Dear Andre,
I'm Gianpiero Morbello, serving as the Head of IOT and Ecosystem at Haier Europe.
It's a pleasure to hear from you. We just received your email, and coincidentally, I was in the process of sending you a mail with a similar suggestion.
I want to emphasize Haier Europe's enthusiasm for supporting initiatives in the open world. Please note that our IOT vision revolves around a three-pillar strategy:
achieving 100% connectivity for our appliances,
opening our IOT infrastructure (we are aligned with Matter and extensively integrating third-party connections through APIs, and looking for any other opportunity it might be interesting),
and the third pillar involves enhancing consumer value through the integration of various appliances and services, as an example we are pretty active in the energy management opening our platform to solution which are coming from energy providers.
Our strategy's cornerstone is the IOT platform and the HON app, introduced on AWS in 2020 with a focus on Privacy and Security by Design principles. We're delighted that our HON connected appliances and solutions have been well-received so the number of connected active consumers is growing day after day, with high level of satisfaction proven by the high rates we receive in the App stores.
Prioritizing the efficiency of HON functions when making AWS calls has been crucial, particularly in light of the notable increase in active users mentioned above. This focus enables us to effectively control costs.
Recently, we've observed a substantial increase in AWS calls attributed to your plugin, prompting the communication you previously received as standard protocol for our company, but as mentioned earlier, we are committed to transparency and keenly interested in collaborating with you not only to optimize your plugin in alignment with our cost control objectives, but also to cooperate in better serving your community.
I propose scheduling a call involving our IOT Technology department to address the issue comprehensively and respond to any questions both parties may have.
Hope to hear back from you soon.
Best regards
Gianpiero Morbello
Head of Brand & IOT
Haier Europe
If only they would have reached out this way the first time instead of a cease and desist, their brand getting dragged through the mud could have been avoided.
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Well, how about having a local API and have no calls at all to your cloud infrastructure? Probably too easy and you cannot lock people into your ecosystem.
From any practical standpoint, this makes so much sense.
Sometimes my Tesla fails to unlock for some reason and I have to disable my VPN and then stand next to it like a God damn idiot for 10 seconds while it calls it’s servers in fucking California to ask it to unlock my car.
As if I needed yet another reason to never ever own a Tesla.
My car has this crazy technology in it: You can stick the key in the door and twist and it’ll unlock. Even if the network is down or the battery is dead. Arcane, right?
Anyone buying a Tesla at this point either knows they’re buying a shit car purely for the status symbol, or they’re a rube. Fools and their money and all that
Are they even a status symbol at this point? At least where I’m at they’re a dime a dozen.
Well that’s incredibly presumptive, judgemental and simply untrue. They’re incredibly pragmatic and well-rounded. And relatively inexpensive to boot.
My friends base model kia soul from 2013 has less issues with gaps in the body and awful craftsmanship with regards to interior trim than the two model 3s that are in my family. The same has been true for quite literally every car I’ve ever owned, and I’ve owned real pieces of shit. It’s also been in the shop less despite having been around an extra 7 years.
Don’t know what to tell you. I have zero issues with panel gaps. Nor has anyone that I know who actually owns one.
The only service I have needed in 3 years they came and completed in my driveway while I watched TV. Can’t say that about any other cars I’ve owned.
You don’t.
That others do is the issue.
Hahahahahahajaja
Found the rube
Very mature.
Haha yeah there are other, more reliable methods but the “phone as a key” is also super convenient when it works properly, which is most of the time. It just would be a lot smarter if it worked locally.
…Or if there were an alternative option that didn’t rely on software and electronics is my point.
Cars have had electronic remote keyless entry for decades. It’s not new. Some of them even have phone apps that duplicate that functionality. No one but Tesla has been stupid enough to remove the keyhole, though.
I understood your point. My point is those electronics make it more convenient to use. Would I appreciate ALSO having a physical unlock mechanism? Sure. It also increases the attack surface.
Cars have had electronic remote keyless entry for decades.
As does Tesla.
I will be driving my 03 1.8t 5mt Jetta into the ground, thank you very much.
Hell yes! My sister-in-law has your same year but the diesel version and that thing is a champ. It’s rated at 45 mpg on the highway but she typically gets 50+, even with nearly 200k miles on it.
I had a 2004 1.8t Jetta for 12 years but I swapped it for a Prius. I love the Prius features and fuel economy but I miss how damn quick that my Jetta was, plus I loved the interior color scheme.
The issue you are experiencing likely has nothing to do with the VPN. Network connectivity is not needed to unlock the car. I have been in places with no cell phone signal and it still works.
I do sometimes experience the same issue you are. If I wake up my phone, then it works. So it may be working for you not because you disabled the VPN, but because you woke up your phone and it then sent out the bluetooth signal to let the car know you were nearby.
When I have the VPN on I get nothing but a “Session Expired” notice for several months at a time.
It’s a bit of both! Certain commands to the car can be done locally via Bluetooth OR via Tesla servers. The tricky bit is that status always comes from the server. If you are on a VPN that is blocked (like I use NordVPN and it is often blocked) then the app can’t get status and as long as it can’t get status it may not even try a local command. It’s unclear to me under what circumstances it does local vs cloud commands, and it may have to do with a Bluetooth LE connection that you can’t really control.
When you don’t have service, or you’re on VPN, it may be worthwhile to try disabling and reenabling Bluetooth. I have had success with this before. If you’re using android, it seems like the widget also uses Bluetooth, so you could try adding the widget to your home screen and using that. You can also try setting the Tesla app to not be power controlled, so it never gets closed.
Either way, there’s a definite engineering problem here that feels like it should be fixed by Tesla. But I can at least confirm that, even in situations with zero connectivity, you should be able to perform basic commands like unlock and open trunk without data service.
Can’t you just put the key in? Do they even have physical keys?
The physical key is a smart card. The size of a credit card
If it’s implemented correctly, a smart card or phone unlock does not need internet connectivity to work.
The are a bunch of wrong ways to do that without needing the Internet too. Requiring a network connection for it is a special kind of stupid.
If it’s implemented correctly, a physical metal key does not require electricity or a functioning computer to work, either…
Then you get “Kia Boys” videos. A simple mechanical key really has not been sufficient for over a decade
We’re talking about opening the door, not starting the engine.
Tesla’s implementation of both card and phone key doesn’t require internet connection. It’s all local and offline. Phone key uses BT and card is simply RFID.
The smart card or phone don’t. The app does.
Not that simple. You don’t need internet connectivity for auto unlock with the phone. Only manual unlock.
Thats what I said. I’ve had a Tesla for years. Only the app requires the internet
They come with NFC keys but you can also put has a wireless key fob, if that’s your preference.
I think it could definitely be possible to do locally, and I wouldn’t want a car where I have to connect to servers to connect to it. But I am also not sure I want a car that can be opened with a command on the car itself. The code to access your CAR being stored locally on the car itself, with no server side validation, does seem kinda scary. It’s one thing for someone to manage to get into your online login where you can change the password, it’s another for someone to literally be able to steal your car because they found a vulnerability. It being stored locally would mean people would reverse engineer it, they could potentially install a virus on your car to be able to gain access. Honestly, as a tech guy, I don’t trust computers enough to have it control my car.
It already unlocks locally over Bluetooth.
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Someone tell Gianpiero! You could save up to 20% on Amazon fees in just 5 minutes. Commit to a Local API today!
Probably more. Your app can use the local API then as well. And AWS is insanely expensive, especially if you forget to block log ingestion to Cloudwatch (ask me how I know).
I’m cynical so I assume they are turning a profit selling user data. So the lost money is not from AWS expenses but from not having installed apps to steal more data.
Yep people should only purchase things that don’t require the cloud. Local control is the best.
I’m glad the people with this device are getting traction on using it with their HA, but holy hell this is a complete non-starter for me and I cannot understand why they got it in the first place. There’s no climate automation I would ever want that is worth a spying device connected to the internet and a spying app installed on my phone.
Extend this to robot vacuums. I have no clue in hell why anyone would want their vacuum connecting to a cloud service that won’t be there in 2 years.
It’s damage control, they realised what they did was getting them bad PR since news of it started spreading so they are attempting to remedy the bad PR through damage control
Corporations only care about profits, not people
Oh absolutely agree, but this is where they can use it.
The dev can say that they obviously need an official plugin, and work with them on that because now they have 1,800 clones of an unofficial one that may not be optimized.
We also get to know that our tiny HA community has hit a critical mass large enough to get a corpo to freak out a bit
I did my part and sent them a “do this and I’ll never buy a Haier product” email. Corporations exist to maximize profits. Communities like ours just have to learn how to make it clear to them that shutting us out will hurt their profitability.
I think we should all be really proud of ourselves. We banded together and, regardless of WHY Haier is doing this, got them to open a line of communication. This is a huge win!
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Yes, it is damage control. That’s OK.
The whole point of spreading the word about an incident like this is to get public attention on it, and make the company realize that the way they’ve handled things was bad.
A letter like this indicates that they’ve realized they fucked up and they want to do things differently going forward. That doesn’t mean they’re suddenly trustworthy, but it does mean they can be negotiated with.
The correct response is to accept the offer of working together. We want to encourage companies to be cooperative and discourage insular, proprietary behavior. If you slap away the offered hand then you discourage future cooperation, and now you’re the roadblock to developing an open system.
When you start getting the results that you want, don’t respond with further hostility.
Exactly this. I understand the cynicism, but it ultimately doesn’t matter what the motivation of a company walking back a poor decision is. We take the chance for mutual collaboration and hopefully everyone benefits.
On an individual level, that’s when people can evaluate if they still want to boycott and do whatever their own moral compass demands. But refusing to work together at this point just means we definitely don’t get the chance in the future to steer things in a better direction.
And even if the cooperation doesn’t last, it’s an opportunity for the open source developers to work with the product engineers and get direct information from them right now. There’s nothing as valuable as talking to the guy that actually designed the thing, or the guy who can make changes to the product code.
Even if that relationship doesn’t hold long term, the information gathered in the short term will be useful.
If I were part of this project this is what I’d be going for. Push the company to give you direct contact with the relevant engineers, right now while the negative public opinion is fresh and they’re most willing to make concessions, and then get as much out of that contact as you can. Take them at their word, make them actually back it up, take advantage of the offer to cooperate. Sort the rest of it out later.
Nope.
They’re on the ropes.
Keep pummeling them. There’s no integrity behind this, and going along will just let them get away with their bad behaviour.
They played the “We’ll sue your ass off” card first. That means it’s already in the legal realm, they never even triedto work with the OSS community, they basically said “fuck you” until the community replied, very clearly.
Had the community not responded by replicating the repo 1000+ times, and making a story about it, they would’ve continued down the path of slapping the little guy around.
They now realize they can’t compete with potentially 1000 people working on this, against them. They also fear they’ve pissed off some technophile who has some serious skills or connections. Wonder if they saw a sudden increase in probes on their internet interfaces.
Make it hurt. Let them be the cautionary tale.
Yeah, they can fuck off. When their opening salvo was threats and legal bluster, I don’t see why anyone should trust an alleged olive branch now. The right thing to do was not to send this email second.
I have to work with Haier in my business now as well ever since they bought GE. They’re a shitty company that goes back on their word constantly (at least within the B2B space), and nobody should be giving them one thin dime.
Legal threats come from lawyers, while this email comes from an engineer.
… Which makes it even less credible legally.
Unless you’re getting C-suite level emails saying they’re not going to do it, don’t trust them.
And even then you should be ready to sue.
But a company is a sum of these (and other) people. In this case, it’s a draw at best, not a win.
Generally, an engineer wants their product to work well and work efficiently. They put effort into a product, and it feels good to see people benefit from that work. The ones making the decisions have money on their mind. If a FOSS version of their paid platform costs them too much money, they will shut it down. Not because it was the engineers decision, but because the one’s making the decision likely don’t even know what github is and just know it’s taking away that sweet subscription money.
So?
They both represent the company. The company came on strong all ban-hammery, the news flashed around, his repo got forked over a thousand times in a matter of hours.
Haier found themselves on the defensive suddenly, so they got one of their engineers to play nice.
They now know they have 300k users who are pissed at them. People are choosing other products over this already.
Fuck them. With a pineapple. Corporations aren’t people, I owe them no consideration, no courtesy, especially when they act like this.
Respectfully, I disagree. Yes, indeed this first message is PR damage control, but there is something to be gained here for the FOSS community.
This backtrack sends the message out, discouraging other companies with legal departments from trying the same trick else they risk sales. If a positive resolution comes out of this (A. Andre’s project becomes officially supported by Haier with more features whilst being more efficient with API calls, or B. Haier develops a local API option) then it shows other companies there is value in working together with the FOSS community rather than viewing them as an adversary or as competition to be eliminated.
Nah, this is Haier trying to save face. They saw how the story went, that the repo was forked a thousand times in a few hours. They know their engineering team can’t win, long term, against dedicated, pissed off geeks.
Would they play nice with you if the tables were reversed? No.
They already played the legal card, engaging with them at this point would be extremely naive.
Fuck them. Now is the time to pummel them even harder. Making them eat their words is what will send a message to the rest of the jackasses designing garbage and tracking us relentlessly for access to what should be trivial to engineer features.
Recently, we’ve observed a substantial increase in AWS calls attributed to your plugin, prompting the communication you previously received as standard protocol for our company, but as mentioned earlier, we are committed to transparency and keenly interested in collaborating with you not only to optimize your plugin in alignment with our cost control objectives,
i get it; their amazon account gets hit hard by some plugin data stream, they trace the source and kill it for monetary reasons. makes total sense. handled terrible, but still, i also completely understand getting some giant bill from amazon and freaking the fuck out.
Sounds the solution is to allow users to not have to connect to the server in the first place and communicate across a local network.
Because they’ve probably killed more money from loss of sales through this stunt than they have from AWS fees.
I highly doubt it. Lemmy isn’t representative of the general population, and the general population has no idea what Home Assistant is.
The general population is very much influenced by the Home Assistant community since the Home Assistant Community is made up of people who are heavily into technology. My parents will run purchases in the tech world past me, as will many of my work colleagues and friends.
The general population are very interested in what we do, even if they do not do it themselves. I mentioned to a tech-phobic friend that I have sensors in my bath that notify me when my bath is run and he takes the piss out of me to my face then talks about how amazing such a thing is behind my back, I know because it happened yesterday. Who do you think he’s gonna talk to when he buys his next expensive appliance?
Don’t talk our influence down, we have an influence even if you can’t see it.
You’re showing your bias as someone who’s knowledgeable about technology. It’s not uncommon for people with an interest in something to assume that knowledge or interest is universal. It’s not.
The average consumer has absolutely no idea how technology works, and they have no interest in knowing. They’ll just buy off the shelf garbage because brand name and nothing else.
I mean, why does HP’s printer division still exist if “everyone” knows they’re a shitty company that will brick your printer if you use 3rd party cartridges? Why do people buy Tuya devices even though they’re essentially Chinese government spying devices?
It’s because “everyone” doesn’t know. And they don’t care.
When you said “I highly doubt it” in response to the first comment, what were you doubting? You comment does not seem to make sense in response to the comment. They said that the open source project has likely cost more money in lost subscription fee’s than in AWS API calls, and you said you doubt it?
Then the person replying to you said “The general population is very much influenced by the Home Assistant community” not that everyone knows about it. But your comment talks strictly about how commonly known things in the tech world are not commonly known in the general population (which I think is pretty commonly known in the tech world as well).
This comment chain does not seem to be talking about the same things.
It was in response to the claim of lost sales being higher than the AWS bill for the integration
300 million AWS api calls costs $1.00. If they lost even 2 sales because people could just use HA instead, they 100% lost more money in subscriptions than the cost of AWS api calls
This news wasn’t limited to Lemmy, you know.
It doesn’t really matter. The people who care are going to be a very small percentage of the population.
I mean, people still buy nestle products, and they’re straight up evil.
No one is going to remember this in a week besides the people who weren’t likely to buy their products to begin with.
But you have to remember, that’s true for lost sales but it’s also true for API calls - only a small fraction of their user base is contributing to this high API usage
Right, but I highly doubt the back tracking is because of potential lost sales. It sounds more like the financial people got the legal people involved and they sent a C&D without asking the tech people for a solution. Now the tech guys are doing damage control for the idiots.
I’ve been that tech guy, and I know the general population either has no idea about this occurrence, or they forgot as soon as they scrolled past.
“We don’t know how to rate limit our API or set billing alarms in the AWS console.”
They likely due. However overhead cost is overhead cost
Yup exactly. They just need better responses than “get legal on the phone”
Did you not read the letter you posted? It said a call with the IoT department.
Did you not read the linked issue? The first thing they did, before this letter, was sending a cease and desist
I misread the comment, for sure. I thought they were talking about the call the letter referenced.
From the previous issue it sounds like the developer has proper legal representation, but in his place I wouldn’t even begin talking with Haier until they formally revoke the C&D, and provide enforceable assurances that they won’t sue in the future.
Also I don’t know what their margins are like, but even if this cost them an extra $1000 in AWS fees on top of what their official app would have cost them (I seriously doubt it would be that much unless their infrastructure is absolute bananas), then it would probably only be a single-digit number of sales that they would have needed to loose to come out worse off from this.
Just set a rate limit? This could have been a code change and a blog post.
But then how would they get all the tech blogs to write about them?
Honestly they should find away to make it work with HA instead of the companies servers.
Yep.
Fuck Haier, espscially at this point.
Had they tried working with him furst, they’d have a little moral ground to stand on.
Now the lives are off. How many forks are there if his git repo now? It was a thousand yesterday.
I don’t know about you but I want the companies to take self hosted and Foss solutions seriously. The fact that they are wanting to work with him is a major step in the right direction. It would be dumb to discourage companies from supporting foss.
Are they supporting FOSS, or looking to buy out the project to make it a closed in-house solution and avoid the bad publicity they created this last week?
If they buy it, it’s FOSS bro. Fork it. But until that point, diplomatic approaches may be more effective.
Well I think the worst thing that could happen is we just fork it and go on with our lives.
Why would they want a new in house solution? They already have one but home assistant probably is going to be easier for them.
Not really self hosted. Uses their online service to pull it into Home Assistant.
The spacing in the email screwed up the formatting:
Dear Andre,
I’m Gianpiero Morbello, serving as the Head of IOT and Ecosystem at Haier Europe.
It’s a pleasure to hear from you. We just received your email, and coincidentally, I was in the process of sending you a mail with a similar suggestion.
I want to emphasize Haier Europe’s enthusiasm for supporting initiatives in the open world. Please note that our IOT vision revolves around a three-pillar strategy:
- achieving 100% connectivity for our appliances,
- opening our IOT infrastructure (we are aligned with Matter and extensively integrating third-party connections through APIs, and looking for any other opportunity it might be interesting),
- and the third pillar involves enhancing consumer value through the integration of various appliances and services, as an example we are pretty active in the energy management opening our platform to solution which are coming from energy providers.
Our strategy’s cornerstone is the IOT platform and the HON app, introduced on AWS in 2020 with a focus on Privacy and Security by Design principles. We’re delighted that our HON connected appliances and solutions have been well-received so the number of connected active consumers is growing day after day, with high level of satisfaction proven by the high rates we receive in the App stores.
Prioritizing the efficiency of HON functions when making AWS calls has been crucial, particularly in light of the notable increase in active users mentioned above. This focus enables us to effectively control costs.
Recently, we’ve observed a substantial increase in AWS calls attributed to your plugin, prompting the communication you previously received as standard protocol for our company, but as mentioned earlier, we are committed to transparency and keenly interested in collaborating with you not only to optimize your plugin in alignment with our cost control objectives, but also to cooperate in better serving your community.
I propose scheduling a call involving our IOT Technology department to address the issue comprehensively and respond to any questions both parties may have.
Hope to hear back from you soon.
Best regards
Gianpiero Morbello Head of Brand & IOT Haier Europe
Thanks, on my phone and can’t edit it well right now
Happy to see them backtrack. I didn’t think the backlash would be large enough. Let’s see if they follow through on the backtrack though
I’m glad the threat of being on a FOSS Hall of Shame is effective for some companies, and that they can’t just frivolous lawsuit away a hobby developer without consequences to their bottom line, which would have set a bad precedent against small-time FOSS developers everywhere.
Now their status to me is moved from “Shitlist” to “Shitlist Pending”, they’ve talked their talk so now it’s time to see them walk their walk. Best would be to allow users to control their Haier products from their own servers rather than Haier’s. That will reduce their cloud computing bills from 3rd party users but they can still offer “compelling value” in their walled garden ecosystem as a simple one-and-done setup. Win-win right?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code HA Home Assistant automation software ~ High Availability IoT Internet of Things for device controllers VPN Virtual Private Network
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
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