AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright
AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright
www.dexerto.com
AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright - Dexerto
86 comments
-
-
I think coding a contingency for loss of internet connectivity has got to be as basic as preventing Little Bobby Tables from deleting your data.
-
But then you might be able to bypass the €25/mth subscription on your €3059 mattress cover.
-
This is spot on. Note these asshats eventually caved and added local controls when customers kept saying how horrible it was to use the phone. The local controls are explicitly disabled unless the cloud service has recently approved the bed to allow the local controls to work. You have to use the phone to enable the local controls. The phone can't do anything locally except tell it how to connect to wifi. If you don't have the subscription or grandfathered in before the subscription, the local controls do nothing.
Well, unless you jailbreak your cover with FreeSleep.
-
-
You have upset the shareholders.
-
You are correct!
But you know what isn't as easy or basic as that? Convincing Product Managers and others on up the chain that you should be able to take some time to code and test to fix an issue they don't give a fuck about because it doesn't affect their metrics.
-
-
“Eight Sleep confirmed there’s no offline mode yet, but they’re working on it.”
There's an offline mode after all. Unplug it!
-
And the air bladders have a leak that was usually dealt with by it being plugged in so it deflates and you’re left with a very flat and hard bed.
-
So? That doesn't sound as bad as full power heating.
-
I have a mattress i purchased for $100 of my buddy when he moved out the country. He ordered it online the year before for $400. I can just throw it on the ground and sleep on it no problem when i move. Not sure why a mattress would ever need an Internet connection other than to spy on you
-
-
then they will have to cope of buying a 2000$ "normal" mattress. its the same people that bought 1800$ smart fridge from samsung. last december deal we purchase a normal mattress for less than 120$
-
Eight Sleep confirmed that while AWS was down, the metrics collection system was still working using internal memory. This means the dead man’s switch is engaged, and any attempt to power it off would violate the terms of service, causing the bed’s very obvious human-sized mousetrap to have its safety disengaged.
-
it turns into a smei-bear trap for humans.
-
-
-
When AWS went down, users lost access to the app that manages its water-cooled coils, leaving them stuck with whatever setting was last active.
That's ridiculous. The app should merely talk to the device over wifi, if available. The cloud should only be used to connect from outside the wifi network.
Why is everything so crappy?
-
But even that makes little sense as it should take commands locally and any telemetry should be done after the commands are issued. This method basically says “if we ever miss out on telemetry data, it’s just not worth it to us to give you what you already paid for. “
-
IoT devs avoid MQTT and Multicast traffic like the plague.
-
eh perhaps to collect usage data and somehow benefit from it.
-
i heard people got locked in, or out of thier house on thier smart"locks", and also ring cameras were affected because the ALARM SOUNDS WOULDNT TURN OFF.
-
-
anyone who buys a mattress that can't work without being connected to the internet deserves this
-
Reading the comment from the guy about his bed was a sauna all night from the heat. Did he not just think to unplug it? I mean I’ve never seen one of these beds, what happens if you do??
-
It will have to find power somewhere else.
-
They bought a $2000 bed with a 24/7 internet requirement, how smart do you think they are?
-
-
I'm sorry, but why the fuck those exist and WHO THE FUCK is buying them!?...
-
Are they analyzing your sleep telemetry so they can send you ads for nasal strips and melatonin?!?
-
Less than 2 minutes of humping and Amazon sends you Viagra overnight.
-
Accidentally spill water in your bed and the next thing you know you're getting adult diaper ads on every device you own for the rest of your life.
-
They're gathering something. Like a lot of "smart" stuff that's connected to AWS, there's just no reason to do it that way other than to take your data.
-
-
Finally a bed that kills bed bugs by itself. You are welcome.
-
"We are going to bill you extra for the downtime service."
-
-
People wondering why this was designed to need the cloud, it requires a subscription fee. Overpriced greedy product. Its actually a good idea (bed temp control), but too greedy
-
I feel weird because I've like never had a problem with bed temperature lol maybe pillows but even then that hasn't been a problem for me in years.
-
-
You can feel the smart in these.
-
And this is why I only buy "smart" tech that can be used offline, and then put it on a separate vlan with extremely restricted access. Screw the cloud.
-
Agreed. If it doesn't work with Home Assistant or requires me to use an account to use it, I'm completely not buying it.
-
-
- Invent incredibly dumb device.
- Brand it as "Smart" to lean into Dunning-Kruger effect sales.
- Profit!!
-
So far I've mostly avoided the whole "things that don't need to be on the Internet" situation.
Non smart TV (well that period when they started adding smart features but they're all out of date now so not even connected to the Internet)
All kitchen stuff is just kitchen stuff. No Internet.
Car is still offline.
Only real exception is smart thermostat, and that's just because when the boiler was installed that's what they put in.
-
Smart thermostats are really important for managing heat pumps efficiently. Especially when they're multistage. I mean, not necessarily that they have to be always online, but they do benefit a lot from more smarts than the basic thermostats of the past.
-
How does the “smarts” help? All a thermostat needs to call for multistage would be is statistical analysis for heat/cool deltas and resist, which offline thermostats have been doing for a while.
All the “savings” my “smart” thermostat reports is because I have set-backs, which I had with my old model which also supported multistage heat pumps. The thermostat in question is mind-bogglingly stupid when it comes to handling time of use rates.
So, overall, not very impressed. Happily, I can manage it with Homeassistant.
-
Especially when they’re multistage. I mean, not necessarily that they have to be always online, but they do benefit a lot from more smarts than the basic thermostats of the past.
Smart thermostats are no better than $30 programmable thermostats, which don't randomly change temps and don't rely on servers. I'm a sucker who bought one.
-
-
-
First time I'm hearing of a smart bed.... who tf is buying this crap? I still see Teslas out in the open and drives me mad to no end.
-
NGL if you have the money, a Watercooled bed is amazing.
Getting one that doesn't work through the internet though, good luck.
-
-
why the fuck would you get a smart bed
-
to drink smart water in.
-
So in my case (I didn't want to, but not my choice, but at least it was cheap and without subscription at the time), it was about the water cooling/warming. It's really nice and essentially inaudible.
I think Chilipad is a brand that does it without the online bullshit, though I didn't get to try that.
None of this should ever require an internet connection, and it's abundantly clear that's an anti-consumer hostile forced behavior Eight Sleep did.
-
-
Bed goes up. AWS goes down.
-
Man, reality is way weirder than i thought..
-
and still the product is more intelligent than the buyer
-
Stupid bed.
-
Mr robot
-
haha, I paid $150 for my mattress and $200 for the frame. I slept like a baby during the outage. Bunch of "tech" suckers.
-
What is a smart bed? I mean it’s a bed. Are remotes too good for people?
-
its like a smart fridge, or a smart electric toothbrush, something that requires an internet connection, usually it connects to an app on your phone to control certain features on said appliances, which people are too lazy to do themslves. when AWS went down, apps, or sites that uses aws went on the fritz.
-
-
I wonder what kind of data about your location and bedtime activities are these beds collecting and selling?
-
Woe, the bed got an erection.
-
Lol
-
The fix is investing in redundant internet at house from multiple providers. Satellite+fiber and achieve 99.99999% uptime so the bed won't Crash and allow you a good night of sleep.
Because it's unacceptable to send commands directly from the phone to the bed located in the same room, they need to transit between a dozen server farms to gather the delicious telemetry
Also: local=no subscription and that's so bad
86 comments
Hahahah wtf is this world anymore, beds getting fucked up because an internet service broke, this is the stupidest timeline.
I get that the people who buy this stuff might not know what needing an always-online service to function entails, but what were the designers thinking?
Designers were probably thinking "well this is stupid but it's what I'm paid to do and I didn't decide to have a fucking bed be always online". The execs that made the decision are probably thinking "why didn't the designers think of this problem and prevent it? We should fire some. "
The designers were thinking "we want to force users to a monthly subscription".
So against my preference, we bought one of these. Years ago and it wasn't so crazy expensive and the basic 'cloud' functionality was free. Over the course of the years of the initially decent warranty, the covers sprang leaks and so we got free upgrades carrying us all the way to a generation of the product where they replaced the crappy molded leak prone water mat with decent tubes that seem to be more resilient, all without needing to get in the subscription. As a consequence, I know about their evolution.
From the onset, they were hammered with "phone over the internet control is bogus, add a remote or buttons on the base or something", and they kept responding with vague "we are working a solution". Well, they ultimately did, they added earbud-style 'tap N number of times on the side to adjust things or dismiss alarms". Ok, super awkward and still no buttons, but at least it has local controls, right? Well, I go to try it and it just gives the long-buzz error indication. Turns out the app has to be used to activate the bed or schedule a start time before the local controls will let you control it. When they explicitly added a local control loop, they blocked it from working unless the cloud service said it was ok.
This is not "crappy developer stupidly doesn't know how to make local control work". This is "developer going out of their way to screw over a customer to force them to keep paying for every single month they want the product to keep working".
A shame, aversion to buttons aside, the hardware design is really quite good, quiet and effective and seemingly more leak resistant.
"We need to remind them who's in charge."
Here i am with my primitive bed with zero electronics.
These are the same people that elected trump AFTER seeing his stupidity for four fucking years.