Comment by necubi
5 months ago
> Device Timeline: Your Ai Pin will continue to function normally until 12pm PST on February 28, 2025. After this date, it will no longer connect to Humane’s servers, and .Center access will be fully retired.
> Device Features: Your Ai Pin features will no longer include calling, messaging, Ai queries/responses, or cloud access.
For a $700 device that was on the market for less than a year, that is a not a stellar way to treat your customers. Fortunately it seems there were very few of those.
[0] https://support.humane.com/hc/en-us/articles/34374173951373-...
What customers?
> Humane’s daily returns are outpacing sales
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/7/24211339/humane-ai-pin-mor...
And the results here are exactly why I will never be an early adopter of a $700 AI gadget
A $700 gadget that has significant offline functionality may still be ok.
One that’s dependent on the company’s servers to operate? Almost no f’ing way.
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[flagged]
Do they have a history of lying? I follow their reporting, and have generally found them reliable.
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> We understand this transition may be difficult
You have to be a right knob to describe this as a “transition”
Death is a transition, I guess.
it looks like the company was already "transitioning" - $116M for 200 people in AI, and that nowdays when an NVDA or PLTR employee is $70M+ each. It looks like they were trying and failed to get $750M-$1B just half a year ago, and even that would normally be a bargain for 200 people.
It sounds like they just bought a bunch of patents. I’m not sure they would keep the acquihires from such a… successful product
Where is the 200 figure from?
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I have this regulation idea:
If the hardware requires software that is not available for self service, then the customer is entitled for full refund at any time.
In other words if the hardware is just an accessory for providing service through software then the money the user pays for the hardware should be considered a refundable deposit.
You should propose it! I hear the CFPB is looking for new ways to protect consumers.
Unfortunately the CFPB is in the process of being eliminated.
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Doesn't the FTC regulate vendor-advertised claims about product behavior?
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Sounds like a good intention with bad consequences. It would incentivise operating systems to become subscriptions too. Plus, it would never happen. If a company goes bankrupt they can’t buy back the devices.
I’d rather they were forced to release their software to the public, making it a requirement without which bankruptcy or sales would be refused by regulatory agencies. That way hobbyists could still get them to work, perhaps even launch a new company to revive the old devices (reducing e-waste). Additionally, we could detect if they had been doing anything shady with the data.
I think going bankrupt can be grounds for making the software open source or at least free to make the users whole. Think of it like a liability, when bankrupt the stakeholders can choose to refund customers or make the software available - whichever suits them.
That might also have bad consequences (not because the idea is bad, but because corps will try to route around it). It'll start with pieces of the software not being able to be released because they were licensed from a third party, and end with software development teams being organized into contract shops that own the code and thus (oh! How sad!) are regrettably unable to supply any code after the bankruptcy of the main entity. Would need very careful rules from regulators to try and anticipate tricks like this.
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That is far better; this 'blahblah' that, after bankruptcy legal reasons prevent from passing out the source should not be allowed as excuse.
> If a company goes bankrupt they can’t buy back the devices.
Yes, but in this specific scenario the purchasing entity is far from bankrupt at least financially.
Then the hardware is not a purchase, but a lease (without time limits). And the vendor would have to refund lease payment if it stops working.
If you want to go the other way, a hardware that requires a paid service should be jail-breakable. If the designated service stops working, then the service should be open-sourced. (We would love this on HN but just imagine the OpenSource overload engineers like us would be overwhelmed with to the point no one would try.)
> If the hardware requires software that is not available for self service, then the customer is entitled for full refund at any time.
If a service it depends on goes away within X years (5? 10?) you're owed a prorated refund.
Why is this regulation necessary? You can just choose not to buy products whose future you’re skeptical of.
In this case, Humane would likely go bankrupt rather than pay out the refunds your regulation would require, so it would still be ineffective in protecting consumers.
Why have regulations at all then? Why regulate water purity when you can choose to not drink water you're skeptical of, or why regulate food if you can just not eat food that you're skeptical of? Regulations are there not for you, who perhaps knows better, but there for the people who do not. Most people are not tech-savvy. Most people believe whatever marketing is being shoved down their throat.
An average person does not do or know how to do the due diligence of product validation, and I'd argue even the tech-savvy of us are unable to figure out if a product is going to stick around or not since what info is being given to us for analysis is limited, and heavily watered down.
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> You can just choose not to buy products whose future you’re skeptical of.
I had a meeting last week whose sole purpose was for me to re-describe something a couple times which I had already described in text. And which also could be found in vendor documentation.
I also know someone who seems to think that (almost?) anything pushed on the Internet must be true.
Understanding how products works and what are the risks requires a study. It’s not realistic that a layman will study and understand the implications of the architecture of the product.
This regulation will transfer that requirement from the consumer to the maker so that the maker can choose to create products they issue full refund when they can’t guarantee perpetual software availability or they can choose to make all the software available with the product. It also avoids dictating how the product should be designed when doing all that.
In this particular case, this is true, and in any case approximately nobody bought these, but it's not uncommon for large, well-capitalised companies to nuke products when convenient (Google likes doing this, say).
Oligarchs will say no
Not a humane way to treat your customers…
> $700
Plus monthly subscription.