IoT is still in its infancy. Forget dodgy equipment from random Chinese companies, even so called reputable vendors still do not get security right. I do a lot of home automation stuff, but I prefer Z-wave / Zigbee devices over all this WiFi crap that the likes of Google and Apple seem to prefer. Often those devices are easier to set up and troubleshoot as well... in terms of reliability, WiFi sucks.

Where I do use IP devices (cameras, Philips Hue, etc), they go on a separate subnet that can talk to the home automation hub only. And I never use devices that require outside access.

As was pointed out in aother article recently, modern botnet software is designed to fly under the radar and generate reasonable amounts of traffic instead of crapflooding the connection for all it's worth. Given the size of a typical botnet and the bandwidth of residential internet these days, you can still bring down sites easily without each individual bot breaking a sweat.

Checking traffic volume won't cut it anymore, you need to look for unusual traffic patterns. But a good start is to enable the firewall in your router (many of them have decent ones these days), and allow your IoT devices access only to the server they need to connect to.

Especially if that password
- Is a default password that is the same for every device sold (these days a lot of equipment ships with unique random passwords)
- Isn't changed by the user during setup
- Can't be changed by the user. (What the hell, OpenElec?)

We can lobby consumer router manufacturers to include it. Openwrt has a bcp38 package with no configuration, done by Dave Taht and the Cerowrt folks.

Well, it could be directed to an IPV4 local network multicast address in the range of 224.0.0.0 to 224.0.0.255. That might at least wake up the device owner.

It might take some time for DNS changes to propogate. The IP address was set to localhost for a while to get the attacks off of the net.

First, I'm sure there's lots of Open Source being used in Google's implementation - just not where we can see.

There is a speech recognizer from CMU that might be a good starting point. I haven't heard about plain-language software, though. There is additional rocket science to be done. Not insurmountable given things we've already done.

Training with millions of people? Actually, that's the part that community development is good at.

If you surveyed how many citizens would support law against hate speech, it would probably be a significant number. And prospective citizens as well. So I don't think the problem with your proposal has anything to do with people in favor of shari'a law. It would not work with plain Judeo-Christian European European-descended folks.

There already was a good reason. You need some stuff like documents and photos around on the drive for ransomware to glom onto.

OK. The folks who run Project Shield have been informed!

I've met Godwin and he'd be horrified that you are trying to shield Trump by invoking his name. The world doesn't need an automatic method to suppress discussion of atrocities, and Mike never meant what he said to be one. In fact, this is a quote of Mike directly:

If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician.

There's also Google's Project Shield, which is free for journalists.

That's a really good point. This service sure isn't going to throw someone off for being attacked too much. I'll ask someone at Google to expedite the process.

By the way, I've sworn to much the same text in my police deputy's oath. I volunteer for disaster services. It didn't limit me from opposing any law, I just have to follow them while they are still on the books.

Your next move, should you choose to make it, is to decry that if we actually had standards for citizenship (like every other goddamn country on Earth) we'd have to kick out all existing citizens that don't meet those standards, which is ludicrous. No one handles birthright citizenship the same way they handle citizenship through naturalization, and the lack of options for stateless citizens makes that idea cruel and untenable.

With all due respect, you're talking to yourself now. I wasn't thinking of this point at all.

The actual statement is "support and defend the constitution and laws of the United States". Now, obviously, you personally do not approve of every law, nor could anyone even know them all. If you swear "true faith and allegiance" to them you are swearing to follow and uphold the law, not to refrain from opposing it in a peaceful political manner as is supported by that very text. The only way as a citizen that you could actually break the first amendment would be if you were in a government position, because it's directed toward congress rather than the people. So, the typical prospective citizen can swear allegiance to that amendment with complete confidence that they will never be in a position for that to matter.