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The Nightmare On Connected Home Street
theodp (442580) writes With the battle for the connected home underway, Wired's Mat Honan offered his humorous and scary Friday the 13th take on what life in the connected home of the future might be like. "I wake up at four to some old-timey dubstep spewing from my pillows," Honan begins. "The lights are flashing. My alarm clock is blasting Skrillex or Deadmau5 or something, I don't know. I never listened to dubstep, and in fact the entire genre is on my banned list. You see, my house has a virus again. Technically it's malware. But there's no patch yet, and pretty much everyone's got it. Homes up and down the block are lit up, even at this early hour. Thankfully this one is fairly benign. It sets off the alarm with music I blacklisted decades ago on Pandora. It takes a picture of me as I get out of the shower every morning and uploads it to Facebook. No big deal." Having been the victim of an epic hacking, Honan can't be faulted for worrying.
Better return that USB Fleshlight
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
when you need to create "employment" because your social model is obsolete.
We don't need people to work on useless things anymore. We have technology and resources to allow for a livable lifestyle for everyone with far less work than before.
But we "must" all work! Work work work! But what's actually left to do?
Nothing! So let's make stuff up! Quick! Universities must ramp up new courses! Textbooks shall be written (and re-written!)! Employers shall demand decades of experience!
For crying out loud, it doesn't matter if it's your PC, a server, a toaster, or your goddamn huose. If you want to avoid viruses and computer worms and malware, just do the smart thing and run OpenBSD. OpenBSD is as secure as you're ever going to hope to get when it comes to an operating system. If OpenBSD isn't secure enough for you, then you're pretty much shit out of luck, son. OpenBSD is the epitome of operating system security. You don't want your automated digital house playing shitty music? Run OpenBSD. You don't want your automated digital house spewing sewage out of the toilets and the kitchen sink? Run OpenBSD.
The internet of things is nothing but a marketers (and hackers) wet dream. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - there is no reason what so ever for each device to be directly connected to the internet, or have internet access, for that matter. The refrigerator doesn't need access to the internet, neither does the washer and drier, toaster, or even the thermostat. One home router and a single control unit is all that's needed, or both in one unit. Let that control your food, soap and dryer sheet inventory. Each unit can tell the control system when a unit of measure is used, and it can keep track. Access to the internet is limited to that one device and there aren't 20 different ways to hack into my network. Of course, this will never fly. Each manufacturer will want to hold the patents on the standards, so they can charge for what should be a free and open standard. No one will ever play nicely so the general public can benefit rather than the elite corporations.
Fuck them, I'm glad I have the skills and knowledge to do this on my own, without all their patent encumbered, insecure crap. Of course, my washer and drier, refrigerator and oven will remain dumb, as they should.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
I agree, I don't want to get bobbitted.
Seems a bit overly paranoid. I've never had a device that I couldn't get it to switch languages, adjust the volume or disable/reset a function (house telling you to exercise). I have no interest in networking the houses primary utilities (door locks, dish/cloths washer, lights, electricity, fridge, HVAC, etc) but some secondary functions (exterior security cameras, temperature/water sensors, etc) would be fine as long as they are not in any way connected to the primaries. Technology is great, but until we figure out device security it shouldn't be integrated too deeply into our lives.
Amen, brother! Amen, amen, AMEN!
I've had to see through so many meetings now where some hipster dickweeds keep going on about the 'Internet of Things'. It is all so very tedious. It's just like three or four years ago, when they wouldn't shut the hell up about NoSQL. They said it would 'change the world' and we'd have to get rid of all of our real DB systems. MongoDB! Cassandra! Redis! They couldn't go 10 minutes without dropping one of those names, even when we were talking about rugby during lunch. And then they were proven wrong. Those technologies faltered and withered.
And it's just like four years before that, when these same hipsters had stiff, raging hard-ons for Ruby on Rails. It would 'change the world', they told us. We'd have to get rid of all of our web apps written in Java, PHP and Perl. Ruby! Ruby on Rails! DHH! Zed Shaw! Mongrel! The name dropping was maybe even worse than it would be for NoSQL. I couldn't go an entire work day without hearing some hipster verbally ooze lustful and quasi-erotic feelings for Zed Shaw. And then they were proven wrong. Those technologies faltered and withered.
The 'Internet of Things' is following the same pattern, and the outcome will be the same. The hipsters get excited about something stupid, the hipsters won't shut up about it, reality sets in, and their obsession becomes irrelevant when there's none of their hype surrounding it.
If my refrigerator isn't connected to the Internet, how will it automatically update my Facebook and tell everyone I'm out of milk?!
LUDDITE U JUST DONT UNDERSTAND GOOGLE GLASS
I MEAN GOOGLE FRIJ
You know, if there comes some soft rains, what will the house do?
It doesn't matter if we WANT a "connected home". We are going to have it, like it or not. In a couple decades, it will be impossible to buy an appliance that isn't "connected'. Connectivity will cost less than whatever the marketing companies will pay to track our habits, and all devices will include connectivity by default. We likely won't even be able to buy unconnected devices, because economies of scale will not exist to make them affordable.
That the house will run off an OS that runs on a Prom, with updates delivered by drone. If it gets infected reboot it.
This book has a fascinating idea that just might solve this problem. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you do (it's free!)
http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Mat Honan is no stranger to this kind of stuff and I'm really tired of hearing what he has to say. The thing that soured me was when he stuck his phone in his back pocket, sat on it in a taxicab, and the screen cracked...and promptly whined to someone else at Wired and had them write a whole article about phone glass to justify that it wasn't his fault that he plopped his ass down on his phone and busted the screen. This guy seems to blunder constantly and then blames all of the things that happened on someone else.
This level of paranoia implies that all of your appliances and devices are going to magically connect to the internet all by themselves.
I've got a smart TV. Guess what? I just don't let it connect to any wifi networks. Problem solved. As to other devices? Just don't buy them. The "pillow" described above? It has speakers. Speakers have wires going to them. Wires that can be cut. Problem solved.
These days there really should be a basic computer networking class that everyone has to take. If there were then people would know how to fix these problems themselves. Lockdown your LAN and make sure you keep your wireless device software up to date with super strong passwords, if you really need to have wireless.
Amen, brother! Amen, amen, AMEN!
I've had to see through so many meetings now where some hipster dickweeds keep going on about the 'Internet of Things'. It is all so very tedious. It's just like three or four years ago, when they wouldn't shut the hell up about NoSQL. They said it would 'change the world' and we'd have to get rid of all of our real DB systems. MongoDB! Cassandra! Redis! They couldn't go 10 minutes without dropping one of those names, even when we were talking about rugby during lunch. And then they were proven wrong. Those technologies faltered and withered.
NoSQL technology did not falter or wither, it's stronger and more popular than ever and works quite well in certain circumstances. NoSQL didn't replace relational databases, but when used appropriately, it does exactly what it's supposed to.
You see, my house has a virus again. Technically it’s malware. But there’s no patch yet...
a) Do not let a Windows machine control your hose. US Navy tried that. Bad idea.
b) Going by the past history there won't be a patch from Microsoft. Wait for a third-party A/V software to come out with a fix.
It will be required for your refrigerator to refrige, for your washing machine to wash, etc.
Already you can see this in blu-ray players, which if you don't let them connect online, will soon stop playing any new movie.
It'll be a requirement, not an option. And people will eat it up, because they always do.
I wish it was 'hipsters'. I see in my company 50-60 year old men jumping up and down about it. Course it is phone company.... and they are drooling over 1 cell modem in every object.
I think they are on version 5 of a project I started nearly 10 years ago. Ground up re-write as the last one 'was not very good' and the current project are 'the brightest and best' and 2 years behind. They do not understand the market. I tell them what they are doing wrong. But they want to sell 2 million units yesterday.
Honestly, no one cares about what state the lights in your bedroom are. They have a switch on the wall right next to the door. They do not need a remote control for it and a giant light bulb to say if it is on or off.
Most things at this point that needed a remote control have it. Its not like VCR's and TVs with them are a new thing. If there was a serious market for a remote control for your fridge they would already have it.
The 'internet of things' (I want to slap the guy who invented the term and I know who it is) is about connecting things that do not really need it. He took my project and decided everything could be connected up with it. It was just another industrial protocol. The whole reason he invented the term was to sell data lines and modems.
Oh and security? After thought.
The Nightmare On Connected Home Street
Connected Home Street itself is already a nightmare.
Swift? You're sure they didn't mean the European currency exchange and clearing mechanism? It's as old as I am. (Well, not quite. Nothing's that old.) But it's definitely old enough that you can have six years' experience a few times over.
The biggest problem I anticipate this winter is having to crawl from my nice electrically-heated sleeping area out to the wood stove and get it fired up. Moving to the boondocks *does* have some advantages. I don't expect my electric heater or my stove to be playing dubstep anytime soon. My PC is actually hooked to cable internet (we ain't off-grid), but everything else is vintage 1978, and I intend to keep it that way.
1. The poem is actually be Sara Teasdale but was used in Bradbury's short story of the same name. 2. The subset of people who didn't at least think about Bradbury turns in their cards.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Does this Connected Home of the Future run on Microsoft Windows ©
you play your movies from a plastic disk? wow, just like grandpa's LPs? yet they require internet to authorize them?
why don't you just get your movies from the internet anyway?
The only way one could have that much experience with Apple Swift is to have worked at Apple on the Swift team. It's code for "We want to poach somebody from Apple." I know Apple HQ is in a state with a public policy against covenants not to compete, but that still leaves an opportunity for Apple to try a legal theory of inevitable disclosure.
It won't help. Too much is already under control of remote vendors. Google/Apple and the carrier can muck with your cell phone. Your telco can muck with your router. Your cable provider can muck with your cable box, and maybe your TV. So can your TV vendor. Your game machine is a slave to its vendor and the game providers. Your TV, computers, and Kinect may be watching you right now. Your remote-based security system definitely is.
You don't control any of this stuff. Even if you run Ubuntu, it's always asking to install new stuff.
It will take your females.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
This is how it will happen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
just use 1.1.1.1 for gateway
I refuse to build a Connected Home without Free Software. Imagine the security nightmares of SCADA and consumer electronics, together at last.
This has to apply to the drivers and the peripheral firmware, too, because the Linux kernel has its own vulnerabilities.
Have a nice time.
Amusing to sit on the sidelines and watch the marketeers at work pushing garbage nobody is predisposed to care about in the first place.
Apparently they refuse to understand home automation offers very little in the way of actual benefits to user where novelty of gimmick ridden ... "look ma I can flush my toilet from my iphone" ... get old quicker than 3-D glasses needed to view overpriced blue ray movies.
Gimmicks are the turd left behind when you are unwilling or unable to provide actual value to the consumer.
Your house is running Windows Rubish XXIII instead of StallMan XXX? Poor You...
NoSQL was invented back in the 1980s.
We called it 'Berkeley DB'. It's used to index files for fast lookup. Sun Microsystems' Yellow Pages - oh, sorry, Network Information System, AKA YP/NIS - used it extensively.
Get over yourselves.