This article is full of brand new sentences and combinations of words that shouldn't exist, like beds being "bricked" and beds lacking offline mode. On that note: Why the heck didn't the beds have...
This article is full of brand new sentences and combinations of words that shouldn't exist, like beds being "bricked" and beds lacking offline mode.
On that note: Why the heck didn't the beds have an offline mode?? Can they even be turned off without the app? Because that seems like an easy solution to the overheating at least... This is why I don't want a smart-anything.
It's why I like my Zigbee / Zwave setup for smart lighting and sockets. Even in the event of total collapse of the app and internet infrastructure (such as when I have a router / internet outage...
It's why I like my Zigbee / Zwave setup for smart lighting and sockets. Even in the event of total collapse of the app and internet infrastructure (such as when I have a router / internet outage for example) the smart light switches still work.
Why the hell would you design an application, not just a bed, but any application to just assume you have internet access. Like yeah, a worldwide aws outage is rare, and if it's not mission...
Why the hell would you design an application, not just a bed, but any application to just assume you have internet access.
Like yeah, a worldwide aws outage is rare, and if it's not mission critical maybe it doesn't make sense to plan for that, but losing internet? That happens to basically everyone a few times a year. For some people it happens constantly.
Designing a bed so that it gets boiling hot if there's no network crosses into gross negligence. A 13 year old first time coder could identity that as a problem.
Like so many software platforms, I doubt it's intentional design; it's just easier. A company pressed for time and resources will take every shortcut possible, and AWS is convenient and industry...
Like so many software platforms, I doubt it's intentional design; it's just easier. A company pressed for time and resources will take every shortcut possible, and AWS is convenient and industry standard. Why bother implement an offline mode when you're drowning in a backlog of other feature requests and investors are demanding results? It's rare to find a company that actually takes the time to think through every corner case; most are just racing to capture their market. It's so rare that I'm unreasonably happy every time I find a (usually small) company that seems content on building a tiny perfect product.
I'm quite sure that a product engineer working on this has raised the question "what happens if the Internet goes out?". It was probably just ignored and brushed under the rug by the product owner...
I'm quite sure that a product engineer working on this has raised the question "what happens if the Internet goes out?". It was probably just ignored and brushed under the rug by the product owner because it would slightly impact their ROI. Losing connection to their servers isn't a corner case. It's something that literally happens every day for anything deployed to a few thousand customers.
It's not like they're too busy to think about these things, it's that it gets in the way of their profits.
Right now, with a large scale outage and a news story highlighting their lack of care, it's going to turn out that they probably should have taken a little more effort performing that risk analysis.
And I'm sure that every time a developer put up their hand to ask, their corporate boss goes "that's stupid, AWS has guaranteed up time of 99.999% (or whatever), stop wasting time and get that new...
And I'm sure that every time a developer put up their hand to ask, their corporate boss goes "that's stupid, AWS has guaranteed up time of 99.999% (or whatever), stop wasting time and get that new marketing gimmick in already "
I see this explanation a lot, that the market won't pay for robust software because it takes longer to develop; but when an entire industry has been failing to make robust software for 10+ years,...
I see this explanation a lot, that the market won't pay for robust software because it takes longer to develop; but when an entire industry has been failing to make robust software for 10+ years, why would you believe them?
Generational decay of knowledge is a real problem, and at a certain point people have to re-learn what used to be common knowledge. There's a reason "Have you turned it off and on again?" is a meme in IT circles.
Even hardware companies like Intel are at risk of forgetting what it means to be an engineering company, and the progress of silicon manufacturing is one of the greatest achievements of the century.
Personally I was more surprised there's such thing as "smart beds". I've never heard of them before, but perhaps smart <anything> is to be expected at this point... You'd think it should be able...
Personally I was more surprised there's such thing as "smart beds". I've never heard of them before, but perhaps smart <anything> is to be expected at this point...
You'd think it should be able to function as just a regular bed if the servers fail, but I guess not. Why in the world can it get stuck upright without a way to fix?
I've heard of them in passing. There were mattresses that could adjust temperature and incline for years with remotes, so an app-controlled one is a natural evolution. It's the lack of an offline...
I've heard of them in passing. There were mattresses that could adjust temperature and incline for years with remotes, so an app-controlled one is a natural evolution.
It's the lack of an offline mode that's so bewildering to me. That seems like a major safety risk given they have heating coils that apparently can't be turned off without the app.
I have a Sleep Number bed (because it was a good idea for my partner and had we not had a never ending string of financial stressors since it would have been fine but ugh) and we control it with...
I have a Sleep Number bed (because it was a good idea for my partner and had we not had a never ending string of financial stressors since it would have been fine but ugh) and we control it with an app, and there are things that are weird like my foot warming can get disabled and I have to call their support to get help with it. I can hypothetically adjust the bed from work if I'm logged in. But if I can't log in to my account for some reason the app works via Bluetooth and proximity to the bed.
And if that doesn't work there's a button on the bed to flatten it out. The heat on these runs on a timer so there's not really a safety issue unless you'd be injured by like 6 hours of electric blanket. If so, I can unplug it, and it remains a bed.
This company skimped. They're much cheaper than a full sleep number mattress/frame set, but this tech isn't new, and they cheaped out on purpose.
I guess they saved money on a control panel or remote. I just can't think of a reason I'd want to adjust a bed if I weren't just about to use it or already in it. Do you maybe preheat it before...
I guess they saved money on a control panel or remote.
I just can't think of a reason I'd want to adjust a bed if I weren't just about to use it or already in it. Do you maybe preheat it before you get home, like how people start their cars from inside the house?
They sell a remote, but a control panel wouldn't really be accessible and gets into more of a hospital bed, which this let me avoid needing for my partner. (I'd have lost a remote during the two...
They sell a remote, but a control panel wouldn't really be accessible and gets into more of a hospital bed, which this let me avoid needing for my partner. (I'd have lost a remote during the two moves I've had or just because remotes fall into a pocket dimension with me) There's no reason (and it's not safe with pets) to adjust the bed from elsewhere, really, it's just that this way one person can be connected by Bluetooth and the other via WiFi and independently adjust their side of the bed without it being an issue. You can control the other side of the bed but it defaults to your side. The button that flattens the bed feels very much like a "making the bed, forgot to flatten it" sort of thing. But also a way to avoid this company's problems.
My foot warmer is set to turn on at a certain time, so I don't even need to do that.
I probably watched too much slapstick comedy but when I read this, I was imagining scenes from Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. I hate that these beds exist and failed in such...
I probably watched too much slapstick comedy but when I read this, I was imagining scenes from Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.
I hate that these beds exist and failed in such obnoxious ways. I also laughed at the thought of beds stuck upright because of a computer outage. I'm team analog bed.
If I were a teenager with the ability to "hack" a hated teacher's bed, I would find this absolutely hilarious. Bed goes up -- bed goes down -- bed goes up ---- It hasn't been 7 days, and also it's...
The company has previously faced criticism over security flaws, including a 2024 report that found exposed AWS keys could have allowed remote access to customer devices.
If I were a teenager with the ability to "hack" a hated teacher's bed, I would find this absolutely hilarious. Bed goes up -- bed goes down -- bed goes up ----
CEO Matteo Franceschetti said, “We will work the whole night+24/7 to build an outage mode so the problem will be fixed extremely quickly.”
It hasn't been 7 days, and also it's your development team not you, you probably slept fine on an analog bed.
I know this is hyperbole but imagine cooking to death in your smart bed because it lost connection to its server haha. Would probably be one of the most embarrassing ways to go
I know this is hyperbole but imagine cooking to death in your smart bed because it lost connection to its server haha. Would probably be one of the most embarrassing ways to go
Without servers to verify you paid your sleepscription I'm surprised they didn't deploy those metal spikes they use to keep unhoused people off of public areas. Meanwhile us free thinkers who...
Without servers to verify you paid your sleepscription I'm surprised they didn't deploy those metal spikes they use to keep unhoused people off of public areas. Meanwhile us free thinkers who jailbroke our two grand nootropic AI Blockchain beds are sleeping soundly.
People ignore the escalator rule too often. If an escalator breaks, it just becomes stairs. Bad stairs, but still stairs. Everything you build should be the same, if something breaks it should...
People ignore the escalator rule too often.
If an escalator breaks, it just becomes stairs. Bad stairs, but still stairs.
Everything you build should be the same, if something breaks it should still be possible to operate it even if it's a bit janky.
It’s also not recommended by the manufacturer companies usually, deemed unsafe due to various safety features not guaranteed to function. What @shrike is referring to is often called “fail open”:...
It’s also not recommended by the manufacturer companies usually, deemed unsafe due to various safety features not guaranteed to function.
What @shrike is referring to is often called “fail open”: fail in a way that allows usage (vs fail closed). Magnetic doors are often referred to as “fail safe” (power outage: magnet release) vs “fail secure” (power outage: door remains locked)
I walk up escalators pretty much 100% of the time when they're working so it's not so strange. But my intuition is that if it's not running it's probably broken in some way, and if it's broken in...
I walk up escalators pretty much 100% of the time when they're working so it's not so strange. But my intuition is that if it's not running it's probably broken in some way, and if it's broken in some way it may be possible it could slip and hurt me.
No not just you. My brain knows it's not moving but anticipated it anyway so with some unnecessary additional forward momentum I semi awkwardly step on it. It feels off every time.
No not just you. My brain knows it's not moving but anticipated it anyway so with some unnecessary additional forward momentum I semi awkwardly step on it. It feels off every time.
The Register had a few, such as the (not essential for use) monitoring for LitterRobots. And Philips Hue lightbulbs and such. I heard some restaurants were impacted, because Toast powers their...
The Register had a few, such as the (not essential for use) monitoring for LitterRobots. And Philips Hue lightbulbs and such.
I heard some restaurants were impacted, because Toast powers their point of sale. Presumably other tablet based PoS solutions may have also been at risk.
Feeling pretty good about my company's multi-region strategy and incident response practices now lol.
Aren't Hue bulbs on Zigbee? I guess the app not working when you're away from home during the outage makes sense but I was controlling mine totally fine the whole time (though it was already well...
the Hue bulbs a collection of dumb glass
Aren't Hue bulbs on Zigbee? I guess the app not working when you're away from home during the outage makes sense but I was controlling mine totally fine the whole time (though it was already well underway by the time I woke up, maybe it'd been partially fixed).
This article is full of brand new sentences and combinations of words that shouldn't exist, like beds being "bricked" and beds lacking offline mode.
On that note: Why the heck didn't the beds have an offline mode?? Can they even be turned off without the app? Because that seems like an easy solution to the overheating at least... This is why I don't want a smart-anything.
Frankly, at this point if I see "smart" in the marketing for a product - it's an immediate red flag to me.
Sometimes it's hard to avoid.
Keeping it off the network is always an option.
It's why I like my Zigbee / Zwave setup for smart lighting and sockets. Even in the event of total collapse of the app and internet infrastructure (such as when I have a router / internet outage for example) the smart light switches still work.
Don't forget that the beds require a subscription, and send gigabytes of data back to the company.
This is a product for stupid people right? Right!?
Seems like, I don't know, unplugging it would do so.
Apparently unplugging it takes a special kind of person.
I thought for sure that the third and fourth people to enter the scene were also going to join whatever was happening on the keyboard.
Now that would just be ridiculous. It's hard enough fitting two people on that keyboard, let alone three or four.
Why the hell would you design an application, not just a bed, but any application to just assume you have internet access.
Like yeah, a worldwide aws outage is rare, and if it's not mission critical maybe it doesn't make sense to plan for that, but losing internet? That happens to basically everyone a few times a year. For some people it happens constantly.
Designing a bed so that it gets boiling hot if there's no network crosses into gross negligence. A 13 year old first time coder could identity that as a problem.
Like so many software platforms, I doubt it's intentional design; it's just easier. A company pressed for time and resources will take every shortcut possible, and AWS is convenient and industry standard. Why bother implement an offline mode when you're drowning in a backlog of other feature requests and investors are demanding results? It's rare to find a company that actually takes the time to think through every corner case; most are just racing to capture their market. It's so rare that I'm unreasonably happy every time I find a (usually small) company that seems content on building a tiny perfect product.
I'm quite sure that a product engineer working on this has raised the question "what happens if the Internet goes out?". It was probably just ignored and brushed under the rug by the product owner because it would slightly impact their ROI. Losing connection to their servers isn't a corner case. It's something that literally happens every day for anything deployed to a few thousand customers.
It's not like they're too busy to think about these things, it's that it gets in the way of their profits.
Right now, with a large scale outage and a news story highlighting their lack of care, it's going to turn out that they probably should have taken a little more effort performing that risk analysis.
And I'm sure that every time a developer put up their hand to ask, their corporate boss goes "that's stupid, AWS has guaranteed up time of 99.999% (or whatever), stop wasting time and get that new marketing gimmick in already "
I see this explanation a lot, that the market won't pay for robust software because it takes longer to develop; but when an entire industry has been failing to make robust software for 10+ years, why would you believe them?
Generational decay of knowledge is a real problem, and at a certain point people have to re-learn what used to be common knowledge. There's a reason "Have you turned it off and on again?" is a meme in IT circles.
Even hardware companies like Intel are at risk of forgetting what it means to be an engineering company, and the progress of silicon manufacturing is one of the greatest achievements of the century.
Personally I was more surprised there's such thing as "smart beds". I've never heard of them before, but perhaps smart <anything> is to be expected at this point...
You'd think it should be able to function as just a regular bed if the servers fail, but I guess not. Why in the world can it get stuck upright without a way to fix?
I've heard of them in passing. There were mattresses that could adjust temperature and incline for years with remotes, so an app-controlled one is a natural evolution.
It's the lack of an offline mode that's so bewildering to me. That seems like a major safety risk given they have heating coils that apparently can't be turned off without the app.
I have a Sleep Number bed (because it was a good idea for my partner and had we not had a never ending string of financial stressors since it would have been fine but ugh) and we control it with an app, and there are things that are weird like my foot warming can get disabled and I have to call their support to get help with it. I can hypothetically adjust the bed from work if I'm logged in. But if I can't log in to my account for some reason the app works via Bluetooth and proximity to the bed.
And if that doesn't work there's a button on the bed to flatten it out. The heat on these runs on a timer so there's not really a safety issue unless you'd be injured by like 6 hours of electric blanket. If so, I can unplug it, and it remains a bed.
This company skimped. They're much cheaper than a full sleep number mattress/frame set, but this tech isn't new, and they cheaped out on purpose.
I guess they saved money on a control panel or remote.
I just can't think of a reason I'd want to adjust a bed if I weren't just about to use it or already in it. Do you maybe preheat it before you get home, like how people start their cars from inside the house?
They sell a remote, but a control panel wouldn't really be accessible and gets into more of a hospital bed, which this let me avoid needing for my partner. (I'd have lost a remote during the two moves I've had or just because remotes fall into a pocket dimension with me) There's no reason (and it's not safe with pets) to adjust the bed from elsewhere, really, it's just that this way one person can be connected by Bluetooth and the other via WiFi and independently adjust their side of the bed without it being an issue. You can control the other side of the bed but it defaults to your side. The button that flattens the bed feels very much like a "making the bed, forgot to flatten it" sort of thing. But also a way to avoid this company's problems.
My foot warmer is set to turn on at a certain time, so I don't even need to do that.
I probably watched too much slapstick comedy but when I read this, I was imagining scenes from Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.
I hate that these beds exist and failed in such obnoxious ways. I also laughed at the thought of beds stuck upright because of a computer outage. I'm team analog bed.
If I were a teenager with the ability to "hack" a hated teacher's bed, I would find this absolutely hilarious. Bed goes up -- bed goes down -- bed goes up ----
It hasn't been 7 days, and also it's your development team not you, you probably slept fine on an analog bed.
I know this is hyperbole but imagine cooking to death in your smart bed because it lost connection to its server haha. Would probably be one of the most embarrassing ways to go
Without servers to verify you paid your sleepscription I'm surprised they didn't deploy those metal spikes they use to keep unhoused people off of public areas. Meanwhile us free thinkers who jailbroke our two grand nootropic AI Blockchain beds are sleeping soundly.
Imagine reading this comment 20 years ago.
The beauty part is that it heats via waste energy from proof of work calculations, year-round, whether you want heat or not.
Like this case when the cooking fail offline, it just heats!
People ignore the escalator rule too often.
If an escalator breaks, it just becomes stairs. Bad stairs, but still stairs.
Everything you build should be the same, if something breaks it should still be possible to operate it even if it's a bit janky.
The Mitch Hedberg rule. "Escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
I used to listen to Mitch Hedberg. I still do, but I also used to.
Stepping on a stopped escalator to climb it manually weirds out my brain. It feels so wrong.
It’s also not recommended by the manufacturer companies usually, deemed unsafe due to various safety features not guaranteed to function.
What @shrike is referring to is often called “fail open”: fail in a way that allows usage (vs fail closed). Magnetic doors are often referred to as “fail safe” (power outage: magnet release) vs “fail secure” (power outage: door remains locked)
I walk up escalators pretty much 100% of the time when they're working so it's not so strange. But my intuition is that if it's not running it's probably broken in some way, and if it's broken in some way it may be possible it could slip and hurt me.
For me I think my brain expects the stair I step on to be moving, and if it isn't I get this weird feeling. Probably just me, lol
No not just you. My brain knows it's not moving but anticipated it anyway so with some unnecessary additional forward momentum I semi awkwardly step on it. It feels off every time.
...mechanically-locked escalators can be safe, but you don't want to be on one when it fails: things can get gruesome fast...
Alright, I'm curious so I'll just leave this query here: does anyone know of any other really weird things impacted from the AWS outage like this?
The Register had a few, such as the (not essential for use) monitoring for LitterRobots. And Philips Hue lightbulbs and such.
I heard some restaurants were impacted, because Toast powers their point of sale. Presumably other tablet based PoS solutions may have also been at risk.
Feeling pretty good about my company's multi-region strategy and incident response practices now lol.
Aren't Hue bulbs on Zigbee? I guess the app not working when you're away from home during the outage makes sense but I was controlling mine totally fine the whole time (though it was already well underway by the time I woke up, maybe it'd been partially fixed).
If you're away from home or you never put your phone on your wifi (which apparently some people do)
I'd also love to know.