Hidden tech of the Nest Thermostat
When I was in Google Patent Litigation, I volunteered to work on Nest because it sounded cool. So I spent a couple days over there (they weren&#x27;t on the Mountain View campus) and sat in on some deposition preps. They were being sued by a Texas company called Allure, which was <i>not</i> a troll; they actually had a product that, at one time, you could have found on the Home Depot web site. I&#x27;m not going to reveal any legal secrets here, sorry.<p>I did a ton of research on this space, and dove into their source code. Literally all over the world, companies have been working on this problem for decades. How you know when someone is coming home so you can turn on the heat or A&#x2F;C, or how the utility company can do it for you: all that is very, very well covered. I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s anything fundamentally new about the Nest, and I don&#x27;t have one in my house.<p>I actually stayed in someone&#x27;s house that had two, so it&#x27;s not as though it&#x27;s completely foreign to me. I don&#x27;t think that web-ifying your whole house is ever a good idea and I&#x27;m never going to do it. YMMV.