Within a week of buying a Nest, I had disabled all of its features and now it's just a pretty thermostat that cost a lot of money.
posted by riotnrrd at 12:18 PM on May 10, 2019 [21 favorites]
you can't gamble on your thermostat not working.
This was also the company that produced a smoke alarm that could be silenced by waving at it. Except the sensor that detected someone waving at it would sometimes be triggered by the presence of *a fire*.
posted by grahamparks at 12:22 PM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
This was also the company that produced a smoke alarm that could be silenced by waving at it. Except the sensor that detected someone waving at it would sometimes be triggered by the presence of *a fire*.
posted by grahamparks at 12:22 PM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
Eh, I have a Nest thermostat and I'm not particularly piqued about this, and I am not a huge fan of Google in other regards (I gave up on Android as a platform because Google is so shittacular as a steward of it).
All the Nest devices themselves will continue to work. You can keep using them with a Nest account if you want, although I can't see myself caring enough to. (Now I'm just annoyed that I had to create a fucking Nest account; couldn't they have enabled optional log-in-with-Google as soon as they bought it? You know how often I want to create new accounts for shit? Exactly never.)
Say what you will about Google, they are at least big enough to have some skin in the cybersecurity game. I'd be more worried about a small company like Nest, if it had remained independent, than I am about information held by Google. Cyberoperations, offensive and defensive, are not something for the faint of heart or shallow of pockets; once you start having information worth protecting, you're competing directly with nation-states, so you'd better have the resources to compete. Google has that. Apple has that. Amazon has that. Most companies don't. (Hell, most government agencies don't, when they act independently. Go drown in a lake, OPM.) I'd rather keep the list of people who have my data very short.
Probably this will suck a lot if you had a big investment in Nest ecosystem devices made by third-parties who can't or don't want to update them to work with Google instead. But I think that's sort of a risk you assume whenever you buy a "smart" device. And it's why the only one I own is the one Nest thermostat, because it seems to be the most common and the most likely to remain operational for the longest time. (And there are enough of them that if/when Google does try to force an upgrade, I'm pretty confident someone will figure out how to hack or reflash its firmware to keep it working locally.) The market is still too young and too unstable to justify spending a bunch of money on interconnected devices, IMO, unless you are buying the stuff you basically wire up yourself to your own server and control logic.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:24 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
All the Nest devices themselves will continue to work. You can keep using them with a Nest account if you want, although I can't see myself caring enough to. (Now I'm just annoyed that I had to create a fucking Nest account; couldn't they have enabled optional log-in-with-Google as soon as they bought it? You know how often I want to create new accounts for shit? Exactly never.)
Say what you will about Google, they are at least big enough to have some skin in the cybersecurity game. I'd be more worried about a small company like Nest, if it had remained independent, than I am about information held by Google. Cyberoperations, offensive and defensive, are not something for the faint of heart or shallow of pockets; once you start having information worth protecting, you're competing directly with nation-states, so you'd better have the resources to compete. Google has that. Apple has that. Amazon has that. Most companies don't. (Hell, most government agencies don't, when they act independently. Go drown in a lake, OPM.) I'd rather keep the list of people who have my data very short.
Probably this will suck a lot if you had a big investment in Nest ecosystem devices made by third-parties who can't or don't want to update them to work with Google instead. But I think that's sort of a risk you assume whenever you buy a "smart" device. And it's why the only one I own is the one Nest thermostat, because it seems to be the most common and the most likely to remain operational for the longest time. (And there are enough of them that if/when Google does try to force an upgrade, I'm pretty confident someone will figure out how to hack or reflash its firmware to keep it working locally.) The market is still too young and too unstable to justify spending a bunch of money on interconnected devices, IMO, unless you are buying the stuff you basically wire up yourself to your own server and control logic.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:24 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I have a Nest thermostat and it's overloaded with "smart" features that make it much worse than a normal, "dumb" thermostat. Here's a good example: it contains a motion detector and (by default) will turn off your heat if it doesn't detect motion.
This is not true. It doesn't turn off your heat. You set min and max values (at initial setup), and it goes to your minimum temperature value in the winter and your max temp value in the summer before turning on.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:32 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
This is not true. It doesn't turn off your heat. You set min and max values (at initial setup), and it goes to your minimum temperature value in the winter and your max temp value in the summer before turning on.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:32 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
As I said on Ars when I read this, I love that I bought a Nest way back when you could buy a smart thermostat that did one thing: control the temperature in a reasonably smart way.
I've considered replacing it, perhaps with an Ecobee for Homekit compatibility, but I really do not want anything that comes with an always-on camera and microphone. Apple I can deal with, Google I mostly tolerate, but the idea of anything with an Alexa built in just creeps me the F out.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:32 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I've considered replacing it, perhaps with an Ecobee for Homekit compatibility, but I really do not want anything that comes with an always-on camera and microphone. Apple I can deal with, Google I mostly tolerate, but the idea of anything with an Alexa built in just creeps me the F out.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:32 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I have a friend who used to work firmware in Nest before he got out. There's a lot of shit still coming down the pipe that he can't talk about due to NDA. This is only the second (hidden microphone being the first) of many more unpleasant surprises. It's what he says, anyway. He took a huge pay cut to get out to go work for a much less toxic company, is the gist.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:38 PM on May 10, 2019 [14 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:38 PM on May 10, 2019 [14 favorites]
We have nest fire alarms and a security camera have been very happy with them. The camera is outside so I don't care about privacy issues and the smoke alarms have been very good at detecting bacon cooking. I'm annoyed by having to change the accounts but that's just a one time thing.
posted by octothorpe at 12:43 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 12:43 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
You set min and max values (at initial setup), and it goes to your minimum temperature value in the winter and your max temp value in the summer before turning on.
Oh, so it's a thermostat. Why does anyone need this connected to the internet?
posted by 3urypteris at 12:46 PM on May 10, 2019 [17 favorites]
Oh, so it's a thermostat. Why does anyone need this connected to the internet?
posted by 3urypteris at 12:46 PM on May 10, 2019 [17 favorites]
Sorry for the driveby "Nest is a bad product" but I didn't have a lot of time and it seems useful to warn people away. I'm talking specifically about the thermostat, the flagship product. The one that costs 2-3x more than other Internet connected thermostats.
As noted above, the motion detector turning off your heat thing is a real problem. So you disable that. There's also a learning mode where it tries to guess when you want heat. This doesn't work very well at all, so you turn that off too and program a manual schedule. There's also a thing where it can try to predict how long it will take your home to heat up to 68 degrees at 7am or whatever. That results in the furnace turning on at 5am, waking you up. So you turn that off too.
By the time you turn off all the "smart" stuff in a Nest thermostat so that it doesn't suck, you end up with a dumb thermostat.
Nest's way of charging itself is bizarre. It's sort of a clever hack but it doesn't work with a whole lot of people's furnaces. To be fair they disclose this pretty well and have a generous return policy.
Then there was the time Nest shipped a firmware bug that drained the battery to zero. So it couldn't charge itself. The only fix for that was to take the thermostat off the wall and charge it via the USB port.
There was the other time that Nest removed "away" mode entirely from the thermostat. Turns out that it's still there, it's just rebranded as a little green leaf and the smarmy word "Eco". The first time I had to figure that out, on the way out the door for a trip for a week, it took me twenty minutes.
It is an Internet connected thermostat. Well, sometimes. The website is broken a shockingly high percentage of the time for a Google product.
The user interface is lovely though. The big metal knob to turn, the UI for programming a schedule. That was very nicely done.
posted by Nelson at 12:52 PM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
As noted above, the motion detector turning off your heat thing is a real problem. So you disable that. There's also a learning mode where it tries to guess when you want heat. This doesn't work very well at all, so you turn that off too and program a manual schedule. There's also a thing where it can try to predict how long it will take your home to heat up to 68 degrees at 7am or whatever. That results in the furnace turning on at 5am, waking you up. So you turn that off too.
By the time you turn off all the "smart" stuff in a Nest thermostat so that it doesn't suck, you end up with a dumb thermostat.
Nest's way of charging itself is bizarre. It's sort of a clever hack but it doesn't work with a whole lot of people's furnaces. To be fair they disclose this pretty well and have a generous return policy.
Then there was the time Nest shipped a firmware bug that drained the battery to zero. So it couldn't charge itself. The only fix for that was to take the thermostat off the wall and charge it via the USB port.
There was the other time that Nest removed "away" mode entirely from the thermostat. Turns out that it's still there, it's just rebranded as a little green leaf and the smarmy word "Eco". The first time I had to figure that out, on the way out the door for a trip for a week, it took me twenty minutes.
It is an Internet connected thermostat. Well, sometimes. The website is broken a shockingly high percentage of the time for a Google product.
The user interface is lovely though. The big metal knob to turn, the UI for programming a schedule. That was very nicely done.
posted by Nelson at 12:52 PM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Oh, so it's a thermostat. Why does anyone need this connected to the internet?
Who cares? If you want a non-internet connected thermostat, they cost $20 and take 20 minutes to self-install. Your needs are being met and cheaply.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:59 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Who cares? If you want a non-internet connected thermostat, they cost $20 and take 20 minutes to self-install. Your needs are being met and cheaply.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:59 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Internet of Shit just keeps being shitty.
posted by emjaybee at 1:02 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 1:02 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I have a Nest camera for a very specific purpose and it’s been ok but have often be surprised how rudimentary the app is (especially for handling clips or lack of handling clips as far as the app goes). Was surprised how little Nest really seemed to progress in the last few years. That said I had some decent lunches at the Nest cafeteria a few times I was there for work. The brisket was excellent.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 1:07 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by inflatablekiwi at 1:07 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is not true. It doesn't turn off your heat. You set min and max values (at initial setup)
I can confirm this. The Nest has an "eco mode", which you are encouraged to set up initially with absolute max and min temperatures for the house. I have animals, so mine is set with them in mind; the lowest temperature is 60, and the highest is 85 (although the cats would be fine if it went higher than that, the dog would probably object). But even if your house is empty, you'd want to set the minimum to whatever you'd set a traditional thermostat to when you go away for a weekend, in order to keep pipes from freezing etc.
If you enable it, it will use both the motion sensor and also your phones' location (if you have the app installed and give it the correct permissions) to determine if you're home or out, and go into Eco mode when you're away.
TBH, I have put it into Eco Mode manually and just left it there for weeks during the more temperate parts of the spring and fall when we have the windows open.
The Nest isn't by any means a perfect product, but it's miles better than the traditional UI-from-an-80s-programmable-VCR thermostat my house used to have, and which was locked on "Hold" most of the time, because the clock was always off (it drifted a minute or two a week), or it hadn't been set for DST, or a bunch of other corner cases that all conspired to make it less than useful.
Also, just being able to change the house temperature from bed is a real cheap thrill in the winter.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:07 PM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
I can confirm this. The Nest has an "eco mode", which you are encouraged to set up initially with absolute max and min temperatures for the house. I have animals, so mine is set with them in mind; the lowest temperature is 60, and the highest is 85 (although the cats would be fine if it went higher than that, the dog would probably object). But even if your house is empty, you'd want to set the minimum to whatever you'd set a traditional thermostat to when you go away for a weekend, in order to keep pipes from freezing etc.
If you enable it, it will use both the motion sensor and also your phones' location (if you have the app installed and give it the correct permissions) to determine if you're home or out, and go into Eco mode when you're away.
TBH, I have put it into Eco Mode manually and just left it there for weeks during the more temperate parts of the spring and fall when we have the windows open.
The Nest isn't by any means a perfect product, but it's miles better than the traditional UI-from-an-80s-programmable-VCR thermostat my house used to have, and which was locked on "Hold" most of the time, because the clock was always off (it drifted a minute or two a week), or it hadn't been set for DST, or a bunch of other corner cases that all conspired to make it less than useful.
Also, just being able to change the house temperature from bed is a real cheap thrill in the winter.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:07 PM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
I keep hearing about a smart fridge that will message me that I'm low on milk, something frequently cited as a good example of how the Internet of Things will improve our lives. Will people really pay thousands extra for that feature? I've seen a few smart lightbulbs on the shelves at Home Depot but I can't figure out what's wrong with lightbulbs that will turn on and off with a switch. I looked at Nest a couple of times but decided it would never figure out my irregular schedule and it would be just as easy to just turn the heat up when I need it and down when I don't.
Not that I'm against Smart Things. I have an Amazon Echo which I think is fabulous even though I only use it to play radio stations from around the world. But I'm not smart enough to tell Alexa I'm low on milk so she should add it to my grocery list.
posted by beagle at 1:18 PM on May 10, 2019
Not that I'm against Smart Things. I have an Amazon Echo which I think is fabulous even though I only use it to play radio stations from around the world. But I'm not smart enough to tell Alexa I'm low on milk so she should add it to my grocery list.
posted by beagle at 1:18 PM on May 10, 2019
how the Internet of Things will improve our lives. Will people really pay thousands extra for that feature?
No. Most of the 'Internet of Things' real products are sold to business clients, not consumer ones, the ones sold to consumers are total novelties or extreme luxury items for the most part.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:23 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
No. Most of the 'Internet of Things' real products are sold to business clients, not consumer ones, the ones sold to consumers are total novelties or extreme luxury items for the most part.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:23 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
The auto/on off lightbulbs and controllers are also luxury items - for houses larger than 5k sq feet that might have 50 light switches in the common areas.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:24 PM on May 10, 2019
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:24 PM on May 10, 2019
someone will figure out how to hack or reflash its firmware to keep it working locally
Oh man, now I want lineageOS for the Nest.
Oh, so it's a thermostat. Why does anyone need this connected to the internet?
I get it - I generally think home automation and pretty much all "smart home" devices are stupid garbage, but most of them at least have a niche with people who have some kind of disability or limitation. A thermostat controlled from the phone can be extremely helpful to people with a limited ability to move (physical disabilities, chronic fatigue, etc). Smart speakers (which I would be thrilled to never use) are a fantastic link to the world for the blind community, especially older folks who might not be comfortable using a smartphone in screen reader mode.
Anyway; I'm annoyed that Google is doing this; I'd like to think that I'll end up selling my Nest and replacing it with a Raspberry Pi or something, but that'll take time and work, so I'll probably ride it out.
posted by god hates math at 1:38 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Oh man, now I want lineageOS for the Nest.
Oh, so it's a thermostat. Why does anyone need this connected to the internet?
I get it - I generally think home automation and pretty much all "smart home" devices are stupid garbage, but most of them at least have a niche with people who have some kind of disability or limitation. A thermostat controlled from the phone can be extremely helpful to people with a limited ability to move (physical disabilities, chronic fatigue, etc). Smart speakers (which I would be thrilled to never use) are a fantastic link to the world for the blind community, especially older folks who might not be comfortable using a smartphone in screen reader mode.
Anyway; I'm annoyed that Google is doing this; I'd like to think that I'll end up selling my Nest and replacing it with a Raspberry Pi or something, but that'll take time and work, so I'll probably ride it out.
posted by god hates math at 1:38 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
to go work for a much less toxic company
Can confirm; Tony Fadell is a huge asshole (of the kind that tends to create more assholes as he moves through the world, reshaping environments into asshole-centric ecosystems). If you see him involved in something, be aware that it will suck more the closer you get to it, so stay at arms-length, even after he's personally gone.
posted by aramaic at 1:41 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Can confirm; Tony Fadell is a huge asshole (of the kind that tends to create more assholes as he moves through the world, reshaping environments into asshole-centric ecosystems). If you see him involved in something, be aware that it will suck more the closer you get to it, so stay at arms-length, even after he's personally gone.
posted by aramaic at 1:41 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
I got a first-generation Nest thermostat a few years back when the second-gen was brand new, but never used it until last fall, after moving into our current house. When I called Nest support (which was excellent, btw) for help installing it the operator was surprised and asked where I'd gotten it.
Our old house has forced-air HVAC but was built before concepts like temperature zoning existed. Since there's a single duct line running the length of the house for the vents on both floors, it's not a retrofittable feature either -- at least not without thoroughly razing the first floor ceiling to do it, and it's just not important enough to us.
So I'm still feeling my way around the thing, and discovered a couple weeks ago that it will operate the HVAC as a whole-house fan on a timed schedule, and it turns out that this does a decent job of recirculating the air between the two floors and does a lot more to keep all the rooms comfortable than running the heater too much in the winter or the AC too much in the summer. The UI is also considerably less cryptic than the electronic thermostat the previous resident had installed. Since it's the first-generation Nest, it lacks the feature creep and the creep features that later versions have, so on the whole, so far we're doing OK by this.
posted by ardgedee at 1:48 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Our old house has forced-air HVAC but was built before concepts like temperature zoning existed. Since there's a single duct line running the length of the house for the vents on both floors, it's not a retrofittable feature either -- at least not without thoroughly razing the first floor ceiling to do it, and it's just not important enough to us.
So I'm still feeling my way around the thing, and discovered a couple weeks ago that it will operate the HVAC as a whole-house fan on a timed schedule, and it turns out that this does a decent job of recirculating the air between the two floors and does a lot more to keep all the rooms comfortable than running the heater too much in the winter or the AC too much in the summer. The UI is also considerably less cryptic than the electronic thermostat the previous resident had installed. Since it's the first-generation Nest, it lacks the feature creep and the creep features that later versions have, so on the whole, so far we're doing OK by this.
posted by ardgedee at 1:48 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
As for having a networked thermostat: It's nice to be able to control it from my tablet or phone, and to be able to stand-down the HVAC when the house will be empty for the day, and get the heater or AC starting up again while we're still a half-hour from home. It's a convenience, and obviously not a necessity. To me, it's more practical than having a fridge that tells me that I'm low on milk (since I am readily reminded of that by directly consuming the milk), and more convenient than having remote-control lightbulbs (because the use cases for controlling bulbs with anything other than a wall switch don't really apply to me). If Google finally pooches Nest, well, that's shit. But at least now I'll have a working idea of what features I want in a replacement product.
posted by ardgedee at 1:55 PM on May 10, 2019
posted by ardgedee at 1:55 PM on May 10, 2019
I have absolutely no idea why people keep giving that scorpion rides across the river.
posted by straight at 2:11 PM on May 10, 2019 [25 favorites]
posted by straight at 2:11 PM on May 10, 2019 [25 favorites]
most of them at least have a niche with people who have some kind of disability or limitation
Yeah, but things designed for people with a disability first take a realistic look at the demand and the size of the market rather than just throw something against the wall to be abandoned in 2 years if it doesn't become the next Twitter.
posted by straight at 2:30 PM on May 10, 2019
Yeah, but things designed for people with a disability first take a realistic look at the demand and the size of the market rather than just throw something against the wall to be abandoned in 2 years if it doesn't become the next Twitter.
posted by straight at 2:30 PM on May 10, 2019
I've owned 3 Nests in different homes. Just rented a new place and bought one and installed it on my own dime. The user interface and ability to manage home temps from anywhere (and to start up the heat or AC on my drive home) for me is priceless. I've never had a single issue with any of them.
posted by docpops at 3:03 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by docpops at 3:03 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
I figure Google Express is the next to join the death list. Over the last month or two, every local, next day store except for Target abruptly vanished off of it. It's now a wilderness of mail order companies that will maybe deliver stuff for you in a week. It's a pity, since I used it as an alternative to Amazon a lot in hopes of supporting local businesses.
posted by tavella at 3:22 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by tavella at 3:22 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'd also add that if you live in a house with kids it can save you the cost of the unit many times over. I would log in from work to see the thermostat turned up from 68 to 74 degrees at 3 as soon as a kid came home from school in the winter because "cold". Not being able to monitor and manage from a distance would be costly.
posted by docpops at 3:31 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by docpops at 3:31 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Here's a good example: it contains a motion detector and (by default) will turn off your heat if it doesn't detect motion. This is delightful when it's the winter and you have only one Nest. If you're not in that room, well, I hope you enjoy freezing to death.I agree that it was inexplicable that they slacked so long on a basic satellite sensor but you left out the most common and free option: the smartphone app sets the home/away status quite reliably. It also used to be possible to use things like IFTTT but Google just killed that option.
posted by adamsc at 4:11 PM on May 10, 2019
My Nest thermostats and detectors work very well. But I love voice controlled lights more than anything else. Fall asleep on the couch, wake up in a daze, say “Alexa, turn off the downstairs lights”, and stumble up to bed. No wandering around fumbling for switches.
posted by schoolgirl report at 4:14 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by schoolgirl report at 4:14 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I looked into it when my old thermostat died. Why does anyone need this connected to the internet? So I could lie in bed and warm up the house before getting up, which would be a luxury. I ended up getting a programmable thermostat that is fine.
posted by theora55 at 6:42 PM on May 10, 2019
posted by theora55 at 6:42 PM on May 10, 2019
My 1st Gen Nest thermostat has been great from day one. My Nest Protects, too ; when I burn something, it warms me before it goes off, and one of my normal smoke alarms woke me up in the middle of the night with a false alarm right above my bed, endearing me to the Protects. My one camera was only purchased to watch the house remotely when it was tented for termites, and happily sits in my garage so I can tell if I remembered to close the garage door (something I'd previously had to drive back home to check on, because I'm forgetful.)
I was ready to purchase more, but then Google bought them, and I knew it was over. Sooner or later someone will come out with a better product, or they'll still working, but in the meantime I'll just keep getting the benefits but also will continue not giving them money.
posted by davejay at 8:46 PM on May 10, 2019
I was ready to purchase more, but then Google bought them, and I knew it was over. Sooner or later someone will come out with a better product, or they'll still working, but in the meantime I'll just keep getting the benefits but also will continue not giving them money.
posted by davejay at 8:46 PM on May 10, 2019
I don't really want a perfect thermostat.
I would like my body, which has heating and cooling resources of its own, to be able to handle a range of 20-30 °F roughly centered around ordinary room temperature without much discomfort.
A few years ago I was reading an article about US soldiers' experience in Afghanistan, and they were in awe of the ability of Afghani soldiers to sleep out in the open on the ground without sleeping bags. I could have done that as a kid and young adult, though not now, yet I still want to hold on to as much of it as I can.
posted by jamjam at 9:35 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I would like my body, which has heating and cooling resources of its own, to be able to handle a range of 20-30 °F roughly centered around ordinary room temperature without much discomfort.
A few years ago I was reading an article about US soldiers' experience in Afghanistan, and they were in awe of the ability of Afghani soldiers to sleep out in the open on the ground without sleeping bags. I could have done that as a kid and young adult, though not now, yet I still want to hold on to as much of it as I can.
posted by jamjam at 9:35 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
The Internet Of Shit.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:02 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:02 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
My gut tells me that there are have been some gnarly Nest vulnerabilities discovered by their in house pentesting team over the years (google Security research is really good..) and that somewhere high up in the leadership echelons the analysis was done between the security risk of letting nest retain control and the cost to business by bringing them under google, and that somewhere a few months back that line was crossed. My bet is that a series of serious flaws were uncovered and that Nest wasn’t as concerned about fixing them with the same urgency Google as was. So google said “you’re coming in”.
posted by nikaspark at 1:31 AM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by nikaspark at 1:31 AM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
I think the only reason that Nest have been so sucessful is that the timers on most home thermostats are so dreadfully complicated and difficult to set - give me something like a simple mechanical timer that I can use without having to read a 50 page instruction manual.
posted by Lanark at 2:44 AM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Lanark at 2:44 AM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
If the answer to the question "Why connect this to the Internet?" is "Because it's not connected to the Internet." you're gonna have a bad product.
posted by tommasz at 5:00 AM on May 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 5:00 AM on May 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
If you enable it, it will use both the motion sensor and also your phones' location (if you have the app installed and give it the correct permissions) to determine if you're home or out, and go into Eco mode when you're away.
I use a VPN.
Therefore, my "thermostat" is long johns & shorts, a physical switch on the giant electric sauna rock oven on the wall, and a mercury wall thermometer.
The one Smart Thing I own is a $500 robot vacuum that my $20 dustbuster with a floor extension outperforms by a long shot (carpet? what carpet? rubber sandals & socks dammit!). Anybody buyin'?
The VPN is really the thing that killed my IoT experiment. The apps can't with a VPN. My argyle sweater doesn't object though.
posted by saysthis at 5:01 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
I use a VPN.
Therefore, my "thermostat" is long johns & shorts, a physical switch on the giant electric sauna rock oven on the wall, and a mercury wall thermometer.
The one Smart Thing I own is a $500 robot vacuum that my $20 dustbuster with a floor extension outperforms by a long shot (carpet? what carpet? rubber sandals & socks dammit!). Anybody buyin'?
The VPN is really the thing that killed my IoT experiment. The apps can't with a VPN. My argyle sweater doesn't object though.
posted by saysthis at 5:01 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
I wonder if this is why the Abilene giraffe Cam is down? It’s a Nest Cam. It was going down a lot and one of their giraffes may be expecting. I have never liked Nest cams. A couple giraffes I was watching were on Nest. Abilene and Richland. Lots of glitches and just not being on at all.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:58 AM on May 11, 2019
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:58 AM on May 11, 2019
The VPN is really the thing that killed my IoT experiment. The apps can't with a VPN.This may be true of some apps but it’s definitely irrelevant to the Nest app: as long as you have an internet connection you can control it and your presence will keep it in “home” mode.
posted by adamsc at 7:22 AM on May 11, 2019
I am not against the idea of home automation per se, but fuck if I’m going to voluntarily put an always-listening speaker in my apartment that uploads everything I say to Google or Amazon. I’ll wait until the speech recognition is good enough to run on a local server that isn’t connected to the public internet.
posted by Automocar at 7:48 AM on May 11, 2019
posted by Automocar at 7:48 AM on May 11, 2019
Let me know when they release a version of Nest that can build a fire in the fireplace for me. Or turn the radiator knob! The last time I lived in a place with central heating was college.
posted by Snacks at 9:37 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Snacks at 9:37 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
Oh, so it's a thermostat. Why does anyone need this connected to the internet?"IOT" posits you attach random stuff built and coded by randos talking to web sites coded by randos to your network. When (not "if") their server shuts down, various features that you thought were important may cease. From heating your house to "all functions," depending on the device. Note that I am not talking specifically about Nest, I am talking about how IOT works in general.
Who cares? If you want a non-internet connected thermostat, they cost $20 and take 20 minutes to self-install. Your needs are being met and cheaply.
Accepting this may make sense for you, but one can't decide this without understanding how the actual model works, versus the "it's a wonderful unicorn that poops ice cream" marketing buzz, which is what the original quote seemed to be trying to reach. Using IOT stuff is a tradeoff, and it is worth making that explicit.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 10:08 AM on May 11, 2019
We use Nest for our community building. The heating needs to come on for a while to heat the place up, so it's really helpful to be able to check the thermostat remotely before getting there. Particularly if it's been rented out for the day and you were never planning on actually going in person anyway.
posted by plonkee at 10:34 AM on May 11, 2019
posted by plonkee at 10:34 AM on May 11, 2019
If yall like gadgets and don't want your appliances on the Internet of Shit, take a look at the open source Home Assistant.
Maybe turning on the heat from bed is a luxury, but my z-wave thermostat was like $30, and it's not hooked up to anyone's cloud.
posted by bradbane at 1:29 PM on May 11, 2019
Maybe turning on the heat from bed is a luxury, but my z-wave thermostat was like $30, and it's not hooked up to anyone's cloud.
posted by bradbane at 1:29 PM on May 11, 2019
"IOT" posits you attach random stuff built and coded by randos talking to web sites coded by randos to your network.
I can't imagine doing this myself, but so far I'm not being forced. I think.
Because I often wonder, as prices drop, how long I will be able to know there isn't something in my light bulbs spying on me.
I would like my body, which has heating and cooling resources of its own, to be able to handle a range of 20-30 °F roughly centered around ordinary room temperature without much discomfort.
I have never in my life bothered to even set up a timer on a thermostat. I started to once when we got a new system a while back, but blew it off. Laziness wins. We set one temp for winter and one for summer and that's pretty much it.
posted by bongo_x at 2:54 PM on May 11, 2019
I can't imagine doing this myself, but so far I'm not being forced. I think.
Because I often wonder, as prices drop, how long I will be able to know there isn't something in my light bulbs spying on me.
I would like my body, which has heating and cooling resources of its own, to be able to handle a range of 20-30 °F roughly centered around ordinary room temperature without much discomfort.
I have never in my life bothered to even set up a timer on a thermostat. I started to once when we got a new system a while back, but blew it off. Laziness wins. We set one temp for winter and one for summer and that's pretty much it.
posted by bongo_x at 2:54 PM on May 11, 2019
When I left my thermostat at a single temperature all day in the winter, it cost roughly double to heat my house in the winter. I have gas heat, high-efficiency furnace, so the slew rate on the house temperature is fast (like you can heat it 20 degrees F in an hour if it's running balls out), but it is not cheap in terms of fuel cost.
Tried an old-school programmable thermostat but it was fairly obnoxious. The Nest does what the programmable was supposed to do, but in a way that's not so annoying that it gets turned off (put into "Hold" mode) immediately, as the old programmable one was. I've heard that the great majority of programmable thermostats in residential applications end up being set to "Hold" and used as conventional manual thermostats, because programming them is such a PITA. I believe it.
It basically paid for itself in a season just by virtue of being a programmable thermostat that's not shitty. YMMV.
It will be very obnoxious if/when Google turns off the remote servers, but I am making a calculated bet that (1) the device won't really owe me anything by that point, i.e. the cost will have been fully recouped in energy savings and convenience and then some, and (2) the very large installed base and annoyance involved in replacing it, suggests that somebody will work out how to hack it to use a local server if Google threatens to make it stop working.
The 2nd Generation Nest thermostat is apparently powered by a ARM-based Cortex-M3 processor (reportedly a TI AM3703CUS Sitara), which isn't especially exotic or anything. 512MB of RAM (2GB Flash), which is enough to run a Linux kernel and not just some cut-down RTOS. The battery is easily replaceable. AFAICT it uses two IR motion sensors, not a camera, to do its motion detection. (I keep hearing claims that it has a "hidden camera" but have never actually seen this confirmed via a teardown. Maybe people are assuming it has a camera because of its motion-detection feature?) Apparently it also has an Ember EM357 Zigbee controller on the board, which raises some interesting possibilities for integration with other stuff if you had the right software running on it.
Hackaday has an article on rooting it, by putting it into "Device Firmware Update" mode and reflashing it via USB. (The article is old, though, and applies to the older version.)
The thing that annoys me is that the popular press tends to report on rooting/reflashing discoveries as "vulnerabilities" that will let haxxors come into your house and steal your soul; IMO we should be mandating that manufacturers provide straightforward ways of reflashing embedded systems. Instead, both the press and regulators seem to conspire to make them intentionally difficult to work with.
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:41 PM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
Tried an old-school programmable thermostat but it was fairly obnoxious. The Nest does what the programmable was supposed to do, but in a way that's not so annoying that it gets turned off (put into "Hold" mode) immediately, as the old programmable one was. I've heard that the great majority of programmable thermostats in residential applications end up being set to "Hold" and used as conventional manual thermostats, because programming them is such a PITA. I believe it.
It basically paid for itself in a season just by virtue of being a programmable thermostat that's not shitty. YMMV.
It will be very obnoxious if/when Google turns off the remote servers, but I am making a calculated bet that (1) the device won't really owe me anything by that point, i.e. the cost will have been fully recouped in energy savings and convenience and then some, and (2) the very large installed base and annoyance involved in replacing it, suggests that somebody will work out how to hack it to use a local server if Google threatens to make it stop working.
The 2nd Generation Nest thermostat is apparently powered by a ARM-based Cortex-M3 processor (reportedly a TI AM3703CUS Sitara), which isn't especially exotic or anything. 512MB of RAM (2GB Flash), which is enough to run a Linux kernel and not just some cut-down RTOS. The battery is easily replaceable. AFAICT it uses two IR motion sensors, not a camera, to do its motion detection. (I keep hearing claims that it has a "hidden camera" but have never actually seen this confirmed via a teardown. Maybe people are assuming it has a camera because of its motion-detection feature?) Apparently it also has an Ember EM357 Zigbee controller on the board, which raises some interesting possibilities for integration with other stuff if you had the right software running on it.
Hackaday has an article on rooting it, by putting it into "Device Firmware Update" mode and reflashing it via USB. (The article is old, though, and applies to the older version.)
The thing that annoys me is that the popular press tends to report on rooting/reflashing discoveries as "vulnerabilities" that will let haxxors come into your house and steal your soul; IMO we should be mandating that manufacturers provide straightforward ways of reflashing embedded systems. Instead, both the press and regulators seem to conspire to make them intentionally difficult to work with.
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:41 PM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
I live in a dumb-mid century house. We got a new furnace and AC awhile back and it has a programmable interface which is easy and the batteries have been changed once in six years. That being said, I have a WeMo plug which is use to turn my espresso machine on in the morning and let’s me turn it on remotely when I’m coming home and feel like I’ll want a cappuccino. I love the Wemo and it’s worked great for five years. I don’t want want any new features or updates or anything. Please work forever WeMo.
Other than that I’m fine living in a dumb house.
posted by misterpatrick at 6:22 PM on May 11, 2019
Other than that I’m fine living in a dumb house.
posted by misterpatrick at 6:22 PM on May 11, 2019
Accepting this may make sense for you, but one can't decide this without understanding how the actual model works, versus the "it's a wonderful unicorn that poops ice cream" marketing buzz
I kind of feel this opinion is so equally caught up in the marketing buzz of IOT that it's equally worthy of discussion. The company I work for makes IOT products - for the 112 eCall Mandate for the EU. As of like 2020 (I think), every car sold in the EU will be able to call 112 (the EU equivalent of 911) automatically and deliver coordinates to the police and accident crash information on deployment of airbag (but that is configurable, it will be less in the future).
This is by far the most public product we make. And if you think it means anything that IOT products are 'coded by randos' (and oh yeah the plane you ride in is built by 'randos' and the building you live in was built by 'randos' and you the 'rando' have 'concerns' about internet security and that is supposed to be some kind of deep thought that you have had and no one else has [oh noes my thermostat might break - that's probably why I had to buy a new one in the first place], well think again rando.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:41 AM on May 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
I kind of feel this opinion is so equally caught up in the marketing buzz of IOT that it's equally worthy of discussion. The company I work for makes IOT products - for the 112 eCall Mandate for the EU. As of like 2020 (I think), every car sold in the EU will be able to call 112 (the EU equivalent of 911) automatically and deliver coordinates to the police and accident crash information on deployment of airbag (but that is configurable, it will be less in the future).
This is by far the most public product we make. And if you think it means anything that IOT products are 'coded by randos' (and oh yeah the plane you ride in is built by 'randos' and the building you live in was built by 'randos' and you the 'rando' have 'concerns' about internet security and that is supposed to be some kind of deep thought that you have had and no one else has [oh noes my thermostat might break - that's probably why I had to buy a new one in the first place], well think again rando.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:41 AM on May 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
Just to provide something other than negative waves, I have a friend who is cookoo for automation and he swears by the Z-Wave stuff. I do not see the appeal in being able to graph the temp in my garage while at work, but it makes him happy and is apparently useful without needing anyone's "cloud server." He runs a server on a local Linux box and everything works fine.
In re gas savings, we're in the most temperate part of Minnesota: according to the DNR we had 106 heating degree days at a 65-degree baseline in 2017 and 54 at a 50-degree baseline. That means we could have cut our heating bill in half if we set the thermostat down from 65 to 50 permanently. What kind of temperature regime allows you to save half your heating bill by turning the thermostat down for just part of the day? Is it a very cold or more moderate place? Just curious.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:54 AM on May 13, 2019
In re gas savings, we're in the most temperate part of Minnesota: according to the DNR we had 106 heating degree days at a 65-degree baseline in 2017 and 54 at a 50-degree baseline. That means we could have cut our heating bill in half if we set the thermostat down from 65 to 50 permanently. What kind of temperature regime allows you to save half your heating bill by turning the thermostat down for just part of the day? Is it a very cold or more moderate place? Just curious.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:54 AM on May 13, 2019
My house was built in 1922, and was half-renovated, so it's really easy to do new cable runs etc. - about half of the basement framing is exposed and the attic is unfinished.
All last weekend I was playing around with a microcomputer and spent a good while drawing up plans for a Nest-type thing, but ended up running audio cables to the living room instead, partially because I was like "eh, I could just buy one."
Now I'm rethinking that.
posted by aspersioncast at 12:03 PM on May 13, 2019
All last weekend I was playing around with a microcomputer and spent a good while drawing up plans for a Nest-type thing, but ended up running audio cables to the living room instead, partially because I was like "eh, I could just buy one."
Now I'm rethinking that.
posted by aspersioncast at 12:03 PM on May 13, 2019
What kind of temperature regime allows you to save half your heating bill by turning the thermostat down for just part of the day? Is it a very cold or more moderate place?
This is in the DC area, so not exactly frigid (although we did have some pretty cold weather the last couple of years). I'd have to go back and look at gas bills to get hard numbers, but we were close to a 50% savings IIRC, by taking advantage of the furnace's ability to really shove the ambient temperature in the house up quickly. However the year prior may have been unusually cold; I didn't compare savings vs. heating degree days.
Anyway, we have the Nest programmed to warm the house up so that it's 67F on the main floor at 8AM. BTW the Nest does a pretty good job of figuring out the first derivative of temperature, i.e. the slew rate, and turning on the furnace earlier so that the temperature is what you want it to be, when you want it to be. (The manual thermostat required you put in a certain fudge factor yourself to get the temperature where you want it by a certain time.) So it really starts ramping about an hour or so earlier, depending on what the ambient temperature in the house has fallen to overnight.
Then we have it drop back to 50F for most of the day. If someone is home, we spot-heat particular rooms... and when I work from home, my computer is entirely capable of warming my office if the door is closed. This is the part of the program that's most likely to get manually overridden, e.g. if I decide to knock off work and binge-watch GoT, I'm probably going to turn up the heat.
Then it goes back up again in the evening, going again into the high 60s for the pre-dinner hour. It holds there for a couple of hours, although I've noticed that if we're cooking with the oven, the furnace often doesn't go on. (I need to figure out how to tell it to run the fan regardless, to move the resulting heat throughout the house, but haven't worked that out yet.) Sometime around 9PM it goes off, and the house cools down pretty slowly so typically it's fine for the rest of the night.
And then for the night it's pretty low, like 50F, although that's only the temperature in the main floor of the house—the upstairs, where the bedrooms are, often runs 10F warmer in the winter just from waste heat and stuff rising. Also, heated mattress pad, which is amazing and I totally recommend. You'd never really notice the house getting cold at night unless you get up to use the bathroom, because by the time you wake up it's already started to warm up.
So, basically, it's not just that we're turning the heat down at night, we're really only running the furnace twice a day. We spike the temperature hard and fast in the morning, then let it drift most of the day, then spike it hard again in the evening, letting it drift overnight.
That pattern seems, not entirely surprisingly, to use a lot less gas than setting it to a 'warm' temperature and leaving it 24/7. This could be a really terrible way to do things, if you have a heat pump or some other heat source that's more of a "low and slow" system. But when you have a machine that puts out 90,000 BTUs and is either FULL FUCKING BLAST or COMPLETELY OFF, it seems more efficient to cycle it on and off the fewest times.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:19 PM on May 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is in the DC area, so not exactly frigid (although we did have some pretty cold weather the last couple of years). I'd have to go back and look at gas bills to get hard numbers, but we were close to a 50% savings IIRC, by taking advantage of the furnace's ability to really shove the ambient temperature in the house up quickly. However the year prior may have been unusually cold; I didn't compare savings vs. heating degree days.
Anyway, we have the Nest programmed to warm the house up so that it's 67F on the main floor at 8AM. BTW the Nest does a pretty good job of figuring out the first derivative of temperature, i.e. the slew rate, and turning on the furnace earlier so that the temperature is what you want it to be, when you want it to be. (The manual thermostat required you put in a certain fudge factor yourself to get the temperature where you want it by a certain time.) So it really starts ramping about an hour or so earlier, depending on what the ambient temperature in the house has fallen to overnight.
Then we have it drop back to 50F for most of the day. If someone is home, we spot-heat particular rooms... and when I work from home, my computer is entirely capable of warming my office if the door is closed. This is the part of the program that's most likely to get manually overridden, e.g. if I decide to knock off work and binge-watch GoT, I'm probably going to turn up the heat.
Then it goes back up again in the evening, going again into the high 60s for the pre-dinner hour. It holds there for a couple of hours, although I've noticed that if we're cooking with the oven, the furnace often doesn't go on. (I need to figure out how to tell it to run the fan regardless, to move the resulting heat throughout the house, but haven't worked that out yet.) Sometime around 9PM it goes off, and the house cools down pretty slowly so typically it's fine for the rest of the night.
And then for the night it's pretty low, like 50F, although that's only the temperature in the main floor of the house—the upstairs, where the bedrooms are, often runs 10F warmer in the winter just from waste heat and stuff rising. Also, heated mattress pad, which is amazing and I totally recommend. You'd never really notice the house getting cold at night unless you get up to use the bathroom, because by the time you wake up it's already started to warm up.
So, basically, it's not just that we're turning the heat down at night, we're really only running the furnace twice a day. We spike the temperature hard and fast in the morning, then let it drift most of the day, then spike it hard again in the evening, letting it drift overnight.
That pattern seems, not entirely surprisingly, to use a lot less gas than setting it to a 'warm' temperature and leaving it 24/7. This could be a really terrible way to do things, if you have a heat pump or some other heat source that's more of a "low and slow" system. But when you have a machine that puts out 90,000 BTUs and is either FULL FUCKING BLAST or COMPLETELY OFF, it seems more efficient to cycle it on and off the fewest times.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:19 PM on May 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
He took a huge pay cut to get out to go work for a much less toxic company, is the gist.
Frankly, I'm not surprised it took Google 2 years after Tony Fadell's departure to announce this. The guy seems to thrive on conflict, and AFAICT, Alphabet was created as a conflict management tool to avoid directly confronting asshole leadership.
posted by pwnguin at 11:02 PM on May 14, 2019
Frankly, I'm not surprised it took Google 2 years after Tony Fadell's departure to announce this. The guy seems to thrive on conflict, and AFAICT, Alphabet was created as a conflict management tool to avoid directly confronting asshole leadership.
posted by pwnguin at 11:02 PM on May 14, 2019
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