Internet Outage Wakes People with Overheating Smart Beds
A major internet outage disrupted sleep for users of internet-connected beds, leaving them with uncomfortably warm or cold mattresses and stuck in inclined positions.
Key Takeaways
- Major AWS outage affected smart bed company Eight Sleep
- Users woke to temperature control failures and stuck bed angles
- CEO apologized and promised 24/7 work on outage-proofing
Web-Wide Disruption Impacts Sleep
The technical problems at Amazon Web Services on Monday knocked offline popular services including Snapchat, Duolingo, and Roblox. The infrastructure failure also affected Eight Sleep, which manufactures internet-enabled mattresses.
Smart Bed Failures
Users reported waking up to beds becoming uncomfortably warm or cold because they couldn’t connect to the company’s online services. Others found themselves unable to adjust their bed’s angle, leaving them stuck on an incline that prevented sleep entirely.
That is not the experience we want to provide and I want to apologize for it.
Matteo Franceschetti, Eight Sleep’s chief executive, apologized for the sleep disruption. He committed the company to “outage-proofing your Pod experience and we will be working tonight-24/7 until that is done.”
Questions About Connectivity Dependence
The incident sparked criticism about the necessity of internet-dependent beds that cannot provide basic comfort during outages. Many questioned the wisdom of beds requiring constant online connectivity for fundamental functions.
