This month we talk about Hive, smart products, and DRM.
We also discuss BMWs, Steam, and 1984.
—
Transcript
In the world of electronics, a "bricked" devices refers to a piece of hardware that has been disabled or broken in some way, typically—though not exclusively—due to software-related issues.
Such issues can be caused by updates that fail to download and install all the way or correctly, which can result in aspects of the baseline operating system being corrupted so that it no longer functions—the software that makes it work is partially overwritten, maybe, but not completely, so there's nonsense code interrupting some of its fundamental functionality—and in some cases future repairs, any attempt to fix the issue, are no longer possible, either, if the damage is done in just the right way to just the right device.
This is part of why it's become so common in modern computers and smartphones and other such devices to include a backup of that core, baseline operating system and other necessary files in a separate, partitioned or secondary hard drive, which allows the device to be rebooted, refreshing everything back to its sales floor vanilla state, if all else fails and it otherwise can't be un-bricked.
This backup OS can also help get rid of especially pernicious malware and viruses.
Some such malignant code can work its way deep into the bowels of the devices they infect, but relatively few are able to work their way into that secondary backup OS; so you lose all your personal data on the wiped and refreshed device, but that's in many cases better than having a device that you can no longer use, because it's either corrupted or infected for all time.
Some bricked devices have been rendered brick-like, which is where that term comes from by the way, a device rendered into a paperweight, some have been put in that state because of issues so fundamental, they won't even turn on or show any other sign of life.
This type of bricking, sometimes called "hard bricking," is usually caused by either bad firmware—software issues at the very base of the device's system—or some kind of hardware damage; to the battery, to a core processor: something related to the device being able to get power or read its firmware instructions, usually.
Soft-bricked devices, in contrast, tend to boot up, to turn on, but don't do what they're supposed to; they show some kind of error screen, or maybe they're unable to boot instructions that would tell them how to progress to the operating system, but they only make it partway, leaving the user with a device that kinda sorta works in the sense that it shows signs of life, but isn't useful for anything.
Some bricked devices are rendered useless, usually in the soft-bricking sense, but not always, by intentional traps or failsafes built into the hardware or software.
This is most common in devices that have to phone home, checking in with a remote server, maybe, to guarantee that the device hasn't been stolen, or isn't running pirated software, but it can also be the consequence of devices that need to be paired with other devices to function properly, and which will thus spin out and not know what to do when disconnected from that charging port or computer or whatever else it requires to do its thing for too long.
Such intentional brickings can also prevent users from utilizing their devices in ways the maker of said devices didn't intend.
It's possible to root a Kindle Fire tablet, for instance—which means accessing the fundamental code that tells it what to do and defines its baseline functionality; which is usually only accessible by the folks who make the devices and people certified to repair them—and you can then turn that Kindle device, made by Amazon to run an Amazon-flavored version of the Android operating system, into a more basic, Google-themed Android; which allows one to run more apps, customize more of the experience, and make other little optimizations to the software.
Such rooting, though, can result in a bricked tablet, and this is intentional on Amazon's part, as they want folks to use their version of Android, because it points them toward Amazon products and services rather than those made by Google.
They often sell such hardware at cost, or sometimes at a loss, expecting to make their profit by selling stuff through these devices, so from their standpoint, it's very important no one roots these things and removes all those ads and other nudges toward their digital offerings.
Setting things up so that bricking is a real possibility from the rooting process, then, is in their best commercial interest, even if it's arguably very much against the interest of folks who would prefer to use these devices in other ways.
Similar issues arise with attempts to customize smartphones, computers, and even things like smart tractors and manufacturing machinery: it's all built to connect the product to the maker of these devices so the customer is reliant on those makers for services, upgrades, and so on.
These brickings can thus sometimes serve as disincentives that, although are sometimes fixable, either by the company behind the product or software tools and techniques shared online, are sometimes not, and you're forced to buy a new tablet or tractor as punishment for attempting to make any tweaks to software the maker of the product would prefer you don't touch.
Bricking has become increasingly common for security purposes, as well, as more companies, like Apple, have made Find My Phone and similar services available, which rely upon the ability to force these devices to check in, which in turn allows someone who has their phone stolen to track it to varying degrees, and can disincentivize thieves because they won't easily be able to make use of these stolen goods: simply turning them on, even to wipe them, can give these companies, and thus, law enforcement, their location and other data, in addition to remotely bricking the devices, which are then generally useless for their intended, post-theft purpose.
What I'd like to talk about today are other instances of bricking-like effects in the world of technology, and how the ecosystems companies have been building in order to keep their customers loyal can make such outcomes more likely.
—
The article I'd like to start with today comes from The Verge, and it's entitled:
Smarthome ecosystem goes away
Back in 2020, speaker company Sonos announced that they would be changing the terms of a previously announced, so-called Recycling Program that would have allowed folks to trade-up older Sonos devices for a 30% discount on new ones, but in order to do so, they would need to follow instructions that would permanently brick the old one.
The thing is, Sonos left it up to the customer how they got rid of the older device; they didn't need to send it into the company, and it was advised they basically destroy a functioning older Sonos speaker to get a discount on a newer Sonos speaker.
This was, as you might expect, not well-received news from customers who couldn't understand why the company would want to fill up landfills with functioning speakers that they were convinced to intentionally destroy in exchange for a coupon.
It wasn't a good sustainability look, and it shined a light on a common practice in many industries, though perhaps most famously the fashion industry, to destroy old stock and stock that doesn't sell to avoid reducing the perceived value of what does sell.
This is why clothing companies, including both fast fashion cheap-o brands and super-high end fashion brands will cut up, rip up, and otherwise render into useless shreds of fabric anything they don't manage to sell before new stock comes in to fill the shelves.
Many companies have transitioned away from this practice in the wake of a series of articles written about their tendency to destroy valuable objects to maintain perceived brand value, but it still happens. And that would seem to be what's happened here, as well: Sonos was trying to incentivize people to get rid of their old speakers, but didn't want to pay to have them returned because they didn't have a business model that allowed them to re-sell old ones—they're high-end devices, and they were laser-focused on selling more of the new stuff. They also didn't want a bunch of older Sonos speakers floating around yard sales and Craigslist, because, again, they would prefer to sell people new ones.
Thus, they were keen to remove those old models from the equation, and instructed those who wanted that coupon to destroy their old speakers and to discard them once the surgery was done.
This Sonos tale is similar in some ways to what happened in the story in that Verge piece, but instead of telling customers to brick their devices for a discount, the company at the center of the story has told them their products will no longer work soon because they've decided to pivot their focus.
Hive is a smart home device company that makes security cameras, thermostats, burglar alarms, and other such hardware that can be connected to smart home apps and tracked from one's smartphone, voice assistant, or other such hub.
So like with Amazon's Ring cameras and Google's Nest products, the idea is that you can have Hive thermostats applying software to your heating and cooling needs, tracking your energy usage, and telling you all about it with fancy graphs and such, you can have security cameras, all of which look pretty nice and well-designed, scattered throughout you home, you can have little sensors on your windows that will send you a text or ring an alarm if someone tries to open the windows at night, and you can detect gas leaks using specialized sensors which can likewise ping whatever device you think will get the news out, fastest.
In early July of 2022, Hive announced that it will no longer be selling its security cameras, sensors, or water leak detection systems, and after a guaranteed support period of somewhere between 1 and 3 years, these devices will cease to function.
The leak sensor will be going away in September of 2023, and all those security devices will stop working in August of 2025.
A sound detection feature built into its Hub product will go away at the end of this year, 2022, and the company is saying it's offing these products and services to better focus on the few it can do most efficiently and sustainably.
Which...isn't a bad reason to do things, to be honest, but the weirdness here is that a lot of products work perfectly well for a long time after the official support period offered by the companies that make them ends.
Computers from the 90s are still running great, if a bit slow, and old-school mobile phones are fun throwback objects of desire, in some circles, in part because they still work so well—there's not much to go wrong with them.
These are "smart" devices, though, which in this context typically means they are connected in some way, both to sensors and hubs, but also to centralized software command structures located elsewhere.
Almost always, our voce assistants, our security cameras and our leak detectors utilize processing power centralized elsewhere, where that power is available in greater abundance than can be leveraged by our energy-sipping little devices, and where the companies that make these products can soak up data, which is generally part of their business model, whether they're overt about that or not.
In this case, these devices, which by all indications should be perfectly capable of functioning without that phone-home feature set, will cease to function, will be bricked, as soon as the company stops allowing them to phone-home; almost like triggering a kill-switch once that company cuts off contact with them.
All of which feels a little weird to many Hive customers, as it seems a bit like a Sonos play: like they're killing a bunch of hardware just for the hell of it, not for any good, rational reason.
Reports from earlier instances of Hive, the same company, killing off product lines back in late-2019, indicates that some of their products might survive as baseline versions of what they were sold as: some of their smart thermostats from back then kept functioning as basic, non-smart thermostats once they company cut them off, for instance, and some of their smart plugs and lights continued to function as usual if they were able to connect to another smart home ecosystem.
Part of what's uncomfortable-feeling about this announcement, though, is that, even though we're neck-deep in the streaming and everything-as-a-service economy, it still feels somehow wrong that tangible things we buy, things we feel like we own, might be taken away from us at any moment. We paid for something, feel like we own that software on our computers, those films on our viewing platforms of choice, those smart devices that help us manage our home's climate—but ultimately many of these things could legally disappear, be taken away, at any moment for any reason.
They could also be held back unless we pay more for them, as is the case with some newer BMW models that require the car owner pay a subscription fee of $18/month to use the car's heated seats.
Which sounds like I made it up, I know, because this seems like a ridiculous money-grab: heated seats are a function that exist in the car, and the car maker is saying pay me or I won't activate that thing that is in your car for you—it'll sit there, worthless, unless you pay me more.
This trend is becoming more common in the world of digital products, too.
Back in 2009 there was a big, early hullabaloo about exactly this when, irony of ironies, the ebook version of 1984, and another George Orwell book, Animal Farm, were remotely deleted from Amazon Kindle devices, their ebook readers, which sparked a huge wave of outrage that this company could reach out across the internet and steal—because that's what it felt like—books that these customers had purchased from Amazon's digital bookshelves.
The background of this story makes what Amazon did sound a little more okay: the versions of 1984 and Animal Farm that were removed from devices were illegally uploaded using their self-publishing tool by a party that didn't have the right to publish those books.
Arguably still Amazon's fault then, but the real damage, again, was this now-overt-seeming threat that Amazon, for any reason or no reason, could start stealing books from our devices, could censor what we're able to read by taking stuff away, maybe changing stuff that's on our Kindles; it was a disconcerting thought that in some ways isn't any less disconcerting today, except that now I think more of us are able to conceive of content to which we have access but not ownership—like the movies and TV shows we watch on Netflix.
There was a more recent iteration of this same outrage in response to an announcement, which as it turns out was a misunderstanding predicated on incorrect information posted to their storefront—at least that's what the company is now saying—that a number of Ubisoft games and game add-ons, called DLCs, would no longer be available for sale on game marketplace and digital library Steam, and the content itself would be unavailable beginning September 1 of 2022.
This set off a firestorm in the gaming community, first because Steam is a very popular service through which people buy and manage their video game purchases, and second because it provided a pretty short timeframe in which to play the affected games if you had recently purchased it.
Ubisoft backtracked on this, saying, as I mentioned, that this is not what they intended, but it does seem like some of those add-ons, those DLCs, will no longer be available from that point forward, nor will the online, multiplayer components of some of their games—which isn't exactly the same thing, as those are services provided by the company, rather than products, but it feels the same way in many regards, as, again, these games feel like products people have purchased, when in reality they've bought the right to access and use software, and that right can be taken away at any time, for any reason; including the right-sizing Ubisoft and Hive are doing for their respective catalogs.
One more recent example involves films that were purchased via the PlayStation store in Europe.
More specifically, movies made by production company Studiocanal will be removed from the PlayStation store in some regions, and folks in those regions, including Germany and Austria, will no longer be able to play Studiocanal films they've purchased through the platform.
The expiring licensing agreement at the root of this de-listing will go away on August 31, 2022, and at the moment at least a long list of titles are scheduled to disappear, and customers have not been told they'll receive refunds; they could, but there's no indication they will as of the day I'm recording this.
This is being seen by some as another example of DRM run amok; DRM standing for digital rights management software and systems which are meant to prevent piracy and allow content to be sold digitally across a variety of mediums without then being just immediately posted for free everywhere, but which in many cases is criticizes as being heavy-handed and antagonistic toward people who actually pay for books and movies and game.
DRM often requires, for instance, that folks who want to play a single-player video game have constant high-speed internet access so the game can phone home, can check in with servers elsewhere in the world, to guarantee it's not being pirated or otherwise used illegally.
This is the same sort of concept behind Kindle Fire tablets being bricked when people don't use them as Amazon intended, and why many smart devices are rigged so that they don't work at all when they're not connected to the company's digital hive mind.
Many company have become even more heavy-handed about this as more devices have been made "smart" in this sense, and thus are mostly just physical hubs for software, which customers are paying to access.
DRM-like software and systems keep those things operating as intended, but also prevent use-cases that aren't ideal for the companies making them; and in some cases, like with those BMWs, it allows the companies in question to lockdown stuff they want to sell to customers, despite that functionality already existing within the devices or software they've purchased.
Such moves can be financially beneficial immediately, then, but they can also help lock people in to ecosystems of products, because your stuff, all your games, maybe, might be locked down in your Steam library, the DRM it uses keeping you from fully transitioning, with all the games you've bought, over to their competitor, Epic.
It can also keep you from moving all your books from your Amazon account, all your footage from your Hive security camera account, and so on.
This could become an even more pernicious and common issue as more of what we own, or feel like we own, is actually borrowed, accessed rather than truly purchased.
And there are many pros and cons to that type of setup, but one of the primary cons is that something you do not own can taken away without your say-so, at any time for any reason, or no reason, and a lot of what we make—physical things that cost a lot of resources to produce—may end up worthless, drains on our collective stockpiles of resources, not because they're no longer valuable, but because turning them into bricks is better for some company's business model.
—
Show Notes
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23205004/hive-security-camera-smart-home-discontinued-2023-2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_(electronics)
https://www.slashgear.com/942651/bmw-owners-are-stealing-their-heated-seats-back
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html
https://www.hivehome.com/product-news
https://www.gameshub.com/news/news/playstation-store-studio-canal-movies-germany-austria-23400/
