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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when you need to create "employment" because your social model is obsolete.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!
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..
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.
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.
PS: I gonna b**** slap anyone who says "I can't do that Dave."
When you're out of milk, is your Google Glass half-full or half-empty?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
It doesn't really matter what the operating system is if the security bug is inside the software you need to run.
Of course you would. Your name isn't Dave.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
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.
It doesn't really matter what the operating system is if the security bug is inside the software you need to run.
I think that was the point. Other than BIND, what runs on OpenBSD?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Any POSIX-compatible software that you build and run yourself?
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.
While OpenBSD is certainly more secure than most operating systems, running it is not a cure all.
Just look at Heartbleed. The bug affected still affected OpenBSD.
And if you didn't patch your system, you'd still have issues to this day.
The fact of the matter is good security is hard, and requires a lot of work. Using OpenBSD may get you closer to your end goal, but you still will have to do some leg work yourself
Do you really think that the Internet-Of-things hipsters will be writing POSIX compatible software?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Most software on embedded devices is just Linux open-source software repurposed with a shitty UI on top.
It doesn't really matter what the operating system is if the security bug is inside the software you need to run.
You may have meant this, but I would rephrase that to: "if the security bug is the software you need to run".
/ Fuck the Internet of Things, aka "Please let Madison Ave into your kitchen".
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.
I'd love to. In fact, I've tried recently. After installation, I was informed that I didn't have enough inodes free to install ports and system sources. So I reformat with the smallest possible fragment size. CVS repeatedly hangs up. Not once can I manage to download the entire ports/sources trees OR install them from tarball and update them. I'm sure it's just me, only having been programming for 20 years, but shiiiit, you'd think they could smooth the installation a bit. If you can't install and update the damn thing, what good is it?
Just like my house can have as many rooms as I want as long as I build them all myself. "u-compile" software is not for mass markets. Yes anyone can do it with after a serious Google session but that is more work than the average person will do for any kind of software.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
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.
It's not any more work than installing OpenBSD
His is by Ray Bradbury. You were saying? Everybody else on this thread so far, except for the top-level poster, TURN IN YOUR GEEK CARD.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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"?
Most software on embedded devices is just Linux open-source software repurposed with a shitty UI on top.
Is that shitty UI POSIX compliant?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Alas, it tends to be all Ajaxy and stuff. Not that Ajax is intrinsically bad (It can be great), but it tends to be written by web designers who picked up a little code rather than by actual software developers (meaning it isn't actually a proper API using http for RPC). They figure they can implement security in version 2 (which won't happen).
Does this Connected Home of the Future run on Microsoft Windows ©
glassholes are always full of shit
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.
Probably because you haven't had a device hacked.
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.
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.
I see windows boxes at relatives houses and they are all infested with viruses and botnets, their browsers hijacked, mostly not from viruses but from "free" stuff they installed from the internet. By contrast, all the linux machines are pristine. Even two computers in the same household - one Linux and the other one Windows - there is no comparison.
You can downmod me all you want and tell stories how you managed to secure a Windows machine with your ninja IT skills, the average household's computer is like the "house" from TFA.
Your house is running Windows Rubish XXIII instead of StallMan XXX? Poor You...