Your Appliances Hate You 4
Very early in his career, before getting into movies, Woody Allen used to tell a joke about a man whose toaster mailfunctioned and burned his toast. He cussed the toaster up and down, then chucked it in the trash after it cooled.
Then he left for work. He stepped into his elevator, pushed the “G” button, and the elevator started down.
Halfway between two floors, the machine stopped, the music ceased, and a voice came out of the speakers: “Aren’t you the guy who was cruel to his toaster?”
Turns out it wasn’t just a joke, it was a prophecy (details at the link).
A major cause of this sort of stuff is that, in the rush to market, those who make all these “connected” devices think about sales, not security. And buyers don’t ask themselves, “Why does my refrigerator need to browse YouTube?”
Connecting something to the internet just because you can is likely a bad idea.
January 18, 2014 at 12:06 pm
To my current frame of mind, the people who buy refrigerators and other such appliances that connect to the internet deserve every bit of what they might get. Really now, no one in my class is going to be getting that stuff. So if hackers gaslight the smart households of the upper crust and their not-yet-obsoleted servant class for the purpose of spam and malware distribution, I applaud.
January 18, 2014 at 5:23 pm
I’m inclined to agree. What’s the point? I remember back in the dot-com bubble a start-up that was confident persons would order groceries over the internet just because they could.
(I do know persons who have done that. Acme offered the service and other stores might also. Generally, they are persons who cannot get out because of age or infirmity, but it’s never been just because they could.)
It may be a while, but there will come a time when there’s not much choice and you’ll have to hack into them to turn the damned wireless off. There’s already been LG’s spying televisions.
January 19, 2014 at 3:31 pm
Top graph in news story about Google’s acquisition of Nest. The company enables smart thermostats in your smart house so they learn when to go up and down without you having to touch them. Wow. Very rich. Such coin. Wonderful time.
January 19, 2014 at 11:33 pm
Digital manservants.
How cute.