> We’ll reach out to eligible users in the US and Canada for the Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) at a special price: $149.99 [219.99 CAD] (nearly 50% off).
However, we got a Nest from the Oregon Energy trust for $50 I think. So, not a great price.
Telling me that you’ve unilaterally decided to lobotomize a product I already paid you for, and then thinking that I’d like the privilege of purchasing additional goods from you - even at a discount - is certainly something.
Gotta juice those numbers before moving on to the next role.
This kind of thing drives me crazy, and I think it helps to highlight some of the money-grubbing nature of the tech industry.
Years ago, you'd buy a cheap thermostat and it'd last 30 years or whatever. But the tech industry had to improve that by instead making them last less than half as long and cost substantially more.
I understand the idea that smart stuff is cool or whatever, but it feels like it'd be smarter if it lasted as long as the thing they're trying to replace...
Those same bulletproof thermostats are still sold everywhere. And are dirt cheap. I blame the consumer more than the producer for the proliferation of these products. This is one area where your options were never limited and you’d have to be a dunce and/or been paying zero attention to how tech companies have operated for decades to think these devices were not going to be made useless at a regular rate.
It's one of the problems created by allowing billionaire technofeudal overlords to do whatever they want. They believe they are entitled to anything and everything, and so everything they make turns to shit to fool you into maintaining it and rebuying it faster and faster.
That's a given. It is, but it's not a binary on/off. It's a sliding continuum of enshitification and the current trend is to rapidly increasing towards worse. It rarely/never goes back the other way.
So it looks like these models are over 10 years old
I'm not trying to be a shill for a trillion dollar company but I'd probably put up with the annoyance of swapping the thermostat once every 10+ years over switching to a different company if I was happy with it.
If I pay for something and you don't tell me upfront on the box that it only supported until a certain date in big bold letters (like smoke detectors do). I'm never going to buy a product from you again.
Who woulda thought “one day, I might have little to zero control over your own thermostat” but here we are when planned obsolescence bleeds into everything it becomes pretty dystopian pretty quick.
They could at least have the decency to unlock+open-source the thing.
Offering a 50% discount on the next generation sounds pretty shitty.
I agree. It would be nice if you could self host your own api, and keep these things from turning into useless hockey pucks
Damn...
And also,
> We’ll reach out to eligible users in the US and Canada for the Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) at a special price: $149.99 [219.99 CAD] (nearly 50% off).
However, we got a Nest from the Oregon Energy trust for $50 I think. So, not a great price.
Telling me that you’ve unilaterally decided to lobotomize a product I already paid you for, and then thinking that I’d like the privilege of purchasing additional goods from you - even at a discount - is certainly something.
Gotta juice those numbers before moving on to the next role.
This kind of thing drives me crazy, and I think it helps to highlight some of the money-grubbing nature of the tech industry.
Years ago, you'd buy a cheap thermostat and it'd last 30 years or whatever. But the tech industry had to improve that by instead making them last less than half as long and cost substantially more.
I understand the idea that smart stuff is cool or whatever, but it feels like it'd be smarter if it lasted as long as the thing they're trying to replace...
Those same bulletproof thermostats are still sold everywhere. And are dirt cheap. I blame the consumer more than the producer for the proliferation of these products. This is one area where your options were never limited and you’d have to be a dunce and/or been paying zero attention to how tech companies have operated for decades to think these devices were not going to be made useless at a regular rate.
It's one of the problems created by allowing billionaire technofeudal overlords to do whatever they want. They believe they are entitled to anything and everything, and so everything they make turns to shit to fool you into maintaining it and rebuying it faster and faster.
Planned obsolescence is as old as the light bulb.
That's a given. It is, but it's not a binary on/off. It's a sliding continuum of enshitification and the current trend is to rapidly increasing towards worse. It rarely/never goes back the other way.
Discussion (82 points, 4 months ago, 72 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43802574
Not very "carbon friendly". But the recycler they mention will probably kindly ship it do a foreign landfill.
I am never connecting a thermostat to the internet or using one that strictly requires the internet.
I love the idea of an internet connected thermostat running an open source micropython environment.
No one outside of HongKong ever seems to want to sell devices like that though. I don't know if it's a culture thing or what.
I question how good the engineers are if it costs so much to keep those services running.
I guess the only way out is to vote with your wallet.
YouTube and Gmail are the only Google services left in my life.
Tell everyone homeowner you ever meet when talking about homes or real estate about how bad IoT is.
Destroy the market until they do better.
Actually it’s very convenient to have control of the thermostat remotely.
The lesson here (once again) is just: don’t buy hardware from Google
Durable goods has become an oxymoron.
All sellers of devices of this nature will eventually do this, if they can. It is a sad fact in my opinion.
So it looks like these models are over 10 years old
I'm not trying to be a shill for a trillion dollar company but I'd probably put up with the annoyance of swapping the thermostat once every 10+ years over switching to a different company if I was happy with it.
If I pay for something and you don't tell me upfront on the box that it only supported until a certain date in big bold letters (like smoke detectors do). I'm never going to buy a product from you again.
I doubt in practice what you are saying is true. It would appear to disqualify owning a smart phone or a laptop.
I still regularly use very old laptops and phones. These devices don't stop functioning when they're disconnected from a cloud network.
Who woulda thought “one day, I might have little to zero control over your own thermostat” but here we are when planned obsolescence bleeds into everything it becomes pretty dystopian pretty quick.