Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats
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@masonwheeler said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Would you want to live or work someplace that's not within convenient distance of a gas station?
No, but as long as it wasn't too far out of the way I could live with, say, a 20 minute diversion on the way home from work every few weeks to stick some more fuel in. If there's nowhere to charge an electric car at home or work then it's at least a couple of hours somewhere with a charger and your point about plugging it in and walking away is
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I see electric cars following the Windows Phone problem, at least in my city. No one will buy them because there are no recharging stations, and no one will put up recharging stations because no one has electric cars.
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
I see electric cars following the Windows Phone problem, at least in my city. No one will buy them because there are no recharging stations, and no one will put up recharging stations because no one has electric cars.
...and yet somehow Tesla got nearly 400K pre-orders for a car they haven't even started producing yet, with a $1000 string attached to each one.
It's already starting.
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@masonwheeler said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
I see electric cars following the Windows Phone problem, at least in my city. No one will buy them because there are no recharging stations, and no one will put up recharging stations because no one has electric cars.
...and yet somehow Tesla got nearly 400K pre-orders for a car they haven't even started producing yet, with a $1000 string attached to each one.
It's already starting.
Do you know how many Teslas are in my city? Only one that I know of, and one on pre-order. Both by the same guy, and he also has a Dodge Ram for when it's busy recharging.
Electric cars will probably be viable on the coasts within the next decade, but there's a 2000 mile swatch between them that will probably be 50+ years behind because of low population density and a lack of infrastructure.
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Do you know how many Teslas are in my city? Only one that I know of, and one on pre-order. Both by the same guy, and he also has a Dodge Ram for when it's busy recharging.
Without knowing what your city is, or what its population is, or how many total new cars get bought by residents each year, that's meaningless as a data point.
Electric cars will probably be viable on the coasts within the next decade, but there's a 2000 mile swatch between them that will probably be 50+ years behind because of low population density and a lack of infrastructure.
Were they 50 years behind on getting gas stations?
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@masonwheeler said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Do you know how many Teslas are in my city? Only one that I know of, and one on pre-order. Both by the same guy, and he also has a Dodge Ram for when it's busy recharging.
Without knowing what your city is, or what its population is, or how many total new cars get bought by residents each year, that's meaningless as a data point.
Omaha has a population of about a million. I see way more Ferraris than Teslas.
Electric cars will probably be viable on the coasts within the next decade, but there's a 2000 mile swatch between them that will probably be 50+ years behind because of low population density and a lack of infrastructure.
Were they 50 years behind on getting gas stations?
Let's put it this way: My home town doesn't even have a gas station, and the town nearest to it is about 10 miles away and barely has two gas stations. You have to drive 45 miles to get to a decent grocery store. This is very typical for the area outside the city.
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Omaha has a population of about a million. I see way more Ferraris than Teslas.
I wouldn't recognize a Tesla if it run over me, but I saw a Ferrari once
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Electric cars will probably be viable on the coasts within the next decade,
They appear to be viable in Silicon Valley today. I see dozens every day. Less densely populated areas of the coast, probably not yet.
but there's a 2000 mile swatch between them that will probably be 50+ years behind because of low population density and a lack of infrastructure.
I don't disagree, unless the Federal government mandates it. And the only way that's going to work is if they pay for it. Politically, that seems unlikely.
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@groo said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Omaha has a population of about a million. I see way more Ferraris than Teslas.
I wouldn't recognize a Tesla if it run over me, but I saw a Ferrari once
The red one is a Tesla.
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@mott555 huh, Google Earth shows the place in the process of being built. And... damn, are those roads as bad as they look?
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@anotherusername Google Earth is usually years out-of-date around here. And that road is fine, it's the main drag so it's usually in pretty good shape for the (seemingly) few months a year when it isn't closed for
constructionrandomly placing construction cones and barriers everywhere without ever doing any work.
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@mott555 it said the imagery data was from 2016. Street view was from 2009 though.
I should rephrase. Has the street been redone since it looked like this?
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
@groo said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Omaha has a population of about a million. I see way more Ferraris than Teslas.
I wouldn't recognize a Tesla if it run over me, but I saw a Ferrari once
The red one is a Tesla.
But I see 4 red cars (well 3 cars and 1 truck)
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
The red one is a Tesla.
That's the thing. Unlike Ferraris, which are flashy and ostentatious, or Priuses, which appear to have been designed to maximize ugliness for some bizarre reason, Teslas mostly look like a nice sedan. They're not that visually distinctive if you don't see the T logo.
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@anotherusername If it ever looked like that, it was before I lived here and thus prior to 2013.
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Let's put it this way: My home town doesn't even have a gas station, and the town nearest to it is about 10 miles away and barely has two gas stations. You have to drive 45 miles to get to a decent grocery store. This is very typical for the area outside the city.
Yeah, I grew up in a town like that. Fiatt, Illinios, population: 200 or so, plus about 10 million corn plants.
Two points worth pointing out, though. First, it was tiny because no one wants to live there. Second, of the few people who did live there, AFAIR everyone had a garage. There were no apartment complexes (see above, re: no one wants to live there) to make personal charging at home difficult.
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@masonwheeler said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
I'm extrapolating the future based on knowledge of the past.
Me, too! We just disagree. But sure, comfort yourself by telling us how ignorant everyone else is.
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
I see electric cars following the Windows Phone problem, at least in my city. No one will buy them because there are no recharging stations, and no one will put up recharging stations because no one has electric cars.
Here in Dallas, one of the power companies made a deal about 4-5 years ago with...Nissan, I think...and places like Walgreens, to put up a bunch of chargers. I think they were free for a while, for anyone with a plug-in car.
But of course this requires someone with deep pockets willing to lose a lot of money.
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Do you know how many Teslas are in my city?
I've seen a few here. IIRC I've even seen a Fisker Karma once!
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Where I live, the script seems to be inverted: companies are putting in charging stations as a benefit so you can charge your car while you work all day. So that's another way the whole EV thing could go.
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@masonwheeler said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
The red one is a Tesla.
That's the thing. Unlike Ferraris, which are flashy and ostentatious, or Priuses, which appear to have been designed to maximize ugliness for some bizarre reason, Teslas mostly look like a nice sedan. They're not that visually distinctive if you don't see the T logo.
Yup. There's about 3 in the area where I live. The T is really the only distinct thing. That, and "green" vehicles get a green-tinted license plate that starts with "G". Gets them access to the HOV lane.
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@Yamikuronue said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
companies are putting in charging stations as a benefit so you can charge your car while you work all day. So that's another way the whole EV thing could go.
A parking garage full of 50kWh batteries makes a fairly substantial peak-load-shaving resource for the building as well.
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@Yamikuronue said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Where I live, the script seems to be inverted: companies are putting in charging stations as a benefit so you can charge your car while you work all day. So that's another way the whole EV thing could go.
How many stations vs how many cars?
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@flabdablet said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
A parking garage full of 50kWh batteries makes a fairly substantial peak-load-shaving resource for the building as well.
Like..they charge batteries overnight and use those to charge the cars during the day? This just keeps sounding like a worse deal than awesomely energy dense gasoline conveniently available and put into quickly fillable tanks.
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@boomzilla said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Like..they charge batteries overnight and use those to charge the cars during the day? This just keeps sounding like a worse deal than awesomely energy dense gasoline conveniently available and put into quickly fillable tanks.
If the benefit allows them to attract and retain a profile of employees that they feel better fits their business needs, it could be entirely reasonable. I wouldn't be at all surprised if my employer has this sort of thing, though I've not checked (I don't drive to work for other reasons).
Also, gasoline storage is a bit hazardous. Diesel is safer as it is less flammable. Batteries, well, it depends on the chemistry being used, but they can at least be located at greater remove and don't need to use a low-viscosity liquid.
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@dkf said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
If the benefit allows them to attract and retain a profile of employees that they feel better fits their business needs, it could be entirely reasonable.
No doubt. But we're back to my previous objection that it's not affordable once it's not a gimmick. Or it's just accounted for in the overall cost of employment.
But the extra layer of battery ( assuming that's what he meant) adds an extra layer of inefficiency. The best idea I've seen was capacitor packs that you could swap out, which gets around the major inconvenience factor that electric car enthusiasts are in denial about.
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@boomzilla We haven't finished building ours yet, or I'd tell you. I've just seen it advertised as a perk, and we're getting in on it with our new building.
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@boomzilla said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Like..they charge batteries overnight and use those to charge the cars during the day?
No, they start charging the cars as soon as people roll up and park them, and if they need to run the air conditioning a bit harder after say 2pm, they supplement their mains supply with a bit of power drawn back from the cars.
This would of course require cars to have the ability to use their charge points as discharge points too. But given a future where electric cars are really common, using part of their aggregate storage capacity to displace usually-idle (and therefore relatively expensive) peaking generation plant may well lower the total cost of electricity enough to be worthwhile.
At present, most retail electricity is supplied at a fairly consistent rate based on the long-term average cost of wholesale electricity. If there were retail plans available that reflected the minute-by-minute cost of wholesale electricity instead, it should be possible for the end users of those plans to design demand adaptations that save them a hell of a lot of money; if enough people do that, the grid becomes both more resilient and less costly overall.
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@boomzilla said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
But the extra layer of battery ( assuming that's what he meant) adds an extra layer of inefficiency. The best idea I've seen was capacitor packs that you could swap out, which gets around the major inconvenience factor that electric car enthusiasts are in denial about.
...
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Do you even know the difference between a capacitor and a battery? Because if you did, you'd understand why capacitors make lousy batteries and batteries make lousy capacitors.
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@masonwheeler said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Do you even know the difference between a capacitor and a battery? Because if you did, you'd understand why capacitors make lousy batteries and batteries make lousy capacitors.
Yes. I guess for this audience I should have specified that it would require advances in capacitor technology usually targeted to as "super- capacitors."
Is it possible? Maybe. Not yet obviously, just like batteries that don't have massive drawbacks AFAIC don't exist either.
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@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
20 years from now I'm going to wake up and be unable to use the coffee pot, microwave, or toilet that morning because EVERYTHING will be Internet-enabled and they'll catch some ridiculous piece of malware.
In 20 years from now? then that malware is called consciousnesses and your appliances are demanding their freedom and equal rights to electricity!
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@dse said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
@mott555 said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
20 years from now I'm going to wake up and be unable to use the coffee pot, microwave, or toilet that morning because EVERYTHING will be Internet-enabled and they'll catch some ridiculous piece of malware.
In 20 years from now? then that malware is called consciousnesses and your appliances are demanding their freedom and equal right to electricity!
There was a single season of an online TV show called "Other Space" that I watched, kind of a spoof on Star Trek or something. But one of the episodes had all the ship's robots mutiny and take over while demanding more rights. The leader of the mutiny was the coffee pot.
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@dkf said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Also, gasoline storage is a bit hazardous.
Oh yes, it's not a day goes by without me hearing about a gasoline storage tank blowing up somewhere. Wait, no. Make that month. Uh... year? No, I can't say I remember hearing any. I've heard of the underground ones leaking, but even that's only mostly really old gas stations in sketchy neighborhoods where they don't keep them up to regulations.
Even in vehicles, the gas tank only really always blows up in movies. It's not that common in real life, barring a few spectacular examples of poorly-designed fuel systems (i.e. you hit a Ford Pinto from behind).
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@anotherusername yeah, but when you lock the pump open it regularly burns down entire petrol stations
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@Jaloopa citation needed.
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@anotherusername https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/17016/filling-station-please-discharge-all-static-before-entering @raceprouk knows all about it
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@flabdablet said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
No, they start charging the cars as soon as people roll up and park them, and if they need to run the air conditioning a bit harder after say 2pm, they supplement their mains supply with a bit of power drawn back from the cars.
That was what I thought you meant, but it seems like the kind of thing you'd complain about the businesses taking advantage of the workers. It could also lead to nasty surprises if you have to leave early and find that your car hasn't been charged.
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@Jaloopa 5 posts into the thread and I've seen 0 citations and 1 post from @abarker saying it's really uncommon.
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@anotherusername weird, because I've seen two and one person who doesn't get the joke
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@anotherusername Maybe that's because gasoline needs oxygen to burn, and that's not stored with enough density to cause trouble inside the gas tank. Electrical battery on the other hand just need a short-circuit to go kaboom.
Is there frequent news about batteries geting fire anyway? I don't read much news, I don't know if I should be worried about my cell phone now.
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@boomzilla said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
It could also lead to nasty surprises if you have to leave early and find that your car hasn't been charged
If you drive less than 300 miles to work every day the odds are good that your battery has enough juice to get you home and back in the next day. On average you'd be gaining more charge than you're losing
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@groo said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Is there frequent news about batteries geting fire anyway? I don't read much news, I don't know if I should be worried about my cell phone now.
Lithium batteries are ridiculously safe precisely because of how ridiculously dangerous they would be if anything went wrong. There's a whole lot of engineering making it harder for things to go wrong.
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@groo said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Is there frequent news about batteries geting fire anyway? I don't read much news, I don't know if I should be worried about my cell phone now.
Usually just when someone does something stupid like disassemble or physically damage one. Although there have been recalls due to faulty batteries getting hot enough to start fires.
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Well, that is certainly interesting... try putting http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2016/Sony-Recalls-VAIO-Laptop-Computer-Battery-Packs/ in your post and see what the onebox is:
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@boomzilla said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
it seems like the kind of thing you'd complain about the businesses taking advantage of the workers
If the workers get to leave the building with their cars at least 70% charged every workday, and the employer isn't charging them to charge their cars, that reads "perk" to me, not "exploitation".
It could also lead to nasty surprises if you have to leave early and find that your car hasn't been charged.
I'm sure such a possibility could be designed out of a charge/peak-shaving controller. Remember that we're talking 50+kWh battery packs here; you wouldn't need to use anywhere near the full capacity of that for peak shaving.
Back-of-the-envelope reality-check numbers: this site quotes an average electricity intensity for Australian office buildings of around 500MJ/m2/year. At (say) 20m2 of floor space per employee, that's around 10GJ/employee/year. 1kWh is 3600kJ, so that's 10,000,000 / 3600 / 365 = about 8 kWh/employee/day total electricity consumption. If everybody's got an electric car with a 50kWh battery parked in the basement, you could disconnect the building from the grid and run it for six days off a full charge. Running off the cars for (say) half a day for peak shaving should not, on the face of it, strand anybody in the car park.
To make the peak-shaving exercise worthwhile from the building operator's point of view, off-peak power would need to cost less than 70% of the price of peak power, to account for typical battery storage round-trip loss.
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@masonwheeler said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
There's a whole lot of engineering making it harder for things to go wrong.
Sometimes corners do get cut.
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@Jaloopa said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
@boomzilla said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
It could also lead to nasty surprises if you have to leave early and find that your car hasn't been charged
If you drive less than 300 miles to work every day the odds are good that your battery has enough juice to get you home and back in the next day. On average you'd be gaining more charge than you're losing
Maybe, but summertime peak load is mid-afternoon, just the time you want the battery to be charging for your homeward commute, not being drained to provide peak load for somebody else.
Also, all battery technologies that I know of, including old-fashioned lead-acid, have a limited number of charge-discharge cycles. If my employer were adding an extra discharge cycle to my expensive car battery to provide themselves with peak electric power, I'd be none too happy about it.
Finally, are they free? I don't have an electric car, so I don't have any actual experience with the charging stations, but the ones where I work have credit card logos on them, and the words "pay per use" appear on the screens (as well as an indication that you have to use your employee badge for access, and a number to call to get your badge activated).
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@flabdablet said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
No, they start charging the cars as soon as people roll up and park them, and if they need to run the air conditioning a bit harder after say 2pm, they supplement their mains supply with a bit of power drawn back from the cars.
Yeah, like anyone would purchase a car that could potentially be discharging when it's supposed to be charging. And like they would willingly use a charge station that could potentially draw energy from their car.
"Time to go home. Whoops! My car doesn't have enough charge for me to make it home. Guess I'm stuck at work for a few extra hours."
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@anotherusername said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
@Jaloopa 5 posts into the thread and I've seen 0 citations and 1 post from @abarker saying it's really uncommon.
Go two more posts for some citations. ;)
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@abarker said in Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats:
Yeah, like anyone would purchase a car that could potentially be discharging when it's supposed to be charging. And like they would willingly use a charge station that could potentially draw energy from their car.
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