If you accidentally build your garage too small

[AliG]

I just saw an ad for this.

 

Looks expensive for what it does, but I guess if you really can't get your car into the garage.

 

https://www.myparker.co.uk

[jack]

Worth a look @jamiehamy?

[Roger440]

Clever, but not exactly cheap.

[Onoff]

Just fork out for a lintel and door:

 

 

[ProDave]

Have you ever been to that central London car park near Whitehall that has a robot that picks up your car and puts it into a pigeon hole?

 

I went there once, not in my own car. I can't say I would have been impressed with the thing picking it up by squeezing the wheels. The potential for throwing the tracking out seems emense.

[Ferdinand]

If you buy a Mercedes E-series, you could use the "park from your smartphone" option.

[ProDave]

33 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

If you buy a Mercedes E-series, you could use the "park from your smartphone" option.

I wonder how secure that is? could have some fun?

[Jeremy Harris]

27 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I wonder how secure that is? could have some fun?

 

I doubt that it's very secure at all.  Making any internet connection secure to any reasonably degree costs far more than someone like a car manufacturer is going to fork out.  I well remember the cost, and lead time, of the hardware encryption units we had to install in our two interlinked, but 40 mile apart, data centres.  There were the single most expensive single component, just to allow TS data to be synchronised between the two data centres using internet connectivity.  Previously, we'd kept all our secure data systems physically isolated (often behind several feet of concrete and steel) from any possible outside world connection.

 

One of our old IT managers party tricks was to show how vulnerable ordinary kit was.  I remember him just turning on the mic on the iPhone of a member of staff to listen in to what was going on, it took him seconds to do and the user was none the wiser.  Not illegal, either, as the member of staff wasn't supposed to have his phone with him anyway, he should have put it away in his locker at the entrance.

 

Anyone can hack pretty much anything unless is has really good security, and even good security isn't impossible to hack, it just takes more time and effort,  The question here is whether the reward is worth the effort.  In the case of keyless entry cars the reward has been worth the effort, as they are now stolen very regularly, using boosters to spoof the car into thinking the key is present nearby.  Tesla's have been well and truly hacked, but that's mainly because a lot of Tesla owners are interested in finding out how the car works and what data it sends back to Tesla all the time.  I dare say the autopilot could be hacked, the question really has to be is it worth the effort, yet?  The answer now is probably that it's not, but no doubt it will be if the cars become popular.

 

Data theft or leakage goes on all the time, on a massive scale, as things like phones, tablets, PCs etc are inherently pretty insecure.  Google have just been wrapped over the knuckles for collecting location data from millions of users, even with location services turned off by the user, as knowing where people are is worth a lot of money to some people.  Uber had just had millions of records hacked.  Only today, it was revealed that anyone who reads the Telegraph online (or anyone one of over 400 other websites) has been having every single key stroke, or mouse or finger scroll movement, sent back to a third party, who analyses what you are doing, and collects everything you do when on that website.

 

There is no such thing as privacy, and precious little security, in most consumer stuff, it seems that it is really up to consumers to educate themselves about the risks and take action themselves if they don't feel comfortable with the way some commercial products work.

Edited November 23, 2017 by JSHarris

[ProDave]

41 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

  Only today, it was revealed that anyone who reads the Telegraph online (or anyone one of over 400 other websites) has been having every single key stroke, or mouse or finger scroll movement, sent back to a third party, who analyses what you are doing, and collects everything you do when on that website.

That's a scary one.

 

Just logging what you do on that site or anything? e.g if you had another tab open and logged into your internet banking?

[Ferdinand]

 

[Jeremy Harris]

9 minutes ago, ProDave said:

That's a scary one.

 

Just logging what you do on that site or anything? e.g if you had another tab open and logged into your internet banking?

 

 

Every keystroke or mouse/scroll movement is recorded by the site and sent back to a third party, for all the time that you have that site open in your browser.  Apparently loads of companies are doing it now, in order to see how users interact with their site.  They can replay any user's exact actions when they visited the website.  There is more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42065650

 

There are ways around this, I'm sure.  The data is probably sent directly to the third party servers, so knowing those you could block them.  You can do this in the hosts file (just redirects requests back to your local machine - a sort of oozlum bird trick) or better, add the IP addresses to a black list in your router.  I do the latter, and periodically add new servers as they are picked up by those who sniff for these things, and have added a few that I've found just by looking at Wire Shark logs (Wire Shark is a packet sniffer that tells you who your machine is connecting to all the time - the first time you use it you may get a few surprises at the hundreds of servers your machine will connect to over the space of an hour or two.

Edited November 23, 2017 by JSHarris

[Bitpipe]

33 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

Every keystroke or mouse/scroll movement is recorded by the site and sent back to a third party, for all the time that you have that site open in your browser.  Apparently loads of companies are doing it now, in order to see how users interact with their site.  They can replay any user's exact actions when they visited the website.  There is more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42065650

 

There are ways around this, I'm sure.  The data is probably sent directly to the third party servers, so knowing those you could block them.  You can do this in the hosts file (just redirects requests back to your local machine - a sort of oozlum bird trick) or better, add the IP addresses to a black list in your router.  I do the latter, and periodically add new servers as they are picked up by those who sniff for these things, and have added a few that I've found just by looking at Wire Shark logs (Wire Shark is a packet sniffer that tells you who your machine is connecting to all the time - the first time you use it you may get a few surprises at the hundreds of servers your machine will connect to over the space of an hour or two.

 

Remind me to tell you more about this tonight over a beer...:)

[AliG]

Things are very insecure in general. Hence I am going for physical security in the new place. Steel security door to garage and lockable sectional door. Someone could of course cut through the door but that is a lot of hassle when other people's cars are just sitting outside waiting to be stolen.

 

However usually as @JSHarris you have to think whether it is worth it to hack things. The media is trying to stir up that "millions could be killed" if self driving cars were hacked.

 

Who would do this and why. If someone wanted to kill you they have a myriad of options already. Most people are not at risk of being murdered so I don't think it is something to worry about at all.

 

Indeed I am increasingly depressed re the reporting on new technologies in the media recently. It is encouraging a luddite mentality.

[Temp]

From the Daily Fail but even so...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5099557/Criminals-kill-MILLIONS-remotely-hacking-cars.html

 

Any car built after 2005 is an 'open door' to hackers and could be remotely controlled to obliterate 'millions of civilians', a researcher has found.

 

and from last year..

 

https://www.wired.com/2016/08/jeep-hackers-return-high-speed-steering-acceleration-hacks/

 

The Jeep Hackers Are Back to Prove Car Hacking Can Get Much Worse....

snip

...By sending carefully crafted messages on the vehicle's internal network known as a CAN bus, they're now able to pull off even more dangerous, unprecedented tricks like causing unintended acceleration and slamming on the car's brakes or turning the vehicle's steering wheel at any speed.

[Roger440]

6 hours ago, AliG said:

 

 

Indeed I am increasingly depressed re the reporting on new technologies in the media recently. It is encouraging a luddite mentality.

 

Im not sure its luddite mentality. I prefer to take the view that products need to work.

 

The problem with a lot of this stuff, from phones to electric cars, is that, basically, they are not completed products. They are sold long before they actually work properly.

 

Traditionally, the car manufacturers were exceptional at making something work and work properly, but even thats slipping now.

 

I'll use the technology when a) it actually works, and b) its reliable and doesn't require in depth understanding of the equipment just to use it. JSHarris for example knows how to see who is doing what on his computer.  Me, not a clue. Just dont understand it. I put myself firmly in the "user" camp. 

 

Until then, count me out. Doubtless be called a luddite, but im not.  

[Ferdinand]

13 hours ago, AliG said:

 

Indeed I am increasingly depressed re the reporting on new technologies in the media recently. It is encouraging a luddite mentality.

 

Being a little judgemental.....

 

I am inclined to blame *that* on a media significantly run by people with Arts Degrees, who get to write about subjects that properly should require them to be able to count to more than 5, and have some understanding of science and statistics.

 

I am not depressed - I just evaluate on personal brands of individual writers rather than newspaper brands, and expect idiots who write for newspapers just to be like every other idiot, but with a megaphone.

 

The continuous existential flap about "robots taking our jobs" seems to be a case in point. The arguments are really no different from when Council maintenance replaced turnpike roads, factories replaced cottage industries or  renewables replace gas power stations which replaced coal; society and industry develop, and we need to look forward not backwards.

 

The thing that does truly depress me currently is the state of leadership in our universities, and to a lesser extent in our politics.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited November 24, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

18 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

Im not sure its luddite mentality. I prefer to take the view that products need to work.

 

The problem with a lot of this stuff, from phones to electric cars, is that, basically, they are not completed products. They are sold long before they actually work properly.

 

Traditionally, the car manufacturers were exceptional at making something work and work properly, but even thats slipping now.

 

I'll use the technology when a) it actually works, and b) its reliable and doesn't require in depth understanding of the equipment just to use it. JSHarris for example knows how to see who is doing what on his computer.  Me, not a clue. Just dont understand it. I put myself firmly in the "user" camp. 

 

Until then, count me out. Doubtless be called a luddite, but im not.  

 

 

Hit the nail on the head there, I think.  There's a cultural clash between software developers, who are quite used to a production model where something is released to the market and the customers find bugs that they then fix, and the car (or pretty much anything else) market where consumers expect goods to be completely free of faults. 

 

Sadly we have got very used to all software having bugs, as we've had decades where just about every bit of IT kit ever sold has had bugs in from new.  We put up with PCs that periodically crash or lock up, that are vulnerable to attack, and that require us to go through the time-consuming process of "updating (which is 99.99% of the time fixing faults that should never have been there in the first place).  We would never put up with something like a car that behaved like this, yet now we have a melding of the two technology areas where it seems very likely that we will just have to accept that cars are just like PCs.  I think mine is now on it's third or fourth software update in three and a half years, and in reality those software updates were fixing faults and vulnerabilities in the code that controls functions within the car (not once has Toyota ever revealed what any of the software updates have actually changed, though!).

[jamiehamy]

Pretty much the reason I didn't go with a home automation system for lights and sound in our house - although I do have a slightly luddite mentality in that, pushing buttons to put lights on and off has never bothered me, the real deciding factor was pretty much what Jeremy has outlined - I don't want a house control system that is dependent on a myriad of factors outside my control, be that bugs, vulnerabilities, updates or ongoing support. No thank ye! 

[Roger440]

3 hours ago, jamiehamy said:

Pretty much the reason I didn't go with a home automation system for lights and sound in our house - although I do have a slightly luddite mentality in that, pushing buttons to put lights on and off has never bothered me, the real deciding factor was pretty much what Jeremy has outlined - I don't want a house control system that is dependent on a myriad of factors outside my control, be that bugs, vulnerabilities, updates or ongoing support. No thank ye! 

 

100% with you there. House needs to have minimal technology. Wants to be "passive" (not as in passivehaus) so it cant go wrong or go "out of date".

 

I think we discussed automation before here, and the fact it will be obsolete in just a few years and "unsurpported"

 

That said, i genuinely dont see why i need to turn the lights on from my phone. A switch on the wall is just fine!

[Vijay]

I think lighting from a phone is useful if you get home later than you planned, so you can turn a light on for security

[Trw144]

4 hours ago, jamiehamy said:

Pretty much the reason I didn't go with a home automation system for lights and sound in our house - although I do have a slightly luddite mentality in that, pushing buttons to put lights on and off has never bothered me, the real deciding factor was pretty much what Jeremy has outlined - I don't want a house control system that is dependent on a myriad of factors outside my control, be that bugs, vulnerabilities, updates or ongoing support. No thank ye! 

 

One of the reasons I went for the home automation was nt so much that I have an issue with using a switch on the wall (ultimately that's how all the rooms listings work on our house, with the option that I can do stuff from either my phone or the tablet in the wall if I wanted to), but for instance in our kitchen/dining room we have 12 different zones of lights, and I certainly don't want 12 switches on the wall. I have one switch and 4 preset scenes that I can cycle through. 

[jack]

9 hours ago, Trw144 said:

 

One of the reasons I went for the home automation was nt so much that I have an issue with using a switch on the wall (ultimately that's how all the rooms listings work on our house, with the option that I can do stuff from either my phone or the tablet in the wall if I wanted to), but for instance in our kitchen/dining room we have 12 different zones of lights, and I certainly don't want 12 switches on the wall. I have one switch and 4 preset scenes that I can cycle through. 

 

Exactly. Every light in our house except the one in the plant room runs off our home automation system, and I can't remember the last time I used the app to turn a light on.

 

It's the added functionality that I like. For example, each light switch (spring loaded, so momentary hold) can be used to control anything in the house. For example, at the moment, the garage lights are set to come on for an hour when I hit the switch. I could program the system so that if I long hold the switch, it will open a window, say, three seconds long, count the button presses within that period and keep the light on for that number of hours.

 

I have our bedside light switches programmed so that a long press acts as a "night mode" switch. All lights are turned off, any blinds left open are closed, and the garage door is closed if its open. When our gates are installed, I expect them to have them close at this point if they are open too.

 

Most of the blinds open and close automatically, and are programmed to close a certain time after sunset and open at various times in the morning.

 

There are some downsides and risks, for sure, but for the most part the system has been very reliable.

[SteamyTea]

This serious, and possibly life threatening, wound was caused by technology.

I dropped my phone behind the seat in the car, as I put my hand in to retrieve it, I caught the seat rail (thank goodness it was not electric) and maimed myself.

This is a life changing injury, it has taught me to stop being a clumsy oaf (again).

 

Edited November 25, 2017 by SteamyTea

[AliG]

I think some people are not comparing like with like.

 

When cars were first introduced I am sure people said they were slower and less reliable than horses, comparing a new technology to something that has matured over 100 years is bound to lead to some issues. @Bitpipe electric cars are already a product that works well, I am picking up my Tesla in 2 weeks. There may well be software and reliability issues, but this has little do do with them being electric, the drivetrain is very reliable. Instead these are often due to Tesla simply lacking experience in building cars or adding unnecessary gadgets. The core driving functionality is very sound. Often I read articles on electric cars where everyone pounces on the lack of range, I certainly have not driven more than 200 miles in a day at any point in the last 10 years. There is considerable evidence that the number of long journeys people make is very small and there are charging solutions for that.

 

@temp I had missed your post, this is the kind of scare story I am talking about. The hackers seem to have spent months working on this. If you want to kill someone there are lots of easier ways. It is not something likely to really happen. According to the Wired article the maybe had physical access to the car.

 

I never thought anyone needed a £500 phone when the iPhone came out, look where we are now.

 

Basically I am a big fan of progress. Not every invention is progress of course, some are pointless gizmos, but progress does require some mistakes and some trial and error.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

My concern is that nothing has changed with the ethos behind software design.  Back when I first got a PC, around 40 years ago, software was released with bugs and there was an expectation that consumers would do all the final debugging, with the suppliers releasing patches to address all the faults that were found.  Nothing has changed at all.  If you buy the very latest generation of most operating systems there will be bugs found by consumers within the first few days or weeks, and it will be consumers that have most of the burden of having to update their machines to work as they are supposed to.

 

I think it's cultural, there just doesn't seem to be any real interest in making sure that software is free from bugs before it's released.  This is unlike other products, like cars, where if they all had to be fixed to get rid of inherent faults within the first few days or weeks people would just stop buying that make of car.

 

What's really annoying, is that I know it doesn't have to be like this at all.  The helicopter programme I ran for a few years involved a machine that was fly-by-wire, with a great deal of software controlling everything from the instrument displays, through the main flight control systems, to the engine management systems, as well as all the weapon and sensor related code.

 

There were no bugs in that when that aircraft first flew, none at all.  The code had been written in a robust language, using formal methods, had been complied with accredited compilers that we knew would always produce the same machine code for any given source code, and the machine code had been checked via a full static code walk through before we even started functional testing on hardware.