Hacker News: whichken

New comment by whichken in "Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle?"

whichken — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:40:24 +0000

If they can make it a toggle for Canadian vehicles, why do you need to schedule an appointment in the US? Obviously it's so they can try to talk you out of it, but c'mon, just give everyone a toggle.

New comment by whichken in "Google is killing software support for early Nest Thermostats"

whichken — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 18:54:26 +0000

Not sure why I'm surprised. I'm actually quite surprised Google didn't do this sooner, being Google and all. I bought my Nest before the acquisition and held out as long as I could before they forced me to migrate my Nest account to a Google account.

I understand not wanting to support old hardware forever, but is it really that hard to lock this device down enough to only accept commands from Google servers? I just want to be able to tweak the temperature at night without getting out of bed.

I certainly won't be replacing it with their new model, even if they are offering a reasonable discount. I hear good things about Ecobee...

New comment by whichken in "Geocoding APIs compared: Pricing, free tiers and terms of use"

whichken — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 13:56:49 +0000

That is a very important point that I also was surprised wasn't mentioned. Google offers amazing APIs regarding locations and places, but they are expensive and prohibit you from storing it in any meaningful way.

I was surprised to see AWS' location service wasn't compared in this write-up. They are unique in that they offer both options. They ask when you provision the service if you plan on storing the data. The service works the same, but the cost is 8x. A fair trade, if your use-case involves referencing that data often.