Internet of shit
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@Gurth said in Internet of shit:
There must be room for a small one somewhere on the bulb that doesn’t interfere with its fitting into a standard socket.
Yes, now imagine having to press 10 tiny reset button you have to press with a pencil (or paperclip) inside a narrow shade dangling from a high ceiling.
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@Luhmann said in Internet of shit:
@Gurth said in Internet of shit:
There must be room for a small one somewhere on the bulb that doesn’t interfere with its fitting into a standard socket.
Yes, now imagine having to press 10 tiny reset button you have to press with a pencil (or paperclip) inside a narrow shade dangling from a high ceiling.
@Tsaukpaetra said in Internet of shit:
How often are you
turningfactory resetting your lights on foronly eight seconds at a time repeatedlythis to ever be a thing?But I repeat myself.
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@Luhmann Not to mention that there are fixtures (like the GU5.3 socket) where the bulb is completely fitted into the fixture, with only the light-emitting side visible.
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@boomzilla It's not often you can say this about a Youtube video, but the comments on that are amazing.
I like how they improved the firmware with version 2.8.
"Hi Sarah, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to let you go. Your notice is in the post, and your last project will be designing the reset process for our smart bulbs".
Zeus 600 BC: Sisyphus, roll this boulder uphill for eternity.
Zeus 2019: Oh Sisyphus, I've found a new task for you!
It's shocking this elegant design has been overlooked by award committees.
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Now it really makes me wonder, what happens if you try other sequences of 8 and 2s on (with 2s off intervals)? Can you get the bulb to change its light color, or to reconnect to a different wifi network, or some other fun thing?
Also, this is a great party trick if you're invited by someone who owns one of those. "Hey, I just randomly played with the switch for a minute or so, not my fault it's not working with your phone any more!"
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@remi That was probably why they made the sequence that long and complicated, so the owner can recognize when some guest is trying to prank them and stop it before it happens.
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@hungrier
Bulb owner trying to access the app in time to prevent the factory reset:
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@hungrier said in Internet of shit:
@remi That was probably why they made the sequence that long and complicated, so the owner can recognize when some guest is trying to prank them and stop it before it happens.
I had this situation last night at a friend's house, they've just got an Alexa thing.
So, does it only understand your voices?
Nope!
Alexa: order 3000 rolls of toilet paper. Confirm.
ALEXA: STOP!
...
Spoilsports.Edit: It is kind of nifty. I sort of want one now.
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@hungrier said in Internet of shit:
@remi That was probably why they made the sequence that long and complicated, so the owner can recognize when some guest is trying to prank them and stop it before it happens.
That's assuming the owner knows the reset sequence and is in a state to recognise it (i.e. not drunk or otherwise occupied).
That doesn't sound like a very fun party, or person to party with.
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@error_bot !xkcd alexa
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xkcd said in https://xkcd.com/802/
Online Communities 2
(via https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?search=alexa&title=Special%3ASearch&fulltext=1)
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@remi said in Internet of shit:
@hungrier said in Internet of shit:
@remi That was probably why they made the sequence that long and complicated, so the owner can recognize when some guest is trying to prank them and stop it before it happens.
That's assuming the owner knows the reset sequence
Given that GE needed to post a YouTube video of it, chances of that in itself are already slim.
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Maybe some good news
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@TimeBandit Yay, more buzzwords. Apparently onboarding now means "making sure that devices are properly configured and connected to the cloud" in addition to its dubious usage as HR-speak for getting a new employee started.
I have an alternative process for securing IoT devices: overboarding. They should be adequately secure under a few thousand feet of seawater.
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Don't you think the seas are already polluted enough? I don't want to see a marine animal unknowingly wearing a smartwatch.
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@Zerosquare It is unfortunate, but sacrifices must be made. Environmental catastrophe is a small price to pay for stopping the spread of the IoT plague.
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@Zerosquare said in Internet of shit:
I don't want to see a marine animal unknowingly wearing a smartwatch.
That would be useful. Next time you buy a fish, you can check out its fitbit profile and see if the fish was healthy and active, or if it was one of those sleazy, lazy, mostly sedentary couch-fishes.
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@HardwareGeek said in Internet of shit:
@TimeBandit Yay, more buzzwords. Apparently onboarding now means "making sure that devices are properly configured and connected to the cloud" in addition to its dubious usage as HR-speak for getting a new employee started.
I have an alternative process for securing IoT devices: overboarding. They should be adequately secure under a few thousand feet of seawater.
I can think of yet another alternative process: waterboarding for anyone who knowingly releases an insecure IoS device.
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@Gurth said in Internet of shit:
waterboarding for anyone who knowingly releases an
insecureIoS deviceSave time and cut to the chase.
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@Zerosquare said in Internet of shit:
I don't want to see a marine animal unknowingly wearing a smartwatch.
What about a fish with a wedding ring?
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It was hardly a surprise to Nelligan, however, when he learned the story behind the ring.
“That was my first guess, a divorce, but funny that the guy says the ring is cursed,” Nelligan told For The Win. Because, “That ring is cursed. Ever since it came on my boat, I’ve had problems with my Glendinning engine controls, the switch to raise the helm floor to get at the engines broke and the hose at my dock burst. Sheesh!
“I think we’ll mail it back to him, no return address!”
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Apparently it has bluetooth connectivity. For... something...
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@hungrier If they'd gone the other way and promised to make flagship phones run as fast as sub-$100 ones through the power of the cloud, I'd have believed them!
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@hungrier Local company discovers ONE WEIRD TRICK to bypass the entire software engineering field!
(does it use blockchain? I heard they could make it even faster by adding blockchain)
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@hungrier Since that looks like the same company as the Puffin iOS browser....it will suck. Badly. It's one of our required apps for the kids at school because there are several sites that require the desktop view (that Safari only recently will do), but it breaks most things pretty badly.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Internet of shit:
Apparently it has bluetooth connectivity. For... something...
Where did you see that? I don't see anything about bluetooth there.
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@boomzilla said in Internet of shit:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Internet of shit:
Apparently it has bluetooth connectivity. For... something...
Where did you see that? I don't see anything about bluetooth there.
. . . . Amazon lied to me...
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@hungrier said in Internet of shit:
I'd believe it. Puffin worked great even when the rest of my phone didn't. They compare to Google's data-saving but that's completely ignoring the meat of what Puffin does.
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@pie_flavor said in Internet of shit:
Puffin worked great even when the rest of my phone didn't.
Earth-73
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Puffins are tasty.
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@Zecc Personally, I still don't see what's so "tasty" about huffin'.
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@Zecc Seems like yet another product where a whole lot of people during design never asked "Why should we do this?"
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@Zecc Sensationalism at its finest.
"If used unsafely, some hair straighteners can cause a fire. We were unable to cause a fire with these hair straighteners because their safety features were working as designed. However, they have no defense against tampering with preferences. Therefore !!"
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@mott555 I fear they did. And the answer was: “so we have something trendy to write on the posters”.
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@TimeBandit Apparently even outside of the requirement to keep your phone turned on in the updater app for 3 minutes, they have a lot of technical problems that aren't by design.
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@hungrier said in Internet of shit:
they have a lot of technical problems that aren't by design.
It's by design, it's a smart water bottle
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@hungrier said in Internet of shit:
Then the water bottle told me I had to contact customer support before I could use it again.
How exactly does the water bottle prevent you from using it? Maybe I don't even want to know...
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@mott555 I would assume it it doesn't prevent you from drinking water from the bottle, merely from tracking how much you drink. But it's "smart," so who knows? Maybe the drinking valve can only be opened by the app.
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@HardwareGeek The Juicero was built like a tank, why not this thing?
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@TimeBandit I don't remember all the details since it's been forever, but IIRC the construction was skookum as frig, which was part of what made it so expensive, and that was pointless because the purpose of the device was to squeeze juice out of a bag, not keep a bank vault secure.
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@TimeBandit said in Internet of shit:
One would expect that embedded systems would generally use two-partition updates: flash the new version in one partition, then try to reboot into it, if it does not work, reboot back into the previous version. I mean, it's kind of obvious way to do updates without much risk of bricking the device, right? But no. On the desk behind me sits a big industrial electronic control unit that if flashing it is interrupted, it will stay in the bootloader and do nothing until you successfully flash it. Other colleagues worked on a device that had something like 10% failure rate because it bricked itself if update, over the air, failed—and because it is subject to certification, the returned devices couldn't be reflashed and reused, so each return costed several thousand dollars—but since it was already in production, there was no way to redesign it…
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@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
One would expect that embedded systems would generally use two-partition updates
@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
without much risk of bricking the device
Neither of these economically benefits the supplier.
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@Zecc At least in the second case I mentioned it definitely would have since the supplier was paying all the replacement devices. Those devices came as part of a package that includes support, so all the devices that bricked themselves were replaced under warranty, and with new devices, because the certification requirement meant repairing would mean analyzing each why it failed and that would have been even more expensive.