Internet of Bings

[retina]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business...mdK/story.html

On Saturday, customers of car-sharing service Zipcar made a startling discovery. No matter what they did or how hard they tried, they couldn’t get the cars they had reserved to turn on.

The incident, which lasted several hours and affected an unknown number of vehicles and customers, serves as a reminder of the hazards associated with technology that is increasingly reliant on network connectivity to function.
...
an outage experienced by a third party telecommunications vendor disrupted connections between the company’s vehicles and its reservation software.
...
a number of customers were stranded with cars that didn’t work.

“We can’t stop the process [of IoT],”

Yes you can. Just stop installing it.

He said the way to mitgate [sic] those sorts of issues was by installing redundancies, or backup systems, that can pick up the slack when the primary system has a problem.

No. That way to completely prevent it is to not install the IoT nonsense.

Sometimes you really need a person to solve this problem.

You mean the IoT thing still needs people to fix the mess you made?

[retina]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...v-home-screen/

Buying a product knowing it has ads in it is one thing, but users on Reddit and elsewhere are understandably angry about ads suddenly being patched into their devices—especially in cases when these devices are multi-thousand-dollar 4K Sony televisions. There is an option to disable the ads if you dig into the settings but users are reporting the ads aren't staying disabled.

You were never in control of your Io device. Stop fooling yourself, and just let the big corps do whatever they want. Bend over and take like a sheep.

[retina]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47796528

5G will be crucial for driverless cars.

...

In principle, controlling the technology that sits at the heart of vital communications networks gives an operator like Huawei the capacity to conduct espionage or disrupt communications.

This becomes a bigger problem as more things - from autonomous vehicles to domestic appliances - become connected to the internet.

...

"That allows for remote control... of the network assets. All of these things can be managed virtually, and that makes it challenging in terms of security."

[xilman]

Originally Posted by retina

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47796528

The Beeb's statement is complete bovine excrement.

It most certainly is not necessary. Convenient, perhaps. Useful, perhaps.

[ewmayer]

There was splashy, expensive TV ad last night from one or another peddler of 5G-ness. The ad featured a bunch of footage from the Apollo missions. My immediate thought was, "you do realize those missions were flown with way, way, way less compute power and less total comms bandwidth than possessed by even a 4G cellphone, yes?"

But perhaps the real takeaway should have been that the 5G pushers want to monitor everybody's life down to the intimate bodily functions like NASA did to the Apollo astronauts. "This kind of privacy-invading tech sent men to the moon!"

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

There was splashy, expensive TV ad last night from one or another peddler of 5G-ness. The ad featured a bunch of footage from the Apollo missions. My immediate thought was, "you do realize those missions were flown with way, way, way less compute power and less total comms bandwidth than possessed by even a 4G cellphone, yes?"

But perhaps the real takeaway should have been that the 5G pushers want to monitor everybody's life down to the intimate bodily functions like NASA did to the Apollo astronauts. "This kind of privacy-invading tech sent men to the moon!"

Oh, nonsense. Everybody knows the Apollo missions were fake
;-)

[retina]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Oh, nonsense. Everybody knows the Apollo missions were fake
;-)

They weren't fake. They really were filmed in a Hollywood backlot. Anyone who says differently is lying.

[retina]

... and now you are wondering how you didn't see it coming.

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-digital.html

When purchasing eBooks, the consumer often actually purchases a non-transferable licence to consume the eBook in restricted ways. For instance, they may not be permitted to pass the eBook on to a friend once they have finished reading, as they might do with a physical book. In addition, as we have seen in the case of Microsoft, the company retains the right to revoke access at a later date. These restrictions on consumer ownership are often encoded into digital goods themselves as automated forms of enforcement, meaning that access can be easily withdrawn or modified by the company.

...

If our local bookstore closed down, the owner wouldn't knock on our door demanding to remove previously purchased books from our shelves. So we do not anticipate this scenario in the context of our eBooks. Yet the digital realm presents new threats to ownership that our physical possessions haven't prepared us for.

But MS would never do that, right. They are always looking out for us, right. Right?

Microsoft has announced that it will close the books category of its digital store.

Oh.

[kladner]

https://www.pcmag.com/news/367656/ai...ing-their-stay
".....the high standards we set for ourselves....." Apparently, those high standards only apply after AirBNB is presented with incontrovertible evidence posted on Facebook.

Nealie decided to publicize the incident on Facebook after the company told her that the Airbnb host had been "exonerated" for secretly filming them. "PLEASE SHARE WIDELY. AIRBNB APPROVE HIDDEN CAMERAS AT THEIR HOUSES," reads Nealie's Facebook post.

Airbnb later removed the host from the platform. "Airbnb policies strictly prohibit hidden cameras in listings and we take reports of any violations extremely seriously," the company said in email to PCMag.

"Our original handling of this incident did not meet the high standards we set for ourselves, and we have apologized to the family and fully refunded their stay," Airbnb added.

[retina]

Originally Posted by xilman

The Beeb's statement is complete bovine excrement.

I think it reflects the expectations of the general public: that everything new requires an Internet connection or it won't work.

Originally Posted by xilman

It [connecting a car to the Internet] most certainly is not necessary. Convenient, perhaps. Useful, perhaps.

A better word here would be "forbidden" IMO. It should not be possible for any remote agent to have the possibility to connect to, let alone control, a car.

Driver: No officer, it wasn't me that ran the red light and killed the children on the crossing. My car was hacked by some teenager in their mum's basement, so I am blameless. Too bad for the children, I guess they should have known better. Oh well. Have a nice day.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by retina

I think it reflects the expectations of the general public: that everything new requires an Internet connection or it won't work. A better word here would be "forbidden" IMO. It should not be possible for any remote agent to have the possibility to connect to, let alone control, a car.
.....

To agree and reiterate: the idea that a wireless networking glitch could leave a vehicle out of control is really frightening. It's bad enough with distractible human drivers out there.