Category: Software

  • The UBOS Shepherd rules their #IoT Device Flock with a Staff

    I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how to manage large numbers of intelligent devices in our homes, the #IndieIoT way. Let’s say you pick up two dozen WiFi-enabled motion detectors or thermometers from the store and put them into your home: one or two for each room, hallway, window, attic, dog kennel,…

  • We need open-source firmware

    Kapersky reports that hackers in the “Equation Group” (see Ars Technica coverage) infiltrated the firmware of most major hard drive manufacturers:  rewrote the hard-drive firmware of infected computers … on 12 drive categories from manufacturers including Western Digital, Maxtor, Samsung, IBM, Micron, Toshiba, and Seagate. The malicious firmware created a secret storage vault that survived…

  • House thermostat died. Suggestions for replacements that don’t spy on me?

    There are a lot of projects — like the well-publicized “Build an Open-source Nest in a Day” — that have built open-source thermostats. But those are “projects”. Are there any #IndieIoT thermostat products ready to go that I can buy? Or do I have to build my own? I’m looking for suggestions. P.S.: I’m using…

  • Macrobuild — a new build/release framework for “macro” tasks

    See post on the Indie Box Project site.

  • X.509 certs are less secure than you might think

    This post is prompted by T.Rob’s recent post “We’re gonna need a bigger crowd” where, among other things, he talks about X.509 certificate security. I agree with the core point of his post – crowd-sourcing is ineffective for highly specialized subjects – but this X.509 subject keeps coming up. It is one of the rare…