Do you lust for a smart refrigerator, smart doorbell or some other smart product?
Do you want a smart home?
What about a smart city?
We already have a smart electric grid.
What do they all have in common?
They can be hacked.
It’s something to think about.
Smart = hackable.
Hacking a personally owned smart device is bad, but it pales in comparison to what happens if (when) the grid is hacked, whether by a foreign power or civilians for ransom.
Ukraine’s power was hacked in 2015, but old technology saved it from a far worse outcome.
A bill introduced in 2016 has been working its way through the US Congress. It would require similar old tech for US power grids. The bill provides a study period, so it will be 2020 before anything actually happens.
The old tech is actually the only solution that is immune to cyber/digital attacks of any kind.
Can you guess what it is?
If you guessed analog/manual/human give yourself a gold star. If you are under 40 you get five gold stars.
“Specifically, it will examine ways to replace automated systems with low-tech redundancies, like manual procedures controlled by human operators,” said US Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), who introduced the bill on the Senate floor in 2016. (…) The US is very close to improving power grid security by mandating the use of “retro” (analog, manual) technologies on US power grids as a defensive measure against foreign cyber-attacks that could bring down power distribution as a result.
Are you surprised? I’m not.
I always thought hooking the power grid up to the hackable internet was a dumb idea.
Kind of like locking your house and then taping spare keys to the doorframes.
Remember Juicero? The company that, in three years (2014-2017), burned through $120 million of venture funds building a $700 juicer requiring a special juice packet for each glass.
Following in that product’s footsteps, robotics company Vincross is planning to apply some of their consumer product knowledge to create a new product that is the equivalent of the Jucerio, except it will probably cost more.
The HEXA Plant is designed to look like a six-legged spider and can help anyone keep up with their plants even if they don’t have time to keep up with them. (…) Not only will the planter carry itself into the sunlight when needed – but it will find shade if the plant gets too hot. (…) The robotic planter is designed to stomp around or throw ‘tantrums’ when it is out of water…
The original HEXA robot sells for $949, so it’s unlikely the planter will cost less.
Here’s the robot, use your imagination to turn it into a plant pot.
And start saving, so you can finally have a plant that doesn’t die.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
The mantra of startups is “change the world.”
That slogan seems to be the one thing that startups have in common; they all claim their product/service will do it.
No matter how silly, invasive, unnecessary, or just plain creepy.
One of the creepiest (say the comments) is MobiLimb.
MobiLimb is a robotic finger attachment that plugs in through a smartphone’s Micro USB port, moves using five servo motors, and is powered by an Arduino microcontroller. It can tap the user’s hand in response to phone notifications, be used as a joystick controller, or, with the addition of a little fuzzy sheath accessory, it can turn into a cat tail.
Creativity should be celebrated and innovation can be a wonderful thing — when it isn’t just plain stupid.
I write posts one day in advance, so this one was written yesterday (Tuesday) and is not the one I planned to write.
I live in Washougal, a small town on the Washington State side of the Columbia River about 20 miles from Portland, Oregon; a town that calls itself “the gateway to the Gorge.”
In spite of its proximity to both Portland and Vancouver, WA, it’s a very rural area.
I woke today to a gray sky, the smell of smoke and everything covered with a mix of fine wood particles and ash.
“Even though that kid threw the firecracker, all of those kids he was with are complicit. All of them watched, all of them did nothing. They all were a part of it. One filmed it,” she said. “When I came upon them, and the guy threw the firecracker, I’m pretty sure I heard a couple of them giggle. The guy was filming it like it was another thing to film, no big deal. The whole complacency of that group, I find it so disturbing.”
They did this in an area that has seen no real rain in months; an area under fire prohibitions.
That was the start of the Eagle Creek Fire.
Then, for the first time since 1902, the fire jumped the Columbia, caught and started the Archer Mountain Fire.
As I write this, that fire is less than six miles from my friend’s house and only 15 miles from mine.
The air, inside and out, is smokey.
Hopefully, the winds won’t start up and neither of us will have to evacuate.
There is so much I don’t like about today’s world that it’s hard to choose the worst.
However, I reserve a top spot for people, no matter their age, who don’t think about / don’t care how much damage they do so long as they get their 5 seconds of social media fame, along with those who stand by and watch.
I am a frequent Home Depot shopper, other than during the Nardelli regime, mainly because my Amex points a good conversion rate to dollars for HD gift cards.
Now it seems I only have to deal with corporate purchasing stupidity.
Let me explain.
I live in Washington State, just across the Columbia River about 20 minutes from Portland, Oregon, an area known locally for it’s dozens of micro-climates, multiple rivers and fast elevation changes.
This means that when it’s cold and rainy by me, it’s probably cold and snowy at my friend’s who lives about 15 minutes and 800 feet away.
But in general, we don’t get a lot of freezing weather — but we do get it.
A couple of weeks ago the entire area got walloped with the worst storm in 16 years and it stayed cold, with temperatures in the 20s.
So I wasn’t surprised when I finally got to HD to buy ice melt they were sold out.
However, I was flabbergasted when I went back this week and was told that they wouldn’t have more until October.
A very chagrined manager explained that they had sold out their year’s allotment and had no way of ordering more.
When pushed, he said that central purchasing decided how much of a given product would sell annually and if a store sold out tough luck.
So, based on the weather forecast, it was back to Lowe’s, where I shopped when Nardelli was in power.
Retail DIS-service; better know as retail stupidity.
When it comes to hiring, as Forrest Gump would say, “stupid is as stupid does.”
And stupid is using recruiters who think the only “right” answer to a technical question is the one written on a sheet of paper. (Note that “technical” can refer to the specifics of any field, although in this case it was software.)
No knowledge or understanding of the subject; just the blind focus on the written words — kind of like talking to customer service when the rep keeps repeating their script no matter how you phrase the question — and no recognition that they may wrong.
The call started off well but as the interview progressed, Guathier got an increasing number of questions wrong. His frustration grew as he tried to discuss the answers with the Google recruiter only to find that the recruiter wanted the exact answer in the test book even if alternative solutions were better.
The company is Google and it should be noted that they approached the candidate, as opposed to his applying.
Way back in 2007 Google announce that they had developed an algorithm to screen candidates.
It didn’t work.
Google was also famous for its brain-teaser questions.
But locking technically ignorant recruiters into accepting only set responses to tech question rates right up there with algorithms and brain-teasers. And I say this as someone who was a tech recruiter for more than 12 years.
Of course, managers’ interviewing skills won’t matter, since the best, most knowledgeable, most creative candidates will be screened out before they ever see them.
I’ve always said that smart people say/do stupid things and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is proof of that.
“People under 35 are the people who make change happen,” said, “People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.”
The problem is that the data the tech world is so enamored with doesn’t back that up.
Vivek Wadhwa, a Duke University researcher, worked with the Kauffman Foundation in 2009 to explore the anatomy of a successful startup founder. That survey of more than 500 startups in high-growth industries showed that the average founder of a successful company had launched his or her venture at the surprisingly high age of 40. The study also found that people over 55 are almost twice as likely to launch high-growth startups than those aged 20 to 34.
The term “high growth” is key. 2010′s top two fastest-growing tech startups, according to Forbes, were First Solar, founded by a 68-year old, followed by Riverbed Technology, co-founded by entrepreneurs who were 51 and 33 at the time.
He should also inform the Merage Institute, which awards $100K to the top startup by a 45+-year-old founder (more runner-ups at the link).
In 2016 it was iSilla – Movement for people with disabilities
2nd Prize – SonicBone – Bone Age – Ultrasound Device for Bone Age assessment
3rd Prize – Inensto – Aluminum Air Battery
In 2015 they were:
1st Prize – NiNiSpeech
2nd Prize – A new Hydrogen Energy Storage
3rd Prize – Glasses for AMD Macular Degeneration
Brian Acton was 37 when he founded WhatsApp.
Notice that all of them solve a real problem — a problem of which they wouldn’t be aware if they hadn’t faced it directly or indirectly themselves.
Which meant they had real world experience.
Even Mark Zukerberg had real world experience; he wanted an easy way to engage and keep up with his friends. Remember, Facebook was originally started for college kids.
Hence young males created Tinder and its clones to hookup and Match and its clones for something more permanent.
If you look at socially oriented startups, many of their founders, both young and old, saw the need first hand, while volunteering and/or traveling, came home and created a solution that answered that need.
It’s not a matter of age.
It’s a matter of three things
See the need/experience the want/desire what isn’t
Think of a way to solve/provide it
Possess the drive, tenaciousness, guts and slight insanity required to turn an idea into a reality and a reality into a company
And those three things can happen to anyone at any age.
My thanks to KG for reminding me of how important it is to help smash these myths.
Matt posted a hair-raising lesson on LinkedIn about electric cars, distraction and gratitude. He wanted to share it here, also.
This is a gratitude post. No fancy photos and no clever links. Just a shout-out to the universe for allowing me to be around and complain.
I have friends with cancer. I have relatives with dementia, heart disease, mood disorders, I have people in my life with serious injuries to recover from, life disasters, and more. So I don’t have much to complain about that rises to the level of those “legit” complaints.
Today I got a kind of a wake-up call at lunch. I was hit by a car.
While walking. I was coming back from lunch, crossing the street with the light, in the crosswalk. And for some reason my phone was in my pocket— an unusual thing when I’m taking a break or walk during the day. So I had all my wits about me and was presumably paying attention. I was in my suit (I wear suits at client sites, which are typically hospital systems, clinic systems or other large healthcare organizations), and was walking leisurely, not too fast. It was a warm day and who wants to sweat in a nice suit, right?
A gentleman was in an electric car. First alert—people, electric cars make no noise. So you have no warning in your blind spot as a pedestrian or bike rider. A cute little BMW i3 I think. Kind of like one of those tiny smart cars. Same shape, flat short hood. He was on his phone texting or otherwise looking at the screen. His light was red. Mine- green with the white “walk” sign just starting to count down. He swung around and zipped right into the crosswalk to make his right turn… into me. He never saw me until I was on his hood. I was two steps off the curb. I never thought to look again over my left shoulder. I had the light. There were about four or five others ten feet in front of me in the crosswalk, and if he had come 10 seconds earlier he would have hit that bunch of people, including an elderly woman and someone with a dog on a leash. The dog would have been roadkill for sure. I don’t want to think about the slow-moving elderly woman.
Why do I write this? To say “I’m grateful to be alive and grateful to have all of you in my life.” And also to say that my complaints don’t add up to a hill of beans compared to the others with real issues including the big C, and all the rest. Working lately in healthcare has given me great new perspective about how precious good health is. We take it for granted. We think we are immune from the statistics.
As a society, we live careless lives, are overweight, out of shape, putting toxins in our bodies. We think we are unaccountable for the way we treat our bodies. We think we are invincible, or we are just lazy about it. We walk around with our noses in cell phones indoors and out. We don’t notice our surroundings, much less appreciate them. Things like a gorgeous sunset. We’re too busy flipping posts in Facebook and Instagram and SnapChat and Pinterest and email. Liking a post. Making a post. Reading drivel. Is this drivel? Perhaps.
If you want a reality check go work at a healthcare company or volunteer at a hospital or clinic system. That’s where the people with legit complaints are. And they can’t just “solve” them.
Funny thing about this accident. 40-some odd years ago I ended up on the hood of a very nice woman in Palo Alto. I was riding my bike and had headphones on (not unlike many bike riders-especially commuters- today). She did not see me and as she exited a driveway without looking both ways, I ended up on the hood. I thought for sure she would pause and look both ways. Bad bet. She was distracted and was looking elsewhere. In a hurry. Luckily I was a bit more agile than I am today, and a lot more durable, and kind of bounced off and slid to the other side of the car, like a stunt man in a cop movie. She was more terrorized than I was. I was probably too young and stupid to understand what had almost happened.
Fast forward to today. Not as young, not as durable (probably only a bit less stupid) I looked to my left just in time to see this little car with the driver just looking up with a terrorized expression and no time to slam on the brakes in time. I was able to jump up and get just enough elevation to put my butt on the hood and break the force of the impact with my arm on the upper part of the hood.
The good news is that these cars are made of thin aluminum and it crushes like tinfoil on impact. So I left two nice big dents on the hood, kind of bounced off and ended up staggering away. I think my wallet took the blow instead of my hip or rear end. Thank you VISA and MasterCard. “Priceless” padding. :) I was in one of those adrenaline induced states where I was more worried about falling on the pavement and ripping my suit. My coffee was gone. No way to save that. I looked at the coffee spot on the concrete and had this terrible vision of what if that was blood. The mind does weird things.
After gathering myself and determining I was a) still alive and b) in one piece and c) okay enough to be mad but shocked enough to be happy to be in one piece, I was asked for my insurance information…. apparently mister wonderful was going to try to make a claim. There were about three people left around us, asking if we should call 911 and at that point someone made the point that they saw him run the red, looking at his phone and that he hit me in the x-walk. I declined to give my info and allowed as how I was walking back INTO a healthcare clinic and that he should be happy that I was not more banged-up and asking for treatment. I just wanted to get back to normalcy. Probably still in shock.
He took off, I came back to the office and sat down to assess how lucky my life is, to be able to complain about distracted drivers. And to be walking around to talk about it. And to warn my friends and family about electric cars at intersections… you can’t hear or see them coming when they zip around corners.
On a bike I guess I would have been more vigilant, but as a pedestrian I had this kind of invincible feeling of being protected walking with the light and the “Walk” sign inside the crosswalk. That’s not so. Be vigilant. And thank you Sensei Mirko and Senpais David and Jessica and friends for the recent agility work in jumping and spinning this week that probably got my body primed to jump up and turn around to break the impact. Not Kevin Durant elevation but just enough to get up over the bumper and onto the hood with my rear end and upper body. Note to self— practice jumping more. And look both ways twice at busy intersections.
My daughter is learning how to drive this year. I am her teacher. This is a great example of what distracted driving can do. I am not 100% guilt free in that department. I’m taking the pledge to stay off of phones 100% while driving except for bluetooth and headsets in one ear. Just too much at stake and just so many times to dodge the bullet. And maybe the Universe was sending me a reminder message today.
And to my friends with legit concerns… prayers to you that you come out of your battles and win the war. We’re only here the better part of 100 years give or take. It’s not fair what’s happening to you.
And now I’m leaving the office and driving out to watch the sunset. :)
No Instagram post. Just taking it in and enjoying it. I’ve posted my share of pretty sunsets. This one is just to look at. I encourage you to do the same, to honor our friends and family that have bigger problems than the rest of us. We can all enjoy the same sunset in sync from wherever we are. No Instagram/snapchat needed. We are the lucky ones. #gratitude
When I was in college, I remember discussing a newspaper story with my aunts. I remember saying that I didn’t believe something and my aunts saying that if something wasn’t true it would not be in the paper.
They really believed that, because in the world they grew up and lived in it was mostly true.
Fast forward to today and you find the same attitude being applied to the information supplied by the tech they use.
They don’t question the stuff supplied by various apps, especially if it’s from known vendors.
Maxmind identifies IP addresses, matches them to a map and sells that data to advertisers.
Trouble is, accuracy isn’t their strong point.
Back in 2002, when it started in this business, Fusion reports, MaxMind made a decision. If its tech couldn’t tell where, exactly, in the US, an IP address was located, it would instead return a default set of coordinates very near the geographic center of the country — coordinates that happen to coincide with Taylor’s front yard.
Taylor is the unfortunate owner of a farm that sits on one of those catch-all co-ordinates.
And although the info isn’t supposed to be used to identify specific addresses, surprise, surprise, that’s exactly how people do use it, law enforcement included.
The farm’s 82-year-old owner, Joyce Taylor, and her tenants have been subject to FBI visits, IRS collectors, ambulances, threats, and the release of private information online, she told Fusion.
As bad as that is, at least the Taylor’s still have their home, unlike the two families who are homeless because a contractor assumed Google maps was correct, so he didn’t check the demolition addresses.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable that they accepted the tech without checking.
Unbelievable that they first called it a minor mistake.
Unbelievable that the owners aren’t suing.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
This is a gratitude post. No fancy photos and no clever links. Just a shout-out to the universe for allowing me to be around and complain.
