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What's that touchscreen in my room?

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Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#111

Post by AceJohnny2 »

kelnos wrote: post #53

> There were two strings printed with labels “SSID” and “Pwd”. I froze in horror. They wouldn’t dare. It is literally 3 meter distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this complexity… Not surprising at all. I would expect that a lot of these are bought as retrofits, and not as a part of new construction. Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and they don't want to put that barrier to sal…

> Also, oh, man, Jazelle. I'd forgotten about that. Hardware support for Java bytecode... that did not pan out well.

I'd love someday to learn more about why Jazelle failed.

The first SoC I worked on almost 20 years ago was built around an ARM926EJ-S, just like in the story. It was built for Nokia, who used Symbian OS [1], and supported user-installable apps written against Java Micro Edition [2].

The utter mess of Symbian's app discovery and installation, I suspect, was a prime reason Apple created their App Store for the iPhone.

Nevertheless, the fundamental concept of HW-accelerated Java apps doesn't sound crazy. What happened? Were they just stuck with a sinking ship, Symbian?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Micro_Edition

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#112

Post by UberFly »

userbinator wrote: post #100

Interesting article but one thing stood out: The landlord had no idea what this is. There are no buttons or labels on the thing, just a tiny yellow light to let you know it has the power. You move in and find a mysterious device on the wall that, at least to me, appears somewhat ominous and it's not obvious whether it may have a camera and possibly a microphone (the picture of it on the manual appears to show that it…

That was my first though as I read it. It would be disabled or removed the first day.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#113

Post by inetknght »

neither_color wrote: post #99
inetknght wrote: post #23

> Turns out, I need a 3A fuse, so I ordered one from Amazon OP might want to watch Louis Rossmann's video about buying things from Amazon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

For US readers: The big orange or blue store are probably better for you for anything electric that would go in your walls. I went down a rabbit hole of amazon clones of popular brand things like switches/dimmers/outlets and what I found is dubious UL certificates shared by multiple "brands".

> what I found is dubious UL certificates shared by multiple "brands"

Have you reported it to UL?

https://www.ul.com/resources/market-surveillance-departments

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#114

Post by inetknght »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #109
kelnos wrote: post #53

> There were two strings printed with labels “SSID” and “Pwd”. I froze in horror. They wouldn’t dare. It is literally 3 meter distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this complexity… Not surprising at all. I would expect that a lot of these are bought as retrofits, and not as a part of new construction. Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and they don't want to put that barrier to sal…

> Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and they don't want to put that barrier to sale in front of them. It also makes it more convenient to compromise the device from across the street (or across town with a directional antenna). Though of course that's not a problem if your security is up to par and the device continues to receive regular security updates, and we can only surmise that the author ha…

> Though of course that's not a problem if your security is up to par and the device continues to receive regular security updates

Just remember that the S in IoT stands for security :)

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#116

Post by alexambarch »

kelnos wrote: post #53

> There were two strings printed with labels “SSID” and “Pwd”. I froze in horror. They wouldn’t dare. It is literally 3 meter distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this complexity… Not surprising at all. I would expect that a lot of these are bought as retrofits, and not as a part of new construction. Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and they don't want to put that barrier to sal…

> Also, oh, man, Jazelle. I'd forgotten about that. Hardware support for Java bytecode... that did not pan out well.

As someone who was too young to be paying any attention during this time, what were some of the reasons this didn’t pan out? Java seems so dominant looking back that I’m surprised something like this wouldn’t have been a success.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#117

Post by chefandy »

Nursie wrote: post #105
chefandy wrote: post #17

Weird to see some micromuse thing listed as the service listed for 1534. I worked for them back in like 2006 and we got eaten by IBM/Tivoli and I don't believe they kept the name for anything? I always knew nobody really updated those but man, really nobody updates those.

Hah, weird to see micromuse come up. I started working for them two weeks before the acquisition was announced!

Ha! I did support there for Proviso— the product of a startup that Micromuse had acquired not too long before the IBM acquisition. I started in between the acquisitions.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#118

Post by NautilusWave »

userbinator wrote: post #100

Interesting article but one thing stood out: The landlord had no idea what this is. There are no buttons or labels on the thing, just a tiny yellow light to let you know it has the power. You move in and find a mysterious device on the wall that, at least to me, appears somewhat ominous and it's not obvious whether it may have a camera and possibly a microphone (the picture of it on the manual appears to show that it…

He hadn't read 1984

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#119

Post by fulladder »

xerox13ster wrote: post #98
kelnos wrote: post #53

> There were two strings printed with labels “SSID” and “Pwd”. I froze in horror. They wouldn’t dare. It is literally 3 meter distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this complexity… Not surprising at all. I would expect that a lot of these are bought as retrofits, and not as a part of new construction. Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and they don't want to put that barrier to sal…

> A 3A fuse would burn out in a fraction of a second if you tried to do that. he bought it on Amazon. He has every reason to be worried that it won't burn out. Louis Rossman did a video[0] where he put 8 amps through a 2 amp fuse and left the room for quite a long time, I think it was several minutes with 8a going through a 2a fuse. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

That is very disturbing. Does Amazon reimburse you when your house burns down?
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