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The Internet of Unprofitable Things

strugglers.net

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Re: The Internet of Unprofitable Things

#61

Post by ssl232 »

grifferz wrote: post #52
Scoundreller wrote: post #30

1. 70 GBP/hr seemed like a low rate for a consultant (what’s an electrician or a plumber cost on a subscription contract?). I’m glad author doubled it. What happened to NetThing’s customers after they ceased trading? Who took over the lighting management of the car parks etc. ?

Author here. I'm sure you're right. I pretty certain I could have charged them much much more and they'd still have accepted it. In conversation with the software eng it was implied that they intended to send someone on site to each of over 500 sites to reimage the devices. That must have cost them way more than £70/month and the way that after ~10 months the number of devices actually went up to over 1,000 suggests…

I like your attitude. If you were stuck fixing the mess the software engineer had to fix, you'd appreciate a random stranger making your life easier when they didn't need to. Maybe they'll pay it forward. Think of the money you didn't charge as your donation to making the world an ever so slightly nicer place!

Re: The Internet of Unprofitable Things

#62

Post by jsjohnst »

It’s so simple to setup your own Stratum-1 server, I don’t get why more folks don’t. The one I keep in my house is a 1U unit about the size of a 16 port switch and keeps time accurate to 15ns via a small Multi-GNSS antenna (yes, serious overkill for home needs, but I already owned it for a use case that used to need it).

Re: The Internet of Unprofitable Things

#63

Post by Drdrdrq »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
eropple wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not an "article". It's a blog post. An informal post, written informally, for an obviously technical audience. I very, very rarely explain what "AWS" is when I'm casually writing about cloud stuff. It's table stakes. You should know, or you aren't gonna appreciate reading it anyway.

Logged in just to upvote your comments. This is a place of intellectual curiosity, and I don’t understand those who expect knowledge to be spoon fed to them. If you don’t know a term, search engine it and work your way down the stack. You might find yourself pleasantly surprised you’re providing an NTP server in the NTP global DNS pool.

> search engine it...

That is, go to google.com or DuckDuckGo.com and search for it...

I mean, open the browser, click on location bar (on the top) and write...

That is, if you are on Windows, click Start menu (which is now 4 rectangles),...

Nevermind... /s

Re: The Internet of Unprofitable Things

#65

Post by Waterluvian »

I got butterflies reading this because it's something I can see myself having done early in my career.

A relative newbie finding himself responsible for nontrivial design and implementation decisions for fleets of robots. Luckily they were always updatable. But if you asked me to set up the NTP story for them (which they had but people smarter than me worried about it) I would have Googled it for a while and just hoped that I didn't miss any fundamental understanding of how to use NTP.

p.s. this article felt like it was the perfect length. It shares the perfect amount of detail succinctly.

Re: The Internet of Unprofitable Things

#66

Post by bcaa7f3a8bbc »

jsjohnst wrote: post #62

It’s so simple to setup your own Stratum-1 server, I don’t get why more folks don’t. The one I keep in my house is a 1U unit about the size of a 16 port switch and keeps time accurate to 15ns via a small Multi-GNSS antenna (yes, serious overkill for home needs, but I already owned it for a use case that used to need it).

Unfortunately, having more Stratum-1 servers does nothing to help clueless device manufacturers who hardcoding the IP address of an individual server, and damaging the community service. But yes, when we talk about the NTP community in general, we certainly needs more Stratum-1 servers. Nowadays, running a Stratum-1 is easy, the hardware is cheap, a single broad computer w/ time source from a shortwave radio or GPS. And if one loves electronics, one can build a precision oscillator (evem a Rubidium standard can be used for 300 USD), or go straight to make a GPSDO to achieve highly-reliable timekeeping.

Nevertheless, there are two practical difficulties.

1. Static IP addresses are unavailable in most home connections. And many home broadbands throttle UDP traffic, dropping them when the pps rate is high. It makes one's home unsuitable for hosting a NTP server.

2. Unlike Stradium-2, you cannot simply use a "cloud" service for your dedicated server. To run a NTP Stratum-1, you have to physically host your server with the customized hardware in a datacenter, which costs 100 dollars/month in my city, not including network transit and bandwidth. I really want to run one, but I cannot afford it.

3. Shortwave / GPS reception is usually not available in a datacenter, and an antenna installation is usually not allowed. You can be creative, a good way is using the time provided by mobile basestations. But it needs experience.

Re: The Internet of Unprofitable Things

#67

Post by c22 »

jpm_sd wrote: post #60

It's pretty cheap to embed a tiny GPS receiver and crappy chip antenna these days. Probably enough for time sync in many situations.

Is it? The cheapest gps chips are still a couple bucks a pop (not counting the extra costs of more complex integration.) And from my experience these cheap gps and pcb antenna solutions are basically useless indoors. NTP is probably still the right solution for these devices, being essentially free to add to a device that already needs an internet connection. Care should just be taken to implement it correctly, obviously.

Re: The Internet of Unprofitable Things

#68

Post by xte »

BWAHAHAHAHA thanks both for the nice post and for politeness you prove to have.

That's not much IMO a problem of "modern IoT" but a problem of modern managerial-driven society that lead to a proliferation of Ford-model workers at ANY level, not only the lowest one.

People simply can't reason autonomously anymore, at any level, can't really understand "the big picture" of pretty anything: think only at periodic "cry" for $FamousFreeServices down and the relative cue of polemics that follow...

Re: The Internet of Unprofitable Things

#69

Post by SuperPaintMan »

HocusLocus wrote: post #32

Good a place as any to mention my short story https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7132077&cid=49308245 possibly the only work of fiction ever inspired by NTP, IoT and cryptographic protocols. This struggle with embedded ip address seems to echo this part of my story, "These hastily made things flooded the market and soon replaced other well-documented things. At times something failed and its inventors could not say…

I absolutely loved this, thanks for posting it.

Do you have a list of your stories avalible?

Re: The Internet of Unprofitable Things

#70

Post by reaperducer »

I like that story.

The author responded to the initial problem in the old-fashioned internet "we're all here to make things work" kind of way, without letting himself get taken advantage of.

And then when the problem decided not to play nicely, he increased the pressure in a civilized way.

These days most companies would have just said, "Sucks to me you" and cut off the dummy IoT company.

This also illustrates why big companies like Apple maintain their own NTP services.

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