Re:Everything I own, owned
by jfsebastian on Monday August 24, 2026 @02:31AM
(#49415901)
Generally, I'm with you, but over the past decades I often saw companies being lazy about their software. So I think chances are good that we can make use of this situation. Not long ago, you had to accept certain decisions or servers going down with leaving devices useless. I'm hopeful that more stuff can have a 2nd/better life in our hands.
I like being able to have all this access, of course, but I'm not sure if "we" all truly have the character to be good stewards of this.
Or rather I am sure that we do not.
OTOH, maybe it needs events like these to build character. It just will suck for whoever turns out to be the collateral.
Re:Everything I own, owned
by jfsebastian on Monday August 24, 2026 @03:23AM
(#49416254)
That's the downside of the medal, but let's face it. A tool is a tool. You can forge helpful stuff or weapons, but this is not the fault of the tool itself. So we're currently at the stage where we were on the internet 30 years ago. Let's see where this leads too.
(in response to the other comment here, whose author forgot to turn off VPN and got automatically flagged despite his account being 10 years old, because @dang would rather hang a hundred innocent men than let a guilty get away.)
do you ponder "unpleasant moral stuff" every time you chop vegetables?
>As an anchor, knives or sharp objects were used in about 97,000 homicides globally in 2017, equivalent to roughly 266 deaths per day.
>There is no reliable single global count, so the best concise answer is about 10,000 people injured by stabbing each day worldwide, not counting deaths separately.
I can guarantee you that 95% of those are done with the humble kitchen knife.
Do the companies have better character though?
lol - if hackers hacking devices encouraged device vendors to secure their shit, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Indeed. Most of the barrier is the sheer breadth of devices on the market meaning nobody knows anything about your specific one. This is solved when you can automate it, no matter how bad the automation is as long as it works.
What you're saying only applies to what is out there right now. New stuff will eventually just be locked down more.
It's of course still huge to be able to do this with all tech up until this cut-off point. Eventually though, LLMs will have to break SOTA cryptography to keep doing this, and if they should ever manage to do that, there will be a rough awakening for the world that runs on that not being possible.
___
Also, for every IoT device we can own, some non-IT people will be facing abuse through the same means.
Devices aren't just locked down to tether us to clouds, but also so that bad actors do not have free reign. Now they kinda do.
We should keep in mind that not everyone wins here. In fact, only a minority does.