these days, the IoT term has been hijacked to mean 'we mine your personal info along with smart sensors we convince you to buy and install inside your private LAN.'

that's really a bad idea, of course. I'm very into IoT things right now, myself, but NOT cloud-based shit! not for me! MY iot stuff is about device to device and device to small server, ALL staying local and nothing going across to a WAN. nrf24l01, xbee, even esp8266 - all neat wireless protocols. but all meant to stay local, too.

if your iot solution leaks info, you picked some cloud-based thing. DONT DO THAT!

iot != cloud

likely its the magic 32k number, which happens to be the size of the atmega 328 (arduino classic) chip!

still, 32k is too large for many sensors. attiny chips are now in the 8k range and even that is asking a lot. 4k used to be more typical.

android? HAHAHAHAH! google, you are teh funny. the security nightmare and complexity of android for IoT sensors? wow, I needed a good laugh today.

my 'fix' has been to stop upgrading, about 2 or even more years ago.

yes, it has bugs and probably security issues, but I deal with that instead of dealing with more bullshit from moz.

really - a web browser is a little bit like a flashlight; it has a job to do, its clearly defined and its not hard to solve the problem. I don't need a flashlight with 'accessories' on it or with 'helpful advertising'. I simply need it to work, stay stable and not change every damned time someone has an itch to change-just-for-changes-sake.

I won't give up what I have, but I have stopped upgrading a long time ago.

ODDLY enough, I have 2 nas boxes here by zyxel; and the truly odd thing is their model number: nsa-320. I kid you not!

had them running about 2 years, now, with no problems! not the fastest thing but they are tiny, they do support both nfs and smb (most small nas boxes don't do nfs) and it has not crashed or had o/s issues that I've seen. I dont use usb on it, only ethernet in and 1 or 2 drives internally, but its been pretty good for its size and price!

wait- indians eat hamburgers?

holy cow, that's news, right there!

if you have 20 grams, you should probably give it to gangadude. I bet he'd appreciate it ;)

the same advice is used for other overloaded programming pins (such as tx/rx which is used for the inline 6pin 'arduino' programmer, or the 6pin 2x3 isp connector).

you want to have a high-z buffer (or play the resistor trick, which I don't personally love) that you can detach your i/o devices from 'a bus' while you program the controller chip. then, when the controller runs, it can either enable the line buffers (ie, tri-state) or you could just have hard jumpers onboard, but that gets tiring after a while.

point taken, though; think about the lifecycle of software update and if anything on the bus can be in the way of that, you'll have to have an approach that removes the devices at the right time.

other misc tips while I'm on the subject: its been mentioned to use silk screening and mark polarity (lytic caps, etc) but some pkgs like eagle tend to want to put the plus sign inside the cap's circle. once you populate that cap, the plus char is now hidden and you can't easily desk-check things. I always like to add another '+' char OUTSIDE the cap circle footprint so that even when the part is installed,I can still see the indexing mark. same with chips and diodes and everything else that has a footprint that might cover up an index mark.

add lots of test points, even if its just an unfilled pcb via.

add lots of diag leds and jumpers so you can change options or enable a debug mode via a simple jumper change.

on any higher freq test points, have an eyelet that is a local ground neaby within a few mm distance, so you can use a spring clip probe instead of the 1" of alligator clip/lead that adds too much inductance for high freq grounding use.

oh, this goes without saying but so many forget this: HOW ARE YOU GOING TO MOUNT THE BOARD? ie, add round screw holes on the 4 corners of the board. remember, it will be mounted somewhere. I see lots of boards (like the open-bench logic sniffer board; it has nearly no holes and mounting in a box is difficult) that forget about the holes. its one of those 'doh!' moments but lots of people seem to forget this simple thing.

if a chip is hard to solder (fine pitch) consider making it a module that has its own chip carrier and follows .1" standard spacing. socket it so that if it blows you don't have to do serious board rework and can just replace the blown chip on a new carrier board. daughter boards are a great concept to follow.

use tlv diodes to limit static on front panel buttons, or even use opto couplers. any outside world interface may also benefit from optos (I have a project where I'm allowing ttl serial i/o from a user to the board; and I'm using optos to allow 3.3v and 5v to mix but also no ground loops and no direct connection from control system to the controlled system). if you are using fast i/o, remember that most opto chips are slow and you want nanosecond speed, not microsecond, so pick a faster opto isolator chip (they are only a dollar or 2 more, at most).

also, avoid all parts from ebay, especially china. goes without saying, but they are all likely fakes or factory rejects or even used parts that were manually removed! buy from mouser, digikey, jameco, etc. even stuff that 'should not matter' like IC sockets will be surprisingly low quality and even things you think 'should be ok' will break on you if you buy ebay china parts. its tempting, but never use that kind of part if you are building something for someone else or if you need it to last. some of us have 2 bins of parts: the junkers that are 'just for us' and for informal testing; and the parts bin from trusted sources that you will use for real builds.

and if you do send a job to china to have your thing built, never give them all the plans. divide it up so that no one place has your whole design. make it so that you can have 'diag code' loaded for the manuf testing guys, but load your own code here (in your own country). its true about china theft, so know that going in. if you break up the project into a few different boards or modules and don't give the same work to all your sub-contract vendors, you will retain more ownership of the project over time, that way.

stopped reading there.

look, don't lie to me that you are helping ME, a consumer.

you look stupid when you lie. and you guys do such a really bad job of lying, too.

and protein from the sea.

I am 'box' !

no, you miss the point. travel 'empty'. a plain fresh install with no URL history or anything on it. ie, you do a fresh build, you create a backup (that's your new image for any new travel) and you travel with a fresh install of linux (ideally not windows) and you remember, in your head, your passwords and key URLs.

its very sad that its gotton to this. but this is probably the best way to protect yourself and arrive in one piece, unmolested.

sadly, very few can even do this much. or are willing to do this before they travel.

I don't believe encrypting a full disk is going to help you and may cause you to be detained (unfairly, but you are not in control, here, realize that). encryption keeps so-called bad guys out, but the real ones to worry about are 'your own people' (so to speak). they won't take no for an answer.

better to travel with a blank install and keep all your login and history info in your head.

question to the bay area folks who work at HP: does HP do piss testing for pre-employment? I've heard they do but that info may be old.

I'm considering applying for a software job there but I dont' want to run into any surprises and I don't support this level of privacy invasion, especially not for engineering roles.

anyone who advocates a challenge-to-authority and shakes up the 'established' order is a threat to any modern government, these days. at least in the US, we want pawns who will do what they are told and not rock the boat.

religion is the main way the elite controls the masses. if you shake up belief in religion, the upper classes will worry about their stability in maintaining control. they don't like that.

I find it disgusting that 'law enforcement' wastes time on people who are absolutely no threat at all.

one more sign that our 'free society' is a lie. impression of freedom but not true freedom. the watchers are still totally out of control.

really? you are able to NEGOTIATE with a company, these days?

in the job market now, that's really stupid. its a corporate heaven right now; those guys who are the 'job creators' (puke) are having a great time. the rest of us, we're getting by, at best.

there has to be a fair balance if there is any leverage. the only leverage she would have is to just leave. but you cannot make a company do things on threat of your leaving. that went out 20 years ago, if it even existed back then.

we're serfs and you know it. admit it. this is the world we now live in. companies fucking own us; some a little, some a lot. but things have gotton worse, not better, in terms of freedom and rights of employees.

THIS is why bosses are assholes like that guy. they are bold because they realize the imbalance of power in the current labor market.

and we've done such a great job over the past 50 years of killing the union movement, its basically only there for those that held on tight and didn't let go (oddly enough, cops have a union that 'protect' them; but regular people are not 'allowed' to have unions, since that's, uhm, somehow bad.)

no power in a weak labor market. this is what you get. blatant employer abuse.

hang on.

you are saying she should be reachable via phone. I may agree with that (maybe).

but what the HELL does that have to do with gps tracking?!

how can anyone honestly be ok with a creepy employer knowing where you drive, how long you stay at each stopping point, etc.

what the hell need is it of any employer, EVER, to know that about off-hours employees?

is this the 21st century or did I wake up in dickensian times?

that should include piss-tests, too.

that is absolutely a violation of your privacy. if you have a problem with an employee's performance then you deal it then. you dont' start off assuming that all potential employees are 'bad guys' until proven otherwise.

pre-employment testing is bullshit. this also need to be prohibited by law. problem is, its the US (!) that is kind of forcing and encouraging companies to do this shit! "to get a government contract, you must ensure all your employees, yadda yadda yadda". the US is what started this; companies would generally rather NOT foot the expensve of hair and piss tests, but they are forced to (one way or another) by the government! not all companies seem to let themselves get put into this situation but quite a lot still are on that bandwagon.

if an employee is able to balance his lifestyle outside of work - and if only a chemical test is how you would ever find out - how is this not a violation of his privacy?