People wondering why this was designed to need the cloud, it requires a subscription fee. Overpriced greedy product. Its actually a good idea (bed temp control), but too greedy
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I'm sorry, but why the fuck those exist and WHO THE FUCK is buying them!?...
You can feel the smart in these.
A smart bed that can't function without checking in with mother ship? That's the dumbest thing ever. You can always tell the businesses that skipped testing lol.
They crave your data! They made it so that it cannot function without your sweet sweet sleep number!
Its a feature, make the product unusable if its not used as they intend. Take the sim card out of your car and watch it go into limp mode.
I don't have a smart car though, I use a bike. No registration, no tax, barely any regulations and fewer that are actually enforced.
- Invent incredibly dumb device.
- Brand it as "Smart" to lean into Dunning-Kruger effect sales.
- Profit!!
Man, reality is way weirder than i thought..
When AWS went down, users lost access to the app that manages its water-cooled coils, leaving them stuck with whatever setting was last active.
That's ridiculous. The app should merely talk to the device over wifi, if available. The cloud should only be used to connect from outside the wifi network.
Why is everything so crappy?
Because we have webdevs and think of them as devs. They are not devs. They are mostly idiots.
What do you mean? Webdevs are devs, just within a specific platform. And like any dev, they can suck or be great.
It just so happens that overwhelming amount of them do what they should not do - create actual apps (webapps in reality). We could thank Google or frameworks for this, but ultimately their incompetence leads to situations like this. Webdevs thinking of everything as a platform for their stuff that should be working at all times. If they were actual devs they would build proper native apps, think more about how devices actually supposed to work, and rely on cloud less.
What's wrong with webapps?
I get that many could be static pages, but you're comparing web vs desktop. And in that case, I prefer web most of the time. Why? It works the same everywhere, and I can probably access it just fine on my phone without having to get their mobile app, which probably has fewer features and more telemetry.
Web doesn't make sense for everything, but it's far better than desktop apps for relatively simple use cases. If the app isn't performance sensitive and doesn't need to store a ton of data, web is my preferred platform, especially since I'm a Linux user and would likely need to run the app through WINE instead.
Not desktop. Native. You can build native apps for smartphones and pretty much anything. Web comes into play when you decide you won't build native version of what you want. In some cases that is guided by thoughts like "I know web will fit this project. I know the platform and will remember to keep memory and internet usage low", but in most cases it's about "no idea what that startup is about, but I know some AngularJS and they said I can use AWS so that'll do".
Similar thing is happening now with Unreal Engine 5. The difference between devs and webdevs became very similar to the difference between coding and vibe coding.
and doesn't need to store a ton of data
I know by data you mean "data I care about as a dev" but that should also include data that is actually processed and saved on user's device. And webapps are notoriously bad at keeping their caches and data usage low.
IoT devs avoid MQTT and Multicast traffic like the plague.
i heard people got locked in, or out of thier house on thier smart"locks", and also ring cameras were affected because the ALARM SOUNDS WOULDNT TURN OFF.
But even that makes little sense as it should take commands locally and any telemetry should be done after the commands are issued. This method basically says “if we ever miss out on telemetry data, it’s just not worth it to us to give you what you already paid for. “
eh perhaps to collect usage data and somehow benefit from it.
Hahahah wtf is this world anymore, beds getting fucked up because an internet service broke, this is the stupidest timeline.
These are the same people that elected trump AFTER seeing his stupidity for four fucking years.
Here i am with my primitive bed with zero electronics.
I get that the people who buy this stuff might not know what needing an always-online service to function entails, but what were the designers thinking?
Designers were probably thinking "well this is stupid but it's what I'm paid to do and I didn't decide to have a fucking bed be always online". The execs that made the decision are probably thinking "why didn't the designers think of this problem and prevent it? We should fire some. "
That assumes the execs didn't just contract out all the development and neglect to include an offline requirement.
The designers weren't going to get paid for the extra work so they didn't do it.
and neglect to include an offline requirement
Oh the innocence. Execs don't neglect that, they specifically ask for that. This bed doesn't work without a subscription so offline functionality would lose them money
The designers were thinking "we want to force users to a monthly subscription".
So against my preference, we bought one of these. Years ago and it wasn't so crazy expensive and the basic 'cloud' functionality was free. Over the course of the years of the initially decent warranty, the covers sprang leaks and so we got free upgrades carrying us all the way to a generation of the product where they replaced the crappy molded leak prone water mat with decent tubes that seem to be more resilient, all without needing to get in the subscription. As a consequence, I know about their evolution.
From the onset, they were hammered with "phone over the internet control is bogus, add a remote or buttons on the base or something", and they kept responding with vague "we are working a solution". Well, they ultimately did, they added earbud-style 'tap N number of times on the side to adjust things or dismiss alarms". Ok, super awkward and still no buttons, but at least it has local controls, right? Well, I go to try it and it just gives the long-buzz error indication. Turns out the app has to be used to activate the bed or schedule a start time before the local controls will let you control it. When they explicitly added a local control loop, they blocked it from working unless the cloud service said it was ok.
This is not "crappy developer stupidly doesn't know how to make local control work". This is "developer going out of their way to screw over a customer to force them to keep paying for every single month they want the product to keep working".
A shame, aversion to buttons aside, the hardware design is really quite good, quiet and effective and seemingly more leak resistant.
I think coding a contingency for loss of internet connectivity has got to be as basic as preventing Little Bobby Tables from deleting your data.
But then you might be able to bypass the €25/mth subscription on your €3059 mattress cover.
This is spot on. Note these asshats eventually caved and added local controls when customers kept saying how horrible it was to use the phone. The local controls are explicitly disabled unless the cloud service has recently approved the bed to allow the local controls to work. You have to use the phone to enable the local controls. The phone can't do anything locally except tell it how to connect to wifi. If you don't have the subscription or grandfathered in before the subscription, the local controls do nothing.
Well, unless you jailbreak your cover with FreeSleep.
hahahahahahahaha... this is so stupid!
You have upset the shareholders.
anyone who buys a mattress that can't work without being connected to the internet deserves this
good. I hope that whole industry fails. plug in anything is bullshit. give me old fashioned!!!
“Eight Sleep confirmed there’s no offline mode yet, but they’re working on it.”
There's an offline mode after all. Unplug it!
then they will have to cope of buying a 2000$ "normal" mattress. its the same people that bought 1800$ smart fridge from samsung. last december deal we purchase a normal mattress for less than 120$
This is right up there with the Louvre security being connected to the internet and was hackable. Maybe some old fashioned alarms and guards would've been better.
Do you seriously think old alarms were unhackable?
Not being able to do it from a distance would probably be a boon to security.
It doesn't matter if you can disable it by cutting a wire, it's the same amount of security in this case.
There were of course alarms that you couldn't disable by cutting an obvious wire, just like there are smart alarms that you can't actually hack easily.
You're asking for trouble if you bought a "smart" bed that requires an internet connection to function.
Reading the comment from the guy about his bed was a sauna all night from the heat. Did he not just think to unplug it? I mean I’ve never seen one of these beds, what happens if you do??
It will have to find power somewhere else.

They bought a $2000 bed with a 24/7 internet requirement, how smart do you think they are?
Can't just unplug them?
That would require thought. Something that anyone buying a "smart" device, lack.
First time I'm hearing of a smart bed.... who tf is buying this crap? I still see Teslas out in the open and drives me mad to no end.
NGL if you have the money, a Watercooled bed is amazing.
Getting one that doesn't work through the internet though, good luck.
Bed goes up. AWS goes down.