A bit of a dick move to remove the root password on an IOT device of a flat you only rent.
What's that touchscreen in my room?
141–150 of 576 posts
Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?
#142I like how the author is surprised by the technological aberration that form Linux powered home appliances. A node server to power and publish over wifi a web site, an API, a web socket, while the site is being displayed by a outdated webview engine within an heavily constrained terminal which cant be reused for anything else. That's... the norm. All this is very common. And yet displaying a couple of digits and a ba…
Pulling wires through anywhere after it's finished is an immense installation hassle though. It might be possible...or it might be completely impractical even if you can (i.e. low voltage buses and unshielded power wires don't play nice together if they're parallel).
Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?
#143I like how the author is surprised by the technological aberration that form Linux powered home appliances. A node server to power and publish over wifi a web site, an API, a web socket, while the site is being displayed by a outdated webview engine within an heavily constrained terminal which cant be reused for anything else. That's... the norm. All this is very common. And yet displaying a couple of digits and a ba…
He probably would get more savings by removing the fuse again than keeping that useless thing on…
Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
device continues to receive regular security updates Have to reply to this, and my response was covered a bit by your statement of "security up to par". Nothing should be considered secure. All those bug bounties are to entice black hats, into giving up juicy pre-0day vulnerabilities. So just because a device is up to date with security updates, we all must understand, there are countless bugs unknown, needing to be…
> Consider everything that is network connected as compromised. Everything. This doesn't seem like useful advice. If you know something is compromised, you're going to want to stop using it and build a clean system etc. You can't just do that continuously the instant you've built the new system. Likewise, how does monitoring even work? Every device and app wants to phone home to some random server. The connection wil…
This doesn't seem like useful advice.
Understanding reality is always useful advice. Wishing reality isn't as it is, won't help.
The mindset I have described, is how one must view all electronics. Unsecure.
Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?
#145Hey Nikita, that was an excellent read. It felt like a pivotal scene in a movie that would change the course of the succeeding narrative. I envy the ability to write so nicely and clearly, making it enjoyable for most generally technical people and keeping us engaged. I will watch out for more articles.
Same! This is my favourite of all recent HN posts.
Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Consider everything that is network connected as compromised. Everything. This doesn't seem like useful advice. If you know something is compromised, you're going to want to stop using it and build a clean system etc. You can't just do that continuously the instant you've built the new system. Likewise, how does monitoring even work? Every device and app wants to phone home to some random server. The connection wil…
This doesn't seem like useful advice. Understanding reality is always useful advice. Wishing reality isn't as it is, won't help. The mindset I have described, is how one must view all electronics. Unsecure.
But what does that mean in practice? Throw them all into the fire and go back to pen and paper?
Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?
#147A bit of a dick move to remove the root password on an IOT device of a flat you only rent.
It was completely non-functional before, so there's really no loss.
Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?
#148A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…
About water consumption: depending on your make of water meter, there's often a small reflective wheel that turns eg. once for every liter. Sometimes these are made out of metal or even slightly magnetic. An arduino with an optical or Hall effect sensor might get you real far in real time, high resolution data collection!
Alternatively I've had success in wiring up a temperature probe directly to the incoming water line, and comparing that temperature to the ambient temperature. Where I live that works because the water arrives from underground & is always much cooler than ambient air. The time-integrated difference between the two is a proxy for how much water you use... this is much more involved to get meaningful data from, tho.
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Edit: a proximity sensor that detects metal might be the most straightforward thing, if you have a water meter with a rotating metal gauge https://www.alldatasheet.com/view.jsp?Searchword=LJ12A3-4-Z/...
Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?
#149I thought it would a Telescreen. (1984 reference)
Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?
#150A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…
About monitoring water consumption, maybe using some webcam + OCR would help to recognize reading of a water meter?
Then Home Assistant would be helpful to see charts with energy consumption etc