The Real SkyNet
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Well we'll need better architected systems in any case. Latency between nodes makes thinking hard and delayed...
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Our homes have smart thermostats, smart appliances, smart door locks, even smart light bulbs.
Not "our" homes, I never saw any of these "smart" stuff around here, and I doubt I'll ever see. The cost/benefit ratio of them is too high for this fad to ever get out of the richest countries on the planet.
Except for smart TVs, they are selling that shit here, but with my Chromecast I don't see the point in a TV that show ads.
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@fbmac said in The Real SkyNet:
I don't see the point in a TV that show ads.
Or that reports everything you do with it to its manufacturer, or that can be hacked by some script kiddie out to vandalise stuff. I got a new TV recently, and deliberately turned its network off entirely because I don’t see why some foreign company needs to know anything at all about my viewing habits. (I did consider trying to find out what IP addresses it phones home to so I could block them in my router, but that turned out to be far more difficult than I was willing to put the effort into. Since I have an Apple TV for my streaming needs and a tablet nearby for quick internet access, I also don’t need any of the other “smart” features that the TV requires a network for.)
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@Gurth said in The Real SkyNet:
Or that reports everything you do with it to its manufacturer
That reminds me, I've wanted to log the network traffic between my TV and the internet for a while. I think I managed to turn off all spyware "features" (thankfully, Android TV is not nearly as bad as Samsung's shitty spyware), but I should probably make sure.
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@Gurth said in The Real SkyNet:
I got a new TV recently, and deliberately turned its network off entirely because I don’t see why some foreign company needs to know anything at all about my viewing habits.
You know, I thought that, too. That is, until I realized this kind of data would prevent TV shows like Cavemen from ever making it past someone's shower thoughts.
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The internet of things will eventually kill everyone stupid enough to buy IoT shit, and I honestly can't wait for that to happen. Humanity's average IQ is going to skyrocket, and I might even end up being able to buy a decent TV that is just a TV and not a shitty fucking "entertainment solution" for retards.
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@blek Angsty much?
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@anonymous234 Extremely.
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@fbmac said in The Real SkyNet:
but with my Chromecast I don't see the point in a TV that show ads.
Neither of my smart TVs show ads, except for actual broadcast TV and Youtube videos - and the Chromecast shows adverts on Youtube videos too.
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@Gurth said in The Real SkyNet:
Since I have an Apple TV for my streaming needs
There's no way an Apple device would report anything back to base...
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@Gurth said in The Real SkyNet:
I got a new TV recently, and deliberately turned its network off entirely because I don’t see why some foreign company needs to know anything at all about my viewing habits.
I can't get excited about this. I mean...I get the initial reaction of a privacy invasion, but then I'm like...well, maybe it will convince people to make more of the stuff that I like. But then I'm like...shit, my kids watch cartoons on Netflix all the time so maybe this isn't a good idea. Then I'm like...I need a drink and that's that.
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@boomzilla said in The Real SkyNet:
I can't get excited about this. I mean...
Plus there's the whole "who the fuck buys a smart TV and then disables the network" thing.
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@boomzilla said in The Real SkyNet:
But then I'm like...shit, my kids watch cartoons on Netflix all the time so maybe this isn't a good idea.
It's almost like internet connected devices are actually useful.
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@asdf said in The Real SkyNet:
That reminds me, I've wanted to log the network traffic between my TV and the internet for a while. I think I managed to turn off all spyware "features" (thankfully, Android TV is not nearly as bad as Samsung's shitty spyware), but I should probably make sure.
All of the network traffic between IoT devices (any device on my network that doesn't have a certificate) and the Internet is logged on my router (mainly so I can catch OTA updates for later analysis)... but if you do this, I think you'll find most of it is HTTPS. I keep meaning to see if it can be MITMed (I mean, how a trust store is maintained on IoT devices is actually an interesting question, seeing as if you unexpectedly have to change the upstream service's certificates you don't want all the devices you've sold thus far to become inoperable), but I'm sure I'm not going to have the time for that until crunch time at work and this semester of graduate school are both over.
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@loopback0 said in The Real SkyNet:
Plus there's the whole "who the fuck buys a smart TV and then disables the network" thing.
@Gurth. Allegedly.
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@boomzilla He used up all his tinfoil making hats and didn't have enough left for the TV, I assume.
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@heterodox said in The Real SkyNet:
if you do this, I think you'll find most of it is HTTPS
The destination addresses are interesting enough, no need to analyze the contents for now.
I keep meaning to see if it can be MITMed
I'm pretty sure Google uses certificate pinning for its own domains, so you won't be able to analyze that traffic without routing the device itself.
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@asdf said in The Real SkyNet:
I'm pretty sure Google uses certificate pinning for its own domains, so you won't be able to analyze that traffic without routing the device itself.
Hmmm. I don't see why that shouldn't be doable.
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@asdf said in The Real SkyNet:
How?
If I'm MITMing the communication anyway, why wouldn't I be able to drop the Public-Key-Pins header? The problem is MITMing the communication in the first place; if there's a hard-coded (or OTA-updated) trust store, which there almost certainly is, then I'd have to break into the device because I'm going to be screwed from the start of the handshake. But certificate pinning doesn't seem like the problem.
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@heterodox said in The Real SkyNet:
if there's a hard-coded (or OTA-updated) trust store
That's what I meant. TIL I've been using the term "certificate pinning" wrong; I thought it covered both HPKP and hardcoded defaults.
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@asdf said in The Real SkyNet:
That's what I meant. TIL I've been using the term "certificate pinning" wrong; I thought it covered both HPKP and hardcoded defaults.
Yeah, I only understand it to mean the proposed Public Key Pinning Extension (and that's relatively new). And that's associated with Google, so I figured that was what you meant.
No, I don't think I'm going to be getting into a Google Home or anything this way (which is a shame, because a lot of people would be interested in what it sends, but it's based on the Chromecast, the latest firmwares of which are non-rootable, and I'm not good at electrical engineering).
But I've MITMed a number of other IoT devices which took shortcuts, either because they didn't have a store of trust anchors at all ("We have to get this Wi-Fi enabled Crock Pot to market now! We don't have time to implement an update mechanism!") or were just generally shitty at security ("Just... check the common name, expiration dates, and all that jazz.").
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@heterodox said in The Real SkyNet:
"We have to get this Wi-Fi enabled Crock Pot to market now!"
For anyone who thinks I'm joking:
As long as we're talking about SkyNet, that motherfucker's in control of your food. >:D
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@heterodox Why would you need a Wi-Fi-enabled slow cooker? All it does is make food hot. All it needs is a heating element and a switch. Heck, let's go crazy and make the switch have four options: Off, Low, Med, Hi. Anything more is a waste.
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@boomzilla said in The Real SkyNet:
I can't get excited about this. I mean...I get the initial reaction of a privacy invasion, but then I'm like...well, maybe it will convince people to make more of the stuff that I like. But then I'm like...shit, my kids watch cartoons on Netflix all the time so maybe this isn't a good idea. Then I'm like...I need a drink and that's that.
To be fair, most of my thoughts start with "I need a drink" and never make it past that.
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@loopback0 said in The Real SkyNet:
@boomzilla said in The Real SkyNet:
I can't get excited about this. I mean...
Plus there's the whole "who the fuck buys a smart TV and then disables the network" thing.
o/
because i don't want the smart part of the TV, i only bought the smart TV because it's literally 200$ cheaper to buy the 65" TV with the smart TV built in than it is to buy the dumb TV in that size. either way i'm plugging my chromecast into it to turn the thing into my kind of smart TV, so i might as well save 200$
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@RaceProUK said in The Real SkyNet:
@heterodox Why would you need a Wi-Fi-enabled slow cooker? All it does is make food hot. All it needs is a heating element and a switch. Heck, let's go crazy and make the switch have four options: Off, Low, Med, Hi. Anything more is a waste.
Because people are fucking retarded and "Internet enabled" is marketing wank, even if no one will ever use that functionality.
"Hey honey, I need to check on the roast. What is our login and password for Oster's website?"
"I don't know. It will be fine. We are headed home soon. It is a chuck roast, not filet mignon."
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@accalia said in The Real SkyNet:
either way i'm plugging my chromecast into it
Then why not buy an Android TV in the first place if you're buying a smart TV anyway? Makes the Chromecast completely unnecessary.
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@asdf said in The Real SkyNet:
@accalia said in The Real SkyNet:
either way i'm plugging my chromecast into it
Then why not buy an Android TV in the first place if you're buying a smart TV anyway? Makes the Chromecast completely unnecessary.
because those are more expensive than the "smart TV", and i have the chromecast already anyway.
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@accalia
Did I catch you buying a SAMSUNG device? Spank spank, bad @accalia!Seriously, though, Sony makes the best panels in the price range around $1000 anyway, so it was an easy choice for me.
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@asdf said in The Real SkyNet:
@accalia
Did I catch you buying a SAMSUNG device? Spank spank, bad @accalia!Seriously, though, Sony makes the best panels in the price range around $1000 anyway, so it was an easy choice for me.
samsung? hells no, not unless i'm looking for cheep incendiary rounds for my trebuchet.
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@accalia said in The Real SkyNet:
either way i'm plugging my chromecast into it to turn the thing into my kind of smart TV, so i might as well save 200$
I have a Chromecast plugged into the upstairs smart TV because I already had it. The Chromecast doesn't get used as it's more of a faff which requires extra devices to do what the TV does on its own.
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@loopback0 said in The Real SkyNet:
@accalia said in The Real SkyNet:
either way i'm plugging my chromecast into it to turn the thing into my kind of smart TV, so i might as well save 200$
I have a Chromecast plugged into the upstairs smart TV because I already had it. The Chromecast doesn't get used as it's more of a faff which requires extra devices to do what the TV does on its own.
i always have the extra devices and they're far smarter than the "smart" TV ever could be, even if it is a bit of an extra Faff.
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@loopback0
Well, Google Cast can be quite nice. Especially if someone sends you a Youtube link via Signal/WhatsApp/… and you want to view it on a decent screen. That's why I said Android TV specifically makes the Chromecast unnecessary.
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@asdf said in The Real SkyNet:
Especially if someone sends you a Youtube link via Signal/WhatsApp/… and you want to view it on a decent screen.
I can cast those to the TV without it being an Android TV.
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@loopback0 said in The Real SkyNet:
There's no way an Apple device would report anything back to base...
It probably does, but that’s no reason to have yet another device do the same to another manufacturer, especially when you see no gain in usefulness from it.
@loopback0 said in The Real SkyNet:
Plus there's the whole "who the fuck buys a smart TV and then disables the network" thing.
As if there’s a great many options to buy a non-smart TV anymore. Yes, I’m sure it can be done, but on doing some homework before buying this one, I found that you basically have the choice between buying a smart TV and not buying a TV, if you want a reasonably modern one.
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@boomzilla said in The Real SkyNet:
I mean...I get the initial reaction of a privacy invasion, but then I'm like...well, maybe it will convince people to make more of the stuff that I like.
No, I'm afraid they'll remain convinced to making the lowest common denominator.
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If you want a WiFi enabled appliance, the best choice is a microwave.
It operates on 2.45 GHz (close enough to WiFi's 2.4 GHz) and outputs ~10000 times more radiation power than a router.
That is more WiFi that you will ever need!UHF microwave gun – 04:58
— Kreosan EnglishIn the video you can see that it is compatible with smartphones, light bulbs, TVs, radios, cameras and CDs!
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@Gurth said in The Real SkyNet:
if you want a reasonably modern one.
What makes a tv a reasonably modern one? It just needs to put whatever I send to it's hdmi port to the screen.
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@fbmac
So a TV with at least 1 HDMI port is reasonably modern
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@Luhmann said in The Real SkyNet:
@fbmac
So a TV with at least 1 HDMI port is reasonably modernMy TV has two HDMI ports. It's beyond modern.
I've recently watched Game of Thrones on it through a DE-15 (aka VGA) connection from a laptop running Windows ME.
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@Zecc said in The Real SkyNet:
My TV has two HDMI ports. It's beyond modern.
Mine has four. Does that make mine post-modern?
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@RaceProUK said in The Real SkyNet:
Does that make mine post-modern?
Does it apply a critique based on deconstruction to your viewing habits before calling home to report?
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@boomzilla Not that I'm aware of. Maybe I should check...
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@loopback0 said in The Real SkyNet:
who the fuck buys a smart TV and then disables the network
I haven't shopped for a new TV in a few years, but my impression is that if you want a good TV you have to get one with "smart" features built-in, regardless of how much you don't want or need them, or already have a better solution.
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@heterodox said in The Real SkyNet:
if you
unexpectedlyhave to change [anything] you don't want all the devices you've sold thus far to become inoperableDo you really think that's going to be seen by manufacturers as a drawback rather than a feature ??
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@remi Depends on the manufacturer, how much the device costs, etc. Last estimate I saw said five million Echos have been sold; they don't want a news report that they've wasted $1B of customers' money because they all suddenly became bricks. (Yes, that's an overestimate but it's what the news would run with, obviously.)