Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

This is an ad from Haystack Technologies, disguised as an article. The article claims that the big problem with the Internet of Things is that the handshake time for establishing a connection is too long for fast moving vehicles. Guess what Haystack Technologies sells.

The big problems with the Internet of Things so far are well known.

- All your stuff are belong to us. Everything is tied to some "cloud" service. Since the typical lifespan of a cloud service is only a few years, this is a big problem for home automation.

- Security. What security? Most of these devices can be taken over by almost anybody. Have we had the first IoT murder yet? Would we know?

- Limited consumer benefit. Being able to control your stuff from your cell phone is more cool than useful. A refrigerator with a tablet on the door isn't that useful, especially when it costs more than the refrigerator plus a separate tablet, and the tablet will be obsolete long before the refrigerator.

- Installation. It's possible to do insanely great HVAC, with windows, skylights, fans, and shutters all operating to minimize energy consumption and make the building pleasant to live in. You can even get all that stuff for your house. Now try to get it installed, configured, and maintained.

- "Connected" vehicles not too useful. Most of the talk about "connected vehicles" is about advertising or consumer tracking, or does stuff you can do now. Urmson, who runs Google's self-driving car project, says they don't need connected vehicles. They have to have sensing and sensor analysis good enough to reliably detect trouble that isn't "connected".

- Been there, done that. We've had X10 since the 1980s. Better systems since the 1990s. Nobody uses them.

You're focusing on the consumer space. The big promise currently is elsewhere - sensors, automation, warehouses (for physical goods), and so forth. This is especially true for data collection in physically challenging environments, like mines.

This stuff is not necessarily tied to any cloud. There is a new term (wait for it), "the fog", that implies on-site data processing and analytics for all of these connected devices.

The funny part is the IoT is already here. Such systems are being deployed now in mining, oil and gas, etc.

Pure curiosity: Is security taken more seriously in those deployments than it is in the consumer stuff we've all heard of? (Would love some links to read up on the subject.)

Looking at the wireless protocols being deployed in nearly all cases, my vote would be no. We are installing junk wireless with junk security, some of which is just comical. I don't have all the answers, but there are a few straightforward improvements to be made that I outline here: https://medium.com/the-startup-magazine-collection/a-simple-...

> Pure curiosity: Is security taken more seriously in those deployments than it is in the consumer stuff we've all heard of?

<drink out nose> Thanks. You owe me a new keyboard. :)

No. If anything, it's worse.

> - Limited consumer benefit.

I think people underestimate the extent to which this matters. In fact, I might even say this is the only thing that matters. There are some of us who are concerned with privacy, ownership, security, etc. But most don't, and never will.

The real nail in the coffin is that we're not solving a real need.

:The real nail in the coffin is that we're not solving a real need."

I'd tend to agree, except that half of YC's companies don't solve a real need. Neither Twitter nor Facebook solve a real need. It's just that they got enough early users to benefit from network effects.

If someone comes up with some IoT thing so compelling that you have to have it in your pocket/on your wrist when you're anywhere away from home, that could be a big win. A wristband that lets you into your house, starts your car, logs you into your computer, gets you onto airplanes, and won't work if it's on someone else's wrist.

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