
The Internet of Poorly Working Things - kawera
https://mondaynote.com/the-internet-of-poorly-working-things-cda7a147af
======
binwiederhier
Thank you for that article! I have been feeling like that for many months, and
whenever I point it out to co-workers or friends, they mention the Apple-
universe as the ultimate achievement of interconnectivity. And in a one-vendor
universe, the world may be okay right now. Apple did a fine job there.

However, interconnectivity between devices (and software) of different vendors
seems to get worse and worse; standards seem to have become irrelevant. Time
to market is the only thing that matters and long-term customer satisfaction
and durability seem to be of no importance any more. They just don't care
about integration with other vendors any more.

When I saw Minority Report (2002) a few years ago, I thought dragging windows
and applications across devices with a gesture would be a possibility in the
not-too-distant future. Now, in 2016, this not-too-hard-to-develop feature
seems almost impossible to imagine. Sharing content between devices is utterly
painful or even impossible: copying large files between computers in the same
Wifi without going through the Internet; playing a video from your Android
phone on a Samsung TV; moving application state from your laptop to your
desktop PC when you leave work; playing music from your Android phone in a
brand new Audi via Bluetooth ... All of these things are absolutely achievable
if vendors worked together or standards were to be developed/followed. Right
now, though, it just looks like technology fragmentation is getting worse
every day.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I agree with most of your post, but:

> _I thought dragging windows and applications across devices with a gesture
> would be a possibility in the not-too-distant future. Now, in 2016, this
> not-too-hard-to-develop feature seems almost impossible to imagine._

Moving a _running process_ from one machine to another, seamlessly and
instantly, is not at all easy on current architectures. Not that it's
impossible (well, it might be impossible to do it instantly in all cases), but
it would be a hell of a lot of work, even across a single platform, and have a
lot of unpleasant snags to deal with. (What happens when important app/system
settings are different on your desktop and laptop?)

~~~
gutnor
You assume a specific implementation. In the movie, we only see the display
moving from one screen to the other. That is a problem solved since the 80s
with X-Window.

More recently, all enterprise application UI are actually web UI. So that's
just moving a browser window from one screen to another, so just a refined
Apple "Handover".

On a more hardcore fashion, we can move a whole VM almost seamlessly. At some
point that could be the case with containers too and that may not be that far
fetched to move single process after all.

~~~
mseebach
> all enterprise application UI are actually web UI

Yes, and so are most consumer apps, and "moving state" to another device is
simply a question of IM'ing a link. Sure, the UI in the movie looks way
cooler, but _it 's a movie_.

~~~
acdha
That works for the barely double-digit percentage of apps which store all
necessary state in the URL. In most cases, it's more like share a link,
reauthenticate, get an unhelpful error page, use the navigation to get back to
where you were, learn that the work you did first wasn't saved at all or that
their eventual consistency means "same day" (e.g. iCloud), and hopefully they
don't have some halfhearted attempt at locking which will prevent you from
continuing. I suspect that if this feature ever arrives it'll be streaming
rendered video like CarPlay/etc. because that's the only thing the device
vendor can count on.

The point isn't that this is uncharted waters technically but that too many
companies decided a good user experience isn't compatible with their desired
profit margins. In some cases like security and bug fixes that might change
due to regulation but that's far from certain and it's really hard to imagine
that extending to broad interoperability.

~~~
mseebach
Yes, for an app to successfully transfer state, it needs to be able to
transfer state, that's a tautology.

But for webapps that want to be able to transfer state, the mechanism is the
URL, and for those app, this works perfectly and unceremoniously well today.

~~~
acdha
The point I was responding to was your assertion that this was already true of
most enterprise and consumer webapps:

> > all enterprise application UI are actually web UI > Yes, and so are most
> consumer apps, and "moving state" to another device is simply a question of
> IM'ing a link.

That's a great aspirational goal but it's simply not something which most
people can assume will work – I still routinely find apps from major companies
where you can't even use the back button within the same session!

------
m_mueller
IMO there is a very annoying trend in household appliances towards worse and
worse UI.

Basically, it started with light switches already decades ago, at least in
Europe. In the past, you had switches that themselves indicated what state
they are in, so if you cluster them on a board it's incredibly easy to find
the one switched on at the moment [1].

Then, some moron came up with switches that don't show anything anymore [2].

Nowadays you're lucky if you get switches on anything at all. This [3] is how
a standard stove looks like in new Swiss apartments nowadays. Good luck
explaining this to your grandma. __You idiots, it has one job, getting more or
less hot! __

Recently I took a residential elevator that just had an empty touch field when
you came in. _No indication of what you could do whatsoever_. This immediately
gave me anxiety, and I'm just 31 goddamnit. Anyways, what happened was that
_once the elevator door closed_ it gave me a selection of floors to go. [4]
_facepalm_

Please, for the love of what's holy, _stop improving what doesn 't need
improvement_! In german we have a word for this: "Verschlimmbessern". (a
combination of verschlimmern='making it worse' and bessern=improving)

[1]
[https://adventurelightingblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/li...](https://adventurelightingblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/light-
switch.jpg)

[2]
[http://www.schulungshandbuch.de/WebRoot/Store22/Shops/627847...](http://www.schulungshandbuch.de/WebRoot/Store22/Shops/62784718/54C3/771A/FC18/5950/9A6B/C0A8/2ABB/1470/Lichtschalter.jpeg)

[3] [http://media3.siemens-
home.com/Product_Shots/915x515/MCSA006...](http://media3.siemens-
home.com/Product_Shots/915x515/MCSA00681395_2_EH645BB17E_def.png)

[4]
[https://www.google.co.jp/search?tbm=isch&q=schindler+touch&t...](https://www.google.co.jp/search?tbm=isch&q=schindler+touch&tbs=imgo:1&gws_rd=cr&ei=xWq6V6_KAcjK0ATj9JqYBg#gws_rd=cr&imgrc=33lIUZ1H5KvvxM%3A)

~~~
DiabloD3
Okay, so, I program, do sysadmin work, and all sorts of highly technical stuff
for a living.

If it becomes a thing where only that oven can be bought, and all ovens have
those insane controls?

I'll quit eating. I swear to God, I will give up eating altogether.

~~~
m_mueller
All I want is a gas stove with built-in electric ignition like we have in
Japan. It's simple, immediately hot, easy to repair and IMO elegant.

~~~
lostlogin
Try induction. As a side skill you can learn to arc weld with a potato instead
of a welding rod.

~~~
m_mueller
What I showed in the pic is induction probably, most new stoves in Switzerland
are. It's ok for directness, but nothing beats gas. I don't even need the damn
knob to tell me how strong it is, I can see the flame! There's beauty and fun
in cooking with something as simple as fire.

~~~
gambiting
Speak with any professional chef and they will tell you that gas is what you
want. The direct control is impossible to beat, induction gets close but it's
still not ideal - and regular electric hobs are just miserable to use.

------
wtbob
> In less than two years, the CPU inside the TV quickly becomes obsolete and
> can’t be upgraded while the display itself easily lasts a decade, and
> software updates are persphinctery, if they happen at all.

That's odd — the word 'persphinctery' seems to appear only in Monday Note
articles. Is this some sort of trap street[1] for medium-form articles?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street)

~~~
jpatokal
That looks a bit search'n'replace run amok, although I fail to see what the
first half of s/?/sphincter/g could be.

The end result is certainly unlovely though: rather colonoscopacetic, if you
will.

~~~
rexfm
I searched the same thing, decided it's probably a pun on "perfunctory" \+
sphincter-clench-inducing

------
GuiA
Any smartphone from the past few years + an internet connection lets people
file their taxes, watch videos, communicate by text/audio/video with pretty
much anyone in the world, read online encyclopedia, order pretty much any
physical good to their door, listen to music, translate languages, read books,
take high resolution videos, and so much more.

How do you even beat that? And what do you offer beyond that?

It feels like we're reaching the flat part of the logarithmic progress curve
(a much more appropriate curve for progress than the hockey stick curve) when
it comes to what personal computing is going to bring to the daily lives of
consumers.

Of course, there are still many areas not explored by computing. Computer
aided medical procedures and diagnoses, monitoring and upkeep of crops, and so
many more fields will grow in the years and decades to come. And improvements
to personal transportation, through i.e. self driving cars, is arguably a
consumer technology.

But the whole IoT movement is just a parody of itself. The vast majority of
people do not want internet connected water cups or juicers or microwave
ovens; and those who do soon get frustrated by the real world logistics that
come with these things (higher costs, more frequent failures, lack of
interoperability, etc.). I had Philips Hue bulbs for a while, and the
girlfriend I lived with at the time hated them with a passion - for
understandable reasons. When it comes to turning lights on and off, you can't
beat a light switch, and the same logic applies to every single item we
interact with daily. For instance, the Nest we had in our apartment would
randomly start on and off, or suddenly stop being visible to the app, etc.

~~~
toomanybeersies
There are certainly areas where remote connectivity is useful. Cameras is one
case (although I would be skeptical of the security of most of them).

HVAC is certainly enhanced by the ability to control it remotely, first,
because of the potential effort savings in being able to control it from
anywhere in your house without having to seek out your control thing or
remote, and second, because you can adjust the temperature remotely, which is
good for those of use who don't want the house at 18 C all day long when we're
not home, you can set the temperature to your desired temperature when you
head home from work, which may not be a set time.

IOT toasters though? That's just taking the piss.

~~~
zyxley
I could see cases where connected toasters could be useful. It'd be a marginal
amount of added value, but it would be there.

The problem is that in the current context, almost any IOT device has an
additional negative value attached to whatever positive value its features
give, because basically every company doing it makes overcomplicated crap.

In a perfect world, you might be able to plug in an IOT toaster and have it
automatically connect to your Amazon/Google/Apple/whatever hub (with a simple
"I found <yourname>'s hub, is this correct?" interface). At that point the hub
would track the toaster status and the household context, and then do stuff
like say, via your phone or a set of discreet speakers throughout the house,
"The toast was burning, so I stopped the heat" or "You left your toaster on
when nobody was home, so I turned it off".

None of this would be impossible to implement today, but it would require
thinking about long-term holistic benefits instead of being able to slap "IoT
device" on something to try and sell more to nerds.

~~~
toomanybeersies
But how do you leave a toaster on when nobody's home? You put bread in, push
the lever, and it pops up 3 minutes later.

And it's possible for a toaster to detect burning without requiring an
internet connection.

~~~
zyxley
> But how do you leave a toaster on when nobody's home?

Start toast, go and grab the mail, get distracted by a neighbor, forget about
the toast, go over to look at their new riding lawnmower.

> And it's possible for a toaster to detect burning without requiring an
> internet connection.

Nothing about the scenarios I described would _require_ an internet connection
for anything but communicating outside the house (e.g. phone notifications).

~~~
leoedin
I think the point of the comment you replied to was that almost every toaster
automatically shuts off after an adjustable time. Unless you have drastically
misadjusted your toaster settings the worst case for a toaster is burnt toast
(or perhaps some smoke if you really didn't get it right).

------
wangchow
A lot has to do with the fact that most of these devices are novelties. Save
for smart thermostats (can save money on heating bill), or simple efficiency-
boosting products, life is generally easier without the added complexity of an
interconnected-everything. A fridge is a fridge and its proven to work well
for over 100 years. A toaster makes toast. The dishwasher washes dishes.

Once something more useful comes around companies will invest more resources
but I mean who wants a smart toaster? You pop some toast in there and let it
do it's thing. Simple.

We need some major breakthroughs in, for example, 3d printed gourmet meals or
something.

------
DiabloD3
> In less than two years, the CPU inside the TV quickly becomes obsolete and
> can’t be upgraded while the display itself easily lasts a decade, and
> software updates are persphinctery, if they happen at all.

I refuse to buy a smart TV, and when my TV finally dies, I will probably be
forced to buy one, and the first thing I will do is either disable, or just
refuse to setup and use, the smart part.

I will then plug a Chromecast in. That cost me $35. That actually works with
the services I pay for correctly.

Even those Android TV-based smart TVs are useless, because Google does not
control them and cannot force the OEM to push Android updates.... although,
Android TV does let you Chromecast to it, which is probably what I would use
it for.

Although, if I _wanted_ Android TV, I'd buy an Nvidia Shield TV and use that
instead, since it actually has a reasonable amount of horsepower, supports
H265 Main10 and Rec2020 colorspace (in the hardware, AndroidTV support of it
itself is upcoming), thus, true 4k support (not merely 2160p support using
8-bit Rec709/sRGB, which a lot of so called 4k devices and TVs are; for a
historical perspective, see all the TVs that can only do 720p and 1080i but
not 1080p, thus are not actually HDTV/Bluray compatible at all, this is the
same thing al over again).

Technology advances too quickly for a TV to ever be smart. I'd pay _more_ for
a dumb TV that has two more HDMI ports instead, ripping out any smart TV SoC,
and ripping out the (extremely useless) cable tuner.

Side note: the cable tuner is useless on cable, due to all cable companies
moving to encrypting all channels, or moving to IPTV platforms entirely, thus
always requiring a box (CableCard is a dead standard and was a mistake,
similarly to how smart TV is a mistake and should be just as dead); the cable
tuner is always useless on satellite; and if you're trying to do OTA, many
TVs, even ones produced today, do not have sufficient sensitivity to dial into
channels for many reasons (distance, obscured line of sight, reflections), and
even with large enough antennas, you'll get better performance (and sometimes,
the ONLY performance) out of a dedicated OTA box.

As of which OTA box, if you _need_ signal performance for extreme OTA
situations, Channel Master's tuners, as a set top box, kind of suck, but often
are the only ones that can coherently decode a signal.

~~~
rdtsc
> I refuse to buy a smart TV, and when my TV finally dies, I will probably be
> forced to buy one, and the first thing I will do is either disable, or just
> refuse to setup and use, the smart part.

Heh. That's what happened to me. Got a "smart" Vizio TV 4 years ago. It had a
Skype + camera option. One night saw camera light come on when I wasn't using
it. Quickly yanked that out. Then at some point the "apps" for Amazon stopped
working for it. So that's when I disabled its networking plugged in a fire-
stick and just using it as a dumb large screen for Netflix.

Actually that is an interesting niche to play in -- sell a high quality TV
display but just with lots of USB and power ports in the back so people can
plug in their favorite stream devices. It would be lighter and thinner as
well. More power efficient.

Can even make a play on "this is secure, unlike other such devices". And of
course the "you save by not paying for extra crap you don't want to use".
Advertise that to a few sub-reddits which do xmbc, kodi development, cord
cutters. Maybe get Costco on-board as well.

~~~
widforss
I just bought a Philips 40" 4k-computer monitor with a Chromecast. Mostly
because there is a license cost to own a television in my country. This setup
saves me $200-300 a year.

~~~
eagerToLearn
Can you expand on how buying a TV saves you $200 a year ?

~~~
lostlogin
Getting pictures on the screen via an aerial presumably incurs a tax. So don't
connect aerial and use a different system and don't pay.

~~~
saiya-jin
not sure about his country, but all countries i've lived in, those TV fees are
practically impossible to legally dodge.

all possible things that are considered as TV receiver - any smart phone,
tablet, PC including all *book, and of course all possible TVs. "reasoning" \-
you can still watch stuff online.

and there might be sub-fee for just radio receiving, in case you really don't
possess any video-displaying device. And again any of those devices (over
internet for example) apply.

I don't pay them where I live currently (Switzerland) - the private company
which has government mandate to extract fees (Billag) has questionable
legality over incurring any fees (which can go up to 5000 CHF =~ 5000 USD),
and they need to physically inspect your apartment before any action. Of
course there is no force in universe that would make me let them in. Reason -
I haven't watched any broadcast TV station (or any other) for last 5 years.
Plus we pay for TV channels to internet provider quite hefty sum already (part
of the package, unused). If it's not illegal, it's immoral to extract those
fees.

------
Mister_Snuggles
I've got a bunch of WiFi cameras that aren't able to access the internet[0],
so really it's an "Intranet of Things". But they sometimes drop their
connection, which is expected because it's WiFi, but a lot of the time they
won't reconnect properly.

I figure that if basic infrastructure stuff, like automatically reconnecting
to WiFi, doesn't even work, what chance do we have of harder things like
security working properly?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11933851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11933851)

~~~
voltagex_
How much did you pay for them? I've lost all faith in consumer-level gear. I
just don't think the businesses prioritise any kind of QA any more.

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
They're definitely consumer-grade cameras, and most of them are at the low end
of that. I'd say they are in the $50-100 CAD range per camera.

That said, when they do work they work a lot better than their price would
suggest.

~~~
voltagex_
I'd probably create a Rube Goldberg-esque setup that detected when the camera
dropped off wifi and power cycled (Wifi-enabled socket, it's IOT all the way
down) the camera.

~~~
zyxley
There's a device for that: [http://resetplug.com](http://resetplug.com)

------
meddlepal
Worked on industrial IoT for five years from devices to backends. It's all
garbage. Nothing works, everything is wrapped in marketing double speak,
security is a Shit show and UX is virtually non-existent.

~~~
bgentry
Do you have any thoughts on why? Lack of competition, race to the bottom on
prices, incompetence, or some kind of vendor lock-in?

~~~
raarts
The consumer doesn't want it?

I don't have anything IoT in my home. Why spend hundreds/thousands to: replace
my thermostat with an app, make all of my lights remote controlled, motorize
my blinds, and what else is there?

It's just spending a lot of money and time for hardly any perceived advantage.
Combine this with the fact the average consumer is very cash-strapped in these
times.

~~~
zyxley
Motorized blinds _should_ have a simple and incredibly useful killer feature
for literally anyone living in a city: the blinds automatically close when you
go to bed, and automatically open a little while before your alarm clock goes
off.

The fact that getting something this simple this set up takes technical chops
and a ton of cash is a massive failure on the part of the companies making
these devices.

------
Animats
There are two basic problems. 1) getting the devices to find each other and
communicate in some reasonably secure way, and 2) controlling them in some
user-friendly manner.

1) is still a mess. Things that are hooked to line power ought to talk over
the power line. There are lots of standards for that, from the old X10 (1980s,
low bandwidth, poor noise immunity, no security), bidirectional X10, Echelon
(1990s, low bandwidth, very good noise immunity, some security), HomePlug
(2000s, high bandwidth, some security), plus some proprietary systems. X10
refuses to die, and HomePlug's bandwidth is overkill for lighting. Echelon
mostly gave up on the home and went on to become the standard for subway and
rail automation (signs, lighting, HVAC, doors, etc.) because of the good noise
immunity. They're working on a new approach to lighting, where LED lights run
on 48VDC. This is a bit radical for home automation.

If you have any of these, it's useful to have a whole-house RF filter where
power enters the house or apartment to isolate your network segment from
everybody else on the same pole transformer. These are cheap ($6 or so) but
have to be installed by an electrician. This is a big obstacle to power line
networking.

Then there are the RF-based networks. WiFi, Zigbee, etc. These have range
limitations and may not work through walls. Despite all the headaches of RF
networking, most of the IoT vendors are going that way because they get to
dump the range problem on the user.

~~~
gerbilly
>If you have any of these, it's useful to have a whole-house RF filter where
power enters the house or apartment to isolate your network segment from
everybody else on the same pole transformer.

I considered X10 a few years back, and when this issue came up I scrapped that
idea.

I think it would work better if these controllers used out of band
communication, but that would require running an extra set of wires.

------
flyinghamster
Vendor lock-in gets short shrift in this article. Let's not forget Philips
attempting to lock out competitor's bulbs from their Hue bridges.

~~~
TeMPOraL
They tried, there was a shitstorm, and they reverted that. For now, at least.

I'm a recent and quite happy Hue owner. I decided to go for the expensive good
stuff because I learned the hard way that cheap consumer electronics is always
shitty and not worth the hassle - all those trivial annoyances add up to your
stress level. Also, I know a bit too much about Chinese cheap LED bulbs
manufacturing quality - I don't trust them that they won't burn my house down.

------
ebbv
All that build up and it ends up basically an ad for Amazon Echo?
Disappointing. Amazon Echo is of very borderline usefulness at best. On its
own it does almost nothing that the digital assistant on your phone can't
already do, and a lot that it can't just because your phone is so already
entrenched in your life.

~~~
dangrossman
I can say "Alexa, dim the lights to 50%" and it happens. I can say "OK Google,
dim the lights to 50%" and nothing happens. Both ecosystems have access to my
lights (I can control them with various apps), but only one has put effort
into first-party integrations with IOT platforms.

~~~
ebbv
Ok so your specific lighting system integrates better with Echo than with OK
Google. That says something about those combinations, it doesn't say much
about Echo itself.

Like I said in the comment you responded to; _on its own_ the Echo is pretty
borderline whether it's useful at all, and it can't do many things your phone
assistant can.

My point being; just because your combination works with your Echo and not
your phone assistant doesn't mean that Echo is a device most people should
buy.

~~~
dangrossman
I don't think you understand. This isn't the case of "oh that product's better
integrated with Amazon than Google". Amazon has put the resources and legwork
into establishing a business and development integration with every single
major connected device maker in retail stores. All of them, in a way that
nobody else has. I think it's wrong to say it "doesn't say much about Echo
itself". It shows a focus on becoming the center of the smart home nobody else
has.

If a device works with Samsung SmartThings, Philips Hue, Belkin Wemo, Insteon,
Lutron, Wink, Nest, HomeSeer, Almond, LIFX, GE Link, TCP, iHome, Leviton,
Honeywell Lyric or TotalConnect, Ecobee, Haiku, Keen, Garageio, Z-wave or
Zigbee (via a hub)... then it also works with Alexa, out of the box, because
Amazon has relationships with all of them already.

You just say "Alexa, discover my devices" and she finds whatever you happen to
own on your network on her own, instantly knows their names (that you gave
them if applicable) and capabilities, and can address them through natural
language.

~~~
ebbv
I do get it. You're saying Echo has the best IoT integration of all the
assistants. That _may_ be true. But it's also possibly irrelevant depending on
what combinations of IoT devices someone wants. If everything I want has
HomeLink integration, then Echo's broader integration means nothing to me.

> This is something Amazon did; "it doesn't say much about Echo itself" is
> completely mistaken.

You're misunderstanding what I mean by that sentence, which I guess could be
clearer. What I meant is; it doesn't say anything about _Echo 's independent
functionality apart from any other devices._ Does that help clarify?

My point is that ability to integrate with other devices is great but it's
only one thing that a digital assistant has to do. Echo is missing other
things that assistants on phones can do not only because the phone has
capabilities Echo does not hardware wise but also because our phones are so
integrated into our daily lives.

Anyway this discussion has really gone off the rails. My original point was
this article is clearly just an Echo ad and it's a bad one at that.

------
walterbell
_> A look at the so-called Smart TV reinforces the observation about CE
culture. In less than two years, the CPU inside the TV quickly becomes
obsolete and can’t be upgraded while the display itself easily lasts a decade,
and software updates are persphinctery, if they happen at all._

Evocative term ("persphinctery"), what does it mean? A web search mostly
references mondaynote.

~~~
slowmovintarget
The prefix "per" means through, so this made up word seems to mean "as though
it came through the sphincter" a.k.a "crappy".

So "persphinctery" would be a synonym of "excretory", were it actually a word.

~~~
nathancahill
You got it:
[https://twitter.com/gassee/status/767576827963453440](https://twitter.com/gassee/status/767576827963453440)

------
sangnoir
I just had a chuckle: the Chrome tab I have open now (for this HN story) reads
"The Internet of Poo" with the rest of the sentence faded out & cropped. How
fitting

~~~
clydethefrog
Related: Internet of Sh*t is a Twitter account highlighting "your best home
appliances ruined by putting the internet in them".

[https://twitter.com/internetofshit](https://twitter.com/internetofshit)

~~~
JMCQ87
It's mentioned in the article... ;)

------
dredmorbius
This isn't the first time gratuitous "technologisation of stuff" has been
proposed, though it seems to be proceeding rather apace.

From 1922, "Radio All the Things!":
[http://i.imgur.com/TSJnicdl.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/TSJnicdl.jpg)

(Via: [http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2015/01/videophones-from-
fut...](http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2015/01/videophones-from-future-
past.html) and origionally: [http://wi.mobilities.ca/grant-wythoff-aerophone-
telephot-hyp...](http://wi.mobilities.ca/grant-wythoff-aerophone-telephot-
hypnobioscope-hugo-gernsbacks-media-theory/))

Or the original book if you'd prefer: Hugo Gernsback, _Radio for All_ (1922):
[https://archive.org/details/radioforall00gerniala](https://archive.org/details/radioforall00gerniala)

I think I know what a radio phone might do. Radio clocks even exist (though a
networked NTP timekeeper is more useful). I'm not sure I'd care to fly in a
radio-controlled airplane. And I'm utterly perplexed at what a radio heater
might be -- unless it's a microwave space heater, or an early instance of
Nest.

~~~
kalleboo
I like how the radiofax is dumping the output straight into the trash can

~~~
zeveb
My guess is that it's some sort of ticker service.

Also, in an era of omnipresent paper notes, perhaps the expectation was that
most notes would be discarded, with only the important ones retained?

------
supergeek133
Working in consumer IoT on a regular basis.. here is the main problem with
adoption: Every device has it's own app!

Let's say eventually I want to use Echo, or SmartThings, etc. I can buy 20
devices but half of them have their own app that requires registration before
I can connect it to my Echo or SmartThings hub.

The reason people hold up Apple as a potential solution is you are seeing
hints of them starting to steal registration tasks of even cloud connected
devices.

So you might ask "Why" does each device have it's own app? Because all of
these companies want to "own" the customer and the associated data.

The funny part to me, is I know damn well some of them don't want any part of
maintaining an application and the team associated with it and the
infrastructure.

If someone came up with a platform that was easy to integrate, managed an app,
and just shared that data for free or a nominal fee, I believe they would win.

------
_asummers
Google cache:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p3ffba...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p3ffbaWsETUJ:https://mondaynote.com/the-
internet-of-poorly-working-things-cda7a147af+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
davidgerard
Whenever you see "Internet of Things", think "Unfixable Heartbleed Everywhere
Forever".

------
ss9445
It's true that progress is slow, partly because not enough people are
tinkering and innovating in this space. We're trying to fix that by getting
affordable starter kits into the hands of more developers.We saw a big gap in
the market in terms of innovation at the edge especially using cellular
technologies. Technologies like CAT-M and Narrowband should make this gap even
smaller.

------
blackflame7000
Honestly it's not that hard to design controllers. It simply requires a
fundamental understanding of finite state machines. Amateur / rushed coders
think the if else statement is cheap way to program in a ruleset and often end
up with rare corner cases as a result. The key is to define your states, and
don't ever let it ever get outside of what is expected. But if it does, make
sure you can detect it and revert. This isn't rocket science. A raspberrypi is
faster than computers 5 years ago, don't mistake it's price for quality.

------
jwatte
And then the cloud service for your door lock, light bulb or security system
gets shuttered.

#internetofbricks

------
sickbeard
The internet of low margins and devices of dubious functionality. I'm truly
scared that the next dotcom crash will come from iot not panning out for
companies jumping into it without any forethought

------
gabomagno03
Even though I compleatly agree with everything being said in the article ,it
highly understimate how hard it actually is to build a semi-complex IoT
product. Our startup realized this after 2.5 years in the making of a Smart
Things competitor. For example, to debug something you need to check a larger
set of things (cliente, backend, hardware, embedd software, network, etc). It
will all get better but as of today it really is hard to achieve.

------
Scea91
Regarding the mentioned Moore's law, do we really have 1000 times more
computational power on consumer devices than we had in 1996?

~~~
majewsky
A quick look at Wikipedia ("List of Intel Pentium microprocessors") shows that
top-of-the-line desktop CPUs ran at 200 MHz, while a current Core i7-6700K is
clocked at 4 GHz. That's already a 20-fold increase. Also consider that clock
rate is not everything. The number of instructions per clock has also risen,
although I don't have hard numbers at hand that easily.

Also consider storage. RAM clock speed is slowly, but steadily increasing, as
are cache sizes across all levels. And the biggest gains in this area are made
by transitioning from HDDs to SSDs, although I don't have numbers on this one,
either.

But the elephant in the room is floating-point performance. The GPU in my
desktop PC (a 2015 AMD R9 Nano) does 8 teraflops. Compare with an Nvidia RIVA
128 from 1998, which did 5 gigaflops. [1] That's more than 1000 times faster
in just 17 years.

[1]
[http://www.nvidia.com/object/RIVA_128_FAQ.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/RIVA_128_FAQ.html)

------
dredmorbius
JLG raises some excellent points and points to some excellent critics,
including the Internet of Shit twitter account.

Some elements to highlight:

 _We had this problem in consumer electric goods, starting slightly over a
century ago._ Poorly-made devices could electrocute users, burn down homes (or
offices or factories), would fail to work as advertised, fail to work, or
otherwise disappoint. The result was that, _at the instigation of insurance
companies_ , an independent testing and certification service was created,
Underwriters Laboratories. UL are actually looking at entering the IoT/IoS
morass: [http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2016/0405/Can-
testin...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2016/0405/Can-testing-
outfit-Underwriters-Laboratories-secure-the-Internet-of-Things)

 _More complex products make for more complex assessments._ One of my most
useful and oldest household purchases is also one of my oldest: a cast-iron
frying pan bought 30 years ago. It functions as it did when I first bought it,
I've used it daily for decades, and its function was immediately evident.
Contrast the tablet and keyboard on which I'm typing this, neither of which
have lived up to expectations (nor the manufacturers to their warranty
obligations -- Samsung and Logitec respectively). With hardware, control
interfaces, communications, server dependencies, bugs, security
vulnerabilities, and more, IoT devices are vastly more complex than what they
replace.

 _Poor margins make for poor products._ This seems far less well understood
than it ought, particularly among the HN crowd. An undercapitalised company,
or one operating on a burn-rate and prayer, or some overseas firm you've never
heard of, trying to crack your local market, may well choose to skimp on
quality options. Vendors who care nothing other than order fulfillment and
logistics (Amazon, WalMart, Best Buy) have no vested interest in product
quality. Quality itself is a difficult metric to assess, particularly
_lifetime_ quality.

Product / vendor lock-in is a consequence of this. Rather than make money on
initial purchase, various forms of subscription-based services are offered, or
interconnectivity is provided ... as an ad-on, additional-cost, feature.

 _Unintended consequences are a real bitch._ This is an area of market failure
I've been exploring which seems highly underconsidered in contemporary
economics. While Akerloff's "Market for Lemons" gave us a fuller awareness of
_information asymmetries_ , I'm not aware of a general treatment for a simple
_inability to know the salient future outcomes of current actions_. Consider
Thomas Midgley, Jr.'s contributions of chlorofluorocarbons and tetraethyl
lead, used in leaded gasoline. He's done more than any other engineer to put
all of humanity at risk. And while lead was a known pollutant by the 1920s,
the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer wasn't discovered for another 50 years.
Long-lingering systemic effects are particularly pernicious.

 _" Smart" products only offer so much additional capability._ The ability of
added logic or communications to a device to increase value is limited by the
mode through which that object operates. Take Google's recently announced
energy savings AI applications. The multi-millionfold increase in computer
processing capabilities, combined with a decade's hard work at improving AI
... can deliver a ~15% energy efficiency improvement. In a Moore's Law
scenario, this is about a four-month advance in processor capabilities, and
given interactions of the Jevons Paradox, the end result is likely to be
_increasing_ energy utilisation, not decreasing it. Similar results are seen
for automotive and aircraft control systems. Net increases in efficiency from
_millionfold_ processer capability improvements are, at best, a factor-of-two
doubling, and often far less.

There are examples of marked improvements, with the multiple factors
compounding in shipping markets a good example: containerisation,
standardisation, improved dockside handling, intermodal rail and trucking,
invoice and manifest controls, etc., have increased the efficiencies (and
decreased the costs) of shipping markedly. Of course, the result is that _far
more goods are shipped_ , and labour rates in advanced countries have fallen
tremendously with falling negotiating advantage.

 _Complexity increases failure modes._ The more interconnections and mutual
dependencies a thing has, the more ways it can fail. Any individual or
combination of possible interactions needs be considered. Multiple systems
with complex interactions compound this. The alternative is fully modularised
and independent systems.

E.g., rather than a fully integrated "IoT" refrigerator, specific sensing,
control, and communications modules might be provided to monitor power,
temperature, contents, and communicate these.

Taking my tablet example -- apparently cases designed to specific device
dimensions make the interchangeability of what ought be completely separate
systems complex.

~~~
catdog
It's adding a very complex and complicated machine (a computer) which also
interacts with other very complex and complicated machines all over the world
to items which are usually very straightforward and "simply work". To provide
an equally seamless, secure and whatnot "smart" experience you have to invest
a lot on top. If the additional value of the "smart" product is that low no
one pays the price that is needed, vendors operate on poor margins and there
it is, the internet of shit.

On top of that you have hardware people being responsible for software which
usually is equally bad as software people beginning to solder. It might kind
of work in the end but….

------
DyslexicAtheist
Technology is no longer driven (=funded) by innovation but by the ability to
produce "recurring revenue". Selling software and some support around it is no
longer a viable business model. It's unicorns or nothing.

Even Microsoft has seen that coming (and responded by open sourcing gradually
... from C#, ... MS Azure, ... the current Windows-10 beta that runs a Linux
kernel, to PowerShell that runs on Linux). Has hell frozen over? No. But we
think the only way to make money is with reselling user-data. And the VC
industry reflects that. How many tech businesses that made it big today aren't
built on central data harvesting of their users in exchange for _" free"_
stuff?

We've pushed all our computing to the cloud and think it's the panacea to
everything. Do we really expect to apply the same business model and
technology principles from virtual world to our physical devices and get away
with it? Reminds me of the old phrase, "When your only tool is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail".

Problem isn't that Security is so much worse in IoT than in your typical web
application stack. The problem is that it isn't any better than web-security!
We have XSS and SQL injection in IoT, crypto built on shitty javascript, we
have MiTM attacks, lack of authentication, ... worse, we can re-use the same
exploits (shellshock, heartbleed, ...), and nearly identical attack-vectors!
In the age of Shodan and MASSCAN we won't get away with that [1]. (ProTip:
(from Gartner, I think): you can send payloads with MASSCAN to a gazillion
connected devices by 2020 ;-))

Take a look at the issues of trust on the web! How many signing countries can
we trust in our certificate chain? How confident are we that our HTTPS
connection is safe (cloudflare is known to MiTM[0] half the internet, so the
silly green browser padlock doesn't mean anything) Yet we expect to use the
same flawed trust-model with IoT (where bugs hit us in our physical face) as
we use on the web. We want to protect all this with Tor browsers, even more
centralization and vendor-lock-in or even creating dystopian proposals like
the ones from many EU based countries (hello Germany) that propose that the
data will never leave the EU.

The vendors response?

I, and many others who stepped forward to report critical bugs to IoT
companies are ignored, accused, blocked. I started IoT Security[5], on
LinkedIn some years ago. LinkedIn is a joke of a platform I agree, but it also
allows us to put all this shit right into the face of these crappy vendors.
It's the perfect melting pot for marketeers and engineers ;-))

Privacy and Security have gotten worse over the years. not just for IoT but on
the web in general. We point the finger to the "Internet of Shit", but do we
expect if we constantly use the wrong tools for the job?

We're looking to the industry to solve this for us. An industry which hasn't
figured out yet how to monetize their technology without selling our private
data. VC's are as much part of the problem as tech companies. What could go
wrong? It's like asking an addict to seek cure by discussing it with their
dealer.

There is too much technical debt in terms of privacy & security that all these
gadgets are either going to kill us, and as consequence will be regulated like
anything else that has killed regularly in the past. If not now then as soon
as the first connected car is weaponized, or the first smart-home kills
someone.

Nation states and their armies have become dependent on the Internet to keep
us safe. They're doing a good job reminding us that the cyber-threat is real.
They're right about the threat. What we're wrong about though is believing
that global data harvesting by shady intelligence services will keep us safe.
But they have their own agenda[4].

The way forward? Certainly not more centralization or cloud.

PS: If you're also sick of all this shit, please do find me ;) there is lot's
to talk and little time.

[0] [https://scotthelme.co.uk/tls-conundrum-and-leaving-
cloudflar...](https://scotthelme.co.uk/tls-conundrum-and-leaving-cloudflare/)

[1]
[https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2024/DEF%20CON%2024%20pre...](https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2024/DEF%20CON%2024%20presentations/DEFCON-24-Lucas-
Lundgren-Light-Weight%20Protocol-Critical-Implications.pdf)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/74958341227350835...](https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/749583412273508352)

[3]
[https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/74962796346176307...](https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/749627963461763073)

[4] [https://blog.valbonne-
consulting.com/2016/08/06/smartcitiess...](https://blog.valbonne-
consulting.com/2016/08/06/smartcitiess-cyber-security-role-and-ethical-
challenges/)

~~~
majewsky
> or even creating dystopian proposals like the ones from many EU based
> countries (hello Germany) that propose that the data will never leave the
> EU.

I could call this proposal many unpleasant things, but "dystopian"? I can
definitely see why people want clearer jurisdiction over the flow of their
personal data, and that intention is anything but dystopian.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
how would you guarantee that packets never leave a country without balkanizing
the net. It's just another proposal for more centralization and walled
gardens. "E-Mail made in Germany" was all the rage in 2013 after Snowden.

[http://www.thelocal.de/20131129/german-email-providers-
unite...](http://www.thelocal.de/20131129/german-email-providers-unite-german-
internet-against-nsa)

It's an absolutely ludicrous idea. A wet dream conceived in the boardrooms of
Telekom and 1und1 during a time when nobody had an answer to reduce blanket
surveillance. It's dystopian not in a sense that it would be impossible to
implement but because it would be a knee-jerk reaction that wouldn't solve the
underlying issues.

------
bingobob
waiting to see what comes out of Google IoT project like Brillo, Weave it's
been kicking around a Google for a while now seems long before the 2015 I/O
announcement. maybe Fuchsia has something to do with it who knows.

------
seiferteric
My neato botvac seems to forget its wifi settings every couple weeks :(

------
api
I just call it IOJ: Internet of Junk.

~~~
dredmorbius
IOS: Internet of Shit. As JLG notes in the article.

Io[B]T[TSoY]: Internet of (Broken) Things (That Spy on You).

~~~
rvense
Internet of Targets.

~~~
dredmorbius
_Beautiful!_

------
Aelinsaar
Nothing about the impending IoT seems planned, standardized, and remotely
designed with the consumer's best interest in mind. That being said, consumers
for their part seem almost eager to throw their money away for truly dubious
improvements. What isn't a bad idea from the get go is often a good idea
ruined with careless implementation.

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
Apart from the fridge that, once upon a time could show you your Google
calendar[0], I have yet to see any IoT device that actually requires a cloud
service for its functionality.

Why can't things be built to just use local TCP/IP connections? Those work
just fine on my local network, and they work just fine if I flip my VPN on
when I'm not on my local network. Anything that actually needs some kind of
server piece should have a server that can run locally.

[0]
[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/Uhfp...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/UhfpcwO0X0c)

~~~
techsupporter
> Why can't things be built to just use local TCP/IP connections? Those work
> just fine on my local network...

Simplicity, possibly. Vendor lock-in, probably.

I'm in the same boat. I wanted a weather station that didn't cost several
hundred units of currency but also let me query it directly instead of having
to hit Weather Underground or (FSM help us) a vendor's web site with no API.
Only a handful of them do this so I wound up rigging up what I wanted using a
Raspberry Pi, a USB-connected weather station, some extra sensors, and several
lines of PHP.

Why I'd want to subject my light bulbs or coffee pot to that is beyond me.

~~~
zipwitch
Data-mining.

How can the smart-fridge company sell your eating habits if your fridge only
tells _you_ (and not them) how you're using it?

------
chaostheory
This post would be more accurate two years ago. Today IOT is usable with much
less work and headaches. Sure there are still bugs, but it's a big improvement
from a $40 brick. Also platforms like IFTTT, Alexa, and Homekit make it more
practical as well.

