Startup set to brick $800 kids robot is trying to open source it first - Ars Technica:

The $800 robots, aimed at providing emotional support for kids ages 5 to 10, would soon be bricked, the company said, because they can’t perform their core features without the cloud.

This is Web 3.0, the new Internet, the newer Internet of Things. We’re no longer able to buy products and services, only compute. Fleeting, short-term, rent-by-the-hour computational power from middlemen start-ups who have a product to plug into Amazon, Google, or Microsoft’s cloud infrastructures. When the start up goes away, so does the product, and on comes the next thin-client for us to rent.

It’s cool that this company will attempt to open source the robot’s cloud service, but did it need the cloud in the first place? No. VC’s needed a revenue stream in the cloud.

$800 from a Chromebook with arms is crazy.