That’s the dream. After years I finally got serious about learning/implementing VLANs and have begun to isolate everything out/properly firewall them. Most of the smart home stuff is already Z-Wave/Zigbee, but the few devices that aren’t are mostly already migrated onto a dedicated IOT network, as is the hubs, where only devices that have business talking to each other can even see one another.
I have yet to play with tailscale, but it’s on the list.
Hm. Imprecise on my part.
The panels aren’t the concern. It’s stored energy in the battery that can be dumped onto the grid, along with the stored energy of other compromised systems.
The article I linked outlines a scenario like what I’m describing being possible with EV’s that have had their chargers hacked.
I love the idea. Scares the shit out of me.
I’m not as concerned with these things starting house fires, but I want to explain that away first. I’m a little weak on the science, but my understanding of how these work is that they attune to the grid frequency and voltage to deliver power at a slightly lower frequency than what is provided by your wall plug. This allows them to augment your home power use without refeeding power into the local grid. IIRC, if there’s no wall power, they only offer power through outlets on the devices themselves, vs through the wall plugs.
And, I think that the above safety feature will prevent over-amperage situations for in-house wiring loops, since the device cannot exceed the power delivery of the circuit it’s plugged into, when operating normally.
These things scare the shit out of me because the U.S. power grid is badly under-engineered. Before actual electrical engineers hunt me down and kill me, think of building a bridge. You can do that by just pouring a billion tons of concrete into a ravine. But building something that is material and budget conscious while being safe enough to avoid lawsuits is not what I’m getting at. (Think of the phrase “Anyone can build a bridge, but not anyone can build a bridge that barely stands.”)
It’s a feature, not a bug. Otherwise, power lines would be I-Beams and we’d have some sort of insane switching technology to isolate and shut off every single segment of the grid.
But we don’t! Homes are never disconnected from the grid unless specialized hardware is installed at the meter to disconnect them. (Which happens for distributed/co-generation scenarios.)
The existence of always connected power generation or storage sources as a potential threat vector is well known. In 2023, it caused a minor kerfluffle as several brands of EV chargers were shown to be easily hackable and as few as 300 of them could be used to take down a regional power grid. Not everyone can afford an EV, and usually those users are a tad more tech savvy. They generally are not buying third party chargers, anyway.
But the rate of adoption for these devices could be significantly higher. The law of averages being what it is, I think these pose a much higher threat to the grid from hacking. Everyone loves apps. No one thinks about security. They could easily exploited, rooted, and have their safety features disabled. Who needs 300 EV’s when you have 300,000 balcony chargers?
Funnily enough, these would be in high demand if the U.S. grid got fried. It would take years to undo the damage.
I like smart home stuff. I hate my privacy being invaded. It’s a very thin line to walk.
A company recently released a product that promises to be Matter compatible. By the time the product arrived, they edited their product description to say it worked with Matter if you bought their always online hub, created an account, let their hub talk to the internet, and then installed their internet-connected plugin to Home Assistant. (So it’s not that HA talks to these devices, or that it talks to their hub. It logs into the company’s servers to get the current state of the device.)
I wrote a review outlining this. An AI bot sent me a message offering me additional products from this company. (Ha!) And included the line “We strictly adhere to data protection regulations” … in the U.S?
Laughably misleading.
…. Huh.
Every person at my work has simply picked a new first name with the same letter, so that their LastNameFirstInitial(SometimesNumbers) user ID has not needed to be updated. Only their display names have changed.
Ironically, people changing last name due to marriage have traditionally required more effort.
I’m in IT, but not that kind of IT.
Last week I afflicted myself with the Location Services are turned off bug by installing the 23H2 update to duplicate an issue a user in my work area was having.
When I called desktop support, we could not replicate the issue after he remoted in.
He closed the Remote Desktop connection, and the issue reoccurred.
He remoted in. The popup vanished as soon as he connected. We couldn’t replicate the issue.
He seemed dubious now. He disconnected. It occurred. I got a screenshot. He reconnected. We looked at the remote connection settings. Remote connections were set to override location. Disabled that.
Issue presented. We both had a good laugh.
… I thought that was a vibrator until I zoomed in.
Rafiki whacks you on the head with his staff.
Go talk to a therapist!
I personify my ADHD symptoms as “the goblin”
The ADHD goblin steals memories, tells me to eat when in bored, tells me that every minor rejection is a major judgement against me, and all the other symptoms I can’t think of right now.
There is no paradox in the social contract.
Tolerance is mutual. Respect is mutual. Kindness is mutual.
I know. I was just seeing if you would notice. awkward laughter
(But thanks, I was trying to wing the conversion and started off with 3.3ft =1m and then did the numbers meme while my fingers typed gibberish.)
I have an FDM printer (Ender 3 clone) that is mostly 2020 aluminum extrusion as the frame. A few years ago I found some 2020 on sale and built a set of shelves for my wife’s plants out of it. (Now - I know. It’s not the most economical use of materials, but it was the middle of winter, and I didn’t want to go work in the garage. Plus the 2020 was on sale.) It’ll support a slew of plants over a 4-foot span (~1.2m) without any sagging or other concerns. It can be wobbly side to side, but that’s a matter of bracing and connectors.
It’s like a trap. Answerable facts of no consequence.
Why must our brains do this?! But we can’t stay interested in the stuff we need to stay interested in.
It’s not unheard of. The genetic factors for several types of conditions can overlap. Not a guarantee, and everyone is different, but… 🌈💫
But they’re jawa21! That’s got to count for something!
Many years ago, I discovered that my then-employer’s “home built” e-commerce system had all user and admin passwords displayed in plaintext at home/admin/passwords.
When I brought this to the attention of leadership, they called the “developer” in and he said “oh, well, that’s IP locked, so no one on the web can access it!” When I pulled it up on my phone, he insisted my phone was on the work WiFi, despite it being clearly verifiable that was not the case. (The same work WiFi that had an open public connection, which is the one my phone would have been on, if it were on it…)
He did fix that, but many other issues remained. Eventually a new COO hired someone competent as his ‘backup’, replaced our website and finally suggested he pursue other employment opportunities before he could no longer voluntarily pursue them. (There was concern he might sabotage.)
I worked very hard all day on very small things. I was pretty well rested and properly medicated.
At the end of the day, however, I had made progress forward, but also had discovered issues with my earlier work, setting me back an amount commensurate with my progress.
Tuesday will be more challenging, I have some things that are causing me anxiety, and I expect them to be worse Tuesday. Whee.
Unless something else happened, it has to do with the sign stealing scandal
The internalized sense of failure because you cannot maintain friendships with (most) neurotypical people is honestly kind of a cancer until you figure it out. It’s one of the most damaging things that happened to my psyche as a result of having ADHD.
It’s one of the reasons why I so strongly advocate for everyone getting tested if they have any suspicions. The knowledge that I wasn’t wrong, and the disconnection I felt from others was not (necessarily) a result of my own failings was really freeing and lifted a lot of weight from me. I hope getting tested can help others by either preventing them from internalizing similar feelings, or giving them a path forward to working through those feelings.
Like I said, I’m weak on the science. I’m more of a computer person.
Most of what I know is based on either a Practical Engineering or Matt Ferrell video, but I’m interested in the topic, if a little too busy to dig deeply enough to get past the marketing. If you have a good info source on the matter, I’d love to check it out.
With that said, the first paragraph is not really applicable to my concern, which is that a grid connected panel + battery could be hacked. En masse, they could dump power onto the grid and fry transformers or take out substations. (Which smarter people than I have identified as a concern, re: EV chargers.)