Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can’t access your stuff. But that’s just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it’s getting worse.

It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across the local network. Now it will have yet another garbage “cloud” “integration” involved, and they certainly will find a way to make things suck even worse for you.

If you ever saw the South Park episode where they try to get the cable company to do something on their behalf and the cable company people just touch themselves inappropriately upon hearing the lamentations of their customers, well, I suspect that’s what’s going on here. The management of these places are fundamentally sadists, and they are going to auger all of these things into the ground to make their short-term money before flying the coop for the next big thing they can destroy.

  •  space   ( @space@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
    102•9 months ago

    So let me get this straight. You buy Phillips Hue devices because they work offline. Then they change how the devices you bought function making them only work online forcing you to create an account and allow them to collect data.

    This should not be legal. This is a breach of contract, they modified the contract after you already signed it (by buying the device). If they want to do this, they should offer full refunds to anyone that wants to exit the contract, or only apply the changed to new devices.

      •  Umbrias   ( @Umbrias@beehaw.org ) 
        5•9 months ago

        They do not.

        The format where they do is when it is a service provider and they simply stop service of the contract. I.e. if you don’t accept the terms and services for say, using reddit, they can just choose to not continue providing you access to those servers.

        But it didn’t hold up on contracts involving already rendered services or anything really other then the outcome of declining being ‘everyone exiting the contract’ or simply moving back to the previous contract.

        Courts in the us have pretty much universally upheld that contracts cannot be changed without all parties agreeing.

        •  WetBeardHairs   ( @WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml ) 
          1•9 months ago

          Yeah but the whole tech industry operates as Whatever-as-a-Service now, which means those ToS changes are able to be applied whenever they like. You either continue using the service or you don’t. This apparently applies to lightbulbs now. Lightbulbs as a Service. Sigh.

    •  noodlejetski   ( @noodlejetski@lemm.ee ) 
      0•9 months ago

      I’m sure there’s a line somewhere in the ToS that you always read carefully from beginning to the end, saying that they merely rent you the devices infinitely, so they’re actually not your property and they can do whatever they want with them.

  •  Badland9085   ( @Badland9085@lemm.ee ) 
    86•9 months ago

    I swear, these bad EULA updates that basically force users to “accept the agreement, or we’ll brick your device” needs to fucking stop and be made illegal. The price that’s set for a product, especially a damn physical product, should include the acceptance of an existing EULA, and it should be honoured even when new ones come out and the user chooses to not accept the new agreement. You’ve basically never owned the product if companies can just pull the rug underneath you, and render your hardware useless. And you can’t foresee such changes too; a predatory company can acquire one that you’ve trusted and pull this shit. It’s borderline daylight larceny.

  •  Tunawithshoes   ( @Tunawithshoes@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
    38•9 months ago

    The biggest gripe I have with this is that they are not cheep. Hue is one of the more expensive products smart lamp products.

    Why are they chasing pennies? I could buy 3 ikea lamps for price of 1 hue.

    Shame I really liked their color accuracy but guess I have to find new fancy lights.

    Luckily I use home assistant so my lamps are not ewaste.

  •  TehPers   ( @TehPers@beehaw.org ) English
    28•9 months ago

    Tangentially related, but I recently bought a Philips shaver and the thing wanted me to install an app on my phone and connect it to the shaver via bluetooth to send shaving data.

    I mean, I guess there’s theoretically value there for some people? I can’t imagine what, but that app’s staying well off my phone.

  •  4am   ( @4am@lemm.ee ) 
    23•9 months ago

    Javascript plus a “curl | sudo sh” attitude to life equals “yeah no, I am never touching this thing”.

    Assclown take. Buy a HomeAssistant Yellow and boom done.

      •  Sjy   ( @Sjy@lemm.ee ) 
        5•9 months ago

        Don’t know about green but I got a Home Assistant Blue and it’s good enough. Tho You can just use a raspberry pi.

        Side note I think you were being sarcastic when you said Home Assistant Green, so I wanted to make reply that sounded sarcastic but Home Assistant Blue and Home Assistant Yellow are real things, tho rereading my comment if one isn’t familiar with technology or home assistant talking about Home Assistant, colors, and raspberry pi for controlling light bulbs just sounds like trolling.

        Edit: Sorry, Home Assistant Green is also real. It’s every level hardware that is more than enough for running home assistant and Home Assistant Yellow is the next step up in hardware. Home Assistant Blue was a limited edition run of the hardware prior to Home Assistant Yellow being created. To be clear, I am not trying to troll but to one that isn’t familiar with this technology these names might sound like trolling.

        •  HidingCat   ( @HidingCat@kbin.social ) 
          3•9 months ago

          No, Green is their latest launch, supposed to be cheaper and easier for newcomers to start.

          If that is the attitude that vets take when newcomers ask questions, good luck getting widspread adoption.

          •  Sjy   ( @Sjy@lemm.ee ) 
            3•9 months ago

            My apologies, before now I haven’t heard of green. I legitimately run my instance on the limited edition blue that kinda lead to yellow being created and before that I used a raspberry pi. My original comment was a little bit of me finding the naming for this stuff funny, not trying to discourage anyone that is new to the platform.

            •  Hot Saucerman   ( @dingus@lemmy.ml ) English
              3•9 months ago

              I don’t know why you’re being hassled. I legit had never heard of Home Assistant and made a dumb throwaway joke because the colors mentioned were Yellow and Green, which were also flavors of Soylent in the film Soylent Green. (There was also a Soylent Red, but thats immaterial to this)

              I honestly thought the person mentioning Home Assistant Green was making a similar joke… So, your misunderstanding is valid, imho.

            •  HidingCat   ( @HidingCat@kbin.social ) 
              1•9 months ago

              Thanks, Green is quite new, I first heard of it like a week ago. Since I’m not familiar with the platform, thought I’d ask. Am anticipating moving to a new home in a few years time so am aiming to get it set up with some useful automation.

              •  Sjy   ( @Sjy@lemm.ee ) 
                1•9 months ago

                Not sure if you have an extra raspberry pi 4, but if you already have any smart home stuff there is no need to wait a few years, get it going now! (It can also be setup and run on a normal computer with windows/mac/Linux.

                I keep mentioning the raspberry pi because they have so many uses that aren’t just limited to home assistant vs dedicated hardware for home assistant. Looking at costs tho it wouldn’t save you any money to get the Pi, a micro SD card, charger and a case vs the home assistant green coming with all that. But keep in mind you will need an adapter if you want to integrate devices that use Zwave or zigbee. They aren’t that expensive and the one I have is the Nortek HUSBZB-1, i think I paid about $30 for it and does both Zwave and zigbee, but the home assistant yellow has zigbee built in, if you choose to go that route.

                But remember Home Assistant does need a little bit of knowledge with technology or some patience when you start. It’s selling point is that it can integrate almost anything, not that it is easy to integrate everything. I started years ago and had no knowledge so it was a huge learning curve, but they’ve made incredible progress with streamlining integrations and they have fantastic documentation so the learning curve isn’t nearly what it used to be. For reference, when I started automations had to be written in YAML, now it’s done through a UI. And contrary to how these comments may have seemed, the community is great, very friendly and very helpful.

                •  HidingCat   ( @HidingCat@kbin.social ) 
                  1•9 months ago

                  Don’t own my current home, so am only looking to do so when I move. Though I’ll take your advice on experimenting and learning, so I’ll have a better of idea what to expect/to do when that day comes. Think Pi4s aren’t too expensive to get and muck around with.

          •  Sjy   ( @Sjy@lemm.ee ) 
            2•9 months ago

            Thanks for the affirmation that it wasn’t just me thinking the names sounded like a joke to those that aren’t familiar.

            But the software I’m referring to this is free and open source, if you have any smart devices, it is worth looking into for convenience and the amount of customization and integrations available, in addition to running locally and respecting user privacy.

  •  Tenkard   ( @Tenkard@lemmy.ml ) 
    18•9 months ago

    Couple of weeks ago I wanted to change the intensity of the light bulb. I open the hue app and it tells me to download the new app, not allowing me to do anything else. I install the new app and it asks me to register… I still have my bulb at full light :D I’ll either find a compatible open source app or a light bulb that respect my privacy, I got a couple of tplink ones which were cheap and seems to work ok

  •  alwaysconfused   ( @alwaysconfused@lemmy.ca ) English
    16•9 months ago

    I bought a Raspberry Pi a few months ago and I feel strangely prepared. I wanted to use Home Assistant to have greater control over my devices since Philips Hue’s app seemed limited.

    I feel like a sucker for falling for Philip’s marketing but at least I can use zigbee. I have now decoupled myself from their Hue Hub and app. Unfortunately I now have a wasteful hub sitting around. I have it posted for free on the classifieds in hopes it will disappear.

            •  CmdrShepard   ( @CmdrShepard@lemmy.one ) English
              3•9 months ago

              Yes for sure with Google or Alexa and I think HA is working on their own voice stuff, but haven’t looked into it too deeply as I haven’t really ever utilized voice commands apart from tinkering with them briefly. A spare Pi works great but you can also use other stuff like a cheap Dell Optiplex micro or and old laptop. If you use the Pi, I’d recommend installing a small SSD with it and running it off that versus an SD card. The card won’t last long with all the read/writes.

              •  JGrffn   ( @JGrffn@lemmy.ml ) 
                5•9 months ago

                They already have a sort of functional “Assistant”. You can type to it, or you can use OpenAI’s Whisper speech-to-text language model loaded up on your Home Assistant machine through an add-on in order to talk to it, it works pretty much as well as any other proprietary speech to text model, except it’s self hosted. The assistant can talk back with another add-on, though the voices are still too robotic IMO.

                Key part in all of this is the “sort of functional” bit. Commands seem to have to be very literal to be understood, otherwise it just tells you it doesn’t understand.

                I’d still rather host my own assistant than rely on Google or Alexa, though, so I’m just gonna put my faith on the HASS team.

              •  Facebones   ( @Facebones@reddthat.com ) 
                1•9 months ago

                Oh yeah I already have an external drive on it, I run a handful of services on it now, but I need to start fresh again anyway because that’s easier than troubleshooting why it’s going derpy.

                In true IT fashion, instead of troubleshooting I just scheduled a nightly reboot 😂

          •  June   ( @June@lemm.ee ) 
            1•9 months ago

            Not quite everything.

            I can’t get my Meross garage door module into HA so I’m stuck using HomeKit exclusively. But I control most things through my phone so it hasn’t been a problem, just limits some automations I can do with it.

    •  ky56   ( @ky56@aussie.zone ) 
      5•9 months ago

      It’s probably enforced through an unnoticed firmware update. However if you have never connected them to the internet, they might have not received the broken update.

      •  PuppyOSAndCoffee   ( @PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml ) 
        1•9 months ago

        Nothing wrong with that, right? As Bob Dylan says, everyone serves someone.

        if OP doesn’t have the passion or time for DIY, the reality is an ecosystem awaits.

        Sometimes you just want to pop a QR code, screw your light in and then have your smart speaker / phone just so it’s thing.

        the key is who will offer what OP needs without farming data for resale, or, worse, criminal enterprise.