Nest's Time At Alphabet: A 'Virtually Unlimited Budget' With No Results (arstechnica.com) 193
Ron Amadeo, reporting for Ars Technica (edited and condensed): Nest CEO Tony Fadell wasn't officially "fired" from Nest, but it certainly feels like it. In just the last few months, Nest has had to deal with reports of an "employee exodus," a string of public insults from Dropcam co-founder and departing Nest employee Greg Duffy, news that even Google supposedly didn't want to work with Nest on a joint project, and fallout from the company's decision to remotely disable Nest's deprecated Revolv devices. [...] It's hard to argue with the decision to "transition" Fadell away from Nest. When Google bought Nest in January 2014, the expectation was that a big infusion of Google's resources and money would supercharge Nest. Nest grew from 280 employees around the time of the Google acquisition to 1200 employees today. In Nest's first year as "a Google company," it used Google's resources to acquire webcam maker Dropcam for $555 million, and it paid an unknown amount for the smart home hub company Revolv. Duffy said Nest was given a "virtually unlimited budget" inside Alphabet. In return for all this investment, Nest delivered very little. Two-and-a-half years under Google/Alphabet, a quadrupling of the employee headcount, and half-a-billion dollars in acquisitions yielded minor yearly updates and a rebranded device. That's all.
BizX's Time Owning Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
Virtually unlimited goodwill from users with no results
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Engaged, got input, a few minor fixes, no fuck ups (Score:5, Insightful)
They haven't fucked anything up. No beta, they didn't remove the "use classic" link from that horrid mobile site, haven't caused any problems. What they have done so far is engaged with the community, solicited input, and made small improvements that don't cause any new problems.
If I thought any of the presidential candidates would do as well, I would have volunteered for their campaign. :)
Come to think of it, MANY people consider Bill Clinton the best recent president. Why, what did he do? Mostly he spent his time dealing with sex scandals. He didn't muck up the growing economy that he inherited or do anything else too bad. His wife spent 8 years as a senator and is now likely to become president. Why, what did she do in her 8 years in the senate? She sponsored a total of three bills in her eight years:
S. 3145: Name a road "Timothy J. Russert highway".
S. 3613: Name a post office the "Major George Quamo Post Office Building."
S. 1241: Designate a union building as a National Historic Site.
That's it, in eight years as a senator. Apparently that's a great senator, one who should perhaps be president. By this measure, Whiplash should at least be vice president.
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Wait, aren't you being a hypocrite for praising Bill for (paraphrase) not doing much, yet attacking Hillary for doing the same?
MAYBE (I'm not saying she did) she successfully FOUGHT AGAINST bills you didn't like, and caused them to not be passed.
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A) Where did I criticise Hillary? I said she's considered one of the best senators, enough that she's likely to be elected president. I listed all of the bills that she sponsored as a senator. If you think her three bills aren't impressive, that's your own judgement.
B) A hypocrite is someone who publicly espouses one thing, while privately believing the opposite.
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WTF are you talking about? According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] :
"While a membe
But they have a nice potato canon (Score:2)
Baghead has some great ideas at Hooli.
This is what happens when you have (Score:5, Informative)
a solution looking for a problem.. that causes other problems.
Re:This is what happens when you have (Score:4, Informative)
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$250 per thermostat which is tolerable if you have central heating. In my case, my apartment has 7 thermostats that's almost $3000. On top of that, each device needs batteries which I would find myself constantly replacing.
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Some people think it's stupid to worry about such things. I think it's a "foot in the door". Remember, Nest was going to be part of a complete home "system".
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Your *apartment* has 7 thermostats? That seems to be its own problem. Does every closet have its own thermostat?
One per bedroom, plus livingroom, kitchen, bathroom and entranceway. Not my favorite design.
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The rate at which your house warms and cools, especially as a function of outside temperature, is a much better algorithm for controlling a heating and cooling system.
Is outside temperature even that important? All houses have varying levels of sun exposure which can pretty meaningfully influence the inside temperature of your house. I've noticed on sunny winter days that the house takes longer to cool off when a setback program is active. It also wouldn't surprise me if windy winter days caused the house to cool down faster as well.
Wouldn't the basic algorithm which programmable thermostats use -- how long did it take to get to the set point the last N times -- mostl
Re:This is what happens when you have (Score:4, Insightful)
In terms of energy efficiency, it is smart. The rate at which your house warms and cools, especially as a function of outside temperature, is a much better algorithm for controlling a heating and cooling system.
That's the "D" (Differential) part of the "PID" (Proportional Integral Differential, or "Proportioner Integrator Differentiator") Algorithm that thermostats and heating/cooling plants have been using for, well, since there were mechanical thermostats with that strange little setting inside that was marked with "0.4, 0.6, 0.8..."
Look up "Heat Anticipator" sometime. Rate-of-Change when heating is NOT a novel concept. Far from it.
Re:This is what happens when you have (Score:4, Informative)
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"D" (Derivative) , because letters and stuff
Yeah, guess it has been too long...
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In terms of energy efficiency, it is smart. The rate at which your house warms and cools, especially as a function of outside temperature, is a much better algorithm for controlling a heating and cooling system. However, I admit even as a gadget geek with some superfluous income it just isn't $250 cool, to me. Purely a values thing. I'd definitely be in for $150, maybe at $200. Price point is just off for what it does.
So I just bought a Gen2 Nest for $125 ( $200 plus a $75 incentive discount from the regional power company)
I hadn't been reading about all of the turmoil... spent a few days reading about home automation stuff, and just about everything else I have already works with Nest (Lutron Caseta, Chamberlain garage door opener, Wink) so it just seemed like a no-brainer. People seem to like the reliability and simplicity of the Ecobee things more, but only the Honeywell Nest knock-off is the only other thermostat t
Re:This is what happens when you have (Score:5, Informative)
My house is very unpredictably empty. But I've also seen nothing to indicate that Nest can handle that any better than my existing "dumb" thermostat.
It can only detect people if they walk near the thermostat (which is in an upstairs hallway that I don't walk by very often), it can guess at schedules, but I can guarantee it can't guess at ours. I could manually program a schedule in to it, but it would always be wrong, and It would be just as easy to manually adjust the thermostat each time.
Now if they implemented something that looked at multiple google calendars, and assumed that if there was nothing scheduled on any of them that there'd be someone home, then it would be useful, but right now it only works if your house is PREDICTABLY empty.
Re:This is what happens when you have (Score:5, Interesting)
Other competitors have solved most of those problems, specifically Ecobee with their remote sensors that you can put in different rooms. You can then set schedules that ignore some sensors at certain times - for example, I don't really care what the temperature is in my office when I'm in my bedroom sleeping, so pay no attention to that.
The remote sensors also have movement sensing too, so you don't have to walk past the thermostat, but any sensor that you can put wherever you please. They've also integrated with IFTTT to allow smartphone geolocation services.
Nest may have been first, but they've done jack shit with that lead and now they're last.
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Funny thing about that, a $25 thermostat from the box store is programmable, and works OK for people with predictable schedules...
Even better, before the world went digital (Score:2)
the thing about programable thermostats are that they are as freindly as a vintage VCR or Clock radio to program. But before the word went digital there were the old Homeywell thermostats with a twist timer. Just like an egg timer in your kitcher, you twist the dial and it counts down the hours. while it's ticking it stays off. so when you leave or it is night time you just give it a twist. No need to be hyper accurate.
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And by "as friendly as a vintage VCR," for the young readers I'll point out that that means any 8 year old could do it easily, but grandpa might refuse to even try because manuals are for wimps and buttons and lights are mysterious.
It is almost exactly the same as setting the time on a digital watch, something even most kids did when they were slightly younger kids. Most families still have a digital clock somewhere in the house that gets set twice a year because of daylight saving time.
I don't doubt it is
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My house is very unpredictably empty. But I've also seen nothing to indicate that Nest can handle that any better than my existing "dumb" thermostat. It can only detect people if they walk near the thermostat (which is in an upstairs hallway that I don't walk by very often), it can guess at schedules, but I can guarantee it can't guess at ours. I could manually program a schedule in to it, but it would always be wrong, and It would be just as easy to manually adjust the thermostat each time.
Now if they implemented something that looked at multiple google calendars, and assumed that if there was nothing scheduled on any of them that there'd be someone home, then it would be useful, but right now it only works if your house is PREDICTABLY empty.
Exactly.
Or if you have pets, do you really want them to suffer, just to save $50 per year?
Programmable thermostats are really only practical in a fairly small envelope of living patterns and situations.
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If your house is empty most of the day, or unpredictably empty, it will more than make up for the cost of purchase in at the most, a year
My apartment is almost always empty. By being a genius with the IQ of an Einstein, I came up with an algorithm to achieve the optimal setting on my thermostat.
(Seriously, am I the only one who sees the irony in a company making an expensive thermostat from a place where weather probably matters the least of anywhere in the US?)
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Depending on whether it gets cold enough to burst pipes, I'm guessing the answer is either "off" or "an RCH above freezing".
Then again, I'm almost as dumb as Feynman, so ou might be working totally over my head.
Re:This is what happens when you have (Score:4, Informative)
I have both a Nest and an ecobee; can't remember which one, but one of the two had a setting where it would switch to resistant heat instead of the heat pump if the internet reported temp outside was below ~32 degrees. I noticed the aux heat was coming on too much and found and changed that setting. I could see how that could add a good amount to your bill for sure.
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For some heat pumps, this is what a call for "stage 2" heat translates into. I didn't even have a resistant-heat "auxiliary" unit installed into mine.
Re:This is what happens when you have (Score:5, Insightful)
a solution looking for a problem.. that causes other problems.
It was a solution for two problems:
.
1) how to gather information about the interior of people's houses
2) how to get people to install yet another advertisement screen in their houses.
To your point, the problem with Nest is that the solutions were not for problems that the people buying the device had, Nest was a solution to Nest's business partners' problems.
Re:This is what happens when you have (Score:4, Insightful)
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yep, some of us aren't so OCD [...]
And some of us aren't so lazy that we can't get up off the couch and change the channel on the TV.
This is what amuses me most about these kinds of comments--the "I'm not so (Bad character trait) that I can't..."
My roommate is somewhat similar. She sets the thermostat to as low as it will go. When she comes home, she turns on the AC. When the house is a nice temperature, she turns it off. When the house warms up again, she turns it on. When it cools down, she turns it off. She's not so lazy that she ca
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yep, some of us aren't so OCD that coming home to a too hot or cold home is a big deal. we tough it out for 30 minutes instead of turning the AC on remotely of having it run all day. this seems like a millennial product for the younger crowd who are still in their whiny everything must be perfect phase of their lives. us old people in the we're too cheap phase will tough it out and save the cash.
Or have homes that are not of terrible construction quality or terrible design, and can hold an approximate temperature for more than a few hours.
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And some live in the basement where it is naturally cool in the summer.
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Some of us are old enough to have grown up w/o AC.
But we were happy in those days... [youtube.com]
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A solution is a one-time income. A series of problems is a perpetual revenue stream.
You should of gone to Arvhard like what me and my pop did. Then you'd know shit like that.
Quadrupling staff in two years??? (Score:2)
Sounds like a terrible, terrible idea.
Most of Nest's management "brainpower" would necessarily have gone into managing that growth and re-org'ing projects and departments several times.
Completely BADDDDDD strategy.
Google bought a highly focussed successful startup, and the way the acquisition was managed, it looks like the focus and execution ability was lost and the potential for sane expansion of the product offering and feature set at a sane pace was squandered.
Not sure who was responsible for that disas
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The problem is diminishing returns. For a couple of years, our flat had no thermostat, just an on-off timer for the heating. That was very wasteful (and resulted in the house being too hot or too cold a lot of the time). Then we got a programmable thermostat and now it's comfortable most of the time. When I work from home on a winter day, I need to flip a switch to tell it not to cool off, but that's about it.
We waste a bit on heating when we're out in an evening, but the energy cost of heating a mod
Stay Frosty San Fransisco (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome our IoT overlords! If not Nest, then the next naked attempt to cash in on as much personal data as they can get away with extracting!
All hail our benevolent Silicon Valley spy master overlords! HIP HIP HURRAH!
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I, for one, welcome our IoT overlords! If not Nest, then the next naked attempt to cash in on as much personal data as they can get away with extracting!
Windows 10 telemetry is the Top of the Pops in that area at the moment. Not even Microsoft employees can tell you what the are collecting, and what they use the data for.
It's really like the former East German Stasi, where the operatives did not know why they were collecting data on their targets. Will we ever really know what is behind Windows 10 telemetry, and who gets what data, and what they do with it . . . ?
I doubt it.
All hail our benevolent Silicon Valley spy master overlords! HIP HIP HURRAH!
Microsoft is not based in Silicon Valley.
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Windows 10 telemetry is the Top of the Pops in that area at the moment.
Meaning it's obsolete?
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And the old versions are absolutely full of pediofiddlerists.
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And you hope that it is only the old versions were "absolutely full of pediofiddlerists".
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Microsoft is not based in Silicon Valley.
Technically, no, but in practical terms, they have a presence.
Microsoft has a huge new technology center in Mountain View, and that's where they like to invite their enterprise clients. Only a small part of that complex is used for public conference rooms and demos.
No idea what happens in the rest of the facility, but I imagine they are actively and heavily schmoozing the people and the businesses of Silicon Valley in addition to whatever actual work is being done there.
Google overpaid... (Score:4, Insightful)
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1) more beautiful and intuitive home automation devices. The demand is there, and even without much innovation they could have turned out some good devices, building on solid design and a strong brand name. Dropcam might have been such a device... but not at the price.
2) a strategy for integrated home aut
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I'm not sure their expectations were unrealistic, though I agree with the notion that they went on a blind buying spree.
A virtually unlimited budget always results in unrealistic expectations. Reminds me the story of the entrepreneur who got money to build a widget factory. When investors showed up at the place of business, they saw a very fancy office and employees playing foosball. They asked to see the widget factory. The entrepreneur said he needed more money to build the widget factory, as he spent all the money on the office. Needless to say, everyone had unrealistic expectations and the office got shut down. Saw quite
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Hilarious to me was "Silicon Alley," ie startups in New York trying to do tech. These companies were crazy about building out their data centers on premises, where there was a tinted glass window behind the receptionist so that when you visited the company's offices you would see the lights blinking on all the pretty servers. "SERIOUS INTERNET WORK BEING DONE HERE!" I visited one company in NYC that intentionally left all the cardboard boxes from Dell leaning against the wall in the hallway so you'd know th
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But it just always seemed like a certain, bizarre brand of hubris to want to show off all the pretty server LEDs as proof that you were doing something important.
When I worked at eBay's headquarters in North San Jose, there's a hallway off the lobby where a glass wall showed off the onsite data center. I'm sure it impressed the hell out of the press and VIPs.
Re:Google overpaid... (Score:4, Insightful)
But it just always seemed like a certain, bizarre brand of hubris to want to show off all the pretty server LEDs as proof that you were doing something important.
In most tech companies the real work happens at desks and it looks boring as hell. The blinkenlichten in the server room are the only visually impressive part of the whole enterprise. Might as well put it on display...
Apple "gets' home automation very well (Score:2)
Google doesn't "get" home automation and IoT any more than other companies like Apple do.
Apple actually gets the whole space very well...
Which is why they made a really nice framework (HomeKit) for interfacing with all kinds of devices, but don't actually make any themselves. Unlike Google.
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Do you even have a MBA, bro?!!
Job security (Score:5, Interesting)
Has the buying out of a smaller company EVER resulted in a better product for the consumer?
Cheaper, maybe... but almost certainly more diluted as creative control and vision is coopted/usurped.
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Re:Job security (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes.
Apple purchased PA Semi, and now they have their own line of system-on-chip computers that have pushed other semiconductor and device manufacturers to constantly increase performance to compete.
Purchasing PA Semi lead directly to the Apple A4 chip and it's successors, which led directly to Qualcomm, TI, and Samsung making better ARM chips to compete.
Re:Job security (Score:5, Informative)
Has the buying out of a smaller company EVER resulted in a better product for the consumer?
Well, I don't know. Was pre-Google Android any good? Were there many devices with it for you to buy?
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To be expected... (Score:5, Insightful)
They released an overhyped thermostat. Google then spent 3.2 billion dollars... on a thermostat company.
Sure they had vague ambitions of a connected home that jived with IoT, but all the company had really gotten into the world was a damn thermostat that could connect to the internet.
No matter how good or bad that concept sounds, it was stupid to justify a 3.2 billion dollar investment on that one concrete thing.
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Unless 3.2 billion is just walking around money...
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Unless 3.2 billion is just walking around money...
That doesn't matter. Nest was just some existing technology cobbled together and wrapped with a very fancy bow. The only reasons to spend that much money would be-
1. The technology was actually worth that much as-is
2. The technology could provide that much value by increasing other businesses
2b. The data that could be collected would be worth that much
3. It would be worth that much to keep the technology out of the hands of a competitor
I really doubt any of those reasons hold up, and probably didn'
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Yeah, I'm frightened over *just* how familiar everything is from the late 90s. Lot's of fluff and hype and crazy valuations flying around with substantive stuff being more and more diluted by the noise...
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something similar from that era
pets.com and their sock [youtube.com]
Advertising company (Score:2)
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Perhaps it was Google's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
I was all set to buy a couple of Nest devices for me house... right before Google purchased them.
I don't want a bunch of Google data gathering devices in my house.
I wouldn't say that was probably a common reaction, but I'm sure Google owning the company made other potential customers uneasy as well. If for no other reason than a company being bought means a device you buy may well have support yanked (as Google Nest did with one of the copies they acquired!).
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I don't want a bunch of Google data gathering devices in my house.
But you were fine with data gathering for a third party who have no history and thus no foundation of assumed trust?
When has the devil you don't know been a better choice?
Say what now? (Score:2)
But you were fine with data gathering for a third party who have no history
Wha?
I am not in fact fine with that either.
I have a thermostat that talks to no-one and is crudely programmable (if you can call setting variables as to what days/times the system activates "programming").
When has the devil you don't know been a better choice?
Well in actual fact Google has a pretty terrible history with all this, second only to Microsoft (who I would rather not share data with either).
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Outlook.com doesn't suck. FF is still usable. DuckDuckGo for search, of course. Not much of an alternative to Android, but I have a faint hope that if I don't use Google services the information harvesting will be minimal.
For me, though, YouTube is sticky. Nothing else really in it's niche, and I find that quite annoying. Network effect I guess.
Nest temperature display is backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a Nest thermostat. It displays in large the temperature you set it to instead of the current room temperature. What the actual fuck? A mercury thermometer is smarter than this.
There was a feature request [nest.com] for this opened in 2013, it has 1683 votes and its the third most popular feature request. You would think that even an entry level programmer would be able to fix that or add an option, but no, the feature has been completely ignored for years and contacting support about it only gives the reply "keep voting for it", even though that is clearly going to /dev/null. The other popular features request are equally ignored.
I am very frustrated by the complete lack of support these devices have. The entire community web site is nothing more than a pacifier for nest owners.
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Re:Nest temperature display is backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
are you serious - they only show the SET value and not the ACTUAL current value? no option to set the default large text for the one you want? not a split display, even?
laughable, if that's really true.
I don't expect much from google, though. they mark serious bugs as 'wontfix' and nothing will change their minds.
they are all a lost cause.
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are you serious - they only show the SET value and not the ACTUAL current value? no option to set the default large text for the one you want? not a split display, even?
They show both, the current and the set temperature, but the set temperature is in large in the center of the screen, and the current temperature is tiny. You have to actually get close to the thermostat to read it as opposed to glance at it from the other side of the room. Its an epic fail.
Here is a pic [images-amazon.com]. In that picture, the current room temperature is 78, and it is set to cool down to 75.
There is no way to change this.
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I think I see what they are trying to indicate. they want you to think there is only 1 number. that the duality of 'set' vs 'actual' is 'too hard' for stupid americans.
"what's the temp set to?" "its set to 75"
"what is it now?"
"its set to 75, and its smart, so it SHOULD be 75"
I bet that's their line of thinking. convince people that the notion of 2 values, one writable and one read-only, is just 'too complex' for consumers.
of course, they are quite wrong. but they seem to be doubling down on their derp.
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Twice a day for the past month I've been telling my Nest to use 68 as my preferred temperature, not 72. It still hasn't figured out that I prefer 68. "learning thermostat" indeed.
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I disabled the learning portion of the Nest after less than a year of using. I now just use it as a dumb thermostat (with away mode) that I can control from my cellphone. Blergh.
The mobile software is unbelievably shitty too.
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I have a Nest thermostat. It displays in large the temperature you set it to instead of the current room temperature.
It displays both. I suppose I see why some people might like the large one to be the actual temperature, but I've never once been bothered by this in the two years I've had them. Partly that's because my thermostats are both in hallways and if you're close enough to see them at all you can easily read both numbers, but mostly I think it's because when I look at the thermostat what I mostly want to know is what temperature its set to.
What I want to know is the big number. That's perfect.
I have a pretty g
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Terrible idea from a human-factors perspective.
Is there ever more than one person in your residence?
If so, how does one person know which way the other person switched the UI configuration to? And when they changed their mind back again?
So as the second or subsequent person in the room, I can't learn what the big central number means, because some dufus keeps changing the meaning on me.
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Oops, I meant making it user-selectable which number means what is a terrible idea.
Google's tactics. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently Google thinks that because bullshit artists outnumber visionaries as 1000 to 1, it's an acceptable loss.
And to compensate for this they simply wait for other companies to cultivate the talent and then swoop in.
Re:Google's tactics. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Fell for the hype, sold after 1 year (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Florida so I liked the idea of a learning thermostat to save some money. Instead what I figured out (and should have known ahead of time) is that it is just better to keep the setpoint constant. Sure I saved $10/mo but the house was always muggy and uncomfortable. Part of the reason is I have a high efficiency A/C so when I keep the setpoint constant it just runs the low speed compressor and fan and keeps the house cool and dry. When the nest shut everything down to save energy when we returned it had to kick on the high speed to get back to temperature. I'd gladly pay $10/mo for a comfortable house and less wear and tear on my $10k A/C unit.
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I had that option on. But when you are away it shuts it all down.
About the only possibly way to botch Glass more (Score:3)
Don't forget that after abandoning Glass and the Explorers who paid a significant overcharge with the expectation of above-average service and support, Glass was "transitioned" to Fadell.
Look where that got Glass - even more dead than it was when the Explorers program was canned with a device that was LESS functional than it was when it shipped to most users. (KitKat on Glass was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, it destroyed battery life, stability, and performance, and they never got it to perform anywhere close to what it delivered when running ICS. What's worse, the fixes they DID managed to get in over the summer of 2014 to make it suck less all got reverted out for the final software update in September/October 2014 or so, which rendered units near-useless. When delivered, my Glass unit easily got 24 hours of battery life with my typical usage patterns. After the final software update - my unit would usually run out of battery in 8 hours of sitting on a shelf doing absolutely nothing.)
ecobee (Score:2)
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Yeah. I had a Nest and eventually had to ditch it. The maintenance band range that isn't configurable is simply unacceptable in a large home. The temperature swings would last for hours at a time. The ecobee fixes that nicely (I wish the maintenance band was more configurable than 2 options, but at least one of the options is acceptable).
Ecobee still has a few glitches and weird algorithms (like the way it transitions from one comfort zone to the other at the same time as the active sensors are changing), b
whaaat? (Score:3)
I wish people here wouldn't poop on a product they (Score:2)
I wish people here wouldn't poop on a product they haven't even tried. For me Nest thermostat paid for itself in the first year. I have a large house. Nest lets me trivially not heat the (or cool) house when I'm not there, yet also turn on the heating it when I'm heading home from work. It's objectively a great product. The "learning" functionality is a bit of a crapshoot, but you don't really have to use it, and schedule set-up is pretty slick, much more so than in the honeywell thermostate the Nest replac
Re:Too lazy to google (Score:4, Insightful)
Internet of Things - Devices to control your home.*
*As long as company doesn't brick your devices because they're too old.
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Of which *only* the thermostat had any sort of 'oh that could be useful' opinion of anyone. There's really not that much in a house that extracts value of internet connected embedded control/monitoring (climate control and security monitoring/locking).
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Sure there is. You just have to think about it a little harder.
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The problem with most of those scenarios is that they are beyond the point of diminishing returns for the most part.
Lights 'on' having a different amount depending on how much natural light... frankly with LED lighting there isn't much value between on/off (probably not enough to offset the cost associated with the complexity of making that determination.
For a refrigerator, it's far more effective across the board to just have more insulation. It's not as sexy, but it does allow the refrigerator to not hav
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some people like "owning" "things" (Score:2)
I just didn't like having to 1) subscribe to 2) constantly upload to their cloud to use it.
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So ... Oracle? Doomed?
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Yup, "move off Oracle" projects dominate consulting these days, and almost no one chooses Oracle for new projects, though PeopleSoft still has some uptake (and even there almost nothing has improved in the 11 years since Oracle bought them).
Oracle's maybe a bad example, though, given the heroic lengths they go to to annoy their customers.