Nest Protect is a terrible buggy product

What Hacker News said

Recommends rdtsc · 2016-01 · on “Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold”

In line with this is the classic "It Can't Be Hushed Here" Nest bug video, by Brad Fitzpatrick from last year: [this video] [Warning: contains extremely annoying Nest smoke detectors beeping. So prepare to lower your volume] Brad looks very annoyed and it was no fun for him, but on an artistic level it is really well done, it is an epic battle between human and machine.

Recommends kyrra · 2020-08 · on “Google to buy 6.6% stake in ADT in home security push”

(googler, opinions are my own) I honestly like bradfitz's youtube video the best to show the Nest Protect (the smoke alarm) issues[0]. They have since fixed these issues, as this was the gen one protect. For your #2 (no insider knowledge), that looks like people's accounts getting hacked and then the hackers talking through them. All home camera cloud based cameras have had these cases. I think Nest moving to Google account login system for Nest is probably the best protection against this kind of thing happening. Account takeovers happen, and guarding against them at scale is hard (especially when people reuse passwords). For #1, I think the culture has changed a lot as it's been absorbed i

Cites lambda · 2015-08 · on “I No Longer Have Any Trust in the Nest Protect”

Here's a good video demonstrating a similar experience: [this video] It is amazing how many of his attempts to silence them fail, until he finally gives up and packs them away in multiple coolers in his garage to insulate away the noise.

Cites georgemcbay · 2015-11 · on “Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work”

bradfitz has this pretty famous video "review" (of sorts) of Nest fire alarms: [this video] The review is extremely negative, explicitly telling people not to buy Nest products. Those are (and were at the time of that video) a Google product, as Google acquired Nest in 2014. Brad still works at Google. I'm sure Benson will be fine.

Cites dcposch · 2015-12 · on “Raspberry Pi Zero vs. Elliott 405”

You definitely don't have to write your own an OS. You use existing tools, for example FreeRTOS. It's surprisingly simple. With a microcontroller, you can have a pretty much complete understanding of the whole machine. All you need is a basic knowledge of C, and most of the people who would solder stuff to a Raspberry Pi already have that or are willing to learn. Say you're making a thermostat. By convention, you leave address 0x0 empty, since dereferencing the NULL pointer is bad form :) At address 0x4 you have a int containing the target temperature. At address 0x8 you have a int containing the current measured temperature. Your whole app uses 8 bytes of memory, plus a few more for the sta

Cites metaphor · 2016-06 · on “Speck”

> I'm curious how many people think this is valuable as a stand-alone device? Does it need to have it's own screen and interface? I see a device whose dominant use case would be direct, at-a-glance interaction. It doesn't strike me as sensible that a typical user would generally care about data whose practicality matters only when he/she is physically present in the datalogged space...almost as insensible as texting someone sitting right beside you. Furthermore, omission of direct UI immediately eliminates the unconnected market segment. I would imagine that "mobile app" isn't exactly a driving parameter when people are looking for an air quality monitor, but in today's connected age, it doe

Cites gasbag · 2017-12 · on “Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse”

Aren't Nest Protect alarms also linked? This harrowing video leads me to believe they are. It's a couple years old at this point though. (Turn your sound down, video is a poor soul trying to deactivate them.) [this video]

Cites choppaface · 2019-12 · on “Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize”

"this is more like running into a meeting and then interrupting it so you can start reciting NLRB policy than it is posting a flyer" How is this like "running into a meeting"?? Do Googlers visit the IRI website every day? Is this pop-up really a distraction to core work for engineering? Your party line here makes the change sound like Nest shutting down the house [1] but according to the evidence it looks more like that recruiting thing that gives you a pop-up for google.com/foobar when you enter certain search queries. [1] [this video]