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Imagine if all wifi were open. Those TVs and other IoT appliances would happily upload whatever the hell they wanted without asking you anything. I used to bem

Imagine if all wifi were open. Those TVs and other IoT appliances would happily upload whatever the hell they wanted without asking you anything. I used to bemoan that more people don't maintain completely open wifi connections in the spirit of sharing (assuming you have unlimited Internet). But there's the upside to everyone putting a password: You can choke off all those household devices that demand Internet access!

nitrogen 10y ago
Do you think they'll just ship LTE radios in the end?
- vertex-four 10y ago
  If they can get mobile providers on board, they definitely will. Amazon has an option for "free 3G" on their higher-end Kindle devices, I don't see why a smart TV couldn't provide it.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Indeed. There's also tons of stuff with built-in mobile connectivity deployed everywhere. Think electronic road signs, billboard displays, and even emergency systems in elevators. It's a tried and true technology.
    - stock_toaster 10y ago
      And vending machines. some of them report home via cellular to let the company know when they are in need of refilling.
elihu 10y ago
> But there's the upside to everyone putting a password: You can choke off all those household devices that demand Internet access! Not for long. As those devices move to prepaid low-data rate cellular service, you won't be able to stop them from phoning home, short of RF shielding. (Sometimes I wonder if a lot of the older electronic devices we consider junk now will become desirable in the future because they "just work" without the various user-hostile spyware, DRM, rootkits, anti-repair features and remote-exploitable security vulnerabilities that seem to be proliferating in modern devices.)
- pdimitar 10y ago
  That's exactly the reason why I curse myself for not going into an engineering highschool and university and becoming a professional electronics engineer -- on top of being a programmer. Nowadays I feel like a helpless puppet in the hands of vendors that want to make their tech transmit as much data as possible to their servers. I am not even sure the TV I have at home (and to which I didn't give any internet access) can't secretly negotiate a connection with my router. I too feel that some of us have to start collecting some older tech just in case.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Older devices are going to have limited capabilities due to their older technology, plus when they break you won't be able to repair them because of the unavailability of parts. A better solution is to build our own devices using readily-available parts, such as Raspberry Pis, and make the designs and source code freely available. Then these things can be updated as technology improves, and their cost will be low because they won't have their availability constrained by being out of production.
Arizhel 10y ago
You don't need WPA to keep devices from connecting. Any decent router will let you block specific MAC addresses.

nitrogen 10y ago

Do you think they'll just ship LTE radios in the end?

vertex-four 10y ago
If they can get mobile providers on board, they definitely will. Amazon has an option for "free 3G" on their higher-end Kindle devices, I don't see why a smart TV couldn't provide it.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Indeed. There's also tons of stuff with built-in mobile connectivity deployed everywhere. Think electronic road signs, billboard displays, and even emergency systems in elevators. It's a tried and true technology.
  - stock_toaster 10y ago
    And vending machines. some of them report home via cellular to let the company know when they are in need of refilling.

elihu 10y ago

> But there's the upside to everyone putting a password: You can choke off all those household devices that demand Internet access! Not for long. As those devices move to prepaid low-data rate cellular service, you won't be able to stop them from phoning home, short of RF shielding. (Sometimes I wonder if a lot of the older electronic devices we consider junk now will become desirable in the future because they "just work" without the various user-hostile spyware, DRM, rootkits, anti-repair features and remote-exploitable security vulnerabilities that seem to be proliferating in modern devices.)

pdimitar 10y ago
That's exactly the reason why I curse myself for not going into an engineering highschool and university and becoming a professional electronics engineer -- on top of being a programmer. Nowadays I feel like a helpless puppet in the hands of vendors that want to make their tech transmit as much data as possible to their servers. I am not even sure the TV I have at home (and to which I didn't give any internet access) can't secretly negotiate a connection with my router. I too feel that some of us have to start collecting some older tech just in case.
Arizhel 10y ago
Older devices are going to have limited capabilities due to their older technology, plus when they break you won't be able to repair them because of the unavailability of parts. A better solution is to build our own devices using readily-available parts, such as Raspberry Pis, and make the designs and source code freely available. Then these things can be updated as technology improves, and their cost will be low because they won't have their availability constrained by being out of production.

Arizhel 10y ago

You don't need WPA to keep devices from connecting. Any decent router will let you block specific MAC addresses.