
The “Internet of Things” is a scam - sgt
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1912
======
makecheck
At some point in history, plugs in the wall became so ubiquitous that you
could simply buy a product and plug it in. Everything could depend on some
standard voltage and current.

IoT devices need this kind of layer, frankly. The choice shouldn’t be between
“connect to my router and do whatever the hell you want” or “nothing”; there
should be a relatively simple and sane layer that is vigorously standardized
and enforced.

For example: maybe every IoT device has to go through a sanitized DNS that
allows only “.device” domains, and data is limited to some number of bytes per
second, and power dissipation is limited, and there is a precise protocol for
software updates that can be governed by an equally-standard protocol to
control when updates may occur, etc.

We have a long way to go but it is possible.

------
marssaxman
I'm still not clear on what the value proposition is supposed to be here. I
can understand why hardware manufacturers are excited about the idea of
charging more money for their devices, and I can understand why software
people are excited about the idea of muscling into the world of consumer goods
by pushing software into ordinary household objects, but what good is any of
this stuff supposed to do - even theoretically - for the people they are
expecting to pay for it?

Why would you want to take something as straightforward, reliable, and
inexpensive as a thermostat and jam a bunch of complicated, fritzy, instantly-
obsolescent Internet hardware into it? I don't understand, even in theory,
what good this would do. Are there really people who want to futz with their
thermostats all the time? I can't remember the last time I've looked at or
even thought about the one in my house.

And how am I supposed to trust these people? Nobody gets security right,
hardware companies least of all; of course these gadgets are going to come
encumbered with security holes, bizarre phone-home policies, "you must log in
through our terrible cloud service" systems, and the most draconian license
agreements possible guaranteeing that none of their many issues can be fixed.
They're going to use these things as marketing opportunities, you just know
it. How can they resist? And the implications once law enforcement agencies
get their hands on the data streams!!

Of course every new technology has some downsides compared to whatever it is
designed to replace. I'm just baffled by the whole "IoT" phenomenon because
the downsides are numerous and blatant, but nobody ever seems to talk about
the upsides. The people selling this stuff appear to believe that the benefits
are so obvious it's not necessary to mention them, but my imagination is not
adequate to the task of guessing what they might be.

~~~
dalke
> Are there really people who want to futz with their thermostats all the
> time?

Yes. I would regularly turn the heat down before leaving, turn it back up when
coming home, and make it cooler before going to bed. I can see the

In general though, I am also baffled by it, for the reasons you list.

(Also, Amory Lovins, the Passivhaus movement, and others have convinced me
that the real problem was the need to have a large furnace in the first place.
There would be little call for an improved temperature controller if the
heating bill were under 10% as large as they typically are now. But that's a
different topic.)

~~~
marssaxman
My thermostat already does exactly what you describe, and it has no internet
anything; it's just a timer. I set it up once, a couple of years ago, and
haven't touched it since.

~~~
dalke
Congrats. Mine didn't. I'm "not clear on what the value proposition" is in
replacing "something as straightforward, reliable, and inexpensive as a
thermostat" with a more expensive, error-prone timer-based thermostat with a
additional fault modes.

~~~
marssaxman
I don't know either; it came with the house. It hasn't proven to be error-
prone, though, probably because devices like it have been available off-the-
shelf for thirty years.

~~~
dalke
The equivalent of the you of 30 years ago would have asked the same questions
about the then-new programmable timer-based devices.

The equivalent of you in 30 years might, on the other hand, consider secure
network-controlled thermostats to be normal off-the-shelf technology.

~~~
marssaxman
Sure, I'm aware of that process, but that's not really what I'm asking. Thirty
years ago, were I feeling skeptical about programmable thermostats, I could
have asked why such a thing would be worthwhile, and someone could have
explained how I could save money on heating by having my house cool down while
I was asleep and then warm up again before I got up in the morning. We could
then have a reasonable conversation about the risks and benefits of the new
technology, about whether this new ability justified the increased cost and
decreased reliability implied by the added automation.

With this IoT stuff, though, I feel like someone is trying to sell me glow-in-
the-dark sunglasses, or an electric belt buckle. Okay, so you can embed a TCP
stack and a terrible web interface in this gadget, that's great, but so what?
What problem is it supposed to solve?

I can't even have the _conversation_ about whether this technology is worth
its extra cost, because nobody within my filter-bubble is explaining what the
potential benefit is supposed to be. I'm commenting about it here because I
hope somebody can point me to wherever it is that people are talking about the
potential benefits of IOT devices, which might even theoretically justify
them, because right now all I see are lots of really obvious downsides.

~~~
dalke
paulddraper's answer gave two examples of new abilities - the ability switch
to vacation mode after starting a long trip, and the ability to turn the heat
on shortly before arriving home.

You write: "With this IoT stuff, though, I feel like someone is trying to sell
me glow-in-the-dark sunglasses"

I think a better example is, why in the early 1980s would you want to buy a
microcomputer?

Here's an example from 1983 concerning the IBM PCjr -
[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1320&dat=19831230&id=...](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1320&dat=19831230&id=isYxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=m-kDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2959,4276070&hl=e)
. It came with 12 miniprograms, used 'to put the first-time user at ease',
include 'a word game, a recipe organizer, a home-loan calculator and a
checkbook program'.

Does that sound like it's worth $1,000 in 1983 dollars ($2,300 in 2016
dollars)?

FWIW, my personal experience is that it wasn't worthwhile on an early 1980s
micro to keep track of recipes or the checkbook. Certainly others thought
otherwise, but for many people the practical uses were also an excuse to buy a
machine that you could play games on.

So, perhaps think of the many IoT devices as fun games for the early adopters,
rather than a serious cost savings that the last adopters would want?

~~~
marssaxman
That makes sense. I wish I knew what the IoT equivalent of a video game was,
though. And while early-80s computers may not have actually _done_ that many
practical things, there were at least lots of speculative articles enthusing
about the practical things they would be doing in the near future, and
decades' worth of science fiction imagining impractical things they might be
doing in the farther future. With the IoT, I don't know of any such writing.
Presumably it exists, and I'm hoping somebody can point me to it, but I simply
haven't encountered anything of the sort.

Another commenter talked about the excitement of being able to manipulate
real-world objects. Maybe when engineer types get excited about "IoT" it is
really just because this is the first time they are imagining that firmware
hacking could be within their reach? Firmware is old hat to me and mixing the
internet into it sounds like a recipe for disaster, but maybe if people are
used to thinking of themselves as web developers, and don't realize that it's
already easy to manipulate hardware and this has nothing to do with the
Internet, they would read "IoT" as "I can control it". For me, though, "IoT"
implies that "it is no longer mine to control".

~~~
dalke
> With the IoT, I don't know of any such writing.

Home automation gizmos, and speculating about them, have been around for a
long time. Here's a quote from a newspaper article from 1990 -
[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19900913&id=...](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19900913&id=G6ccAAAAIBAJ&sjid=h3oEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4661,3343910&hl=en)
:

"With a bedside remote control you'll be able to operate any electronic
equipment in your home without lifting your head from the pillow"

Again, I agree with you. I haven't seen much need for such things. Then again,
I don't even have a smart phone.

Oh! Here's another analogy; IoT is like the home robots of the early 1980s -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERO_%28robot%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERO_%28robot%29)
.

