Bait-and-switch, again.

I understand that Miku got bought out by some new company who decided it had the right to make the change.

It doesn't. It shouldn't have. You buy a company, you buy its obligations. You don't like its obligations ? Don't buy the company.

This is why I will never have a "smart" house. The only thing that is smart is the vendor fees to keep everything working.

I can use manual switches. Go to hell.

A Smart House is fine, its trusting a company to run it is the problem. If you have your own server (or NAS) there are plenty of devices that work with ZigBee or zwave that don't require any call home to manufacturer. Often these devices are the same price and much more customisable

I'm sure there is a genuine market for a non-cloudy smart home (or one that runs on your own purchased cloud and is just managed by an external party)

True - but check your NAS's specs before you head off to buy cameras. Most have limitations on the number of cameras you can attach before having to pay them more money. For baby monitoring this probably wouldn't be a problem cos one or two cameras would suffice - but the basic software that comes with the NAS sometimes has limitations on where the videos can be shown and how long they can be saved for and other annoyanceware. Unlocking these limitations will require the purchase of additional "plans".

Maybe, but much of the 'smart' functionality is unnecessary. Unless a 'smart' washing machine can empty the laundry basket, separate light and dark colours (and red things, of course) then load itself, there isn't much point. Personally, I've never found it difficult to turn the dial to '40 degree wash' and press start, anyway. Ditto heating (those magical things called timers have existed on central heating systems and electric radiators for many years).

And in-home spying devices (i.e. anything with a camera and/or microphone) are definitely out. Smartphones and laptops are unavoidable, but they are treated with appropriate caution.

...I will never have a "smart" house.

I have a smart house. The -I- will flip switches on a very smart basis and the -I- also has a house. But, as a very smart -I-, it is always the -I- who gets to be smart, not the house and certainly no subscriptions so others may monetize my house.

This is why I will never have a "smart" house

I keep being asked by my energy provider when I'd like my 'Smart' meter fitted. They seem genuinely shocked when I reply "I'll only ever have one of those fitted if it becomes mandatory".

There's absolutely no benefit to me for fitting it ("but you can monitor your energy use and turn off devices when not needed" they wail - I already do that since the PV management [1] software measures incoming energy usage and, if a device is on, it's because it *needs* to be on).

They are an insecure mess that only benefit the provider.

[1] We have an old-style rotary electricity meter - as fitted in 1997. It's quite satisfying in the summer to watch it spin backwards as the PV system dumps power back into the grid. A unit costs us 32p at the moment but the best feed-in tarrif that I could find only offers 16p/unit. So it's more beneficial for use to retain the old style meter than get a smart meter with an export tariff.

"I keep being asked by my energy provider when I'd like my 'Smart' meter fitted. They seem genuinely shocked when I reply "I'll only ever have one of those fitted if it becomes mandatory"."

I took that approach, but unfortunately when I moved into the current flat it already had one.

Last month it didn't send in its readings and they asked me to manually read it. Nope - if it was a non-smart one (as in all previous flats) I was quite happy to send in a reading once a month, but if their smartshit misbehaves they can deal with it!

*I keep being asked by my energy provider when I'd like my 'Smart' meter fitted. They seem genuinely shocked when I reply "I'll only ever have one of those fitted if it becomes mandatory"."

Me too all the way. My only concern is the planned removal of the radio signal that tells my meter when economy 7 tariff applies. That may come before smart meters are mandatory...

> We have an old-style rotary electricity meter ... watch it spin backwards

These are known as actual cloud energy storage. The best meters out there.

> It doesn't.

But do we know what did the fine print actually say on the registration page? The old "click here to agree to ten sides of Ts &Cs"! I'm willing to bet it never actually promised to be free at all, let alone "for the useful lifetime of the device" (whatever they decide that might mean), let alone forever.

"You say you haven't been asked to pay a subscription so far? Hmm, according to our records, you have: you ticked that box! Yes, it was very affordable at the start, wasn't it?"

> It shouldn't have.

Welcome to Real Life, as defined by the companies, not the consumers.

> This is why I will never have a "smart" house. The only thing that is smart is the vendor fees to keep everything working.

Now, that is a sensible approach to take: keep away from the buggers, don't give them any extra opportunities to bamboozle us.

Anything that has an app that connects somewhere other than your own computer and sold for one off fee is not sustainable.

They can ride it as a Ponzi scheme - by finding new customers to pay for the servers, but once customers pile up, problems start. Fees may no longer cover the usage of bandwidth and compute and naturally there is only one way to get out of this - cull the customer base and only keep those who want to pay subscription.

To be fair - there should be regulation, where those companies would need to open up the API specification for their products and make it easy to point them at your local server when switcheroo inevitably happens.

When you choose subscription you should also be able to shop around for cheaper providers of the same service.

Alternatively there should be regulation to require sufficient money from the original purchases to be put into a trust to invest to finance continual running of the service. If there's money available to run the service it will be worth somebody's taking on the job.

TBH, as a dev, the whole app biz has become a ponzi scheme.

It used to be, you could charge for software updates (i.e. the development work you spent a year doing), and the cost of maintaining old software was pretty much nil. I have stuff from the early 2000s that still runs fine on Windows today - or it will, if you click through all the warnings about it being an unsigned executable and so highly likely to eat your first born.

But, on mobile apps, users expect updates for free. (Indeed, there's no way to charge, except as an in app purchase.) And I'm in the middle of updating our Android apps to support the latest billing API because Google has declared the old version void. And that's after only just having finished updating them to the latest Android API. Those updates forced on us by vendors are an ongoing cost that we can't recoup. And that's before we get to any backend hosting costs, costs buying certificates to sign software or being in the vendor's store. All of that is funded by new sales. It's not sustainable.

So all new apps will have to have revenue stream: either advertising or subscription. It's not a model I like or agree with. But it's being forced on us by the markets and the hard economics.

"But unupdated apps are insecure!!" will wail the masses. (just ignore that they're mostly going to be insecure because of stuff that is not actually the app itself)

> To be fair - there should be regulation, where those companies would need to open up the API specification for their products and make it easy to point them at your local server when switcheroo inevitably happens.

> When you choose subscription you should also be able to shop around for cheaper providers of the same service.

Nice ideas, but these things are all just luxuries and fripperies; they aren't in any way essentials, barely even "nice to haves". You aren't going to get the required cooperation between the companies[1] or any help from consumer legislation, beyond the basics (and you *did* agree to the terms and conditions when you registered your toy on the server).

Rather than idealistic dreams, work for realistic goals and then nibble away at the companies.

For example, demand a clear statement of precisely how long you will have access to the servers given the package you have bought. This can then be covered by consumer law.

Point out to the retailer that the lack of that statement, clearly on the packaging, is the reason you aren't buying.[2]

[1] it will cost them money, if only to actually document their API - let alone clean it up enough that the glaring security holes are closed and the overall naffness of the design doesn't end up as the Daily WTF.

[2] yeah, I know, this is just a pipedream[3], hoping that enough people would actually bother to do that often enough that the message even got back to the companies involved.

[3] aah, sod it: "There ought to be regulation, why isn't anyone doing anything about this, etc etc etc."

Return for full refund due to manufactures design mistake

> Return for full refund due to manufactures design mistake

Dear Mr Fbw,

Read the fine print on the original packaging! Mwaa ha ha!

Love,

Miku Lawyers

EU warranty law would take precedence and would like a word.

Warranty? The device is still 100% functional! I can prove it: look, this WireShark listing shows it is clearly sending a HELO to the hard-coded IP address and is now just waiting for a response, precisely as it was designed to do.

The UK has the Unfair Terms Act, which prevents companies from being ****s. For instance it does not allow "the firm to transfer its rights and obligations under the contract, where this may reduce guarantees for the consumer, without the consumer’s agreement"

There is also something in there about how terms and conditions can't override statutary rights (ie can't be contrary to law). And here the existing Consumer Rights Act might be that law they are breaking.

The key thing is demonstrating that when you bought the thing, you had a justifiable expectation of how long it would last for including online functionality. Any weasly words in the terms like "service may stop at any time, free and on a best endeavours basis" would have to be made clear at the time of purchase to be valid (and might be illegal under The Act anyway). Burying them in obscure Ts&Cs is also against the Unfair Terms Act.

Interestingly, the Competition and Markets Authority has a huge list of precedents that have been found to infringe the Unfair Terms Act at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/unfair-contract-terms-cma37. It includes this one that loads of firms still use in the mistaken belief that it's ok:

"By completing your order form or electronic registration you will be deemed to

have agreed to these terms and conditions."

They all have a limited lifetime.

Nice that it'll still work locally though. A bit of VPN using WireGuard would sort that for remote use. Are there any off-the-shelf border routers that support that though? I only found GL.iNet routers and that's not a mainstream brand. Of course OpenWRT supports it but that's not an option for most people.

Yup.

I have two security cameras. Don't want or need the cloud storage option (um, my internet up is about 60K/sec, far too slow to be useful there) so they can stream low bandwidth to me, and record in quality to an SD card.

The internet was out the other day. And that's when I discovered that it's impossible to connect to these things without an active connection. There is no device name and no obvious ports open. So my whizzy app has to contact [China|Russia|Mars] to get an address and info on the camera that I'm looking at.

That being said, I can't help but think that these things are loss leaders for cloud services. Otherwise there would be a normal port and it would support streaming in normal video so any old VLC-like would work.

I have Reolink cameras. They do have a cloud system for viewing the camera or recorder output but you can set up the phone app to work locally so it just works over the VPN. I've also blocked the cameras and the recorder from making outbound connections. I can unblock that temporarily if I need to do a software update.

Thanks for the info.

Fritz!Box routers support WireGuard and the company has a good record of updating the OS on existing hardware

Do I respect the brazen, merciless, greedy, profiteering hussle on show? This is what capitalism is all about surely, and customers have a choice of not paying the fee.

Or am I outraged that punters get ripped off (ignoring that they undoubtedly agreed to a licence agreement giving the provider rights to do exactly whatever they want, when they want)?

It's a tough one for me. But then again, when you buy any Internet of Tat device surely you accept you're the product, you have no rights, and government's not going to do anything to change matters. So on balance it's respect to the robdogs of IHM.

And with MS about to get in on the act... the days of avoiding subscriptions (other than for things like a mobile phone and broadband) are numbered.

So far I have managed to avoid this trap but for how long? Well... the Grumpy Old Git in me suggests that I will avoid it for for as long as possible. I have managed to avoid things like Netflix so hope is not lost (yet.)

My starting position is no subscription. I want to control what I buy.

Hence Ring doorbells can fuck off.

I’m OK with subscriptions provided I know up front what I’m getting into. What concerns me is when I also have to fund an expensive upfront cost for a device which can only be used with a specific provider - I’ve avoided this so far.

In this article it’s disgraceful that they introduce the subscription after the purchase. I’d refuse to pay even if I was cutting my nose to spite my face.

But how would you know there was going to be a subscription if you bought this (ridiculously expensive) baby monitor 6 months before that subscription suddenly became mandatory?

I am sure a lot of customers* of this kind of thing don't have a clue about how it works, what it does or doesn't connect to, they are just buying a baby monitor.

*Not me, my kids haven't been babies for many years. And I avoid such connected/subscription/spying devices anyway.

One of the energy companies was in the local shopping mall and displaying the smart thermostat offering the firm had. Cannot for the life of me remember which product it was or the energy company concerned but I do remember talking to the saleswoman there. She was effusive in her praise of the system and keen to sign me up. I asked if it was able to run on a closed loop system or did it require a network connection. She told me that central heating systems were nearly always closed loop and I clarified it meant the thermostat. Oh yest that requires an internet connection and a monthly fee.

I said thanks but not thanks in that case, I have a thermostat that works perfectly and doesn't require an internet connection or a monthly fee thanks very much for asking. She tried to tell me about the benefits of being able to remotely control my heating and therefore the usage of electricity/gas outweighing the monthly fee. So I asked what security protections there were on the thermostat i.e. how easy would it be for someone to hack it and turn my heating off in the dead of winter. What happens if the company goes bust for example or my internet connection dies, will my thermostat continue to work? She wasn't 100% on that and made noncommittal responses to my questions. She did say it was unlikely that the energy firm would go bust and I said I was more worried bout the tech company going bust or not supporting it anymore. When I said I didn't want to control my heating when I'm not at home she looked a little shocked. I told her I was quite happy to come home to a cooler house and wear my jacket until it warmed up. I said I'd consider one when it didn't require an internet connection or a monthly fee.

SWMBO worked for the Baby division of the (three B company) that was recently slaughtered on the altar of Wall Street Rate of Return to make 12 C suite folks very wealthy. So I've seen about 14 variations on this concept, all as basic and simple as could be. Essentially, webcam and local wifi connected receiver (whether smart phone app or physical unit) *both* connect to (vendor provided cloud instances) the other side of the planet, before being able to talk to one another. Most utilized the most basic encryption possible for all connections (in one case, when a neighbour had one the stream from Webcam to Endpoint was literally using a byte swap inside the avi format to scramble the image). These things made me rage. Still do, in fact, since I've yet to see one that implements proper security on the connection that streams the audio/video. Basically wide open, once you find the port that uPNP2 opens on the router.

Basically wide open, once you find the port that uPNP2 opens on the router.

Good luck with that with my network..

(No UPNP at all. Router has all the features turned off except for the PPPOE stuff and a static route to my firewall. Firewall blocks UPnP.

> Good luck with that with my network.

But you aren't exactly the target demographic for these things, are you?

Now, if you boasted "good luck with that on any network in the following two post codes, where I've campaigned and helped reconfigure the routers for all the poor mugs who, through no fault of their own, fall into these sort of bad practices"...

> No UPNP at all.

You, me and the rest of the less than 1% population disable UPNP on the router. The other over 99% don't know, don't care, and pay.

Sell people like a one-time setup of say a RPi acting as a VPN tunnel to let you connect to the device "from" the local network and then pipe the feed out to the Internet. Sell it for like $100 or whatever, which is mostly covering the cost of the RPi, then maybe coding up some kind of app that can switch on the VPN tunnel for the mobile device. A one-time, set-it-and-forget-it proposition. Still a kick in the teeth to the owners of the device, but $10/mo and you figure you'll probably have people needing to use the device for at least around 2-years, it's about a 50% discount. And the RPi tunnel could potentially be reused for other things after the little sprog has started learning to walk, unlike this $400 paperweight. And if you plan on having another little gas, poop, and spitup vending machine, it saves you more money. Not to mention the smug satisfaction of knowing you screwed the company out of their subscription fee.

BTW, El Reg needs to bring back its occasional series of stories where animals attack humans. The tally never included a vulture attack, even including the royal family.

Except even if you tunnel it to the outside world, you're still left with a fancy, overpriced webcam that could have been had for $50,-. People chose to spend $400 on this thing for all the other fancy features (such as breathing and activity monitoring) which have ALSO been locked. The entire "value added" proposition that theoretically made this thing worth the high price is entirely locked away. You VPN tunnel isn't going to solve that.

You're a fool then - you can easily get a big HD widescreen monitor for less than half that price, no subscription required at all!

Ah yes, but not while you're "out and about" as the article says (!!!)

Quite why this would be necessary is troublesome at best.

I Have a Sygic lifetime license they keep trying to encourage me onto a yearly sub and the 'offer' to do so 1 year at £11. Wow I mean with a deal like that who wouldn't. Here's me been using Sygic since the symbian Mcguider days...

Today's tale concerns the Miku Baby Monitor …

Shouldn't that be Milku ?

There is a 'smart sock' baby monitor which can check your little darling's life signals while they are asleep.* Not sure if it needs a subscription, but there is always the fear that your lire one will be the one that dies because you didn't bother to buy, install, use and run it. They work on fear, and the proposal that you can be a wonderful parent without ever, it seems, actually meeting your child after birth.

* https://owletbabycare.co.uk

"While they rest easy, you will too. Find more joy in the parenting journey and extra peace of mind thanks to our award-winning technology."

PS: I don't have children, so I have no idea what I'm talking about, but hey, that's never stopped most people sounding off has it?

I bought a few Blink cameras for the house a few years ago as a quick and dirty solution to a security problem. That was nice too, with alerting, live viewing and local recording, as well as 30-days cloud storage of latest clips. About 6 months ago, Amazon decided to charge £8.99 for the same service.

So basically, I've now got 3 useless cameras that I can't even repurpose or connect to a NAS. Landfill.