this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Mildly Infuriating

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Thankfully I don't use any of their products, but this really pisses me off. They claim that this open source project "causes significant economic harm to their company"

This is ridiculous. It is truly ridiculous. How can something that enables the user to efficiently control their AC cause "significant economic harm"???

Consider forking the repository or mirroring it to another platform like GitLab, Codeberg or your self-hosted Git server, so the project can continue to exist and someone can maybe fork it and maintain it.

The effected repos are: https://github.com/Andre0512/hOn and https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn

If you don't know about Home Assistant, check it out. It's an amazing piece of open-source software, that you can run at home on your own server and use it to control your smart home devices. That way, you don't need to connect them to the manufacturer's (probably insecure) cloud. It gives you sovereignty over your smart home instead of some proprietary vendor-locked garbage. Check out their website and the Lemmy community: [email protected]

I also highly recommend Louis Rossmann's video about this: https://youtu.be/RcSnd3cyti0

He makes awesome videos in general, consider subscribing.

As Rossmann said, don't ever buy anything from such a shitty company that doesn't respect their customers. This move by Haier is nothing other than a slap in the face for everyone, who just wants to comfortably control the product they paid for. This company is actively hostile towards their paying customers. Fuck these bastards!

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[–] [email protected] 263 points 11 months ago (12 children)

This is ridiculous. It is truly ridiculous. How can something that enables the user to efficiently control their AC cause “significant economic harm”???

We're discussing this over in [email protected]. This absolutely has to be about them losing access to data they can sell to 3rd parties. The hOn ToS will no doubt have a clause that enables this.

It's a dick move for sure.

[–] [email protected] 106 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

They want to advertise that their stuff is "cloud enabled", while offering the shittiest service possible and putting as many roadblocks as possible to minimize its use.

Having people use their services efficiently is increasing their cloud services bill, can't have that.

Personally, I've restrained myself from buying into IoT, and if I'm going to do so, I'll make sure it can be controlled locally without depending on a cloud service, and through a hub I can fully control. I need to be able to disconnect my modem and operate everything even if the WAN is down.

[–] cynar 28 points 11 months ago (13 children)

I basically run my house IoT setup as you desire. My smart switches are a mix of Tasmota (open source firmware, running totally locally) and ZigBee (an open protocol for IoT interoperability). The whole lot is controlled by a NUC running home assistant. My doorbell camera also streams directly to the server.

Home Assistant basically acts to glue everything together, and provides nice, easy to use GUIs. It can also bridge between networks. It's easy to have all your IoT things on an isolated network, with no internet access. Only the HA install can see both networks.

I've also been careful of WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). If the internet goes down, almost everything keeps working. If the NUC dies, the switches still work as dumb switches. The bulbs all default to full brightness neutral colour.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

My Home Assistant software and smart devices all are controlled locally and cloud access isn't used but there are other, much more important reasons to avoid running it.

You should avoid it because Home Assistant is an addictive monster. It starts as a hobby and then the next thing you know you're putting temperature sensors in your refrigerator and setting different brightness levels for your bathroom lights depending on the time of day.

Seriously though, the software gives an amazingly useful single dashboard for things you might use everyday including lighting, HVAC, alarm systems, weather, currency exchange rates, and entertainment systems. I use it every day.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Do you... set your thermostat based on the day's currency exchange rate? Do you wake up and say, "Honey, I can see my breath; the Euro must be down. Alexa, call my broker."

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They probably want to pull a Chamberlain and sell a bunch of crappy buggy, inconsistent, error-prone addon services for $60/yr after you've already purchased the product.

But yeah, lesson mostly learned. Don't support companies who only offer cloud-dependent services because they will definitely turn on the customer when they reach the natural ceiling of people buying the product and start looking for extra ways to squeeze their customers.

[–] fishos 6 points 11 months ago

Or go the BluAir route and offload all the processing onto the cloud. They sell the new machines for the same cost as the old machines, but they're dumb as a bag of bricks. If not connected to the cloud, none of the automatic settings work correctly. When you contact customer support to troubleshoot why it doesnt work on auto mode, the first thing they have you do is delete it and reconnect it to the app. No care about updates. Its just a fan on a wifi switch now. Total junk.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (4 children)

The tos should only apply to the software and not the hardware, right? Or do you need to sign a waiver when you purchase the damn thing?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Not sure about the Haier thing. My HVAC has an add-on "smart" controller that I had to pay extra for, and the ToS are no doubt attached to that.

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[–] [email protected] 128 points 11 months ago (1 children)

“Significant economic harm”

Yeah, like my never considering you for any products ever again you pieces of trash. Why the fuck do your products even need to connect with the cloud?

Fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why? Their response showed why: so they can sell your data. There's literally no other reason. And they can't just sell a product for profit, that's not enough, they have to also sell out our privacy for more revenue! Otherwise they would have stayed quiet, maintaining plausible deniability and not taken this step. It's literally never enough for these scumbag companies...

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Special shout-out to LiftMaster/Chamberlain who did the same rug-pull on their customers last year.

Never trust free cloud services attached to a paid product.

[–] Thrillhouse 40 points 11 months ago

Fuck these guys for real. I had just set up a raspberry pi and nfc tags. I’m not buying their shitty ecosystem even harder now.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

LiftMaster/Chamberlain

Get a ratgdo. It's a little ESP8266-powered board that connects to the garage door opener and lets you open/close it and turn the light on and off, and reports the status of the door (opening, open, closing, closed) and obstruction sensor status via MQTT, entirely locally. I installed one on my LiftMaster garage door opener (an old version with no smart features) and it works well! I zip tied mine inside the plastic cover that goes over the light bulb, as per the developer's recommendation.

They have a beta firmware for HomeKit integration too, to directly control it from Apple devices if you don't want to run something like Home Assistant with an MQTT broker.

"ratgdo" stands for "rage against the garage door opener" :D

[–] Blaster_M 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)
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[–] nbafantest 79 points 11 months ago (2 children)

https://github.com/Andre0512/hon/issues/147#issuecomment-1892738060

Looks like the owner isnt taking it down and will force them to take it down.

I'm curious what the legal reason is for this. They arent actually using any illegal IP right?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 11 months ago (9 children)

They just don't want to go through the hassle of securing their api, so they're trying to strong arm the devs into dropping the project.

It would be laughably easy for them to kill this, but maybe their devs aren't competent enough to do it.

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[–] stoly 6 points 11 months ago

APIs are, by nature, open. Anyone can use them. The business bros don't like this fact and are using lawyers to express their distaste for people using their product as intended.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not to excuse this sort of behaviour, but at least they're honest enough to say it's about the money, instead of hiding behind excuses like "bUt sEcuRiTy vUlNeRaBiLiTieS".

We need laws to prevent this kind of anti-consumer bullshit (yeah I know, a pipe dream) and for people to simply not give Haier their money, or data.

[–] Dehydrated 8 points 11 months ago

I don't even think this is honest, I doubt that a small FOSS project is causing "significant economic damage" to a company of such size. It's just user-hostility and the wish to control the users and the products they bought and paid for. Unfortunately, this is an increasing trend among companies.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago (4 children)

One thing I find annoying is that there's no way for me to let the company know that this behavior lost me as their customer forever unless they change their tune.

I'm fairly sure I'm the kind of person they'd market those products towards and it hurs them, but there's no wat that I'm aware of to let them know.

If there was a way, and a significant amount of people would do so, maybe the decision makers would understand it's stupid...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

Make a project of getting escalated up to an executive through a chain of emails. LinkedIn provides a good starting point with contact information.

A while ago, I expressed my desire to tell a Microsoft executive to fuck themselves over a decision that frustrated me and that idea proved fruitful. (Thanks lemmy) Just stay professional until you earn your prize and, at worst, you’ll waste some of their money as your potential entry point wastes time reading your entirely unrelated message. Change emails if you care to cover your tracks.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's actually the one thing that Twitter is still good for.

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[–] CosmicCleric 38 points 11 months ago (2 children)

At this point I need a website that tracks companies BS and gives them a grade level. Just too effing many of them.

[–] SendMePhotos 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

Hmmm..... Like the BBB but better? The better BBB? BBBB perhaps... Or B^4...

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

"Know B^4 you buy"

[–] Water1053 7 points 11 months ago

BCFC - By Consumers for Consumers

[–] postmateDumbass 7 points 11 months ago (4 children)

BBB is run by businesses, for businesses.

Not a consumer protection agency.

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[–] Krafting 36 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Bullshit from companies continues... someone don't forget to upload all code to the Internet Archive just in case.

[–] Dehydrated 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's pretty easy. Download the repo from GitHub as a .zip and upload that to the archive. Pretty simple. Don't forget to do this for both repos.

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[–] dual_sport_dork 30 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Isn't the whole point of this to not use their services? As long as Haier's software and servers are not being touched I don't see how they have any legal standing. This guy should speak to a lawyer to verify if this is the case.

Anyhow, the last Haier/GE air conditioner I took apart had a commodity off-the-shelf USB Wi-Fi dongle inside it plugged in via a short USB extension lead to an off-the-shelf microcontroller board to enable its "smart" features. I'll bet you a dime Haier is violating the terms of at least one open source license, possibly more than one, via the software stack they're running in there. So as far as I'm concerned they're free to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

[–] cynar 11 points 11 months ago

Generally, a lot of companies that add "cloud enabled" to their products don't let you access the local device. Home Assistant isn't talking to the air conditioner, it's logging into their web interface. If it's polling 1/minute, that can be a lot of extra traffic, compared to a normal user.

The better solution is to work with their buyers, not against them. If they provided a local API, then the excess traffic would go away. Theirs no money in that, in the short term, however. So they take the lazy route.

There's a reason I only buy IoT type devices with a local API. They also have a tendency to turn servers off. Suddenly your smart device is bricked, despite working fine.

[–] ShortFuse 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

The problem is it's a script that logs onto Haier's servers with the user's email and password and starts polling for data. Considering that most designed usage is probably based around users every once in a while checking and adjusting their thermostat, just one user with an HACS install doing a poll every minute is 1440x more usage than the next who checks it once a day. If HACS uses were the majority of traffic for these devices I wouldn't be surprised by that metric.

That's what probably meant by the ToS because the users using it are probably violating it, and the addon can be considered as something that makes violating it easier (it doesn't have a secondary purpose other than using a set of credentials that are only given after accepting the ToS).

I've had crappy "Smart" ACs and Samsung was the absolute worst. At random times their AWS instance in Europe would go down or their app wouldn't respond. I gave up and coded my own script to directly interface with the device over the local WiFi. You cut Samsung completely out of the equation. You don't have to worry about their servers not working anymore. That's an ideal way for an add-on to work. Ideally most of the script can be retuned to work directly with the device.

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[–] kozonak 24 points 11 months ago (2 children)

are in violation of our terms and agreements

So what if you dont agree with their terms? What then? Cant you just host the repo and tell them to fuck off since you sisnt agree to anything?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Not to mention this is being used to control products purchased by individuals. Are they not allowed to use their AC after paying for it because they don't agree to Haiers TOS?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Did OP even agree to their terms?

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[–] victorz 23 points 11 months ago

Badwill. Always a bad strategy. Join progress, don't fight it.

[–] local_taxi_fix 13 points 11 months ago

I don't have any Haier products but as a Chamberlain/MyQ garage door owner I can relate all too well. At least ratgdo is an option for the garage doors, I doubt there's anything nearly as simple for the Haier users.

Fuck these companies.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

GitHub also has a legal defense fund for developers. GitHub lists it on their DMCA takedown page.

When GitHub processes a DMCA takedown under our circumvention technology claim review process, we will offer the repository owner a referral to receive independent legal consultation through GitHub’s Developer Defense Fund at no cost to them.

They created this fund after claims were made against a YouTube downloader from a third party. (not Google)

I don’t know if this would be an anti-circumvention claim, but it doesn’t sound like a bad idea to ask.

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[–] Goodie 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This is ridiculous. It is truly ridiculous. How can something that enables the user to efficiently control their AC cause "significant economic harm"???

I assume they have their own app and run ads/user analytics through it that make them money.

I have to wonder if you bought their products on the basis that they worked with HA, if you could have some sort of claim here.

[–] Dehydrated 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

No, thankfully I don't use any of their products. But I find their statement ridiculous. If I buy something, it's mine, I own it because I paid for it. The manufacturer can fuck off.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

As if I needed another reason not to buy their shitty appliances.

[–] m3t00 10 points 11 months ago

reminds me of the DMCA form letters. full of scary empty threats. paid legal dept. earning their keep. mgmt doesn't realize the freely developed stuff makes their products more desirable when it does a better job than their own software. may they flounder in ignorance

[–] anarchy79 8 points 11 months ago

MY ECONOMIC HARM!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

So, is the code in question using a publicly accessible API of theirs? If so it'd be a shame if something were to access that API more than anticipated..

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I live in caveman times. I turn my lights on with a light switch, and I turn my AC on with the power button on the unit.

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