Reflecting on the Future of Tech

Our radiotopia colleagues, the Kitchen Sisters, have a new series rolling out over the next year calledQuilts as Monuments Their first story chronicles So their Names, an unlikely collaboration between an African American preacher, a white federal court judge, and a group of rural Alabama quilters Recently, hundreds of long forgotten pre Civil War names of enslaved and segregated Black members of churches across Alabama were uncovered in the Baptist arrchive The Soouther Names proroject is bringing people together across the state to embroider, memorialize, and bring these names alive on quilts when I went to working on the quilt I said now these people can speak out. amongst what I'm doing project is gonna to help us remember It's always good to have a memorial You don't hurt the pers It was something that we owned. It was something that we owned up to and we went away with our history. Maybe will become a monument. kitchen sisters presents se their names Qilts as monuments wherever you get your podcasts This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to by pchiatry. 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Drip it into your water and drop it into yourou I'm Alex Goldman And this is hyperfixed. Each week on our show, listeners write in with their problems big and small and I solve them or at least I try And if I don't I at least give a good reason why I can't This week A story about a mouse that's actually about everything I'm going to kind of ask you to tell me the story of how this happened to you, but before we even get started, are you Like a computer accessories guide. Do you like the finer things? Are you a connoisseur? No This is David Sarota. He's a journalist, author, and podcast host And this is his producer Ron He's lying, he's a gearhead. I'm a little bit of a gearhead. I'm not like crazy, like, but I'm picky about what I find like ergonomically comfortable All right. So like which keyboard I have and which mouse I have is a very deliberative process. Like I'm the kind of person who will like buy three or four keyboards and mouses and try them out and be like, okay, I like this one. This is good for my wrist. I don't know that I've ever heard of anybody doing that. Honestly, at first I felt like kind of self conscious about that. and then I was like, I'm a middle aged person. I'm at my computer a lot And like it sort of made me think about there's this old shaving commercial I think it was Goillette where they were like Shaving is not something you do for five minutes. It's something you do for a lifetime. right? And I was like, oh, wow, that's actually an interesting point, right? Like So it's like these things that we don't think about that actually are like really important and that we're using a lot. and they seem small and almost invisible, but they're actually really important if you're using them a lot The reason we're spending so much time talking about gear is because it's the subject of today's episode You see? David and I have been internet friends for a couple years, but we'd never actually communicated directly. until earlier this year, when David wrote me about an experience he had with one of his devices The device in question was a mouse made by a company called Latchiteag It had a chord because David hates Bluetooth and a scroll wheel because that's very important to him, and an ergonomic grip because he wants to protect his wrist and knuckles. And for three years this thing functioned like an extension of David's arm And then in January of this year It suddenly stopped working And the story of how that happens has left him with some pretty big and profound questions So can you set the scene for me a little bit? Like how did you notice this was happening So I'm working on a series of articles. I'm trying to be with my family. It was still It was still around Christmas vacation. The kids were off I'm working late one night and my Logitech mouse suddenly stopped working To be totally clear, the mouse wasn't broken exactly It still had power and he could move a cursor around But the way it was behaving It was like the mouse was having a stroke First The scrolling stopped working And you know,' scrolling a lot. That's, you know, normal thing Then the buttons on the mouse didn't work And I have a very bespoke way I set up my buttons on, you know, you can customize the buttons, like, you know, make the screen go away, you know, show me the desktop, take a screenshot You know, we all have our weird little idiosyncrasies And it stops working This completely halts the work that Davaveid's trying to get done So he starts trying to troubleshoot this thing. He finds his way to the software system that controls the mouse and begins tinkering with some of the settings, but nothing works And now, suddenly his mouse is just totally unresponsive, like no functionality at all And this David tells me is when he starts to panic He's thinking, maybe I have a virus on my computer Maybe I'm going to have to reinstall the whole operating system. Just to fix the mouse. I mean, it sounds like a little thing, but like You need the mouse for like literally everything, right? I'm not trying to like over dramatize it, but it's like my workflow. But just before David gets to the point of taking drastic measures with his computer, He decides to check one more thing He hops on Twitter, and he types in Logitech Mouse And that's when he discovers that this thing that's happening to him. appears to be happening to tons of other people as well people who are like, my Logitech mouse just shit the bed. Like I can't use my like Logitech, what are you doing? right? David still has no idea why this is happening And Logitech hasn't offered a word of explanation And there are people posting DIY temporary type patches, which David tries to use But those end up screwing with other parts of David's operating system And he still has all this work he needs to get done So even though he's curious about how it's possible that everyone's mouse went could put at the same time He has no time to dwell He pulls out some basic old mouse from some drawer somewhere and tries to focus on finishing his stories until a couple days later When Logitech finally comes forward to explain what happenens It turns out that there's this thing called a TLS certificate, and it allows these mice to connect to the internet And Logitech let this certificate expire Since this happened around Christmas, the rumor that bubbled up is that some person who works at Logitech who is in charge of making sure the certificate gets renewed Forgot to do that and then went on vacation And when the certificate expired, everyone's mououse crashed LogiteTch issued an apology, called it an inexcusable error, and then issued a patch for all the impacted software But instead of settling the issue, for David, a guy who has specifically chosen to purchase a hardwired mouse The company's explanation of what happened was actually profoundly unsettling. the thing that kind of freak me out is like wait a minute Why to use my mouse Is my computer going on to the internet. Talking with Logitech. any reason at all Like what is that about The mouse is mine. What is that doing for me If I were to Take it. Total shot in the dark. My only guess would be Logitech communicates to your computer Oh, hey, we've got like new firmware updates for your mouse to make it run better or to make it do so and so better But like That shouldn't require them to have like persistent communication. Like you should be right And like like loogitech, you can break my mouse. L I didn't even do anything. Incredibly weird that a piece of hardware can stop working because of some problem that's taking place at Lagitech's home base. That's what I'm saying. L it's not like I accidentally chipped a key off the keyboard myself. It's like it was working and then it died. All the electronics are fine. It's like literally the company I didn't know I was in a relationship with Logitech when I bought its mouse And now I'm wondering like, How many other of my accessories, how many other things in my house are talking to central computers that I didn't, you know, maybe yes, when I got the device, it like I signed some thousand page of fine print and now it's And I'm not I'm not saying that in like a surveillance way, although that that's a whole other separate creepy thing. I'm saying in the like a Somebody does something back at the central headquarters and something in my house or on my computer is just fried. Like that's not a cool feeling So okay, tell me what you want and what would make this feel fixed for you. Like what are your main questions? What would be satisfying for you in terms of it feeling fixed? Would the only thing that makes you feel good have Logic Tech be like, Yes, we're taking them off the internet You can update them as your leisure, or is it Just the knowledge. I think I want like a couple things. I mean, one, I want like an actual explanation and Not a shaming apology, but like, hey That was not good. L we're not just gonna to pretend that that didn't happen and we just update it. Like I'd like an apology. I would like to know if they've changed any internal controls The other thing I would like is is just did they Do they learn anything from events like this about how to Make sure events like this don't happen and maybe Critically think about the downsides of having everything connected all the time. Like is there any thought like Okay, hey, that was bad Maybe we should develop systems where People's accessories don't always have to talk to us Are they willing to give up some control You know David had some very pointed questions for Logitech We had every intention of asking them But in the end, we were unable to do that because Logitech didn't respond to any of the multiple emails we sent them And of course, you know, that sucks for David because we know how badly he wanted an apology But it also turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Because once we started reading about the situation One of our team members, Hyperfix producer Emma Courortland realized that there was actually a pretty big flaw in our understanding of what happened here Hey, buddy recording? I sure am. So I was listening back to your interview with David and one of the big questions he had was like Why did Logiteech build a mouse that has to be connected to the interternet It's a corded mouse. he's not trying to update anything, so why does it need to be connected? Yeah. Okay, so it turns out This Logitech mouse actually doesn't need to be connected to the internet The only reason that Davids was connected to the internet was like Do you remember when he was talking about all of those custom buttons he had set up veryery way I set up my buttons on, you know you can customize the buttons, like you know, make the screen go away, you show me the desktop, take a screenshot. So the way you program those custom buttons is through a specific app It's called Logitech Options pllus. and that app, which of course, has to be connected to the internet That was the thing that had its certificate expire The certificate expires, the MacOS is like, yo, this is no longer trustworthy. They shut down the app And suddenly, all of these devices that had been using the app to power their custom controls They just start bucking out. So there wasn't actually a problem with the mouse itself No. And apparently, there were people who had this Logitech mouse but weren't using the custom controls. I assume they just wanted this mouse because they liked the ergonomic shape of it. Anyway, so those people were completely unaffected by this whole situation our mouses were working just fine the entire time Uh, Okay. U Well, first of all, this makes much more sense than the idea that Logitech was just keeping some sneaky connection to these devices so that they could update the firmware or whatever. I mean, I guess it kind of feels like This isn't really the problem we thought it was, you know? Like, yeah, Logitech made a tiny mistake and it messed up a ton of people's stuff. kind of feels like par for the course when it comes to the Internet of things You have it, Alex That's the scandal I think that under David's specific questions about the Logitech mouse situation, there are much bigger questions, like The one that stands out to me most is just Like, if the physical things we own can simply stop working because of some back channel bullshit that has nothing to do with us then What does that say about the idea of ownership? You know, like if you own the thing but its functionality is controlled by someone else Forever Th do you really own the thing? Damn, that's deep All right, you've convinced me. So I guess we need to find someone who's an expert on the Internet of thingsings, huh Yeah, and if they have some kind of policy background too, that would be amazing. because like I would really like to know like, Is there anyone Policing this That is very fair. I will find that person Thanks, By. All right, talk to you later You know, I got in touch with you with a specific question in mind and I do want to get to that. But before I get to that, I was curious If you could tell me What drew you to this particular space in the first place? Sure, I'm a great big nerd. This is Stacey Higginbotham She works for the Advocacy Division of Consumer Reports, which is like a nonprofit version of Wirecutter For ninety years, Consumer Reports has been running safety tests and investigations on consumer products and publishing their reviews, reporting, and recommendations in a biimonthly magazine And independent of their reviews and the magazine, they also work directly with industries and legislators to try and make products just a little better and a little safer And over the years, they're testing, their investigations and their legislative advocacy have played a role in exposing the dangers of cigarettes and the creation of seatbelt laws And for the past decade or so, a lot of their energy has been focused on the issue of connected technology. which is one of the things that Stacy specializes in. I started buying these products Putting them in my home testing them, talking to the companies My family hated me for a while because our house was just a nightmare. I once programmed like this thing. Because I'm silly, I programed like walk on music for when I entered the home, my phone would signal my house that I was home And like my sono system would play my theme music, right? I find that very charming. If your family doesn't love that, then you know, they just need a better sense of humor, I think Well, what happened is at two in the morning when I was coming home from the airport after a delayed flight Yeah Okay, never mind. I'm on their side. The charm loses its appeal very quickly So what's the coolest device you ever tested? My favorite of all devices that I've ever tested was a connected oven that actually had image recognition. It had like an NVIidA gaming chip inside of it and a camera. And whenever you would put food in that oven, It would recognize it. it would say, hey, is this chicken? And you would say yes, and it would cook it automatically perfectly for you. Oh my God, and it worked It worked, and it worked beautifully for I still have it. They don't sell it anymore. It was amazing. My child, who at the time was like ten years old Lake raaw salmon and asparagus together and it would be amazing, right? That's wild. So there was so much potential, like That's the kind of thing that I thought they didn't like idea that you would have sensors on your cars that could report back like Hot holes in the street to a city Those are the kind of things that we thought the Internet of things would be good for, right I got so excited about it But from where Stacy's sitting It seems like a lot of that excitement has been replac by doubt. And it's not all unfounded In the decade and a half since the Innet of thingsings began to roll out wide Stacy and her colleagues have watched countless promising products hit the marketplace before faltering and fizzling for reasons that had nothing to do with their users This isn't just an issue of computer accessories like Davids that suddenly went offline for a couple days This is e readers, stereo systems, exercise equipment, and kitchen appliances that suddenly become bricked seemingly for no reason at all But there actually is a reason In fact, there are two And the first has to do with the companies that created these devices and the issue of how much it costs to keep them running costs a lot of money to do this, and I don't think everybody was aware of that to begin with So when you connect something to the internet you are creating an ongoing financial obligation to your cloud provider And you're creating an ongoing obligation to update the software so it matches with you know, the latest operating systems on your phone and to fund vulnerability research, right? and to update and patch mistakes. So all of these products For every product that you sell or you sold into the world You had to budget, you know, two to three dollars a year to keep it working. And that was the weak link that Everybody kind of ignored through the venture funding era where we were like, oh my gosh Google bought Nest for three point one billion dollars. It may have been three point two Let's all invest in this and go crazy. And they did They didn't think about Part of it One of the popular solutions to this particular problem has been the introduction of subscription services, where you pay some kind of monthly fee for the privilege of getting to use stuff you thought you already owned thus turning what seemed like a one time purchase into a lifelong relationship The second big reason Why connected technology is falling short of expectations has to do with the invisible security systems underlying the internet All of these mechanisms underlying the internet that the normal people don't see, and honestly they shouldn't have to see This is the stuff that you build in just like, you know your Building codes build in like variances and things like that so buildings don't fall down, right? So this is the stuff consumers shouldn't know about doesn't work, you have the digital equivalent of like a building coming down. It's not quite that harsh, but you know, maybe it's a flood or something like that instead. And then suddenly, you see this, and you're like, wait, what did that how did that happen This is essentially what happened with David's mouse. Because the thing that failed in this situation, the certificate validating Logitech software is safe to operate on a Mac OS is something that exists all over the internet And they do experience lapses from time to time Often because someone left a company or someone went on a vacation and forgot to renew it But in the past These lapses didn't feel like the kind of existential confrontation that David experienced when his mouse stopped working Because while it may feel inconvenient when a website goes down or even the whole internet goes down The fact remains that you don't own the internet And you never thought you did It's only now that the internet has been embedded in everyday objects that we've been forced to face the reality that in a connected world where the power of our belongings belongs to someone else We don't really own shit That's one of the things I work on actually at CR. if I can give a shameless plug is we're pushing for legislation that requires companies like Amazon or like Logitech too tell you when you buy these products, how long They plan to support them at a minimum So they can always extend it. but at a minimum When I buy one of these things I want to I want the company to be like, yeah for at least seven more years. You are going to be able to use this as intended, connected to the internet After that, we'll see. We'll give you updates. you know, like we'll let you know what we think And I think that would help a lot of users understand. that these things aren't around forever, even if they still physically work, and that's a really hard concept for people Right, rightight. You used to just buy stuff and it would work until like it physically broke and when it physically broke, you were like I dunked it in water. There's a huge crack on the screen. I get it But now it's like It seems functional and now it doesn't work I mean, it sounds like what you're trying to do is figure out ways to make sure that the user continues to have some kind of say in control over the stuff they own We want manufacturers to be up frront with users about what they're really buying, Lake You're not necessarily buying. The physical device, you're buying access to certain parts of the physical device that the manufacturer can be like, eh, I don't want to do that anymore and take it away, right? That's a very different proposition And we want people to be clear about that upfront. And then we also want it. so when the manufacturer iss like we don't want to do this anymore, that there's still ways for the user to actually use it as they wanted to use it So if you've got an e bike, right? this happened actually, this is a real use case There was a e bike and the company behind it went bankrupt And then suddenly the people who had the e bike could not turn on their e bikes anymore because it required a connection to the server And this's like a five thousand dollars piece equipment. And they're like rightly upset That's part of the reason why like I am lohe to buy technology from young startups Because who knows whether this company is going to be successful If I buy it and then in eighteen months, it no longer works I would get so frustrated. Yeah, but there are, I mean, Spotify pulled support for their car thing device after roughly twenty months. And that was a reasonably large company at the time. We saw Belkin C Wimo stuff Google has deprecated their first and second generation Nest thermostats. We got Amazon killing the Kindle. and granted, Those are less awful because these devices have been in the market for a long time. But you kind of hit the nail on the head, like people are rightly suspicious because They can't count on these things to work the way they want them to for as long as they feel like they should So you mentioned policy work earlier I'm curious if you can tell me about some of the advocacy stuff that you're currently working on Yeah Good question. I'm not prepared to answer that at all. break, Stacy tells us if there's anything to be done about this This episode of Hyperfix is brought you by strawberry. me. Let me ask you something, Are you where you want to be in your career or are you waking up every day knowing that you're capable of more but not sure how to get there? I mean, I am personally not retired and sipping my ties by a placid lake. So no, I'm not where I want to be in my career. 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