Sony Outlets Control Electricity Through Authentication

itwbennett writes "Sony on Tuesday demonstrated new 'smart sockets' that 'perform authentication whenever a device is plugged in,' said Taro Tadano, a general manager in Sony's technology development division. The company also demoed a home power grid that tracks electricity use by time and appliance." This has led to speculation that the technology will be used in some places to charge consumers for the use of electricity.

Comments

Power piracy

[JWSmythe]

    Perfect. Steal some outlets (carefully) from a hotel, and put them at the house. It'll be a whole new world of piracy. Wait til they start getting cloned. I'd bet the power company may have a huge bill for their own offices.

Re:Power piracy

[localman57]

Don't underestimate the power of stupid plans. There's a reason hotels used to put stickers that said "THIS REMOTE WILL NOT WORK WITH YOUR TV AT HOME" on TV remotes, and bolt them to the night stand.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[jhoegl]

OOohhhh ho ho!!!! I see what you did there...
You said one thing and then went all late 80s on your own sentence!

Next up : Toilet scanners

[unity100]

So that people can be charged for use of public restrooms depending on the excrement mass they release.

what the hell. lets just put it in streetspeak :

for charging people per ounce of shit. .............

there is no end to 'charging' in capitalism. everything is privatized so nothing will remain public, and then everything is charged so that some who control the means can make even more money.

its to the imbalance of 85% of population getting 15% of everything to 5% top of population getting 72% of everything in u.s. now.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

reduction of 'public' and increase of 'private' will just tip it more and more towards the ......... well not medieval serfdom, for sure. medieval serfs got 33% of all produce from the land by law. whereas lord got 33%. church the rest 33%. no medieval lord could dream of getting 72% like top 5% americans did, and no medieval serf would accept less than 33%. but americans, do.

Other uses

[steveha]

You might have a web page where you can pull up your current electricity consumption and break it down by appliance. You might find a new refrigerator would pay for itself, or maybe that your old refrigerator is doing okay; either way you won't have to guess.

Also, I wonder if we will ever see "smart" plugs where the appliance negotiates with the socket for desired voltage and amperage. Instead of having a power brick that converts AC to 5 Volts, just have the smart plug request 5 Volts. I think not, actually, because you don't want transformers in every wall socket and DC is not efficient over longer distances (unless it's ultra-high-voltage).

Also, "smart" plugs would have a safety advantage: if a little kid sticks a butter knife into the socket, the knife wouldn't request any voltage.

But "smart" plugs are also just one more thing to break.

Given the emerging standard for small electronic devices to run on 5 Volts and use a micro-USB socket for charging, I do wonder if power-only USB sockets will become common on electrical outlets. You can already buy wall fixtures with power-only USB sockets, and some cars have USB sockets available for charging phones and GPS sat-nav boxes.

steveha