We delve into an interesting trend in today’s report: What’s the future of home automation? Shoot; let’s try some on and find out! Yee-haw…
We have plenty of media models (auto-opening doors on the Enterprise, for example) but we look at some of the other issues involved. After headlines, charts, and a few snide remarks along the way…
George Ure getting too the age where medical types are recommending get up every 15 min out of your chair to insure your continued mobility. Consider a kitchen timer.
I have a little s/w thingie called snaptimer – and goes off every 30 min…takes me 29 min just to remember where I was…
Some clocks chime nicely on the 15’s.
You price chiming clocks lately? lol
And now, friend George, you have essentially delivered anther blow to self driving cars in the outback areas of rural America.
AV’s rely on internet and specific road cues to function correctly. Well marked lane lines, shoulders, etc. Changing road surfaces has even been a problem for the software.
This is almost 2018, and both you and I have no cable and no cellular service to our homes. I doubt self-driving anything would make it, and if it does, the safety features to prevent collisions and lane departure are going to make the car or truck drive at 20-30 mph at best.
What does an AV do when confronted with a road that is gravel? Because we are seeing, right now this year, both your county and mine opting to replace asphalt with gravel due to cost on several county roads.
I firmly believe that this is because the developers have no intention to do anything except pick the low hanging fruit, get their money and exit the market long before you or I would even stand a chance of attaining service in rural areas.
While it may seem like a tractor would be a great thing to automate, trying to get it to work on farmland is a programming nightmare. So today, you get out of it at a pre-surveyed field and then engage it. You hope there isn’t a problem with a dead deer or a tree limb in the hay field. When done, it stops and you get in it and drive it back to the shed because it doesn’t do dirt roads.
How is this going to work with 18-wheelers? The short answer is it will only work in tech-blanketed areas, and only within certain parameters. The option for maximum safety will ALWAYS be engaged, and the result will be s-l-o-w…
Imagine a stream of cars following at the correct spacing. A human driver inserts his car into that lane. Immediately the lane slows to reposition all following cars at the correct spacing per their speed. Repeat several times and how fast has your average speed dropped? What happens if the human is texting and driving and their lane position is irregular? Remember – the default is ALWAYS occupant/driver safety…
AV’s will be city only, and I doubt it even makes it effectively into cities below 100,000 population – because the tech infrastructure and road requirements are not feasible in a world of declining civic revenues.
Off to see the new Star Wars with the wife and kids – knowing full well that it is and always will be pure fantasy – like self-driving cars in an era of increasing energy costs.
This is almost 2018, and both you and I have no cable and no cellular service to our homes.
Lyndon Johnson won on his past of rural electrification. I’m guessing one could make a good go at office by offering up rural dataification.
? have you tried boosters they have some fantastic boosters that’ll pull in reception from way out there whether it’s cell signal or from a Wi-Fi signals I hear there’s some really good things that will pick up on WiFi and you know your cell phone will go at least 25 miles out so if there’s a cell tower at least 25 miles out you should be able to pick up on 4G in 5 days going to be even more terrific but anyway so what I’m theoretically telling you after the fact is that you should be able to have someone that’s 25 miles away from you and their 25 miles away from another tower that you can pick up on and that’s what I’m picking up is that we have the ability in a complete shutdown situation to be repeaters at 20 25 miles
And I remember a service if you get on the internet and look it up there’s a service that that gives you that the tells you how to do that how to have communications without the cell towers using your cell phones
http://wilysis.com/networkcellinfo
Do you use satellite internet I have satellite internet and I also have the Boost Mobile that picks up 20-some miles away from a tower so between the two of them I always have internet unless I forget to plug in my battery lol.
Then I have a backup system we just call Republic Wireless on the their new system which uses at least two different servers so that way if you know one’s not working another comes up you know for 20 bucks a month they give you a gigabyte but what it does is it has more than one service . Especially for diagnosis purse Problems I know cuz my house phone has the permanent Verizon cell phone service for $18 a month you get at Walmart and then I have the boo switch gets unlimited up to 23 gigabytes for $50 a month and then I have Hughes Network satellite for $40 a month on an old program you can’t get that no more and 8 + unlimited during the the midnight hours to 8 or 7 and then they throw in a bunch of more and anyways pretty much Unlimited so one is none two is 1/3 is too so I have the Hills and then I have the Boost and then I have the Republic Wireless and then I have an on-and-off system on, go you can get, go for a minimum of 995 a month for 1GB and it picks up really really well out in the country with a little bit of aluminum foil and I say it does it on the Sprint network but I don’t know if they have more networks like to the new Republic does the number 3 Republic house more than one network so that’s what we’re going to see in the future is more and more carriers are going to be carrying over on multiple networks so that wherever you at you will be able to receive and then I also see in the future they’ll be using your satellites and then there also be used as repeaters like I get myself signal 20-some miles away so that’s going to be and then we have more so so we have more and more systems coming out and this is called the information age
Ah ha so now I am beginning understand why George refuses to “take the red pill” ! Perhaps by the time U remember to take the Pill, U can’t remember which color, and just keep on popping the Blue ones. Charlie Lee – head honcho at the Litecoin Project is bringing the capability to attach Litecoin to an Asset in 2018. Hugely huge that, not to mention Atomic Swaps capability in 2018. Gonna need sunglasses the future is so bright.
X10 modules are cheap, and all over eBay. Several controllers (some with RS232, some without) show up every week. An RS232 controller, a ‘puter, a speech-to-macro application (or at worst, a speech-to-text app., piped to a text-to-macro app.) and you have Alexa + SmartHome without the network woes, issues, and overhead, and you’ve eliminated the possibility of your home being hacked through the “smart” appliances, switches, and light bulbs which SmartHome requires.
I have no plans for home automation because of security concerns. Almost all devices have no practical security from hacking, unauthorized use etc. The few things that have any its an afterthought and pretty ineffective. Case in point: there is a safe that is Bluetooth to use your smartphone to unlock it. The pin is sent clear text un-encrypted that allows anyone to intercept it. The manufacturer has a patch, but the safe has to be sent to them to apply it. Until manufacturers get very serious about security I’m giving them a pass. Right now everything has papermache lock.
James Johnson, ex-nuke
Anyone using those voice activated, internet connected, SPIES in their home has already had their brain thoroughly washed by the Oligarchical thugs running the place.
Thinking of “SPIES”…
The “God” has enough bandwidth and devices to keep track of all our actions in this shared reality. The God even knows the personal thought of each participant.
Required reading for anyone who does FB. No need for spies when you give it up for free!
Need the teaser, sorry for the length:
In 2012, Kosinski proved that on the basis of an average of 68 Facebook “likes” by a user, it was possible to predict their skin color (with 95 percent accuracy), their sexual orientation (88 percent accuracy), and their affiliation to the Democratic or Republican party (85 percent). But it didn’t stop there. Intelligence, religious affiliation, as well as alcohol, cigarette and drug use, could all be determined. From the data it was even possible to deduce whether someone’s parents were divorced.
The strength of their modeling was illustrated by how well it could predict a subject’s answers. Kosinski continued to work on the models incessantly: before long, he was able to evaluate a person better than the average work colleague, merely on the basis of ten Facebook “likes.” Seventy “likes” were enough to outdo what a person’s friends knew, 150 what their parents knew, and 300 “likes” what their partner knew. More “likes” could even surpass what a person thought they knew about themselves.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win
My lifestyle rule is based on simplicity, “elegance” and cost, meaning, begin with the cheap, simple and easy to use, then work up from there. Daddy, back in the 50’s, born and raised on the farm, rejected cars with auto transmission and electric windows. His comment was, “the more gizmos there are on a car, the more easily they break and cost too much to fix.”
I am definitely a Luddite. I carry a smart phone because they have some nice features. I use it to make calls, play simple games while waiting for something, quick email checks, Meetup last minute changes and weather warnings. Works well for me.