CES 'Worst In Show' Devices Mocked In IFixit Video - While YouTube Inserts Ads For Them (worstinshowces.com) 55
While CES wraps up this week, "Not all innovation is good innovation," warns Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit's Director of Sustainability (heading their Right to Repair advocacy team). So this year the group held its fourth annual "anti-awards ceremony" to call out CES's "least repairable, least private, and least sustainable products..." (iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens mocked a $2,200 "smart ring" with a battery that only lasts for 500 charges. "Wanna open it up and change the battery? Well you can't! Trying to open it will completely destroy this device...") There's also a category for the worst in security — plus a special award titled "Who asked for this?" — and then a final inglorious prize declaring "the Overall Worst in Show..."
Thursday their "panel of dystopia experts" livestreamed to iFixit's feed of over 1 million subscribers on YouTube, with the video's description warning about manufacturers "hoping to convince us that they have invented the future. But will their vision make our lives better, or lead humanity down a dark and twisted path?" The video "is a fun and rollicking romp that tries to forestall a future clogged with power-hungry AI and data-collecting sensors," writes The New Stack — though noting one final irony.
"While the ceremony criticized these products, YouTube was displaying ads for them..."
UPDATE: Slashdot reached out to iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens, who says this teaches us all a lesson. "The gadget industry is insidious and has their tentacles everywhere."
"Of course they injected ads into our video. The beast can't stop feeding, and will keep growing until we knife it in the heart."
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland summarizes the article: "We're seeing more and more of these things that have basically surveillance technology built into them," iFixit's Chamberlain told The Associated Press... Proving this point was EFF executive director Cindy Cohn, who gave a truly impassioned takedown for "smart" infant products that "end up traumatizing new parents with false reports that their baby has stopped breathing." But worst for privacy was the $1,200 "Revol" baby bassinet — equipped with a camera, a microphone, and a radar sensor. The video also mocks Samsung's "AI Home" initiative which let you answer phone calls with your washing machine, oven, or refrigerator. (And LG's overpowered "smart" refrigerator won the "Overall Worst in Show" award.)
One of the scariest presentations came from Paul Roberts, founder of SecuRepairs, a group advocating both cybersecurity and the right to repair. Roberts notes that about 65% of the routers sold in the U.S. are from a Chinese company named TP-Link — both wifi routers and the wifi/ethernet routers sold for homes and small offices.Roberts reminded viewers that in October, Microsoft reported "thousands" of compromised routers — most of them manufactured by TP-Link — were found working together in a malicious network trying to crack passwords and penetrate "think tanks, government organizations, non-governmental organizations, law firms, defense industrial base, and others" in North America and in Europe. The U.S. Justice Department soon launched an investigation (as did the U.S. Commerce Department) into TP-Link's ties to China's government and military, according to a SecuRepairs blog post.
The reason? "As a China-based company, TP-Link is required by law to disclose flaws it discovers in its software to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology before making them public." Inevitably, this creates a window "to exploit the publicly undisclosed flaw... That fact, and the coincidence of TP-Link devices playing a role in state-sponsored hacking campaigns, raises the prospects of the U.S. government declaring a ban on the sale of TP-Link technology at some point in the next year."
TP-Link won the award for the worst in security.
Thursday their "panel of dystopia experts" livestreamed to iFixit's feed of over 1 million subscribers on YouTube, with the video's description warning about manufacturers "hoping to convince us that they have invented the future. But will their vision make our lives better, or lead humanity down a dark and twisted path?" The video "is a fun and rollicking romp that tries to forestall a future clogged with power-hungry AI and data-collecting sensors," writes The New Stack — though noting one final irony.
"While the ceremony criticized these products, YouTube was displaying ads for them..."
UPDATE: Slashdot reached out to iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens, who says this teaches us all a lesson. "The gadget industry is insidious and has their tentacles everywhere."
"Of course they injected ads into our video. The beast can't stop feeding, and will keep growing until we knife it in the heart."
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland summarizes the article: "We're seeing more and more of these things that have basically surveillance technology built into them," iFixit's Chamberlain told The Associated Press... Proving this point was EFF executive director Cindy Cohn, who gave a truly impassioned takedown for "smart" infant products that "end up traumatizing new parents with false reports that their baby has stopped breathing." But worst for privacy was the $1,200 "Revol" baby bassinet — equipped with a camera, a microphone, and a radar sensor. The video also mocks Samsung's "AI Home" initiative which let you answer phone calls with your washing machine, oven, or refrigerator. (And LG's overpowered "smart" refrigerator won the "Overall Worst in Show" award.)
One of the scariest presentations came from Paul Roberts, founder of SecuRepairs, a group advocating both cybersecurity and the right to repair. Roberts notes that about 65% of the routers sold in the U.S. are from a Chinese company named TP-Link — both wifi routers and the wifi/ethernet routers sold for homes and small offices.Roberts reminded viewers that in October, Microsoft reported "thousands" of compromised routers — most of them manufactured by TP-Link — were found working together in a malicious network trying to crack passwords and penetrate "think tanks, government organizations, non-governmental organizations, law firms, defense industrial base, and others" in North America and in Europe. The U.S. Justice Department soon launched an investigation (as did the U.S. Commerce Department) into TP-Link's ties to China's government and military, according to a SecuRepairs blog post.
The reason? "As a China-based company, TP-Link is required by law to disclose flaws it discovers in its software to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology before making them public." Inevitably, this creates a window "to exploit the publicly undisclosed flaw... That fact, and the coincidence of TP-Link devices playing a role in state-sponsored hacking campaigns, raises the prospects of the U.S. government declaring a ban on the sale of TP-Link technology at some point in the next year."
TP-Link won the award for the worst in security.
I don't know how my daughter survived baby-hood (Score:3)
... given we didn't have a radar sensor to put in her room.
Re: (Score:2)
How else did you know when your baby clocked 50 in a 25?
Re: (Score:2)
We kept finding donut tracks in the crib.
Re: (Score:2)
... given we didn't have a radar sensor to put in her room.
Presumably you had the time to dedicate to look after her. More has changed over the years than simply the advancement of a baby monitor. Or maybe you are just lucky, you know given that over the past 20 years the rate of unexpected infant death has about halved.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone who doesn't have the time to dedicate probably shouldn't be having babies? Babies aren't just social status symbols.
TP-LINK routers and OPENWRT (Score:5, Interesting)
The hardware itself is not really that bad in a TP-LINK router. Granted, no consumer router is stellar or anything, you DO get what you pay for-- however, the bulk of TP-LINK devices are supported by OpenWRT and are reasonably good feature wise. Replacing the firmware that way completely removes the outstanding security issue posed by the government.
Removing these devices from the market will make it much harder to find a supported device to run the community created and maintained firmware package.
Re:TP-LINK routers and OPENWRT (Score:4, Informative)
What about OpenWrt's own OpenWrt One network router [slashdot.org]?
Re: (Score:2)
Missed that story, looks nice. Possibly a bit pricy but it's essentially what I paid when the nice router I got turned out to not work then I had to buy a different one (I think I know what the problem was, but I didn't have patience or time to do my own build). Ok, the doubters say just stick with factory default firmware, because why would TP-Link, Belkin, or Linksys not have good firmware... The wifi part of the ISP's dirt cheap router that they give to naive home users tends to not be very good in my
Re:TP-LINK routers and OPENWRT (Score:4, Informative)
Removing these devices from the market will make it much harder to find a supported device to run the community created and maintained firmware package.
OpenWRT is excellent, and it supports a huge number of devices so not having TP-Link would not really make it that much harder.
https://openwrt.org/toh/views/... [openwrt.org]
Re: (Score:2)
This, their Archer C7 with OpenWRT is my go-to for an 802.11ac router.
Re: (Score:2)
Replacing the firmware that way completely removes the outstanding security issue posed by the government.
That is, these routers have the possibility of being modified to be more secure. The big question is how many are actually modified. It seems like many/most keep using the default firmware. So, in theory, these routers could be secure, but in reality they usually are not.
In a way, it's sort of like arguing that Window is secure as long as all security patches are always immediately applied. The problem with both Windows and TP-Link is that the usual security management practice makes them insecure, regardle
Disposable everything (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I recently went shopping for a bathroom light fixture. After decades of use, the old one started to visibly corrode. About 75% of all fixtures have integrated LEDs, so once they go you can only replace the entire fixture. My guess is that no consumer integrated circuit will last in a very humid bathroom setting, so you might get 2-3 years out of one. This is very wasteful, yet somehow these new lights get all kinds of green and energy star certifications/awards? Why?
My bathroom lights are track style and use replaceable GU10 LED bulbs. The bulbs and fixture are intended and rated for bathroom use.
Re: (Score:2)
Energy Star certification just means that it's certified to use less than X-amount of energy during normal functioning and Y-amount (or less) when not being used. Doesn't say anything about reliability or suitability.
Bulb shaped LED lights are a mistake (Score:2)
>> you might get 2-3 years out of one. This is very wasteful
I think you should stop buying the cheapest crap available.
LEDs properly integrated into a fixture have an extremely long lifetime.
Bulb shaped LEDs are just a transitional hack, those are very bad from the thermal side, and will break too soon, because the shape of a bulb is perfect to keep heat, which kills LED lifetime.
The best advice is:
1) take old fixture, put in a waste 12V C8 plugged power adapter and a bunch of LED strips when possible
My Router? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Look for the "Made in China" sticker or the other one that mimics the CE European Union mark but actually means China Export. (Those sneaky CCP companies) If you have either (or both!) your router is evil and needs to excised using OpenWRT.
Re: (Score:2)
So my $proud_US_company router is evil? Seeing they all have a "Made in China" sticker AND a CE mark...
Re: (Score:2)
Ding, ding, ding ... winner, winner, chicken dinner.
90% of influencer advertisers are crap (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason companies advertise with successful influences that the subscribers trust them. Basically, people think of the influencer as their friend, so they are getting recommendations from a friend. It is basically buying a small amount of word of mouth.
People with a worthwhile product want you to trust their company and their product, not the promoter. Coca-cola does not need Mr. Beast to tell everyone how great it is. And someone that say invents a new hair growth formula does not need that more than once anyone. Real word of mouth acts faster than purchased word of mouth. It is called 'going viral' for a reason.
I am sure there are exceptions, but by far, the companies like Honey, BetterHealth, etc. that pay to advertise on YouTube and other influencer sites have products not worth trying.
Re: (Score:2)
They are. But some of the incredibly stupid shit they spam advertise on TV is hilarious until it becomes annoying. One of the ones that has been going on for a while is this Kardia [kardia.com] which they spam all the time on the cable news channels. It's amazing! It can detect atrial fibrillation, bradycardia, AND tachycardia! Okay, so it measures your heart rate. I can do that with a carotid pulse. Afib you can kind of detect if you really know what you're doing, but I'd rather buy an Apple Watch. Admittedly, an Apple
Why did Chinese companies even go to CES? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Interestingly Tesla just cloned the Xpeng crossover, that was itself claimed to be a copy of Tesla. It's come full circle, with the Model Y being a mere knock off of a superior and much cheaper Chinese vehicle.
As for why, CES has international reach so there are plenty of consumers in Europe and Canada seeing this stuff. Or showing Americans what they are missing.
Re: (Score:2)
No Americans will purchase any of their stuff for security reasons.
Did they legalise weed in your state? Chinese tech is highly prolific in America including security products. No one gives a flying fuck about Chinese security when they can get something for 20% cheaper. In fact this problem is more prolific in America than most of the rest of the world, preferencing low cost above all else.
It's why even right in TFS they say 65% of routers sold in the USA are from just one single Chinese company. It's why Amsterdam has a significantly larger number of e-bikes to New York
YT will advertise any old shite. (Score:3)
Here are some of the ads I've seen recently in youtube:
- Adhesive patches that stick to the soles of your feet, absorb "toxins" and somehow improve sleep quality.
- Shoe insoles that supposedly burn "belly fat", that pretend to be made by a real Japanese company (single letter difference in the name).
- Numerous weight loss products that claim to be endorsed by the NHS, who never endorse commercial products.
- A cheap Chinese electric razor "made by Gillette".
I've almost given up on reporting this sort of crap; Google obviously doesn't care about local advertising laws.
Re: (Score:2)
While I'm at it, today's featured crap on /. ads is:
Temu
Temu
Temu
AliExpress
And, best of all, "THE LETTER YOU SEE REVEALS YOUR ADHD TYPE"... shown against an Ishihara plate (the real tests for colour blindness) that doesn't even have the right colours.
If anyone knows how to get AdBlock working on /. again I'm all ears. We used to expect better from this site.
Re: (Score:2)
Ads on Slashdot? Dude, install uBlock Origin into your browser. If any do sneak through, right click and "Block Element".
Re: (Score:2)
Ads on Slashdot? Dude, install uBlock Origin into your browser. If any do sneak through, right click and "Block Element".
Options for ad blockers on OSX and iOS are limited, and uBlock isn't one of them. No, slashdot started doing something screwy with their ads a month or so back; I don't get ads anywhere else.
Re: (Score:2)
I noticed that for a day or two this last week, on several browsers. All with ublock origin. Slashdot was adding in these iframes with aliexpress ads in them. They are playing games with javascript to get around ad blockers too. If you inspect the html and remove the iframe entirely, it reappears in a second or two. Javascript is dynamically generating them and responding in real time to blocking. It really irritated me how sneaky they made them. I was going to do some more investigation to see what j
Re: (Score:2)
Because I think they're not directly going to third party uncurated ad vendors, like many sites do. There's a specific "as.slashdot.org" URL, for "ad service"? You can see it if you hover over the ads.
Re: (Score:2)
I just noticed that I have no ads today on my home computer. Odd. I fiddled with blocking some more stuff with noscript on my work computer, but it was just not working and I thought I had undone it all. I really don't know what the difference is between the two computers.
It may also be that I gave feedback on adblock about slashdot ads getting through. ("report issue", then click "I still see ads")
Re: (Score:2)
"And, best of all, "THE LETTER YOU SEE REVEALS YOUR ADHD TYPE"... shown against an Ishihara plate (the real tests for colour blindness) that doesn't even have the right colours."
I saw that ad and wondered what colour blindness had to do with ADHD
Re: (Score:2)
I get a site wanting to work around ad blockers to preserve revenue streams just as much as I get users wanting to use ad blockers to keep sites somewhat usable and protect against malicious ad servers that can be in the rotation regardless of the site's intent.
Slashdot's just being insulting, though. The site loads perfectly well, THEN a script loads that claws it all back and informs you your ad blocker is causing issues. Uh huh. Pull the other one.
Re: (Score:2)
I run noscript on slashdot. None of the ads ever appear.
Re: (Score:2)
I run it at home and work, and ads are definitely at work, and I could not find a way to get it to block them. At home I only noticed today that there were no ads, and I don't remember if it's always been like that or not since the "new" ads showed up.
It is freaking annoying that the ads appear right above the old option that says "we value you as a member so here's an button to turn off ads".
Re: (Score:2)
My favorite so far has been the "magnetism infused mattress" guaranteed to improve your sleep.
Re: (Score:2)
"Guaranteed", if you track them down somehow. 99.9% of the time, the customer service line goes to an overseas outsourced service (India, Phillipines), and the listed company mail address is something like a UPS store, or an unrelated company, etc. Mattresses seem iffy, but smaller devices ("Elon Musk Approved Heater eliminates your heating bill!") are probably shitty products sent in from other countries and the USA address is just a shell. Then you'll see that there are 20 different Elon Musk heaters t
Re: YT will advertise any old shite. (Score:2)
Thank the Libertardians and their quasi-religious belief that if you defund the regulatory agencies that the mystical magical Free Market Fairy will fix everything.
Sometimes I think there should be some minimal level of education in history and economics required to be allowed to vote, but then I remember who would be making that law and just shake my head.
AdBlock Origin UO... (Score:2)
uBlock Origin UO...
Re: (Score:2)
Google/Youtube doesn't care. They're making money. And being respectful of your customers often stands in the way of making money. Curating ads will lose them money. Allowing crap to be shoved in your face is the way to go, have it all automated so that there's no human obstructing progress by thinking "this feels like a scam".
I mean for a long time, Youtube has made you watch ads before you can watch movie previews - on other words, watch this ad before you are allowed to watch this other ad. It's absu
Re: (Score:2)
Here are some of the ads I've seen recently in youtube:
- Adhesive patches that stick to the soles of your feet, absorb "toxins" and somehow improve sleep quality.
- Shoe insoles that supposedly burn "belly fat", that pretend to be made by a real Japanese company (single letter difference in the name).
- Numerous weight loss products that claim to be endorsed by the NHS, who never endorse commercial products.
- A cheap Chinese electric razor "made by Gillette".
I've almost given up on reporting this sort of crap; Google obviously doesn't care about local advertising laws.
This kind of crap makes me wonder who is daft enough to run their web browser without some form of ad blocking these days... I guess the advertisers are targeting them though.
Nothing wrong with TP-link devices, just use OpenW (Score:1)
Rule of thumb (Score:4, Interesting)
If a device purports to be "smart" or use "AI" then it's junk. Utter dogshit. And if a device requires a phone app, or account registration, or reliance on a cloud service when a simple remote or control panel would have sufficed then it's also junk. Utter dogshit. This is 100% true for any white goods and largely true for other appliances around the house.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, "utter dogshit". Perfect analogy. I agree 110%.
Re: (Score:2)
We have ourselves to blame. Look at the washing machine market in Japan. They compete on how well they clean clothes, and how convenient they are, and how much energy/water they use. In Europe and the US, it's pointless smart features that differentiate models and brands.
Low information consumers are the issue.
Same thing with vacuum cleaners. I'm Europe it got so bad that the EU had to put a limit on motor power, because consumers were buying 3000W space heaters with a little bit of suction, not machines th
Re: (Score:2)
I find Which offers very good reviews on these topics, actually doing cleaning tests etc. I generally buy something reviewed by them unless I want something that's a bit off the beaten track.
Also as a general rule I don't buy smart shit, which appears to be synonymous to "has shitty software coupled in an even worse app which will be obsolete in 2 years and unavailable in 5".
Re: (Score:2)
I find Which? reviews to be hit and miss. If they say something is bad I will probably skip it, but if they say it's good I'll confirm that myself.
It may not even be the quality of their review process exactly. For example when the stupid vacuum ban came in they noted that most of their top rated ones were affected. Now maybe those things do happen to clean well, but only by being noisy and heavy. Maybe you could say that their review criteria are not the same as mine.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not going to claim perfection, but they do offer scores in multiple categories, such as in the case of vacuum cleaners sucking up several different categories of things, and a few others. Things that aren't covered by the available specs such as weight and power draw. They do give an overall score, but you can personally reweight by various other categories if you wish.
It's certainly better than the advertising copy, that's for sure. Not disappointed with the one I bought and it's a lot easier to handle
Re: (Score:2)
Europe has energy ratings very prominently displayed on white goods so I believe they are highly influential in purchase decisions. I think this smart shit is just an excuse for manufacturers to slap a 30-100% premium on a device for "smart" features which are neither convenient, nor labour saving, nor smart. And after 3 years the appliance is bitrotten or broken and prohibitively expensive to repair.
So as part of Europe's e-waste initiative they should really put rules in to stymie "smart" / "AI" products,
Government use of unreported vulnerabilities (Score:1)
OpenWRT seems populer here, how about DD-WRT? (Score:2)
I flashed a Netgear router with DD-WRT and I love the features.
Haven't tried OpenWRT of which I see a lot of fans in this thread.
Can someone (kindly and civilly) expound on why you chose OpenWRT rather than DD-WRT or the other option that I can't remember the name of, maybe it was abandoned?
Re: (Score:3)
Generally,
DD-WRT tries to be the swiss army knife, cramming every tool possible into the firmware.
OpenWRT takes a different approach: Minimal system, you select which packages you then pull and enable.
The really security conscious adhere to the "Minimize attack surface" mantra, and prefer OpenWRT, as you can completely eliminate a vulnerability in FOO, by Simply not having FOO installed.
This is not possible with DD-WRT, since it tries to install every kind of tool, including the kitchen sink, and trying to
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you!