Humor Section!

[Porthos]

 

[Porthos]

 

[Porthos]

 

[NETWizz]

No thanks. I do not desire my washer/dryer or refrigerator to be connected to the Internet. I do not want a TV screen on my fridge either.

What is next? Will I be expected to buy a monthly subscription to use my toothbrush?

 

[GTP]

It's a crazy world we live in now...

Steve Gibson relayed a funny but true story of a woman who was locked out of her Samsung oven because she failed the "captcha" challenge!
"No dinner tonight kids - oven says no!"

 

[britechguy]

Steve Gibson relayed a funny but true story of a woman who was locked out of her Samsung oven because she failed the "captcha" challenge!

And people wonder why I assiduously avoid the IoT as much as is possible. I had to cave for a smart TV, and I chose to cave for an iRobot vacuum cleaner with features that map your floor plan, but that's it.

I just installed a Magic Chef electric wall oven that was chosen because it was about as "old school" as one could hope to find. Temperature is regulated by dial, as are the various functions (e.g. defrost, convection bake, broil) with another dial. The only thing digital is the clock and timer, and the appliance is not web connected. I don't need an oven with 500 possible cycles and that's constantly phoning home. My fridge, which is a few years old, is the same: not web connected.

 

[frase]

No thanks. I do not desire my washer/dryer or refrigerator to be connected to the Internet. I do not want a TV screen on my fridge either.

What is next? Will I be expected to buy a monthly subscription to use my toothbrush?


View attachment 17660

We have been watching you brush your teeth and have videos of evidence, you are you dirty person. Deposit 500,000 Bitcoin to unlock your toothbrush and we will not release videos to your dentist.

 

[frase]

 

[GTP]

And people wonder why I assiduously avoid the IoT as much as is possible. I had to cave for a smart TV, and I chose to cave for an iRobot vacuum cleaner with features that map your floor plan, but that's it.

I just installed a Magic Chef electric wall oven that was chosen because it was about as "old school" as one could hope to find. Temperature is regulated by dial, as are the various functions (e.g. defrost, convection bake, broil) with another dial. The only thing digital is the clock and timer, and the appliance is not web connected. I don't need an oven with 500 possible cycles and that's constantly phoning home. My fridge, which is a few years old, is the same: not web connected.

Why anyone would willingly invite their home appliances to start sending data back to the mothership is truly beyond me.
Do manufacturers really need to know what I eat, when I sleep, or how often I wash my underpants? I’m not sure what marketing value they hope to extract from the contents of my fridge or the timestamp of my last sock cycle -but I’d rather not find out.
I grew up during the Cold War, and I still remember my father eyeing our black-and-white TV suspiciously. He’d say, half-joking, “Are we watching it… or is it watching us?” At the time, it felt a bit paranoid. Now? Prophetic?
It feels like a product pitch from CES.

Case in point: a listener once reported to Steve Gibson (Security Now! podcast) that his LG smart washing machine was uploading 3.6 gigabytes of data per day. I don’t know what kind of telemetry a washer needs to phone home, but unless it’s writing a memoir called “The Laundry Files,” that’s way too much bandwidth for a spin cycle. Turns out it was a slave in a botnet!

 

[HCHTech]

Why anyone would willingly invite their home appliances to start sending data back to the mothership is truly beyond me.

This recent XKCD seems relevant: