Hyperfixed - A Better Mousetrap

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Earlier this year, David's mouse suddenly stopped working, which wouldn't be that weird, were it not for the fact that people across the world were reporting the same issue with the same mouse. What happened, and why? The Hyperfixed Team investigates.We are doing a LIVE SHOW in Brooklyn in September, get your tickets herehttp://tickets.hyperfixedpod.com/Please consider becoming a hyperfixed premium member. Your support keeps our show alive.https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/joinLINKS: The Lever (David's investigative news website)Consumer Reports Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The internet gives us a glimpse into the crazy happening all around us. Unhinged behavior, personal secrets, unbelievable coincidences. It's all one big circus. And the RR show is your front row seat. Each week, we curate the wildest Reddit stories just for you. Whether you're into hilarious accidents, insane relationship drama, or pure chaos. These insane confessions are sure to make your jaw drop. Listen to the RR show weekly on Mondays via your favorite.

podcast platform. Or get your episodes early and ad-free by becoming a member. The RR. show. All of the drama, none of the hassle. Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. And this is hyperfixed. Each week on our show, listeners writing 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, no. This is David Serota. 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. 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 Gillette 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? 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 Logitech. It had a cord 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 happened 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 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, you're scrolling a lot. That's, you know, normal thing. But 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 David'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? Like 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 mouse, like, Logitech, what are you doing? Right. Now, 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 kaput 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 happened. 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 was 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 mouse crashed. Logitech 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 freaked me out is like, wait a minute, why to use my mouse is my computer going on to the internet, talking with Logitech for any reason at all? Like, what is that about? The mouse is mine. What is that doing for me?

If I were to take a total shot in the dark, my only guess would be that, that we'd be that, 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're, you should be able. Right. And like like Logitech, you can break my mouse? Like 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 Logitech's home base. That's what I'm saying. Like, 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 tough. And I'm not, I'm not saying that in like a surveillance way, although that's a whole other separate, creepy thing. I'm saying in the, like, 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? and what would be satisfying for you in terms of it feeling fixed? Would the only thing that makes you feel good have LogicTech 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.

like, we're not just going 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, it's 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.

Like, are they willing to give up some control? You know? David had some very pointed questions for Logitech. And 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, hyperfixed producer Emma Cortland,

realized that there was actually a pretty big flaw in our understanding of what happened here. Hey, buddy, you 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 Logitech build a mouse that has to be connected to the internet? Right? 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 David's was connected to the internet was like, do you remember when he was talking about all of those custom buttons he had set up? 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. So the way you program those custom buttons is through a specific app. It's called Logitech Options Plus. And that app, which, of course, has to be connected to the internet, that was the thing that had its certificate expire. So 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 fucking. out. Oh. 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. Their, like, their mouses were working just fine the entire time. Okay. Okay. 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. But 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. But that just kind of feels like par for the course when it comes to the internet of things. Yeah, but Alex, that's the scandal. And 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, then 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 Things, 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. We'll find that person.

Thanks, funny. All right. Talk to you later. So, 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 90 years, Consumer Report. has been running safety tests and investigations on consumer products and publishing their reviews, reporting, and recommendations in a bi-monthly 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 programmed 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 it 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 now. 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 Nvidia 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? And it worked. And it worked beautifully for, I still have it.

They don't sell it anymore. But it was amazing. My child, who at the time was like 10 years old, could cook, like, raw 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 the, like, the idea that you would have sensors on your cars that could report back, like, potholes 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 Stacey's sitting, it seems like a lot of that excitement has been replaced by doubt. And it's not all unfounded. In the decade and a half since the Internet of Things began to roll out wide, Stacey 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. And 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. It 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 the stakes. 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 working. And that was the weak link that everybody kind of ignored through the venture funding era where we're like, oh my gosh, Google bought Nest for $3.1 billion. It may have been $3.2. Let's all invest in this and go crazy. And they did. And they didn't think about that 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 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. Like 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. But when it 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 as 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.

And that's one of the things I work on, actually, at CR, if I can give a shameless plug, is we are pushing for legislation that requires companies like Amazon or like Logitech to 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, I kind of, when I buy one of these things, 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. 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. So, I mean, it sounds like what you're trying to do is figure out ways to make sure that the user continues. used to have some kind of say in control over the stuff they own. We want manufacturers to be upfront with users about what they're really buying. Like, 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 up front. And then we also want it. So when the manufacturer is 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 a 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 it's like a $5,000 piece of equipment.

And they were like rightly upset. But that's part of the reason why, like, I am loathe to buy technology from young startups. Because who knows whether this company is going to be successful? If I buy it and then in 18 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 20 months. And that was a reasonably large company at the time. That's true. We saw Belkin pull Wimo stuff.

Google has deprecated their first and second generation nest thermostats. We got Amazon killing the Kendall. 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. What a good question. I'm not prepared to answer that at all. After the break, Stacey tells us if there's anything to be done about this. Welcome back to the show. So before the break, we heard the harrowing story of the day the mice died. On January 6th of this year, an administrative oversight at Logitech HQ led to the crash of countless devices all across the globe. And for journalist David Soroda,

the fact that some unseen action of some unknown person could crash a thing he thought he owned raised some pretty thorny philosophical questions. So we reached out to a woman from Consumer Reports named Stacey Higginbotham to talk about all the ways that connected technology has changed the relationship between us, our stuff, and the companies that make it. And Stacey was like, this is all I do all day. For the last 15 years, Stacey and her colleagues have been watching the ways that companies who manufacture connected devices have fallen short of the obligations they should reasonably keep with their customers.

And now she's trying to do something about it, in part because the agency that's supposed to do something about it isn't really. We actually sent a letter to the FTC about a year or a half ago saying, hey, you should issue really clear guidelines for companies that make this sort of stuff to be like, these are the rules you have to follow. Okay. So yeah, tell me about some of the changes you're pushing for in your work with consumer reports. So some of the things that we would like to see clarity on is like when you sell a connected device, you should make sure we call it degrades gracefully. So when you stop supporting it, a customer should still be able to use it for its core function. So if it's an oven, you should still be able to turn it on and heat it up and track its temperature, even if you can no longer use Alexa to do that for you.

We also think it's important for companies who make these connected devices to establish as part of their accounting procedures, how much it costs to keep it going every year, right? And then they should escrow that in case they get in financial trouble. So if you're buying something from a startup, maybe as part of being a startup that sells a connected device, you escrow X amount of dollars to keep those devices functioning for two to three years in case you go out of business. Oh, that is so smart. Then there's this whole other issue where companies go out of business or abandon their products and then lock down the proprietary features under the guise of copyright protection. Copyright law is always a beast. but Stacey and her colleagues are pushing for clarity on what's fair when it comes to the question of ownership in a connected world.

And then we've got our Connected Consumer Product End of Life Disclosure Act. I should have come up with a better acronym. But basically this is what I was telling you about where companies need to tell consumers how long they plan to support this stuff when the customer buys it. So at the point of sale. And then when they stop supporting it, they actually have to tell consumers via some sort of proactive notification. So those are some of the things that we're looking at. Before we said goodbye, Stacey stressed that not every company is shady about this information

and that there are plenty of companies that publish information about how long they plan to support their connected devices. But for those of them that don't, you should still be asking. I tell people to like to ask these questions. Like if you're spending $6,000 on the new Peloton treadmill, you have every right to ask like the Peloton person, hey, how long do you think you're going to support this? I mean, I would want to know that before spending $6,000 on a treadmill. Stacey, this has been such a pleasure.

What a fun conversation. I really appreciate it. I went back to David to tell him what we learned about how a company right now can sell you something and then on a whim decide they no longer support it and disable it. And his reaction was about the same. is ours. These companies need to be beholden to someone about this stuff. Because it turns out that while we were reporting this, David was working on his computer one day, and you'll never believe what happened. They pushed an update, Logitech pushed an update to the app. The way I found out

that the update had been pushed was I was doing an interview, a video interview with a political leader and I was trying to scroll in through my notes and the scrolling stopped working and I was like what is happening here like I can't like I don't first I was like my maybe my browser's wrong maybe and then I was like oh my god logitech right and I like after the after the interview's over I go to the app and there's like this red flashing thing like it was either you have to update the software or but it was like so rude like you're just shutting it down like mid, I hadn't restarted the computer. It's just like, there was no no...

That's crazy. And like, what if you were in the middle, what if you were a lawyer and you were in the middle of a deposition? Like, this could actually have serious ramifications. Right. Like, where's the polite, like, hey, you need to restart your computer because we have an update? It was just like, no, we're just going to stop working now.

That's crazy. Yeah, it's like rude. It's like digitally rude. The next time I have any kind of glitching on my computer at all, the very very first app I'm going to check is Logi Options Plus. Like literally, like my brain, it's now, I've now built a neural pathway in my brain. If anything goes wrong on the computer, first check the Logitech app, because that may be where it's coming from.

That's really funny. And like, I can't even tell you that that's necessarily the right impulse, but like, who could blame you? Right. Exactly. And it confirms everything my dad taught me at the very beginning of when I had a computer. That's right. You know, my dad said to me, you know,

Third-party accessories, third-party devices, anything third-party brought into the technology ecosystem is a risk. Dad, you were totally right. Hyperfixed is produced by Emma Cortland, Amor Yates, and Katzuknek. Our engineer is Tony Williams, and the music is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Scylinder and myself. Don't forget that we're doing a live show. Tickets.hyperfixpod.com. It is in September. It is in New York.

It will be fun. If you don't come, I will be so. ad. Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover Audio with Vision at Radiotopia.fm. Thanks so much for listening. Radioopia.