Can you imagine buying a fridge, an oven or a washing machine, just for it to suddenly stop working after 2-3 years because the producer decides to turn off their servers?

Even if the device itself is perfectly functional from a hardware point of view, its inability to call home suddenly makes it as useful as a bulky rock sitting in your house.

This is exactly the situation where the "#SmartHome" sits today. I bump into news like these at least once a week. "#IoT maker X decided to stop investing into product Y. Users of Y, who probably invested a few hundreds/thousands bucks in the product very recently, will suddenly discover that their smart device is now dumb. No apology/refund is required/expected from X's side"

1. We need a regulation that guarantees proper support from smart devices. If I buy a fridge or any home appliance, I'd expect it to work for at least 10 years. The same should apply to home appliances that just so happen to run some spyware inside. Going after e-waste means also going after those who suddenly turn thousands of devices into e-waste by switching off a single server.

- The smart home still has plenty of advantages if you build it yourself. Don't rely on people who just want to iterate fast and break things when it comes to the stuff that runs the things in your house.

https://www.t3.com/news/british-gas-starts-to-turn-off-hive-smart-home-devices-forever