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Australia's Geekiest Man
An anonymous reader writes "Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick? Computerworld has a story up about the outgoing Linux Australia group president's hacked home, in which just about anything from watering the lawn, to opening his blinds, or checking the mail can be controlled through a software environment. Jonathan Oxer is an electronics and coding whiz who apparently has an RIFD tag implanted in his arm that opens his front door, and his front gate is hooked up with gigabit Ethernet — able to tell him when someone enters the property or send him a virtual email or sms to say he has real mail. Apparently the iPod Touch has just inspired him to begin linking all his little hardware hacks together into the one single, software controlled handheld touch device. I wonder if Steve Jobs ever thought the Touch would end up being used this way?"
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
How long until this gets hacked?
Other than having a "one remote to control them all" wasn't this all implemented in the MS/Gates house like... a decade ago.
What exactly is a virtual email? Can the system send him one when he gets a real email too?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Pretty cool. I wouldn't worry about people hacking it too much though since it isn't exactly a common thing just yet. :) I should point out though, that the link goes to the 2nd page of the article rather than the first. :o
Weaksauce as they say...
very touching story... i wonder why he hasn't hooked up a moisture sensor to her gfriend yet? She doesn't have one? that's just sad...
Just as an FYI for anyone considering this, implanted RFID have been known to cause a high incidence of cancer around the implantation area. There's research showing it in animal models, I found out after my pet had to have his RFID tracker replaced (they use this in pets to let vet offices identify your pet if it gets lost).
Apparently the body doesn't like certain subcutaneous implanted foreign objects and cancerous growths build around it.
The other issue I would like to point out is that putting RFID chips into people and treating them as cattle has for some time been a dream of the uber wealthy elite classes. This tracks back to the eugenics movement to present day. See Aaron Russo's documentary "America: Freedom to Fascism".
As such, I would not be in a hurry to usher in the era of slave I mean people tracking.
Liberty.
I was always curious why futurists and cyborg fanboys get RFID chips implanted underneath their skin. What's wrong with just wearing one on a ring or perhaps a chain around your neck? Maybe both for multiple redundancy. Does it really happen THAT often you go to the pub for a few pints and comeback so drunk you've lost all your possessions? Does that slim probability warrant tagging yourself like cattle?
What sort of emergency do you have in mind? No home security will deter a determined malicious threat from entering, but a gadgetted up house you could fully control with a device that fits in your pocket, could create enough of a distraction to escape.
>>Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?>>
I can think of a number of reasons.
1. You can give your key to a trusted associate, for example to housesit or run an errand for you. Giving your arm to a trusted associate is computationally intensive, destructive, and irreversible.
2. You can, for the cost of less than one hour's salary, revoke the key tied to a compromised lock, and then issue a new key. If unforseen circumstances should cause the RFID lock to require revoking, well, bad news bears...
3. Key/lock devices are well understood, hardly ever fail due to them having few moving parts which are almost never in operation, and are robust against almost all unforseen environmental conditions (i.e. power outage). Arm/RFID reader interfaces are poorly understood, by necessity have to be polling constantly, and are dependent on several fragile systems to maintain the key requirements that you be let into your house promptly any time you desire and that unauthorized users be rejected 100% of the time.
4. You have designs of ever having a romantic relationship. ("Honey, I know preparations for the wedding have been a bit busy, but we'll have to schedule your surgery sometime this week...")
5. A diligent attacker attempting to compromise your lock/key interface has no reason to attempt to compromise your shoulder/arm interface with a hacksaw.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
While having total control of your surroundings with a single remote control sounds fine and everything, one thing it will not make any easier is getting laid. In fact, I would dare say that the man is going to find it considerably harder to get his weiner whacked by someone other than himself.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
A real geek would have this lock on the door to his basement.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Known? Implanting "subcutaneous foreign objects" might cause cancer, see the quote below. And the research done on mice indicates it typically happens in one percent or two.
"It's important to emphasize that those studies are not necessarily sufficient to view these implants as known hazards. The data suggest that the devices foster cancer by causing inflammation of the tissues that encapsulate them. There is a large amount of scientific literature linking cancer and inflammation (the National Cancer Institute has some information on the matter). RFID tags turn out not to be the only form of animal tagging that causes cancer through inflammation; standard metallic ear tags can do so as well. That paper also notes that there have been a number of case reports where human prosthetic implants have induced cancers in the surrounding tissues.", taken from Ars Technica
Perhaps it's the world's way of telling you that you should get a job and live normal hours like the rest of us - then you won't be up when the Australian stories get posted.
I'm a doctor, and I haven't heard anything about what you claim. Think about it, we put pacemakers and defibrillaters in people all the time, and there is no appreciable increase in cancer around these implantation sites.
As far as the body is concerned, it would see a little pellet lined with a coating. Many pacemaker housings are titanium, so if this is metal-lined, I do not see any possible way this could cause cancer being the low level radio emitter it is. I'd be happy to review any reputable journal articles if you can link, but a quick medline search does not reveal support to your claim.
and were planning to sell it to China.
The system contains everything you could imagine: in-house tracking system, motion detectors, remote messaging control and web-interface administration, integration with all electronic household appliances for whatever control you could think of doing, including but not limited to gardening and feeding your dogs.
He even got VC supports to build the actual products; but then, I asked him one question: "what about power outage, which happen so frequently in China?"
He thought briefly and said "We could include an fuel-powered, emergency backup power supply for my system."
"Well, when there's a power outage, those house appliances cease to function as well..."
He then thought more deeply and said "Then we must kick in a bigger fuel-powered, emergency backup power supply for the entire house!"
He's now selling household fuel-powered emergency backup power supplies and really good at it.
For all those who are about to make wisecracks about this dude, by all means go ahead.
Just pause for a moment and admit to yourself that you were thinking what language *you* would be scripting the curtains with.
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
I'm not having anything implanted in me. Not that I was a major contender but if that's what you have to do to get geek cred, I'm outta here.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
There is obviously a nanothin line between a "geekiest man" and a complete moron.
Got an implant.... now that shows you're into it.... or at least it's into you!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The fact? The suggestion that it might is enough to make you avoid it? The OP claimed it caused cancer in a "high number" of cases. That was blatantly untrue in fact, there was no evidence to back up his claim.
I certainly won't bring up the discussion on what foods cause cancer and at what rate. Or how much sun you can take before you get skin cancer. The fumes from your house or ground gas might cause cancer. Or the petrol in your car. Never mind fried foods. Come on, there are risks everywhere. Some are smaller than others.
But if the possibility that it might is enough for you: don't eat anything.
I've always wanted to do that sort of thing (less the RFID tag)! Unfortunately I lack the money :(
1) For a trusted babysitter (as if a real geek has babies or goes out), you issue a temporary RFID key that only lasts for the night/whatever.
2. Xacto knife.3. You're a geek, so you don't really go out anyway.
4.Inflatable dolls don't mind or want to be hitched.
See 3.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Only slightly offtopic, but not what I'd call a troll.
Every time I read a story about people implating RFID tags into themselves as a means of "keyless entry", it always reminds me of that scene in Demolition Man where Wesley Snipes pulls out the warden's eyball so he can get past the retinal scanner in the Cryoprison.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
My understanding of "RFID" tags is that since they are powered by the energy broadcast by the reader, the tags themselves can't do very much in terms of computation. As a result, they are limited to parroting back a static serial number (though a long one, or part of it) that's determined when the tag is manufactured.
//in infrared ink//. Sure, you'd need fancy infrared optics to read it - but why the hell would you take that chance?
This means that the tags themselves cannot do any encryption at all.
If this is the case, why the hell would anybody want to use it to gain secure access to anything when anybody nearby the tag with an RFID reader can read the serial number and spoof the tag?
This would be like writing your credit card number on the front of your shirt -
Is my understanding flawed, here? Are there newer RFID tags that actually can do crypto (and are people like those in TFA using them)? I may be wrong in any number of ways, so I'm looking for some more solid info.
"Having said that, I would never implant myself with a foreign object."
Pacemaker, skull plate, bionic ear, bone pins,...?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The presentation mentioned in the article that he gave at linux.conf.au was "Hardware / Software Hacking: Joining Second Life to the Real World". Part 1 Part 2 Slides
But we have geekier people.
Like, say, Andrew Tridgall who at a recent event (linux.conf.au 2008), instead of socialising decided to reverse engineer the Sony eBook reader.
Although the blog post with photos of how he put the RFID in himself was one of the most distrubing things I've ever seen on the internet (I guess because I've worked with him).
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
You say only 1 or 2 mice out of 100 got cancer like it's a small amount.
I'm not taking those odds. There's roughly 300 million people in the US. If we gave them all implants and the same percentage of people got cancer that's 30 to 60 MILLION people!
I mean a N800 runs Linux out of the box and has most of the bits and pieces already available for the remote control uses he describes. And, being not only a Linux geek, but a Linux geek motivated enough to hobble together his own house, he should recognize that the Touch's strength is in doing the small number of factory-approved tasks, but doing them really well, while the N800 excels in doing whatever you want, provided you can figure out how to do it. I'm just saying, it's a better fit.
But when you look at home automation like that, do you ask yourself "how much time a day does he spend installing and maitaining his automatics?"
So, implanted RFID have the same promise as proximity cards did. Just have one card, and open all your locks!
I have six cards now. I've tried to get provider n to use card 1..(n-1), but that's never worked (I guess they sell more cards that way? But then I have to carry more cards!) That's annoying if they're taking up space in my wallet. But if each one had to be injected, I'm thinking this would not work out.
"I would guess most of us are in the hope/dreams stage"
I for one am well past the "take the cheque and fuck off" stage, I've survived the "working single dad" stage and the "middle age disco heart attack" stage. I think the "indifferent old fart" stage is next, I'd ask dad but he's in the "surprised to be alive" stage and mostly just grins like a child.
Go away, I don't have a lawn!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Kevin Warwick, self-professed cyborg and self-evident uber-geek.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Is there a reason why the summary doesn't link to the full interview?
No, I said the OP claimed a HUGE percentage got cancer when in fact they don't. Secondly there was no research done on humans, and mice are not humans.
The fact that 1-2% could even possibly get cancer does not mean 30-60 million people will get it. Science is a bit more advanced than that. I'm not giving you any credit for your math skills. In fact it's probably unlikely they will get cancer at all from this "potential" threat. You are just making outrageous claims from no evidence what so ever.
I would take those odds, they're really quite good, but I don't want to be tagged none the less.
All I have to do is hook all these scripts up to a wireless web server and let hackers unknown take total control of my life! Brilliant! =P
Seriously though, what he's doing is pretty damn cool. It would be nice to do stuff like answer your door without leaving your computer. I'd just make sure that everything is offline and that I implement manual overrides into the system just in case it gets hijacked or the power goes off.
"Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?
RFID tags and proximity cards (like on some cars) are not a good replacement for a key. They do not behave the same way.
We have a modern key-less system at the local swimming pool. Keys have been replaced with a wristband with a single button about the size of a UK 5pence piece (a dime in the US I think). Most of the time they work well. But when the conductance isn't quite right (usually the surfaces are too wet) they don't work. In a swimming pool and the changing rooms, the chances of things being too wet, is er, rather high. A different pool I go to uses real keys. I never, ever have a problem opening a locker at that pool. The key does what it is meant to do, that is, be a key, not a clever, technology over-engineered replacement for a key that requires operator intervention by the key creators to fix malfunctions.
We have a lecturer (professor?) here in the UK that does stupid stuff like this all the time. Gets him in the media. I'm sure he loves it. Really, really sad. Why don't people use their creativity a bit more usefully?
Even without having met him, there's one thing I can tell you about this gentleman with absolute certainty: He does not number among his friends anybody with a warped sense of humour and knowledge of the term "induction field".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
My 2 cents.
And what if there's nothing behind the door until it is being opened?
If you want to hack this together, buy some x10 units (which happen to have web interfaces) write up some perl and glue it to an iphone app.
This shit was old when clueless self-publicist Captin Cyborg ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Warwick ) did it 10 years ago.
Slow news day?
Does that help the gate open/close faster?
No, they seem to enjoy watching the average Joe take a flight with anything electronic manufactured after ENIAC. It must mean he is a terrorist, because Good Little Citizens only bring 4th hand beach novels onto planes. Oh wait. Those could be dangerous too if he has a lighter.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If you thought Orwell or the tv program "Big Brother" was bad, check out these Dutch guys:
http://www.bwired.nl/ for a house that does have a video camera inside the mail slot.
Back in 1998, Kevin Warwick did a similar thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Warwick This led to claims that he was slightly looney :D
If MIX where a ternary (base three) computer, how many tits would there be per byte.
When I read the headline I thought the article would be about this man. My mistake.
Meh, it's been done before - 10 years ago:
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
The iPhone and the iPod touch are both excellent devices for controlling a house. Now we need USB or Wi-Fi enabled thermostats, garage door openers, door locks, etc. X-10 was a cool idea for its time, but it's showing its age.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If you can get anything manufactured at the time of ENIAC (Including, but not limited to, ENIAC) then i'll be impressed. Most of the security would assume such a complex mess of wires and components in such a non-modern case must clearly be a bomb or some form of cyberterrorism device.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
> "Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?"
.. something where you still need your brain working (like a number-code or a password) to open the door would be way more secure -- in both ways :-)
They could kill you and use you as key!
cu,
jan
I have a meat cleaver and i am coming to get your door key!
Chop, Chop.
"Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?"
/joke
Because you'd like to attract women at some point?
stuff |
but you could just have a regular old key as backup. It's just a theory, though. Like evolution.
And gravity.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
> do you really think they give a shit about what time Joe Sixpack
> staggers home with some drunken bar skank?
Yes. Because if they can identify which behavior Joe is going to make next they can find a way to make profit off it. Either buying sixpack stock, selling stuff to bar skank, or maybe Mr. Rich has a grudge against Joe personally and just notifying Mr Police Officer that a drunk is at X can get Joe in trouble.
How do you think they GOT the money?
Kevin Warwick (aka Captain Cyborg) did this years ago. Having a chip implanted for the purpose of opening doors etc.
Jon showed how you can interface second life with the real world at LCA 2008.
Videos here http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2008/Wed/mel8-039a.ogg
and here: http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2008/Wed/mel8-039b.ogg
There is a huge difference between a pacemaker and these RFID capsules and a pacemaker.
First there is the ethical difference, a pacemaker makes a sick person better. A RFID capsule is NOT medicine. First do no harm, ever heard that?
Second, the pacemaker is not injected into tissue but rather implanted in the body. The cancer is claimed to be caused be the tissue surrounding it becoming inflamed.
There is a huge difference between implanting a device in a person via surgery who would otherwise die and injecting a device into healthy tissue into a person who has got nothing wrong with them. If you can't see that, you suck as a doctor and for that matter as a human being.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Appearently sprinklers CAN run linux. And here I've been using Windows all this time...
I have proof that my girlfriend is wrong.
I am not Australia's geekiest man!
www.purevolume.com/martyd
Shhhhh! Do you really want to give the movie studios any ideas and then have to sit through "Home Alone Version 4.0"?
So... his ideal situation (which he hasn't actually manage to achieve yet) is to do something that the security systems in most apartment buildings have been doing for decades.
...because the government or some freak-show hacker can disable the systems to your RFID signature. Effectively shutting you down. No more access to your home, no more control of your identity in public. If I want to be branded like livestock, I'll get a Chinese character or barbed wire tattoo.
Something I haven't seen mentioned is that because this is an RFID tag it should be possible to deny ingress or egress to the property by swamping the radio spectrum used by the tag. That should be reasonably easy to do. Effectively a Denial of Ingress attack. So you could lock this Australian guy in his own house (or lock him out) and he'd have no answer. Short of turning the system off and using a real key of course.
As I said in my previous post, its pointless. Replacing a low tech, no wires, super low maintenance solution with technology, power, etc. Completely the wrong direction. Not even environmentally friendly, the manufacturing costs (including the polution for the silicon parts etc) for the tech version are going to be way higher than for the key version.
1-2% of 300million = 3-6 million.
Down side to this: System detects rapid hand movements on front of TV set playing p0rn. Mr. Clippy pops up with, "You appear to be jacking off. Would you like some help with that?"
Have gnu, will travel.
I've always been surprised that no-one has implemented a bluetooth door lock. While RFID is notoriously insecure, a simple, encrypted bluetooth session should be easy to set up. Charging of the lock could be done either through a battery or through an induction system. You could have a manual key lock operation but in most cases either open the lock by syncing with your cell phone or pass some data over the link.
I do security
At least not me I guess. I have RFID security and devices at my house as well (in the U.S.) - I just don't have a chip in my skin but that's mostly because I haven't found a doc that will do one. I've been searching though.
How many mass shootings in the US have there been in the last year?
With studies like that it'd be interesting to know what other changes have been made over that period? such as harsher sentencing and more people stuck in jail. etc.
Typical Linux fanboi. It all works, but it looks like ass.
Not to lose sight of the point at hand (and forgive me if this was already covered), but if the guy is going to go to all the trouble and expense of digitizing his house, why wouldn't he spend a few extra bucks to make it look good? Those exposed cables and motor for the curtains? The bare electronics on the door mechanism? The above-ground water line of the sprinkler system with the timer seemingly anchored to nothing? It all looks like crap. It might be handy, but I'd be embarrassed to show it off.
Is this only notable because he's implanted a chip in himself?
I don't like to big-note myself, but a couple of years ago I established an orchard and built my own automated irrigation system for it. It's cobbled together using some top of the line soil moisture sensors, a decent weather station, solenoids, flow meters and pressure gauges. I had a mate who is very nifty at electrical engineering build some custom electronics to interface a few of the things that didn't speak RS-232. Because of the size of my operation, it wasn't possible to run wires between the sensors and controlling computer, so I used some small embedded PC's from Soekris to interface with as many controllers and sensors that are nearby and to relay the data and control commands via an 802.11g mesh.
The systems sit in small weatherproof enclosures mounted on permapine posts and are powered via a small solar PV panel and backup battery. They're completely solid-state, with 512MB CF cards holding the Linux OS and code. Data is relayed via SSH back to the central controlling computer in the equipment shed, which is another Soekris board, but has a 30GB laptop hard drive for logging data into a MySQL database. Originally I had it hooked up to the internet via a dial-up modem, but when Telstra switched on its HSDPA NextG network I switched to using that. The increased bandwidth is handy and since then I've supplemented the on-site weather stations data with observations and forecasts scraped from the Bureau of Meteorology's website. I've also added a few webcams in as well, so now from the comfort of my home or day job I can log into my system and check up on what's happening up on the orchard (I go work on it for a weekend once a fortnight) - I can manually override the irrigation system or just let it do its thing. It has a PHP-based web interface that allows me to run queries and stuff and I can export data for offline analysis. E.g. I can plot a graph of daily rainfall over a period (not much in the last few years!) and compare that to daily irrigation volumes.
The irrigation model is pretty cool as well. I use data from the on-site weather station to predict evaporation rates and when the next irrigation event will have to be. I also use observation and forecast data from the BOM website to further enhance that and so if irrigation is due in the next 48 hours and the BOM says there's a good chance of it raining then the system will hold off as long as it can for the rain (why pay for water and power for pumps when the sky can give it to you for free?) If it doesn't rain enough then the system will "top it up" with some irrigation. It also uses temperature observations and forecasts to work out the best time to irrigate as well to minimise evaporation losses - so if irrigation is due, but the next day and night are going to be much hotter than the next day it will hold off until then (provided the soil moisture content doesn't cross the critical threshold).
It saves quite a bit of water over similar operations which is great with the severe restrictions we have on water usage now, but that's mainly down to the moisture sensors. Savings in the last year are a bit more though now that I've worked in the BOM forecasts. I'm still fine tuning it too, and it's going to take some more years yet to get it all bedded down properly as the trees mature and come into production, which means different irrigation requirements that are also further modified by a changing fertiliser regime. I plan on calling in an irrigation consultant then though to help me fine tune the irrigation scheme properly. I'm still unsure on just how much autonomy I should grant the system as I don't have an unlimited water allocation and if the prediction system goes nuts then I could use up my allocation and be up for a big bill to buy more water on the open market to keep the whole enterprise going. (If it dies then I've just thrown away hundreds of thousands of dollars) I guess over time I will continue to tweak it and my confidence in allowing it to run it