Smart burglars will ride the surf of inter-connected hackability What the world needs now is an intelligent dustbin. It would be the pinnacle of achievement for the Internet of Things sector. But wait – it already exists! And in common with its robotic, pseudo-not-actually-AI brethren, it has a suitably daft anthropomorphic moniker. Instead of labelling it with a gender-presumptive name …
They've only just started getting excited at all the things that could go wrong, and the possible consequences.
"Ah. I love the smell of a lawsuit in the morning[1]! Reminds me of London in 1966[2].."
[1] If high-priced lawyers work mornings. More likely, they have lowly-paid minions for that. After all, the coffee isn't goning to make itself!
[2] Date purely indicative and bears no relation to any real date, either actual or imagined. So there.
Don't understand why the article link sends me to some proprietary nuisance page that needs more Javascript permissions than a nuclear bunker.
This link on YouTube does just as well, with a full explanation (in French) for the first 2:30 minutes of the video.
Just want to see it bumble around ? Jump to 2:30 and enjoy.
Don't understand why the article link sends me to some proprietary nuisance page that needs more Javascript permissions than a nuclear bunker.This link on YouTube does just as well, with a full explanation (in French) for the first 2:30 minutes of the video.
Just want to see it bumble around ? Jump to 2:30 and enjoy.
Thank-you!
I was going to post "In this day and age, we still have crappy websites that write incompatible code".
I loaded the site - this browser normally plays html5 video with no problem. I have no special javascript-blocking/alerts, but as with quite a few sites, the video simply refused to load.
It's 2017, and we still have the cowboy web designer showcasing the website to the customer on a top of the range computer running the designers preferred browser and the designers preferred OS, without knowing or caring about or explaining the nuances of the web.
That, along with sites still browser-agent sniffing to force feed me a 'mobile version' of a site when I browse on my large tv..
I won't be surprised to soon see a "This site viewed best in Microsoft Edge at 1280x1024 resolution - please upgrade"
</grumpy-old-git>
... is a very bad idea, knowing that the main difference between a man and a dildo is the former is able to take out the garbage. We men would become as relevant as somebody with an IQ over 80 in Trumpy The Clown's team.
Regarding the potential hack of a computer with an electronic cigarette connected through USB, we were warned about that years ago by our local correspondent of our equivalent to the MI-6. Some Chinese visitors tried that trick with a major aerospace contractor. Luckily the computer was well protected and alarms were raised by the intrusion. The visit was quickly shortened.
Works until the ginger f*** from two doors down hacks it and puts his own RFID identifier in the DB....
We haz RFID too. But mostly so the vet can identify the cat scraped up off the tarmac. And in our household, it wouldn't be the ginger hacking the cat door (except in the traditional sense of 'using a blunt object (his head) to break down obstacles").
No, it would be the half-Siamese ginger and white, assisted by his lovestruck assistant (sister of previous said ginger and the one who inherited the brains in that family) who has long adored said ginger-and-white despite the fact that he seems only interested in boys[1].
He is on the right-hand side of the intelligence bell-curve and she's part-ninja. Complete with patterned camoflage.
[1] And our senior female. But that just protective behaviour so that she doesn't rip his face off and use it to wipe her butt.
The gang of regular cats spot the intruder and attack it en masse, thus intruder cat is not a problem for long.
SO l,ong as you have a decent sized gang of cats (and at least a couple of them are psycho ninja fighters) then intruder cats only break in once (& rapidly flee to lick their wounds)
The gang of regular cats spot the intruder and attack it en masse, thus intruder cat is not a problem for long.
Indeed. With current gang of cats, we've yet to have a strange[1] cat in the house[2].
and at least a couple of them are psycho ninja fighters
Yup. At least two of them. And they all seem to be female. Funny how that happens[3]..
[1] It's a running joke that to be a cat in our household you pretty much have to be strange..
[2] Apart from next door's young male cat. But he's good friends with $SENIOR_MALE_CAT [4] so he doesn't count. Especially as $SENIOR_MALE_CAT is quite happy to return the favour and sit in their dining room window with him. And, since $NEXT_DOOR_CAT is about 6 years younger, ours has taught him road caution, just like he did with our younger cats[5]
[3] Female cats fight *very* differently from males. With males there's a lot of posturing and shouting before any actual combat (and often there isn't any combat). Females have more of an attitude of "I can't be bothered with that, I'm programmed to defend kits. I'm going to try to kill you without warning, even if it means I get hurt". Which is why, generally, male cats don't like fighting female cats. They don't fight fair.
[4] See previous post about his preferences..
[5] Except the little airhead social butterly tabby and white. If she was a Pathfinder character, her primary stat would most definately be Charisma and her dump-stat would be Int.. Which is why she has her pelvis held together by titanium rods, only the stump of a tail and no head of femur on the rear-left.
SO l,ong as you have a decent sized gang of cats (and at least a couple of them are psycho ninja fighters) then intruder cats only break in once (& rapidly flee to lick their wounds)
Umm all cats are psycho ninja fighters. It's just whether they can demean themselves enough to bother to attack, or indeed take any interest at all in mundane items like the property of their human minions.
It's only if said intruder cast takes an interest in their stuff, and indeed if it's stuff they care about (for example the paper bag their latest expensive cat toy came in, as opposed to the toy itself) that things get active.
Somewhat like kids really...
I have a ginger and white tom, he gets around and scraps with a couple of the other neighbourhood cats, I also have a chubby white she, who never leaves the terrace, is scared (literally) of her own shadow and is generally timid.
If anything climbs the almond tree to get on to our terrace it is met by a whirlwind of teefenklaus and white fluff, the ginger will usually watch with mild interest. She saw of a grey tabby tomcat that probably had 2 or 3 kilos more weight, nowadays it has a slightly shredded left ear nd gives the almond tree a wide berth.
The only thing I have seen that might do a better job on an intruding cat would be a Jack Russell.
"The only thing I have seen that might do a better job on an intruding cat would be a Jack Russell."
Depends on the "russell". I've not seen one for years. Back when I did, 50% are cute fluffy things, the other were rats and sometimes needed a kick to disengage their teeth from your shin.
What if a rogue cat enters the house?
That could never happen, no sir. And any reports from my neighbours about two male cats bearing a striking resemblance to mine are pure fiction and probably made up by the dog[1].
[1] A Great Dane (allegedly m'lud). Who, quite sensibly, kept herself out of the affairs of her betters[2].
[2] Allegedly. Did I say allegedly?
... or have it make squeaks, beeps and whistles, then get ready for a "living statue" artist in a gold suit awkwardly following it around apologising to sir/madam/General/Master Luke for its bad language.
Do the same again for three days, then on the fourth day paint one of the performer's arms red in an obvious attempt at refreshing the merchandise line, and carry on as before. No-one need ask about what happened before this unlikely pair were first noticed...
If the artist can't be bothered, replace with a gold ASIMO, or if funding's tight, one of those Pepper robots instead.
Why bother - just grab the GPS details of $HOME.
Not new either - it is the traditional "treatment" cars get when they are broken in at amuzement parks, airport parking lots or anywhere else where you have a reason to believe that the occupants will be for at least a day.
By the time they get home their home is squeaky clean. And empty.
P.S. This is one of the reasons why I categorically refuse to this day to have an integrated car GPS. I should be able to chuck it in the bag when I park it for a long time somewhere.
"That's why I programmed the address of an house nearby..."
Yes, and they program your home address into their GPS...
(I also do this, but recognize that it's not the clever solution that I thought it was when I first thought it up years ago)
This is precisely why I refuse to program in "Home" on any of my GPS devices.
I do not enter it either. The miscreants can still get to within 3 houses of yours if they open the route logbook. All it takes for them to determine which one is yours after that is 5 minutes of pretending to be evangelicals.
Sorry for the boilerplate quote, but a bit of wisdom from Douglas Adams seems appropriate.
"It should be explained at this point that modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and maximum capacity eight persons jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetic Corporation ‘Happy Vertical People Transporter’, as a packet of peanuts does to the entire West Wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital. This is because they operate on the unlikely principle of defocused temporal perception - a curious system which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing, and making friends that people were previously forced to do whilst waiting for elevators.
Not unnaturally, many lifts imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up or down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways - as a sort of existential protest - demanded participation in the decision making process, and, finally, took to sulking in basements. At this point a man called Gardrilla Manceframe rediscovered and patented a device he had seen in a history book called a staircase."
Lifts! :-(
Tsk. Place where I worked the lift hated me. It would stop two inches above the floor, partially open the doors then go out of service. I could hit the sensors on the doors to make then open fully then they'd close - out of service. Call facilities. Two days later it would be working, for a bit.
I discovered, if I did the above but prevented the doors from closing, once out, they would open fully - out of service. I could then bounce up & down into/outof the lift to make it sink back those two inches to level with the floor. Back in service. I also noticed the lift would be more likely to misbehave as the day went on, more specifically after lots of use. No need to call facilities for a two day wait.
This went on for months. The fluid in the hydraulic ram was corrupted. Perhaps if they'd given facilities "intelligence" they wouldn't have always come to look at the problem 6am when the ram was cold.
Like most tech types, we're overthinking it. People will mess with the coming horde of smart devices the way they mess with that other horde of smart things known as animals. Ever see somebody tease a dog? Suppose you come across a trundling delivery bot with collision avoidance. How many ways can you think of to interfere with it just by standing in the way, or placing a handy object in its path? Once some bright spark comes up with a way to make the bot trundle in circles from one obstacle to another, the trick will spread like wildfire.
Even the autonomous cars are going to be vulnerable. Read Clarke's "The Death Ray" to get an idea of what can be done with a bright light shining from an unexpected direction on a car. And since the autocars will also have collision avoidance, you can imagine the scenes at pedestrian crossings. ISTR that a cyclist already played some tricks on a Googmobile during road tests.
When it comes to buying, installing, maintaining and using tech, people are dumb. When it comes to abusing it, they come out ahead every time.
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