Don't worry, they'll repeat over and over how their product was thoughtfully designed with exquisite craftsmanship by the re-animated corpse of Johnny Ive [1] until people believe it's true.
[1] I know he's not dead.
Also...
> ... Essentially all you need to do is unplug the rubber tubing from the Eight Sleep cover, which is available on eBay for a few hundred bucks, and plug it into a $150 aquarium chiller.
> That’s it. Aquarium chillers are somewhat of a misnomer, as they can also provide heat. They use thermoelectric devices to regulate temperature, either cooling or warming the liquid that flows through them, which is the same technology found in eight sleep.
How much do you want to bet the Eight Sleep is literally an off-the-shelf Chinese Aquarium chiller in a custom case marked up 15x, with a shitily-programmed computer bolted on to enable a $20/month subscription?
My e-ass wiper mistook one of my testicles for poo and ripped it off. Please fix
Unlike all the cloud garbage, my zigbee devices continue to function even when the internet is down. I have my zigbee hub (Home Assistant Yellow) on a battery backup, so all the zigbee devices with a battery keep functioning even when the power is out (like my automatic cat feeders)
The lightbulbs themselves only have a Zigbee radio (and Bluetooth, but not in 2018). They communicate with the LAN via the wired bridge.
And double tap turns on a fan.
Tapo is likely a security nightmare.
Old CNet article: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/nanoleaf-remote-review/
I do own of these and while I hate the price, the subscription, the fact that it didn't work for an hour last night due to the internet being down (first time ever really) but there really isn't a better option. I love the temp control and would use anyone else if they had a valid competitor, but sadly there isn't one (or at least wasn't when I bought mine). The alternative is to not have temp control which is pretty amazing.
Not that this ameliorates all the other issues here.
Maybe there needs to be a red answer and a blue answer?
It is a $2000 dollar internet connected bed. The market in this case is probably people who could wipe their ass with that $20 every day and not miss it. I don't think they are stupid. This class of Americans has always been about paying for ongoing service instead of being pragmatic or doing things themselves. "Let the help over in bangladesh fiddle with the connectivity and updating the mobile app for me, while I merely rest my head and make plenty of money," they probably figure, at least subconsciously.
The collective mass of people who buy these "IoT" devices that (1) don't actually need to use Internet-hosted services to function, (2) don't actually need a subscription for their business model to work _except_ for having been unnecessarily tied to an Internet-hosted service, and (3) will fail to function when the Internet-hosted service is gone do not understand the ramifications of the buying decisions they're making.
They're enabling these awful companies and business models. They're making the world worse by buying this soon-to-be e-waste garbage.
Stupid is a bad word. Let's say ignorant, instead. They don't even know what they don't even know. Our asinine industry normalizes these practices because profit.
I think computers have tremendous power to make life better for humanity. I think that can happen without being contingent on this kind of business model.
The bed is an egregious example. There are certainly other lower-priced products that still have this kind of stupid unnecessary "tie" to Internet-hosted services and subscriptions.
OTOH, I grew up upper-middle class, my dad being quite frugal and a big DIYer. Similarly, I make good money and am also very frugal. I have no reason to flaunt money around my peers.
The "smart" features on it are genuinely useful for me - I have sleep apnea, as well as an eight sleep + the electronic platform. It automatically changes the elevation of my head based on apnea events, and I see a marked reduction in them when using this feature.
I have a cpap machine that also makes automatic adjustments but I still get noticeably better sleep quality with the eight sleep. I also really enjoy the temperature control, since it saves on HVAC costs vs. climate controlling the whole house. I've not tried an aquarium chiller for this purpose, though I have used one for doing temperature control on a beer fermenter, and I can extrapolate from there that I value the management of the actual eight sleep device vs. managing an aquarium chiller's temp control.
All of those features could be provided by local compute, either nestled somewhere in the soft and fluffy gross profit margin of a $2,000 product, or with Bluetooth to a "thick" application running on a phone.
The reason this product, and so many other "IoT" products, put their compute across the Internet is to facilitate a business model. The industry has the technology to put as much compute, storage, and reliability on-site with a high-margin, high-cost product like this.
Of course, they'll probably claim AI running in the cloud is making the decisions which makes the local first controller not possible.
This is profit and more profit.
like me. will buy a spring mattress next time
Edit thank you for your recommendation but I'm in italy, European and American mattresses are quite different.
Before discovering this, I once wrote to the customer support of the flamingo hotel, Las Vegas, because I loved their mattress: Hi, i do think that what i'm gonna write is weird, but anyway haha. On july of the summer 2019 i visited the fabulous las vegas. nor the nightlife neither the opulence of sin city could, however, reach the pinnacle of the human civilization, the mattress on which i slept at flamingo. I now have to change my own mattress at home, and i'm looking for the model on which i slept. the website only says "Simmons beautyrest", although Beautyrest is just a brand name used by simmons and doesn't mean a specific model. could you help me in this modern day divine comedy, be my Virgil and help me find the mattress name? Regards Name
I got an answer: Thank you for contacting Caesars Entertainment. I was delighted to hear that you enjoyed our mattress on your visit! Currently, we are using the Simmons Hospitality Beautyrest Felicity Pillow Top. They can be purchased at https://caesarsguestpurchase.com/shop or 1-866-926-8233. Please feel free to write back if you have any further questions.
Thank you for choosing Caesars for your gaming entertainment!
Have an amazing day!
Shirley
Similarly, Talalay latex mattress material is usually only about 30% natural and 70% synthetic, and the synthetic does not cause immune response.
If you powder the natural material and directly expose it to IgE, the dominant protein of interest for allergies, you can get a reaction (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10436396/), but in practice with sheets and the outer cloth covering on the mattress basically no proteins ever come into contact with the body. And even in that study only Hev B I was detectable, which is only one of many latex proteins that trigger the immune response, and only 3 of the 21 tested human sera actually had a reaction to the direct mixing with the powdered latex. As far as I understand it, there has never been a confirmed case of an allergic reaction to a latex mattress.
Seeing the founder fellate Elon and his Doge employees has given me second thoughts. I may be looking for an aquarium chiller in my near future.
Most manufacturers bolt on IOT functions by dropping an off-the-shelf module onto their device-specific board. It's sometimes possible to replace the factory firmware with ESPHome, sometimes even using over-the-air updates. For example, AirGradient air quality sensors: https://github.com/MallocArray/airgradient_esphome
Even when it isn't possible to commandeer the factory IOT module, the fact that it _is_ a module is still useful, because it's almost always possible to inhibit or remove the factory module and connect your own instead. The factory IOT module controls and senses the device, so your replacement module can too, using the same pins. For example, an IOT air filter: https://github.com/mill1000/esphome-winix-c545#final-assembl...
Some devices are designed around multidrop communication busses. These are usually even easier, since the ability to join the bus is an intended design feature, even if the device you're using is not intended. For example, many Samsung residential HVAC systems: https://github.com/omerfaruk-aran/esphome_samsung_hvac_bus/d...
At my day job, we've replaced and re-engineered controllers in industrial laser cutters, CNCs, welders, robots, and similar equipment. There are replacement control boards for hobbyist stuff like pinball machines, motorcycles, retro computers, and retro game consoles.
But as evidenced by the fact that people are buying shitty cloud-only IoT devices, neither the interest nor the capacity to do this is common.
One thing SaaS has not learned from nonprofits with longevity: you do big fund raisers to get money so you can live on the interest payments. If you think of a new project that will increase your burn rate, you throw another fund raiser.
Figure out how many of those beds you expect to be junked for breakage or obsolescence each year and set your margins to keep the long tail running for 10-15 years.
I think SaaS has eschewed strategies for longevitiy because it's contrary to the market's "wisdom" that for-profit companies must have sustained high-rate growth.
Sometimes it’s clearly the founders who go extractive, but others it’s clearly the new owners or partial owners.
And all tech companies are now founded with zero regard for good behavior. I mean, they don't even do minimal amounts of customer service, which is the bare minimum of having regard for your customers.
In general, the IoT industry has suffered and adopters get burned over and over and over so the market is what it deserves in the long run. But that doesn't mean that snooping and monitoring doesn't increase insidiously year after year.
This is a serious problem with future technology. What person would do cybernetics or similar life saving products from companies like this? Perhaps the rigor that Medtronic and similar device companies are subjected to would apply, but I'm not sure those regulations cover information security and privacy.
We are clearly in an age of increasing authoritarianism. China has become far more authoritarian under Xi, right wing fascists are on the rise in Europe, and extreme partisanism just leads to round robin authoritarianism on the path we're on, assuming the next election happens. Russia is trying to expand its reach, and disrupt democratic institutions worldwide.
Undermined privacy and data collection is the tools for total information awareness by authoritarian states, only made far far far far far far far worse by the rise of functional AI.
The future of humanity is bleak. The filter approaches.
As someone on an insulin pump they do. Iirc they have reps showing up at hacker conferences looking for red teams.
Definitely agree with your worries generally though.
They most certainly do. I'm deep into a security analysis of a similar device rn.
A lot of this bullshit only happens long after the sale has been made and consumers are blindsided when things advertised as free are suddenly paywalled off behind a subscription following a ToS update.
"The market" is never going to solve this. What we need are consumer protections in the form of laws and regulations with real teeth and consistent enforcement.
Come on. We can improve that! The next version of the bed will go into carnivorous mode if the subscription lapses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXrAK6sUZ_0
A rational society would have shut those companies down and thrown the executives into prison.
Blame the engineers who know the risks of such foolishness that lack the courage and conviction to stand up to decision makers.
I raised this at a meeting and was told that they weren‘t going to change it because it made too much money.
I’m sure engineers raised issues about this as well and were shut down by the business people who are more than happy to risk customer satisfaction and security if it means more revenue.
Maybe there should be a mandatory information sheet such as listing all functionality that stops working without a network connection.
I don't have the enthusiasm to start a competing company. It sounds like the barrier to entry to the market is fairly low, the tech isn't unproven, and there appears to be a ton of margin.
I assume Eight Sleep has a patent moat.
I would of course, attempt to veto unnecessary IoT devices and subscriptions for usage, but this would be a fight I would likely not win.
I can only speculate.
But, there is demand to improve sleep quality. The provider wants to charge a monthly fee for that.
The market simply puts buys and sellers together. People making business decisions will stick with Econ 101--charge what the market will bare, and why shouldn't they?
They want you to sleep without any clothing?
The pro and enterprise version would allow local server setup for critical sleep equipment functioning and can manage all beds in a household or hotel etc . It can update the version of software or data models when its online and new features are available on cloud server.
I surmise at 300 dollar/month for pro version could be really attractive proposition. Of course local server setup and maintenance can be charged separately.
https://sleep.me/product/cube-sleep-system
It works rather well, I’m tempted to reverse-engineer the remote control protocol for home automation purposes.
I actually commend them for making money off the morons who dreamed this up. They've hopefully put it to better use.
I mean, it's the :CueCat. But comfy.
looks at DOGE
Yep.
> It won’t function if the internet goes down
> Basic features are behind an additional $19/mo subscription
I'll play the Devil's Advocate here. If this product isn't controlled by a remote server, it either needs to be controlled by a local bit of hardware (i.e. with its own screen and hardware input devices) or by your phone. Considering the upper-class target market (high-priced luxury product), the "local bit of hardware" option is a bad call. If it's controlled by your phone, then it would presumably happen over Bluetooth, which is both (a) unreliable and (b) would disconnect if you don't have your phone in your bedroom, which if you're willing to spend $2k on a cover for better sleep, you've probably already tried.
The industry went in the direction of direct-to-Internet connections for home devices because, quite frankly, it's the lowest-friction approach for most home users. Everything else is a distraction from a great product experience for 99% of the market.
With all that said... bundling in hard-coded AWS IAM keys (for Kinesis Data Streams) and hard-coded SSH public keys is just bad engineering. You can't revoke an abusive customer without revoking everyone, and you can't fire any employees without updating every customer end device. Sleep Eight needed to set up IAM Roles Anywhere with a private CA where a user's initial setup gets the private CA to issue a cert for the base unit in the user's name, which is then used to get temporary credentials through AWS STS to write to Kinesis. Similar story with SSH, if it's actually genuinely needed for some reason, set up a private CA, in both cases, with certificate revocation lists. They're unlikely to sell enough beds (remember: luxury product) or fire enough employees for CRLs not to scale well on this solution.
One can just question how we want to live our lives in the future. Behind each and every step a subscription? And all of them seem to be priced 10-20/month, no matter how much value they provide.
I mean, if I wanted to check how many calories are in a food item and the FDA didn't make companies tell me, that's going to be at least 1000 hours of work. For one food item. One time. If I had to do that for everything I'd just starve.
Software is, arguably, more complex than modern ultra-processed food. We can't audit these things. Even when we do audit, we only scratch the surface. There's billions of lines of code behind "hello world".
The market is clearly too stupid to vote against the rent seeking tech industry. It makes me so sad.