here I used to work, every day I drove past an apartment building that was
next to one of those giant animated LED billboards. For several months the
display was an ad for some optometrist. I felt sorry for the residents:
imagine a ten-foot-tall illuminated blinking eyeball outside your
window, watching you all day and night. It would be like living
next to a giant metaphor for the Internet of Things That Spy On You.
Fifty years ago anyone who said their household appliances were spying on them would have been locked up. But it makes sense: your washing machine has all the dirt on everyone in the house. Your coffee maker knows if you've started drinking tea and it might not be happy about it. Soon enough you'll be in hot water. Oh, the bad jokes write themselves, with no help from ChatGPT.
Here's what the news media are saying:
Bose smart speakers were found to share user data with Meta—the parent company of Facebook. . . . LG and Hoover smart washing machines asked for users' date of birth, with people not able to use the app unless they provide it. Both also asked for users' phone contact book.
Wait a minute. App? Are you telling me people are trying to control their washing machine with their cell phone? In the old days, we'd throw our clothes in and push the Start button. What part of that needs an app?
The fact is that if you hook something up to the Internet, it's safe to assume that it's gossiping about you behind your back to its true owner, which is not you. As our society becomes less free, more corrupt, and more authoritarian, it gets less and less amusing. Today it's helpful; tomorrow it reports you for not cleaning out the lint trap often enough. The day after that it rats you out for using too much detergent.
The evidence (≈10× magnification)
The next day you get a nasty email from your washing machine:
Hello, Mr.
none of your damn business you're just a washer!It looks like you've been using too much laundry detergent! Did you know that's bad for the environment? Laundry detergent kills precious aquatic animals and contributes to global warming. Experts say that abuse of laundry detergent is responsible for heat waves, global famine, and floods, which kills millions. Laundry detergent is also known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm!
For more information, or if you'd like to get bitched at some more, please visit our website at xxx.xxx.com.
Sincerely, Your Washer
According to Home Connect, the “smart” washing machine figures out how dirty your clothes are and adjusts the amount of washing to “ensure an environmentally friendly washing cycle with a consistently fresh result.” Then it calls you up on your telephone, wherever you may be, and tells you when your clothes are done washing. So you can be just like that guy pictured on their website walking through the airport smiling with pride as he gets sexted by his washing machine.
Sounds great, but how does it get the clothes out of the laundry basket? It can't transfer them to your dryer, but it can tell your repairman what's wrong with it when it breaks. These days, people have to call an engineer to fix their washer. When my washing machine started making a loud banging noise, I just fixed it myself with a torch and a $15.93 steel rod from the hardware store. The timer was just an ordinary electromechanical switch. If it broke, you found the part number and slapped a new one in. So, ten minutes doing the repair and another hour or two getting the cover back on.
It seems that the more people grow up with technology, the harder it is for them to handle it. The UK Ministry of Defence accidentally sent messages to Mali, an African country aligned with the Russian Wagner group, at least 55 times instead of its intended recipients at the US military. According to the press, so did the Pentagon, which supposedly sent “millions” of emails to them.
Comparison of Calibri and Stencil fonts
I am skeptical about this. It's my understanding that all internal emails at the DoD are automatically encrypted, and if not it tacks on the word “EXTERNAL” as a reminder that it's going to an outside address. But maybe they changed it.
This snafu happened because Mali's domain is .ml instead of
.mil. That's what we get for using that dreadful default Calibri
font instead of Stencil.
Did the mails bounce, were they sent unencrypted, or are they sitting in some minister's spam folder? It hardly matters these days. Maybe somebody ought to hop over there and make sure Mali hasn't started building directed energy weapons. Or maybe the DoD is having budgetary problems:
To: admin@screwdrivers-r-us.ml
Subject: Important message from the US Secretary of Defense
Because of the tragic loss of the staff of the US Defense Finance and Accounting Service, who all suddenly contracted a bad case of diarrhea last week, we need your urgent assistance in securing a consignment of excess currency in the amount of US$17.23 trillion for safekeeping. Our sources tell us you are a trustworthy and reliable person. Please send us your banking details along with $700.42 in cashier's check to cover the cost of a stamp and a screwdriver and we will have these funds transferred to your account. We know you have a choice in giant military powers bristling with nuclear missiles, and we want to thank you for letting us fly them over you.
Sincerely, Lizzy Duklipz
US Secretary of Defense
A $300 screwdriver
Speaking of which, these 600 dollar screwdrivers that everyone thinks are so funny are real. They're called torque screwdrivers and they're essential tools these days. You wouldn't want to put excess torque on your JDAM and have the bolt head snap off. If it did, you'd have to drill it out, with predictable consequences.
They still cost over 600 dollars apiece. And yes, Virginia, I bought one a few years back to repair a piece of scientific equipment. True, it was just a small one, only $300, but without it the repair would have been impossible.
sep 08 2023, 3:56 am. last updated sep 16 2023, 6:08 am
