#iot stuff

[fly-the-pattern]

[rrogueamendiares]

girl help a uni project is making me want to kms again

[needlenxggin]

I've actually meant to do more stuff here but for the past two days things kept getting in the way OTL. Gonna get some food and see about doing some replies after c:

[bhazhetrix]

[feathersofwares]

5G Spectrum Allocation

5G Spectrum Allocation is the process of government agencies or regulatory bodies assigning radio frequency bands to telecommunications companies for 5G network installation. 5G Spectrum Allocation is crucial since it determines the accessibility and effectiveness of 5G services, affecting everything from mobile internet speeds to the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Brave Little Toaster

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

The AI bubble is the new crypto bubble: you can tell because the same people are behind it, and they're doing the same thing with AI as they did with crypto – trying desperately to find a use case to cram it into, despite the yawning indifference and outright hostility of the users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This week on the excellent Trashfuture podcast, the regulars – joined by 404 Media's Jason Koebler – have a hilarious – as in, I was wheezing with laughter! – riff on this year's CES, where companies are demoing home appliances with LLMs built in:

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-hgi6c-179b908

Why would you need a chatbot in your dishwasher? As it turns out, there's a credulous, Poe's-law-grade Forbes article that lays out the (incredibly stupid) case for this (incredibly stupid) idea:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/03/29/generative-ai-is-coming-to-your-home-appliances/

As the Trashfuturians mapped out this new apex of the AI hype cycle, I found myself thinking of a short story I wrote 15 years ago, satirizing the "Internet of Things" hype we were mired in. It's called "The Brave Little Toaster", and it was published in MIT Tech Review's TRSF anthology in 2011:

http://bestsf.net/trsf-the-best-new-science-fiction-technology-review-2011/

The story was meant to poke fun at the preposterous IoT hype of the day, and I recall thinking that creating a world of talking appliance was the height of Philip K Dickist absurdism. Little did I dream that a decade and a half later, the story would be even more relevant, thanks to AI pump-and-dumpers who sweatily jammed chatbots into kitchen appliances.

So I figured I'd republish The Brave Little Toaster; it's been reprinted here and there since (there's a high school English textbook that included it, along with a bunch of pretty fun exercises for students), and I podcasted it back in the day:

https://ia803103.us.archive.org/35/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212_Brave_Little_Toaster.mp3

A word about the title of this story. It should sound familiar – I nicked it from a brilliant story by Tom Disch that was made into a very weird cartoon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8C_JaT8Lvg

My story is one of several I wrote by stealing the titles of other stories and riffing on them; they were very successful, winning several awards, getting widely translated and reprinted, and so on:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

All right, on to the story!

One day, Mister Toussaint came home to find an extra 300 euros' worth of groceries on his doorstep. So he called up Miz Rousseau, the grocer, and said, "Why have you sent me all this food? My fridge is already full of delicious things. I don't need this stuff and besides, I can't pay for it."

But Miz Rousseau told him that he had ordered the food. His refrigerator had sent in the list, and she had the signed order to prove it.

Furious, Mister Toussaint confronted his refrigerator. It was mysteriously empty, even though it had been full that morning. Or rather, it was almost empty: there was a single pouch of energy drink sitting on a shelf in the back. He'd gotten it from an enthusiastically smiling young woman on the metro platform the day before. She'd been giving them to everyone.

"Why did you throw away all my food?" he demanded. The refrigerator hummed smugly at him.

"It was spoiled," it said.

#

But the food hadn't been spoiled. Mister Toussaint pored over his refrigerator's diagnostics and logfiles, and soon enough, he had the answer. It was the energy beverage, of course.

"Row, row, row your boat," it sang. "Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, I'm offgassing ethelyne." Mister Toussaint sniffed the pouch suspiciously.

"No you're not," he said. The label said that the drink was called LOONY GOONY and it promised ONE TRILLION TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN ESPRESSO!!!!!ONE11! Mister Toussaint began to suspect that the pouch was some kind of stupid Internet of Things prank. He hated those.

He chucked the pouch in the rubbish can and put his new groceries away.

#

The next day, Mister Toussaint came home and discovered that the overflowing rubbish was still sitting in its little bag under the sink. The can had not cycled it through the trapdoor to the chute that ran to the big collection-point at ground level, 104 storeys below.

"Why haven't you emptied yourself?" he demanded. The trashcan told him that toxic substances had to be manually sorted. "What toxic substances?"

So he took out everything in the bin, one piece at a time. You've probably guessed what the trouble was.

"Excuse me if I'm chattery, I do not mean to nattery, but I'm a mercury battery!" LOONY GOONY's singing voice really got on Mister Toussaint's nerves.

"No you're not," Mister Toussaint said.

#

Mister Toussaint tried the microwave. Even the cleverest squeezy-pouch couldn't survive a good nuking. But the microwave wouldn't switch on. "I'm no drink and I'm no meal," LOONY GOONY sang. "I'm a ferrous lump of steel!"

The dishwasher wouldn't wash it ("I don't mean to annoy or chafe, but I'm simply not dishwasher safe!"). The toilet wouldn't flush it ("I don't belong in the bog, because down there I'm sure to clog!"). The windows wouldn't retract their safety screen to let it drop, but that wasn't much of a surprise.

"I hate you," Mister Toussaint said to LOONY GOONY, and he stuck it in his coat pocket. He'd throw it out in a trash-can on the way to work.

#

They arrested Mister Toussaint at the 678th Street station. They were waiting for him on the platform, and they cuffed him just as soon as he stepped off the train. The entire station had been evacuated and the police wore full biohazard containment gear. They'd even shrinkwrapped their machine-guns.

"You'd better wear a breather and you'd better wear a hat, I'm a vial of terrible deadly hazmat," LOONY GOONY sang.

When they released Mister Toussaint the next day, they made him take LOONY GOONY home with him. There were lots more people with LOONY GOONYs to process.

#

Mister Toussaint paid the rush-rush fee that the storage depot charged to send over his container. They forklifted it out of the giant warehouse under the desert and zipped it straight to the cargo-bay in Mister Toussaint's building. He put on old, stupid clothes and clipped some lights to his glasses and started sorting.

Most of the things in container were stupid. He'd been throwing away stupid stuff all his life, because the smart stuff was just so much easier. But then his grandpa had died and they'd cleaned out his little room at the pensioner's ward and he'd just shoved it all in the container and sent it out the desert.

From time to time, he'd thought of the eight cubic meters of stupidity he'd inherited and sighed a put-upon sigh. He'd loved Grandpa, but he wished the old man had used some of the ample spare time from the tail end of his life to replace his junk with stuff that could more gracefully reintegrate with the materials stream.

How inconsiderate!

#

The house chattered enthusiastically at the toaster when he plugged it in, but the toaster said nothing back. It couldn't. It was stupid. Its bread-slots were crusted over with carbon residue and it dribbled crumbs from the ill-fitting tray beneath it. It had been designed and built by cavemen who hadn't ever considered the advantages of networked environments.

It was stupid, but it was brave. It would do anything Mister Toussaint asked it to do.

"It's getting hot and sticky and I'm not playing any games, you'd better get me out before I burst into flames!" LOONY GOONY sang loudly, but the toaster ignored it.

"I don't mean to endanger your abode, but if you don't let me out, I'm going to explode!" The smart appliances chattered nervously at one another, but the brave little toaster said nothing as Mister Toussaint depressed its lever again.

"You'd better get out and save your ass, before I start leaking poison gas!" LOONY GOONY's voice was panicky. Mister Toussaint smiled and depressed the lever.

Just as he did, he thought to check in with the flat's diagnostics. Just in time, too! Its quorum-sensors were redlining as it listened in on the appliances' consternation. Mister Toussaint unplugged the fridge and the microwave and the dishwasher.

The cooker and trash-can were hard-wired, but they didn't represent a quorum.

#

The fire department took away the melted toaster and used their axes to knock huge, vindictive holes in Mister Toussaint's walls. "Just looking for embers," they claimed. But he knew that they were pissed off because there was simply no good excuse for sticking a pouch of independently powered computation and sensors and transmitters into an antique toaster and pushing down the lever until oily, toxic smoke filled the whole 104th floor.

Mister Toussaint's neighbors weren't happy about it either.

But Mister Toussaint didn't mind. It had all been worth it, just to hear LOONY GOONY beg and weep for its life as its edges curled up and blackened.

He argued mightily, but the firefighters refused to let him keep the toaster.

#

If you enjoyed that and would like to read more of my fiction, may I suggest that you pre-order my next novel as a print book, ebook or audiobook, via the Kickstarter I launched yesterday?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification?ref=created_projects

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/08/sirius-cybernetics-corporation/#chatterbox

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[ratcurtain]

digital doodle dump 2 !!! IOTS noah though the most I've interacted with it were through edits idt I'll fully get into horror-related stuff in this media 💔

anyway werewolf alejandro gacha style wauhh curse of observance??? made me more insane about them hellyeah

[quebecoiszoe]

Watched iots and a bunch of roti versions and it made me want to draw slasher stuff lmao . Just some super quick doodles.

Minor gore below cut

[nectorbruise]

You know I can’t make it on my own

Put me in a-

Put me in a-

Put me in a movie

More stuff more iots (island of the slaughtered) in that I absolutely adore this ship and this au. It’s nightmare fuel, sure, but it’s also so interesting that I’m stuck in the loop of watching edits and looking at @eavee-ry ‘s art for it.

[lanternouslobster]

Old art for the Preservation of the Slaughter AU I’ve scrapped under the cut. Drew this stuff back in September so it’s kinda ehh

They’re the designs for Zee, Damien, Wayne, and Bowie, plus a drawing of four out of the five planned survivors. Warning for blood

I think Zee was gonna die by rattlesnake venom put into a syringe? Damien got vivisected. So that’s fun. Wayne got locked in the walk-in freezer. And then Bowie got killed by that giant spider seen in Caved by the Bell, which I know is such an unserious method of death but it made for a really cool ghost design so I don’t care. I’m actually gonna reuse it with a different character for the new fic I’m working on (called Whale Eyes if u care. IOTS if it Zeemiened out)

Damien’s ghost design was such a missed opportunity for me tbh I should’ve gone full internal anatomy visible

[ayeforscotland]

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[eavee-ry]

i actually have some questions regarding island of the slaughter as I'm wanting to do a sequel/spinoff fanfic but I want to make sure not to mess up your vision.

Are the spirits trapped to certain parts of the island unable to move about or are they able to move about the island freely (they just can't get off)

Are they hostile and bloodthirsty towards everyone that enters the island now like the man that killed them or was McLean just marked for death because he was the one that caused the whole situation in the first place?

(to kind of go with the above) if say a castaway were to end up on the island would they need to follow the rules to avoid risking the spirts' wrath or was that all essentially and elaborate prank to mess with Chris's head before doing him in in?

Are there any canon Island of the slaughtered ships I need to keep in mind?

Could someone in theory repair the spirits?(unsew Owen give Heather a body al la reverse headless horseman ect.)

Sorry for all the questions I just want to make sure I get this right. 😅

Okay you really are invested with IOTS TYSMM

1. The spirits are able to move around freely, but their designated places are like their home (or spawn point idk😭)

2. The campers weren’t familiar with Alejandro nor Sierra, but still, they may come as hostile if they feel threatened— so yeah, pretty much anyone who would enter the island would be at risk of dying in the campers’ hands if they break their boundaries (Chris is their #1 target though)

3. Same answer as #2!

4. There aren’t any ships canon in IOTS but Duncan and Courtney! I’m quite fond of NoCo in the story though, but it can be viewed as a friendship or more.

5. No i like bullying them

6. I know IOTS is “all over the place” since it was just a thing I made for fun, and I understand if people get confused! I just really like it when viewers can interpret some of the open-ended stuff

also I love the theories that you guys made! they’ll never be confirmed though since I gave up on the series now😥

also i’ve seen people say Alejandro and Sierra were the killers even though they first arrived on the island with Chris (you can make AUs of it dw, just don’t claim it’s true😭)

[prettyboybillyhargrove]

My art imitates my life

Dacre Montgomery in The Daily Telegraph

Rising Hollywood star Dacre Montgomery found global fame as Billy Hargrove in Stranger Things, a teen bully reeling from his mother's abandonment and his father's abuse.

Unveiling Politix's new spring/ summer collection at Sydney's Ace Hotel, Montgomery said he chose a relatable character: "I have a really complicated relationship with my dad, my biological father."

In a climatic moment from the smash-hit series, Billy is about to sacrifice Eleven to the monster, when she's able to reach his humanity by reminding him of the boy he was before trauma.

"A few years ago I went and confronted him about a whole Iot of stuff because I could see it bleeding into me and my life." the Perth-born star said. "Anything that is a trigger in life bleeds into your work, and I'm fortunate-opening up trauma in my work is healing.

The 28-year-old is now looking to buy a house and settle down, in Sydney's inner west or the eastern beaches.

[liquidcrystalsky]

idk how else to bridge my interests of splatoon and computers. uhh.

Kiosks or these little endpoint terminals

These are often just running whatever normal ass windows or linux, in the case of windows its often specialized software to lock it to a specific program, while on linux, instead of launching a full desktop environment, you can just launch a graphical session limited to a single program.

modern arcade machines are the same deal.

there's also "Embedded Windows/Windows IoT" which is a much more stripped down verison of windows specifically for running kios- wait

its just the enterprise edition. and the enterprise editions have even MORE features and support and things?? why are you running an entire windows OS on every tiny kiosk??? i hate microsoft

android has also been used a lot as kiosks and stuff recently also the same thing, locked to a specific app, but i think they run custom versions of the OS instead of just normal android maybe idk

[kinderartifact4]

Tales of Arcadia: Island of the Slaughtered AU

This is the one AU I haven’t posted about here until now. I posted it on Amino back in January, finally posted it on Tik Tok in February, and have been putting off posting it here because I was scared to I guess?

I came up with this AU back when IOTS was really popular, because TOA was still a main interest of mine and I typically like combining my favourite things.

It is an “Everyone is human” type AU. Anyways, it’s just information for now, no proper plot line or descriptions because I haven’t written any of that down yet.

Anything else I come up with will probably be kept to myself (and my bsf who I make proofread my stuff) unless people are interested.

[sillycaylum]

for my next trick, i will explain boat boys as if youve never heard of them, but im sick and cant be botherd correcting my spelling mistakes:

boat boys forst origionated in this minhecraft server grian (their frined) amde called double life. double life is the thirud season of an on going sereies called the life series or, some poeple call it the traffic series bcuz the lifes u get go from 1-red 2-yellow green-3. anywasy so bopat boys are joel and etho(eefo). they wweere paierd in doubl;e life. on he first day they got to know eachother and they made some jokes and stuff, it was niv]ce. actuually they ar ecalled boat b hoys bcuz they went arounf the server in boats. like, on land. it was very funny. the seconf session joel made a big boat for them to live in called the "relation-shipo", (get iot, get it? nudge nudge). etho went tyo the warden and joel sount very concerned as he did so. i dont remeber much abouyt double life as ive been binging limited life for 3 months now. they died due to a trapped nether portal. the perotral had lava spilled aorunf it. it was very sad.

also inportant fact: ther forst time etho and h=joel ever in terected on the whole entire life series they were in boats. they were both riding in boats. are u joking me. THATS SO FUCKING POETOIC WTF CHBFSHVBSHJBJHVKS

onto liml li9fe. they firat saw eachorther in the forst session. etho said "oh so ur gonna make a boat with a new friend now huh?" bcuz joel and jimmy had planned to live in the water. etho was very jealous ogf this, it made me sad. then joel saw etho ina boat with a co2w and joelk saidn "CANT BELEIVE YOUVE REPLACED ME WEITH A COW EEFO!!!" and etho responded with "he keeps me company atleats" AHAHDBFBHVBHWJJVSB JKSNNOOO. anyways in session 4, etho KILLDED JOEL!?!?!?11?!?!??! it was vwery cool actually. joe, clutchedf a fall, and etho landed in huis clutch water and saidf" YOU SAVED ME. YOU SAVED ME JOEL, SO NOW I CAN KILL YOU" that was very cool of etho. even joel daid himself to etho "the fact you landed in my own water bucket trick" i thionk thats everything improtant in liml life?

then serect life. oh, secrect life. my beloved. my onbe treu savior. save me secret life, save me. so, the two sigificant events of secrect life between bgoat boys i can remeber are 1: joel and ehto hop in ab baot otghter and joel goes "we cant do tjis ehto, the fandom will go crazy" (true( then vthey go for a lottle ride untill they are fiorced to stop by a blcok in. their way and ehto goes "well tjis is where the relatiopnshoip ens" HDGBDFISBFCHBES 2: scott is talk9ng abt his task for the sessions=] which is "say i love you to three plkayers and get them to say ot back" so rheyre discussing who would say it back, andf scott goes "i love yoy " to etho and he goes "thank you?-' HAHAH ayways so one thing leadfs to another and etho is on joels front door stepo saying to joel "i loive you" and joerl responds "uhh ok eefo i know youre obbesed with me i saw u made me the thiumbnail for ur fist bvidoe but cmon ehto calm donw" and etho is sad NSJDWBHJSDCJH im sad jusbjbfdn. its alot.

and now the decked o0ut stream. (ik th9s. was before secret life SHUTUPSHGUTPU) so, jimmy askes for a kiss from joel before he does his decked oyut run. joel goes "yeah sure. on the neckk" and jim goes silent till joel goes "WAIT NO ON THE NECK- I MEANT THE CHEEK IM MEANT THE CHEEK" nd it li9ke this hwole meme for the whole event. jimmy startes sing "etho and joel, sitting in a baot" and etho goes "kissing on the neck"!!!!!GSUGDEGUSDVJ!!!!then when they are at rens ice biat thgingy joel and wehto are sitting nect to eacher in thjeor boat s and etho goes "AWH GOTTA COVER UP MY NECK " joelsays "I DONT KISS [PEOIPLES NECKS!!!" then joel scooches up to etho in his boat and joel goes "schooching up to ya etho " and etho goes "his hand slowly reaches into my hair" LIKE EHTO IS HEE WRITING A WHOLE FANFIC OKKKK ETHO I SEE YOUUU. anyways rhat was very funny.

anyways. hermitcraft. oh boy. theres a lot and i will prpbaly misss a lot too but oh well its later and im sick and tired so SUCK IT UP. ill just do dotpointrs of the things i remeber.

etho sees jols banners and really like sthem and asks j]him for trhe pattern, whoch leads to many books which may or may nboit have been signed with neck kisees.

etho makes statues of jpel them pretemds oit wasnt him. joel rrqally liukes the statues and adds thjem to the front of hios nade awith his tori gate

etho so happens to be talk9inmg abt joel and joel hears him and goes "alsways talking abyt m,e eefo"

joel and etho are talki9ng and theres a camle and etho goes "joel mjust reallt like camels ciuz they goit the loonnnggg necks" and joel syags "oh for goodness sake" (ilobve when joel says oh for goodness sakes its like one of his mottos ayt tjis poibgt it so funny )

thatys all i camn remeber i migjt add mre when i thin k of it

thanks for taking the time to read this if u did (and u even could, oops) i doubt many people will make it down this far with reading it, so congrats i guess!! you get.. nothing-