Is it just me or is the weather radar smiling at San Francisco right now?

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Happy Storm #etc #weather #radar #earth Local weather radar shows a big smiling face off the coast of northern California. )

This stupidly placed light switch has been niggling around near the bottom of my list for nearly three years. It's probably sat there with its wires exposed for closer to thirteen, since the kitchen was remodeled by the previous owners.

I could have hunted down a plate and tried to saw a bit off I guess but we got a 3D printer for Christmas and I finally fixed it:

This was easier than I thought once I discovered that this sort of switch is a Decora Duplex. I grabbed this model from user KHF on 3D Warehouse (thanks!), chopped the edge off in FlashPrint, two failed prints (glue, then hairspray, then figuring out the temperature was wrong) and only slightly sliced open my thumb removing the supports. Welcome to the future!

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(Published to the Fediverse as: 3D DIY #etc #3dprint #decoraduplex 3D Printing a Decora Duplex wall plate for a badly positioned electrical socket using 3D Warehouse and FlashPrint. )

A few months ago I wrote about my cunning plan to stop Internet of Things botnets: stop them at the router.

It's just possible that these were in the works before that post but Symantec, BitDefender and Intel unveiled router level IoT security at CES this year. Not as hard core as my plan, but looks like a useful start.

(Image from Norton Core website).

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Routers to defend against rogue IoT devices #etc #iot #symantec Will Norton follow my plan to prevent IOT botnet attaches at the router? )

I haven't checked Klout for a long time - while I was away they've decided I'm a expert in Indian politics. Explains a lot...

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Expert #etc #klout Klout for some reason thinks that I am an expert in Indian Politics. )

We can’t trust manufactures to build secure connected devices and so routers need to be updated to solve this problem once per network.

The distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on Friday, October 21 was apparently caused by dodgy webcams. But next time it will be Nest or Alexa or Hue - not picking on Google, Amazon or Philips specifically here, those just happen to be the IOT devices currently plugged into my home network. My washing machine and drier would be as well but fortunately LG’s dismal app has saved me from myself by not working for toffee. Oh, I have some DropCams too. And my car is connected. The next attack will probably just come from me.

My fix: update routers to sandbox these devices. A Nest thermostat can only talk to nest.com. If it wants to DDOS Reddit too bad, no connection allowed no matter how badly the device is compromised.

When a new device is connected the router looks it up (MAC address registry?) and then puts it in the appropriate sandbox.

If Nest needs to connect to weather.gov to check the forecast then Google would need to proxy this via nest.com. If the device goes bad it’s only got one domain to attack (so there’s a pretty good incentive for the manufacturer to make sure it doesn’t).

The only downside is new routers or new router firmware. Given the current state of IOT I’d buy one.

As usual if any of my billionaire investor readers are interested get in touch.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Securing the Internet of Things #etc #iot #google #philips #lg #amazon A proposal to secure the internet of things via sandboxing to manufacturer owned URL by MAC address. No more DDOS from toasters. )

As much as I’m looking forward to Daydream VR and trying to train my Google Assistant to swear there is one big problem left with Android that Mountain View should tackle first.

Where the fuck did my icon go Android?

Every so often when I update apps an icon is missing from my home screen. It’s one of sixteen apps that I use frequently enough to have pinned there but I can’t remember what it was until my muscle memory sends my finger flying to the empty square an hour or day later. Until then I’m distracted and can’t focus and scroll helplessly through the recently updated list in Google Play trying to figure out which of the updates is the culprit.

It’s not the first time I’ve been through this so I took a screenshot of my home screen just so I could not go through this again. But Google Photos backed it up and deleted it to save space so it’s somewhere in Drive that I can’t find doing me no good at all. When I figure this out I’m going to borrow my daughter’s instax and keep a hard copy in my wallet.

Google booking me a restaurant and a babysitter at a whim won’t save the time I lose to hunting down missing apps.

It might be fixed in Nougat but I can’t update for an unknown number of months because of device/carrier/manufacturer fragmentation so that’s still Google’s fault.

I have been a HTC loyalist so maybe it’s Sense and not Android in which case sorry Google, I should get mad at HTC instead.

I’m pretty sure it was Goodreads.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Where did that app icon go, Android? #etc #google Why oh why does Android sometimes feel the need to remove the icon for an app from your home screen when updating it? )