Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 215 posts

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#91

Post by dragonwriter »

kstenerud wrote: post #76
antsar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use a Chromecast with either, but one of them can also spy on you without your consent.

Not if it isn't connected to your network.

> Not if it isn't connected to your network.

Not if it isn't connected to a network. But its hardly as if devices with manufacturer-paid cellular connectivity built in and preconfigured don't exist, so there's no reason that it has to be your network.

To the extent that manufacturers are either monetizing networked services or deriving useful data from them, making them independent of end-user networking choices has a pretty clear benefit, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it become a common thing in Smart TVs.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#92

Post by geococcyxc »

karambahh wrote: post #16
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also accomplish a one-way airgap using optics that can only pass data in one direction.

I was at a security trade show earlier this year and some companies were marketing "FTP diode": one way FTP transfert. I did not have time to discuss it with them, but how a tcp based protocol could be "one way" just does not make sense to me...

I read about one of these devices once, vendor info said that it runs a small and "verified" kernel (probably seL4 or something like that) that does the TCP stuff and took care not to let any real information flow in the other direction. Apart from FTP, it support SMTP, probably others as well that I forgot. It did not sound very convincing to me. Even if the kernel is totally secure, you could probably have a side channel via ACK timing?

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#94

Post by rconti »

goatforce5 wrote: post #50
rubicon33 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "air gapped" mean?

You can transfer files across an air gap using: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

You can try. Though sneakernetting your malicious payload into the cockpit while in-flight is not recommended.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#95

Post by exelius »

wpietri wrote: post #61
a3n wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly OT: I have yet to have seen anything that makes me look forward to the IoT, and when I talk to the voices of vendors in my head I'm basically telling them "Stay out of my refrigerator, my furnace, my toilet and my smart doorlock that I'll never have." I just don't feel that anything relevant to the IoT is missing from my life. At all.

My guess is that for each person some small thing will make sense, which is sufficient to drive the costs down and the technology forward. For example, good sleep is really important to me. So I used the Philips Hue bulbs and a NUC to build a smart home lighting system that behaves much more like daylight. When I describe it to people, quite a number really want it. Not bad enough to get my code off GitHub and instal…

I don't think so. Cost is one side of the equation, but usability is another. And at the end of the day, I don't think there's enough consumer demand to push IoT where it could be. I think eventually we'll get there -- at some point in the future, it will just be cheaper to buy an Android SoC than a handful of cheap analog micro controllers -- but for the next 10+ years we're going to keep hearing about IoT as "the next big thing" because there's no consumer demand for it.

The situation with your daylight system is a perfect example. People think "Oh, that's cool" but won't actually get off their ass and spend a few hours setting it up and configuring it to their liking. Unless it comes out of the box, it's a non-starter.

IoT devices as they are today require a systems integrator to come in and tie everything together and configure them. So your lighting system is integrated with a presence system that is also integrated with your thermostat. Each of these has to be configured on a case-by-case basis, because no two homes are alike. But if your products require an integrator, suddenly the integrator is your customer, and you begin sacrificing end-user focus for things that make the integrator's job easier.

And then you realize that the largest consumer of IoT platforms isn't consumers themselves, it's installers like ADT. Their focus is on selling simple products that require minimal support, not feature-rich ones. Why? Because users simply aren't interested in paying any amount of money for advanced features. Until that changes, IoT is going to be a niche hobbyist market. Even if it's built in to every device you buy, if it's not worth anything to you, you're not going to configure it in the first place.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#96

Post by cletus »

krschultz wrote: post #2

I was flying from Dublin to Newark on Saturday on a United flight. At some point during our flight the entertainment system needed to be rebooted. When it came back up, the splash screen hit me with a huge amount of nostalgia. It was RedBoot with a kernel build date from 2004. Obviously this is the entertainment system and not something more critical, but it's telling. There is a huge cadence mismatch between softwar…

This reminds me of the rumours that Apple would release a TV. Frankly I never believed it and (IMHO) you have to be pretty ignorant of Apple to think the rumours had any credence whatsoever.

The upgrade cycles are simply too long for TVs.

But more importantly, Apple's whole model is to treat things like this as just "dumb complements". Your mobile device is, from the carrier's perspective, is increasingly becoming an a dumb Internet pipe (first with the App Store, later with the likes of iMessages and how LTE works, etc).

The TV for Apple is simply a dumb display to stick an Apple TV into. A sub-$100 device you can replace every other year if need be. A $3000 TV is replaced a whole lot less often.

Why would Apple want to be in the business of (eventually) supporting 5+ year old TVs for such a low-margin business? Or what makes you think users would pay for the Apple brand and/or upgrade more often to make it worthwhile?

So as far as IoT goes, I have trouble seeing a future where someone says "I need to buy new lightbulbs because mine don't get firmware updates anymore" or "I need to buy a new fridge because it can't talk to my new phone".

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#97

Post by JustSomeNobody »

sliverstorm wrote: post #63
rcraft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I prefer buying "dumb" tvs and simply adding chromecast/appletv/firetv, etc. Much better experience.

It doesn't really matter that much if it's dumb or smart. You can use a Chromecast with either, and refusing to buy one kind limits your choices.

All well and good until the "smart" part fails and makes the "dumb" part unusable. It's only a matter of time until it happens. I would rather take my chances with a "dumb" TV and add the peripherals I want.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#98

Post by burger_moon »

jfaat wrote: post #64
Cacti wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the researcher didn't do that on an actual plane. In fact it wasn't even a simulator, it was a virtualized simulator where he put the systems all on the same bus. On top of that the guy was only able to listen in on traffic. The entire story is bogus. The systems are isolated just fine.

Can you provide a source? [edit] I've seen the claim made more than once in this thread without a source. I understand that the article was probably very wrong. I'm just interested to know if a reputable publication has confirmed this or if it's just conjecture.

I know this doesn't mean diddly squat, but my sister worked for a manufacturer of airline wiring harnesses up until very recently, and when I asked about it, she mentioned that they were not interconnected or exposed to one another. I don't believe they did the really huge jets, but regional and private sized jet harnesses instead, so it could be different in that aspect also.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#99

Post by duaneb »

sliverstorm wrote: post #63
rcraft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I prefer buying "dumb" tvs and simply adding chromecast/appletv/firetv, etc. Much better experience.

It doesn't really matter that much if it's dumb or smart. You can use a Chromecast with either, and refusing to buy one kind limits your choices.

In my experience, "smart" tvs almost always offer a degradation of user experience.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#100

Post by dragonwriter »

wutbrodo wrote: post #88
sliverstorm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really matter that much if it's dumb or smart. You can use a Chromecast with either, and refusing to buy one kind limits your choices.

I think his point is based on the (very reasonable) assumption that an equivalent quality Smart TV is going to be more expensive, which isn't worth it in general since you're not using the features that cause the difference in cost. There of course may be realities of the market to cause it to not work out this way, but it's a pretty sensible assumption.

Otherwise-equivalent Smart TVs are usually less expensive than displays (whether TVs or monitors) without the "Smart" features. This is a matter probably largely of economies of scale -- because that's what manufacturers think the consumer market wants, that's what they make most of and flood consumer channels with, and dumb alternatives are a specialty product.
Post reply on HN