14 ms·

Just wait until device manufacturers start integrating always-on LTE modems with their own SIM cards and billing so they can pull device analytics, sell you new

Just wait until device manufacturers start integrating always-on LTE modems with their own SIM cards and billing so they can pull device analytics, sell you new advertising, and sell your usage patterns to 3rd parties whether or not you ever connect the things to your home wifi. At which point you'll have to disassemble the damned thing and physically rip out the LTE modem, possibly resulting in the device bricking itself when it can't phone home after a while. I bet if you're a device manufacturer right now and go to t-mobile enterprise sales and tell them you want 200MB of data per month per IMEI and you're going to have 50,000 units, you'll get a very attractive monthly price per unit. Mark my words, it'll be commonplace in another 8-10 years. https://me.me/i/tech-enthusiasts-everything-in-my-house-is-wired-to-the-d19985a8762a4e5681ec19b52e632186 https://me.me/i/tech-enthusiasts-everything-in-my-house-is-w... https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...

btgeekboy 4y ago
We're already approaching that point. Most modern cars phone home, and my partner's CPAP machine also has a modem that reports usage info back home, including to their insurance provider.
- scarby2 4y ago
  The CPAP is extremely useful if used correctly (rather than just enforce compliance). It allows a clinician to monitor remotely for all sorts of issues and follow up with the patient. There are a whole bunch of issues that can occur that a patient may not be aware of because they are asleep. Generally I wish we'd all use some kind of sleep monitoring system or at least we started routine screening for sleep disorders
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    My CPAP just has an SD card which I can remove and bring to the therapist. The benefit of this is that I don't have to rely only on the therapist, I can also read the card myself with tools like OSCAR: https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/ https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/ I would really hate having one that reports via 4G to the therapist only.
    - thaeli 4y ago
      Most of the cellular connection CPAP machines also have a SD card slot and will put the full logs on it if you put a card in.
- PebblesRox 4y ago
  I recall a comment here recently about someone whose insurance would only pay for the CPAP if the usage statistics showed enough usage. The problem was that the person kept unknowingly taking off the mask while sleeping. Talk about a stressful situation!
  - bluesquared 4y ago
    That was probably me. Compliance has been even more difficult lately with my seasonal allergies. The silly thing is that the physician who prescribed it doesn't check in on me other than one checkup a few months in to having it, so it's really only used as a fiscal compliance tool. Lots of manufacturers probably do it, but I'll name and shame anyway... it's a ResMed AirSense 10.
randcraw 4y ago
"Faraday cage" is my one-size-fits-all answer. It turns out I kinda have that already. My 1919 house has plastered walls, some of which have a wire mesh underlay. It blocks wifi signals between rooms beautifully.
- labster 4y ago
  The fact that people would even consider living in Faraday cages to keep their refrigerator from spying makes me think our society went seriously wrong somewhere.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    Maybe the Unabomber was a loony and also had a few valid points (broken clock is right twice a day, etc) also.
    - medion 4y ago
      I think he had/has a lot of valid points.
    - slackfan 4y ago
      nah, no caveat. dude was right.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        Right in his critique, but he had nothing worthwhile on how to address it. Hence his resulting attempt of 1. Send bombs to technologists 2. ????? 3. Mass social uprising. On this particular topic, basic software Freedom would be sufficient. But apparently enough people don't even care to make purchasing decisions based on anti-features. Or at the minimum, say hiring a technician to fix your brand new fridge as described in OP. So, as seems to be the trend, most people are effectively content letting technology take away their agency. A small number of us can swim in the stream of navigating it so we don't get ruled over by it, but once you're doing all that work just to tread water it becomes awfully tempting to use your understanding to subjugate others.
npteljes 4y ago
>possibly resulting in the device bricking itself And voiding the warranty for sure.
the_pwner224 4y ago
This is already a thing in many cars (many cars a few years ago, but almost every car now). Both to show ads in the vehicle and to harvest your location data. As well as to sell subscriptions for things like remote start from an app, wifi hotspot in the car, parental controls/monitoring, etc. You can disassemble the interior a bit (usually not too difficult) and disconnect the antenna from the comms module. Depending on the structure of the wiring harness your car uses, it may not be possible to easily do that without also removing GPS/radio functionality. Some models are now integrating WiFi/Bluetooth into the same system. Alternatively, depending on which manufacturer your car is from, you can "acquire" the manufacturer diagnostic/service software and disable the cellular connection. I will give a shoutout to Honda for being pretty good about this. The Civic didn't have a cellular connection at least as of the 10th gen (up to 2021). Not sure if the new '22 Civic does. Also, their infotainment systems run Android and you can root/jailbreak it - on the Civic, Accord, HR-V, and others. Again, this may change in current model years so double check before you buy. And (excepting a few years around 2016-2018) Honda also still has physical buttons/knobs for all the important controls, instead of putting everything into a touchscreen like 90% of companies do these days. BMW has had a cellular connection in their cars for many years, but you can disable the SIM card by programming the TCB through ISTA, even on the current G chassis cars. Not sure if that completely disables Tx. Also not sure how their just released iDrive 8 system handles it though. Alternatively you could unplug the TCB on the BMWs. That requires dropping the headliner on recent ones (annoying but not hard), and on the really recent ones I don't think you can unplug cellular only (you'll also lose GPS & some other things, potentially including WiFi/BT/NFC, I'm not sure). And it'll show a warning on the dash all the time if you unplug it.
- PeterStuer 4y ago
  Do not forget to repeat your intervention after every service at an officially brand recognized service center.
- walrus01 4y ago
  it's all good until the local NPR station bricks your mazda's infotainment unit https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=npr+station+seattle+mazda https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=npr...
samwillis 4y ago
I’m fairly sure, at least in Europe, there will be legislation that prevents this without explicit positive content from the consumer. I suspect GDPR already covers it in fact. My expectation is the online tracking/advertising is about to hit an incredible hard legislative period. The change that is coming is big, and the fallout it going to seriously badly hit some business models and corporations. However, you are completely right, they will try anything and everything to continue.
- izacus 4y ago
  > I’m fairly sure, at least in Europe, there will be legislation that prevents this without explicit positive content from the consumer. I suspect GDPR already covers it in fact. I can't seem to find the relevant part of GDPR that would even attempt to cover that - beyond any tracking data sent back to the manufacturer.
  - ratg13 4y ago
    I don't think GDPR is as relevant here either, but installing a transmitter in a car that you can't turn off would be irradiating someone against their will. France doesn't even have WiFi in schools for this reason. Hard to imagine they would allow something like this in a vehicle.
    - 369548684892826 4y ago
      Irradiation is usually taken to mean ionizing radiation, which isn't what anyone would transmit from a car.
    - c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
      At a minimum, the transmitter would need to comply with RF exposure limits.
    - izacus 4y ago
      Vehicles have built-in hotspots and LTE modems in Europe for years now. Pretty much any german luxury brand car these days will come with builtin LTE modem for navigation traffic and other similar systems. Also, use of your home internet modem to transmit a ISP-only open wifi is also legal according to many EU laws.
yc-kraln 4y ago
This is what NB-IOT is for, and it's already happening.
raverbashing 4y ago
This sounds like a great way of making me trying to plug into it and running it as a wifi-router Especially given the ridiculous price difference between a corporate and a common data plan.
justinclift 4y ago
Yeah. I'm starting to think "open source" appliances would be good thing to start creating. Of course, it's probably a bunch of effort (eg electrical compliance, RF compliance, etc). Kind of thinking it might be suitable for crowd sourcing. :)
mciancia 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if that most the biggest reason for so much pushing for 5g - they probably want to get some standard with good deployment/coverage that can handle massive amount of devices per cell before they start to doing it at scale. 3g definetly was bad for the, maybe lte is not scaling well enough for having each bulb in the house connected to the network without wifi ;D
nonrandomstring 4y ago
I mentioned in this [1] comment that so far Vint Cerf is the only person who has touched on what may become the most important digital rights battle of the century - the right not to be connected. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30975725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30975725
rwmj 4y ago
I live in an area with no cellphone signal, so if they brick themselves without that then it's going to be a problem.
- black_puppydog 4y ago
  Interesting thought experiment: if these become as common-place as "smart" TVs... you'll be left without a fridge. Are there any laws governing that some sort of refrigeration has to be available? I mean... seems like "the market doesn't provide fridges to part of the population" should count as a major market failure and should be regulated to avoid it?
  - Heliosmaster 4y ago
    wouldn't then a new company have an opportunity to fill a new niche?
    - black_puppydog 4y ago
      Doesn't mean they'll go for it. There are many situations where no company is willing to offer service. See for example mobile internet in sparsely populated areas. So the question would then be: do we consider fresh food more important than internet? :D
keraf 4y ago
I heard about a known electronic cigarette brand that plans to do this with their devices. The future where all our habits will end up being tracked is close.
- KermitTheFrog 4y ago
  It's not even close it's already here. Any your smartphone could be located in a city with 20-50m accuracy(5G/LTE) including your indoor height location. Plus add to this your frequent locations, your calls and internet activities, spendings(if it shares with your cellular operator) - and here you are. And we have a smartphone in every pocket. This market is big and each of the producers including fridges wants to bite off a piece of the pie.
jhoechtl 4y ago
> At which point you'll have to disassemble the damned thing and physically rip out the LTE modem, possibly resulting in the device bricking itself when it can't phone home after a while. I wish the guy best luck with his unplug solution. I recently did something comparable and was first lucky to discover when unplugging antennas from the board the device seemingly went on unaffected just to find out that it behaved erratic: Input was terribly lagging up to the point of being unusable to interoperate with. Reluctantly and in defeat I had to re-attach the antenna. I doubt it was designed to behave like this on purpose, but the CPU being tripped for operating out of regular parameters. However intentionally bricking the device when it can't phone home is a very likely future.
rollcat 4y ago
I think we're going to need a law to regulate this at some point. I'm normally a fan of voting with your wallet, but it's getting increasingly impossible to find non-"smart" devices: TVs are the most common offender, but even Roomba's budget option comes with WiFi nowadays. Right to Disconnect? I want my Right to Disconnect.
- dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
  What's the bet you stuck your nose up at your parents that wouldn't "just learn the new tech" when you were younger?
  - badkitty 4y ago
    This has nothing to do with "kids these days", and everything to do with redefining ownership. When these backhaul comms go in this hardware, that "purchase" doesn't convey ownership. I would describe it as a rental in ownership's clothing. It's not about 'learn the new tech' - it's 'learn when the company decides you don't need a feature or just decides to no longer support it' and remotely disables
    - dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
      - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
        Why coreboot? Is it pretty common to have laptop/desktop firmware send usage data over WiFi or Ethernet? I'd be impressed. The firmware on my devices anyways seems to be the minimum they could get away with...
        cesarb 4y ago
        > Is it pretty common to have laptop/desktop firmware send usage data over WiFi or Ethernet? Have you heard of Computrace? It comes pre-installed on the firmware of many popular brands of computers, and it does send data over WiFi or Ethernet.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
I was saying this for a while - the rights to private property are going the way of dodo. If the manufacturer can observe the device remotely, can control the device, can add or remove functionality, decide to stop selling you spare parts so you have to buy a new one, or brick it at any time - meanwhile you cant get the device to do what you want, or even to stop showing you ads? You are not an owner, you are just sucker paying the bill. John deer agrees, in their submission to the court the argued that the farmer is not the owner of the tractor they bought. This is worse than taxes, at least there you get a vote
- mongol 4y ago
  Next step is that John Deere wants to be paid as percentage of farmer's revenue.
st_goliath 4y ago
> Just wait until device manufacturers start integrating always-on LTE modems with their own SIM cards ... Just wait until someone deliberately buys such a "smart" appliance, tears the SIM card out (or does some free-style rewiring of the PCB), and starts prodding around what they can reach on the other side. They might even be so kind as to take a look at the analytics/remote-control protocol, maybe pull some credentials out of the SoC and provide a free fuzz testing service to the manufacturer.
- btbuildem 4y ago
  Free, no-sunset cellular data? Yes please.
  - jjkaczor 4y ago
    heh... this has already happened ages ago with the Kindle.
mongol 4y ago
So when do you accept the terms & conditions? The fridge will not be cold unless you do?
technothrasher 4y ago
> Mark my words, it'll be commonplace in another 8-10 years. Oh, I think it will be sooner than that, and beyond that, it won't even be your appliance. You'll be renting it for only $49.95/month, and for only $4.99/month more you can have the RecipePlus(tm) subscription and see what all your friends are cooking, comes with ExtraCare repair and monitoring service too! Even more discounts when you rent the entire kitchen appliance suite.
1970-01-01 4y ago
>with their own SIM cards and billing That is the final barrier. Right now, they can't financially justify an always-on "hard" link.
kcplate 4y ago
Tony Soprano: “First thing I did was rip out all that GPS shit”
Fnoord 4y ago
Already happened with the coffee machine at work.
ac29 4y ago
> I bet if you're a device manufacturer right now and go to t-mobile enterprise sales and tell them you want 200MB of data per month per IMEI and you're going to have 50,000 units, you'll get a very attractive monthly price per unit. Any ball park idea what this price might be? $10/year/device? Less?
ListenLinda 4y ago
I think the thing we need to watch out for is using LoraWan in devices. It's basically a free low bandwidth network. Amazon has already included a gateway in some of their devices.

btgeekboy 4y ago

We're already approaching that point. Most modern cars phone home, and my partner's CPAP machine also has a modem that reports usage info back home, including to their insurance provider.

scarby2 4y ago
The CPAP is extremely useful if used correctly (rather than just enforce compliance). It allows a clinician to monitor remotely for all sorts of issues and follow up with the patient. There are a whole bunch of issues that can occur that a patient may not be aware of because they are asleep. Generally I wish we'd all use some kind of sleep monitoring system or at least we started routine screening for sleep disorders
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  My CPAP just has an SD card which I can remove and bring to the therapist. The benefit of this is that I don't have to rely only on the therapist, I can also read the card myself with tools like OSCAR: https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/ https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/ I would really hate having one that reports via 4G to the therapist only.
  - thaeli 4y ago
    Most of the cellular connection CPAP machines also have a SD card slot and will put the full logs on it if you put a card in.
PebblesRox 4y ago
I recall a comment here recently about someone whose insurance would only pay for the CPAP if the usage statistics showed enough usage. The problem was that the person kept unknowingly taking off the mask while sleeping. Talk about a stressful situation!
- bluesquared 4y ago
  That was probably me. Compliance has been even more difficult lately with my seasonal allergies. The silly thing is that the physician who prescribed it doesn't check in on me other than one checkup a few months in to having it, so it's really only used as a fiscal compliance tool. Lots of manufacturers probably do it, but I'll name and shame anyway... it's a ResMed AirSense 10.

randcraw 4y ago

"Faraday cage" is my one-size-fits-all answer. It turns out I kinda have that already. My 1919 house has plastered walls, some of which have a wire mesh underlay. It blocks wifi signals between rooms beautifully.

labster 4y ago
The fact that people would even consider living in Faraday cages to keep their refrigerator from spying makes me think our society went seriously wrong somewhere.
- walrus01 4y ago
  Maybe the Unabomber was a loony and also had a few valid points (broken clock is right twice a day, etc) also.
  - medion 4y ago
    I think he had/has a lot of valid points.
  - slackfan 4y ago
    nah, no caveat. dude was right.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      Right in his critique, but he had nothing worthwhile on how to address it. Hence his resulting attempt of 1. Send bombs to technologists 2. ????? 3. Mass social uprising. On this particular topic, basic software Freedom would be sufficient. But apparently enough people don't even care to make purchasing decisions based on anti-features. Or at the minimum, say hiring a technician to fix your brand new fridge as described in OP. So, as seems to be the trend, most people are effectively content letting technology take away their agency. A small number of us can swim in the stream of navigating it so we don't get ruled over by it, but once you're doing all that work just to tread water it becomes awfully tempting to use your understanding to subjugate others.

npteljes 4y ago

>possibly resulting in the device bricking itself And voiding the warranty for sure.

the_pwner224 4y ago

This is already a thing in many cars (many cars a few years ago, but almost every car now). Both to show ads in the vehicle and to harvest your location data. As well as to sell subscriptions for things like remote start from an app, wifi hotspot in the car, parental controls/monitoring, etc. You can disassemble the interior a bit (usually not too difficult) and disconnect the antenna from the comms module. Depending on the structure of the wiring harness your car uses, it may not be possible to easily do that without also removing GPS/radio functionality. Some models are now integrating WiFi/Bluetooth into the same system. Alternatively, depending on which manufacturer your car is from, you can "acquire" the manufacturer diagnostic/service software and disable the cellular connection. I will give a shoutout to Honda for being pretty good about this. The Civic didn't have a cellular connection at least as of the 10th gen (up to 2021). Not sure if the new '22 Civic does. Also, their infotainment systems run Android and you can root/jailbreak it - on the Civic, Accord, HR-V, and others. Again, this may change in current model years so double check before you buy. And (excepting a few years around 2016-2018) Honda also still has physical buttons/knobs for all the important controls, instead of putting everything into a touchscreen like 90% of companies do these days. BMW has had a cellular connection in their cars for many years, but you can disable the SIM card by programming the TCB through ISTA, even on the current G chassis cars. Not sure if that completely disables Tx. Also not sure how their just released iDrive 8 system handles it though. Alternatively you could unplug the TCB on the BMWs. That requires dropping the headliner on recent ones (annoying but not hard), and on the really recent ones I don't think you can unplug cellular only (you'll also lose GPS & some other things, potentially including WiFi/BT/NFC, I'm not sure). And it'll show a warning on the dash all the time if you unplug it.

PeterStuer 4y ago
Do not forget to repeat your intervention after every service at an officially brand recognized service center.
walrus01 4y ago
it's all good until the local NPR station bricks your mazda's infotainment unit https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=npr+station+seattle+mazda https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=npr...

samwillis 4y ago

I’m fairly sure, at least in Europe, there will be legislation that prevents this without explicit positive content from the consumer. I suspect GDPR already covers it in fact. My expectation is the online tracking/advertising is about to hit an incredible hard legislative period. The change that is coming is big, and the fallout it going to seriously badly hit some business models and corporations. However, you are completely right, they will try anything and everything to continue.

izacus 4y ago
> I’m fairly sure, at least in Europe, there will be legislation that prevents this without explicit positive content from the consumer. I suspect GDPR already covers it in fact. I can't seem to find the relevant part of GDPR that would even attempt to cover that - beyond any tracking data sent back to the manufacturer.
- ratg13 4y ago
  I don't think GDPR is as relevant here either, but installing a transmitter in a car that you can't turn off would be irradiating someone against their will. France doesn't even have WiFi in schools for this reason. Hard to imagine they would allow something like this in a vehicle.
  - 369548684892826 4y ago
    Irradiation is usually taken to mean ionizing radiation, which isn't what anyone would transmit from a car.
  - c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
    At a minimum, the transmitter would need to comply with RF exposure limits.
  - izacus 4y ago
    Vehicles have built-in hotspots and LTE modems in Europe for years now. Pretty much any german luxury brand car these days will come with builtin LTE modem for navigation traffic and other similar systems. Also, use of your home internet modem to transmit a ISP-only open wifi is also legal according to many EU laws.

yc-kraln 4y ago

This is what NB-IOT is for, and it's already happening.

raverbashing 4y ago

This sounds like a great way of making me trying to plug into it and running it as a wifi-router Especially given the ridiculous price difference between a corporate and a common data plan.

justinclift 4y ago

Yeah. I'm starting to think "open source" appliances would be good thing to start creating. Of course, it's probably a bunch of effort (eg electrical compliance, RF compliance, etc). Kind of thinking it might be suitable for crowd sourcing. :)

mciancia 4y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if that most the biggest reason for so much pushing for 5g - they probably want to get some standard with good deployment/coverage that can handle massive amount of devices per cell before they start to doing it at scale. 3g definetly was bad for the, maybe lte is not scaling well enough for having each bulb in the house connected to the network without wifi ;D

nonrandomstring 4y ago

I mentioned in this [1] comment that so far Vint Cerf is the only person who has touched on what may become the most important digital rights battle of the century - the right not to be connected. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30975725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30975725

rwmj 4y ago

I live in an area with no cellphone signal, so if they brick themselves without that then it's going to be a problem.

black_puppydog 4y ago
Interesting thought experiment: if these become as common-place as "smart" TVs... you'll be left without a fridge. Are there any laws governing that some sort of refrigeration has to be available? I mean... seems like "the market doesn't provide fridges to part of the population" should count as a major market failure and should be regulated to avoid it?
- Heliosmaster 4y ago
  wouldn't then a new company have an opportunity to fill a new niche?
  - black_puppydog 4y ago
    Doesn't mean they'll go for it. There are many situations where no company is willing to offer service. See for example mobile internet in sparsely populated areas. So the question would then be: do we consider fresh food more important than internet? :D

keraf 4y ago

I heard about a known electronic cigarette brand that plans to do this with their devices. The future where all our habits will end up being tracked is close.

KermitTheFrog 4y ago
It's not even close it's already here. Any your smartphone could be located in a city with 20-50m accuracy(5G/LTE) including your indoor height location. Plus add to this your frequent locations, your calls and internet activities, spendings(if it shares with your cellular operator) - and here you are. And we have a smartphone in every pocket. This market is big and each of the producers including fridges wants to bite off a piece of the pie.

jhoechtl 4y ago

> At which point you'll have to disassemble the damned thing and physically rip out the LTE modem, possibly resulting in the device bricking itself when it can't phone home after a while. I wish the guy best luck with his unplug solution. I recently did something comparable and was first lucky to discover when unplugging antennas from the board the device seemingly went on unaffected just to find out that it behaved erratic: Input was terribly lagging up to the point of being unusable to interoperate with. Reluctantly and in defeat I had to re-attach the antenna. I doubt it was designed to behave like this on purpose, but the CPU being tripped for operating out of regular parameters. However intentionally bricking the device when it can't phone home is a very likely future.

rollcat 4y ago

I think we're going to need a law to regulate this at some point. I'm normally a fan of voting with your wallet, but it's getting increasingly impossible to find non-"smart" devices: TVs are the most common offender, but even Roomba's budget option comes with WiFi nowadays. Right to Disconnect? I want my Right to Disconnect.

dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
What's the bet you stuck your nose up at your parents that wouldn't "just learn the new tech" when you were younger?
- badkitty 4y ago
  This has nothing to do with "kids these days", and everything to do with redefining ownership. When these backhaul comms go in this hardware, that "purchase" doesn't convey ownership. I would describe it as a rental in ownership's clothing. It's not about 'learn the new tech' - it's 'learn when the company decides you don't need a feature or just decides to no longer support it' and remotely disables
  - dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
    - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
      Why coreboot? Is it pretty common to have laptop/desktop firmware send usage data over WiFi or Ethernet? I'd be impressed. The firmware on my devices anyways seems to be the minimum they could get away with...
      - cesarb 4y ago
        > Is it pretty common to have laptop/desktop firmware send usage data over WiFi or Ethernet? Have you heard of Computrace? It comes pre-installed on the firmware of many popular brands of computers, and it does send data over WiFi or Ethernet.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

I was saying this for a while - the rights to private property are going the way of dodo. If the manufacturer can observe the device remotely, can control the device, can add or remove functionality, decide to stop selling you spare parts so you have to buy a new one, or brick it at any time - meanwhile you cant get the device to do what you want, or even to stop showing you ads? You are not an owner, you are just sucker paying the bill. John deer agrees, in their submission to the court the argued that the farmer is not the owner of the tractor they bought. This is worse than taxes, at least there you get a vote

mongol 4y ago
Next step is that John Deere wants to be paid as percentage of farmer's revenue.

st_goliath 4y ago

> Just wait until device manufacturers start integrating always-on LTE modems with their own SIM cards ... Just wait until someone deliberately buys such a "smart" appliance, tears the SIM card out (or does some free-style rewiring of the PCB), and starts prodding around what they can reach on the other side. They might even be so kind as to take a look at the analytics/remote-control protocol, maybe pull some credentials out of the SoC and provide a free fuzz testing service to the manufacturer.

btbuildem 4y ago
Free, no-sunset cellular data? Yes please.
- jjkaczor 4y ago
  heh... this has already happened ages ago with the Kindle.

mongol 4y ago

So when do you accept the terms & conditions? The fridge will not be cold unless you do?

technothrasher 4y ago

> Mark my words, it'll be commonplace in another 8-10 years. Oh, I think it will be sooner than that, and beyond that, it won't even be your appliance. You'll be renting it for only $49.95/month, and for only $4.99/month more you can have the RecipePlus(tm) subscription and see what all your friends are cooking, comes with ExtraCare repair and monitoring service too! Even more discounts when you rent the entire kitchen appliance suite.

1970-01-01 4y ago

>with their own SIM cards and billing That is the final barrier. Right now, they can't financially justify an always-on "hard" link.

kcplate 4y ago

Tony Soprano: “First thing I did was rip out all that GPS shit”

Fnoord 4y ago

Already happened with the coffee machine at work.

ac29 4y ago

> I bet if you're a device manufacturer right now and go to t-mobile enterprise sales and tell them you want 200MB of data per month per IMEI and you're going to have 50,000 units, you'll get a very attractive monthly price per unit. Any ball park idea what this price might be? $10/year/device? Less?

ListenLinda 4y ago

I think the thing we need to watch out for is using LoraWan in devices. It's basically a free low bandwidth network. Amazon has already included a gateway in some of their devices.