IoT Pros and Cons
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If you can ride a bike see if you can trial a Specialized Roubaix. It was engineered using a huge amount of data captured through sensors and in partnership with McClaren.
My 2012 Roubaix is amazing but the 2017 Roubaix (developed using sensors and F1 expertise) is from a different planet. This sort of optimization makes equipment accessible to more people. Apply this technology to artificial limbs and you can empower a generation to do things that were denied to their predecessors.
Modern hearing aids are configured using sensors. Again the difference in only a couple of technology generations is incredible.
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I think what concerns me most about the IoT is security. They have lightbulbs and thermostats that connect to your wireless network. They call to their home server and tell you if they lose connectivity. I haven't researched it, but I have to wonder how secure all this connectivity and communication really is. Is the device locked down? Does it have any security on it at all or could someone pick up on the thermostat and tell it to run full blast? Could someone impact the electrical draw of the light bulbs?
I may be a bit paranoid over it, but we hear about breaches every week where zillions of people have their identity stolen or some system malfunctioned causing fire departments to be dispatched to a location with nobody in it. Just like in programming, security should be implemented on the ground floor. If it isn't, the problems that arise are going to be met with the "Oh, well we didn't know" response and nothing will be done. The companies should be as concerned about security as they are about their bottom line.
Sorry if I went on a bit of a rant, but I'm tired of carelessness in design plaguing consumers.
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Ed, I agree with you 100%. We just don't know about the privacy, and minus the research to find out, I think it's better to stick with doing it on our own. I can program my thermostat for particular time of the day, each day of the week, and I do that. Once done, it lasts for the whole season, unless I want to change the time the heat/AC comes up in the morning for winter and summer. I can leave my dehumidifier in the basement to maintain a specified moisture lever, year round. And I can program my sprinkler system for how long to run every day of the week. Why do I need another device to add into all this I already have?
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) ) - skeleton567 - Saturday, May 6, 2017 4:26 PM
I'm with you and I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one thinking about such things.
It's all done in the name of convenience. After all, you can check your garage door from your phone and close it it you left it open. You can go on vacation and turn on the air conditioning from your phone 4 hours before you get home. What if you get the urge to check the humidity level in your basement while you're at work? There's also the coolness factor. People are lining up to install IoT devices, but they're overlooking the security side of things.
- Jason A. Long - Saturday, May 6, 2017 6:47 AM
... Security researchers, however, discovered the company was also using the smart phone app to harvest data about how customers used the vibrators. The apps collected information such as what temperature and intensity settings the owners used, as well as how often they used the toys...
If corporations want to know these personal details about their customers, they can just call their cell phone while they're at work and ask them directly.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
- Ed Wagner - Saturday, May 6, 2017 3:07 PM
Not very
- Ed Wagner - Saturday, May 6, 2017 3:07 PM
Ed,
Being someone who owns both types of devices you're talking about, I'd say one is "moderately secure," and the other less so. The IoT lights I've got, in order to use the smartphone app to control them, requires pressing a physical button on the "base station" to pair up, plus an e-mail / password to log into the app itself. Now, the lights can *also* be controlled from a web site which only requires the e-mail / password, so from there yes, someone could mess with my lights fairly easily.
As for the thermostat, I think that's the less-secure of the two as the app (and web page) that can be used to control the device only requires an e-mail / password to log in and control the thermostat.
It'd be nice if there were more security on these devices, especially when allowing access from the web, maybe some sort of 2FA to access the pages (ie, when you go to log in to the page, to complete the process you need to enter a code that could be e-mailed to you, or texted to your phone, or possibly displayed on the smartphone app,) although even 2FA can be spoofed (the old call customer service, "Oh, I have a new phone and can't get into the app without the code and the e-mail address I used to log in that you send the code to I lost when I changed my ISP a few months ago and forgot to update your service, could you text the code to my new phone number please?")
- jasona.work - Monday, May 8, 2017 7:49 AM
Thanks for the information, Jason. Yes, 2FA would be nice, but that would require people at some level, which companies don't like to do because it costs them money.
It's good to hear they have at least some security built in to the devices. I wonder if you could access anything from your driveway without being authenticated to your network. Years ago when I set up my first wireless network at home, I had the head of security stop by some night (unannounced) and see what he could see. He was much better than I was, so I was relieved when he didn't find much. Wireless security has progressed significantly since then, but so have the hackers.
I still get blocked traffic on my internet connection firewall from Google. I can't stop it from being sent, but at least it's blocked.
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OK, time for some "grumpy Dad".
Fridge empty? Mark One human eyeball is excellent at spotting gaps when removing items from said fridge. Teenagers, write it down on the white board after your credible imitation of a plague of locusts.
Unless you live in the North and it's a bad winter the time taken to warm the house is the time it takes to warm yourself up with a few chores you have been putting off.
Starting the car from inside the house? As if car thieves need an advantage.
Switching lights off (or on)? What exactly is wrong with the physical switch?
I can see many useful things that IoT could achieve but there seems to be a whole range of examples that are a triumph of ability over common sense.
- David.Poole - Monday, May 8, 2017 1:34 PM
Okay, I think you're in England, but are you sure you haven't been to my house? 😛:hehe:
I think the scientific community is behind the times a bit.
They have yet to discover the psychosis behind all teenagers believing that light switches are evil and should never be turned off.
They also haven't discovered the root cause of the widespread allergy to chores.
And why is leaving a just-opened family-size bag of potato chips partially full so wrong?My sincerest compliments on your "plague of locusts" analogy. It is so very true.
I'm not sure that there's an app for all this yet, but can you even imagine the sales if we were to develop one?
- David.Poole - Monday, May 8, 2017 1:34 PM
I tend to agree, though living in CO, I would like to start my car from the condo when I'm skiing.
- Ed Wagner - Monday, May 8, 2017 1:46 PM
Looking at their bedroom floor my DBA heart is broken by such a denormalised approach to storage.
I'm mentally envisaging an app that toggles site blocking on the household router. Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, WhatsApp killed at the flick of a disgruntled switch. Then again, with mobile contracts with unlimited data they'd just get around that AND I'd end up paying for it.
- Ed Wagner wrote:
I think what concerns me most about the IoT is security. They have lightbulbs and thermostats that connect to your wireless network. They call to their home server and tell you if they lose connectivity. I haven't researched it, but I have to wonder how secure all this connectivity and communication really is. Is the device locked down? Does it have any security on it at all or could someone pick up on the thermostat and tell it to run full blast? Could someone impact the electrical draw of the light bulbs?
I may be a bit paranoid over it, but we hear about breaches every week where zillions of people have their identity stolen or some system malfunctioned causing fire departments to be dispatched to a location with nobody in it. Just like in programming, security should be implemented on the ground floor. If it isn't, the problems that arise are going to be met with the "Oh, well we didn't know" response and nothing will be done. The companies should be as concerned about security as they are about their bottom line.
Sorry if I went on a bit of a rant, but I'm tired of carelessness in design plaguing consumers.
And with that, I found the following on LinkedIn the other day. It's become a personal favorite. I saved it under a file named "Adama was right". 😀
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally) -
well ... actually ... a couple of months ago I got my IoT thermostat (Netatmo) because it regulates my temperature way better than me due to its learning mode.
However, I didn't go all the way. So, we're not having it detect when we're not in the house.
Johan
Learn to play, play to learn !Dont drive faster than your guardian angel can fly ...
but keeping both feet on the ground wont get you anywhere :w00t:- How to post Performance Problems
- How to post data/code to get the best help[/url]- How to prevent a sore throat after hours of presenting ppt
press F1 for solution, press shift+F1 for urgent solution 😀
Need a bit of Powershell? How about this
Who am I ? Sometimes this is me but most of the time this is me
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My sweetie and I keep the house at a balmy 68 degrees F (20 C) all winter long. I found that letting the house cool down while were not home of whatever cause the thermal mass of the furniture, floors, walls, etc, etc to cool down and it takes a lot of heat to get them back up to the comfort zone. So I set the programmable (self contained, not IOT) thermostat to "manual" a leave it at 68 F.
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)
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