I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to (2016)

mjg59.dreamwidth.org

44 points·hazz99··6 comments

This is a short article that gives us a glimpse of how bad things currently are in the Internet Of Shit.

The penultimate paragraph: So, in summary: it's a device that infringes my copyright, gives you root access in response to trivial credentials, has access control that depends entirely on nobody ever looking at the packets, is sufficiently poorly implemented that you can crash both it and the bulbs, has a cloud access protocol that has no security whatsoever and also acts as an easy mechanism for people to circumvent your network security. This may be the single worst device I've ever bought.

Having bought a bunch of IoT stuff since then - these are probably still the single worst device I've ever bought, with the possible exception of the Bluetooth bike lock that had a hardcoded backdoor unlock code.

There's a Russian guy who tests lamps. It's in russian, but should be easy enough to figure out.

http://lamptest.ru/results/

Mostly 240 volts though, not that useful in the US.

Unless you want to rewire your house for 240v... I have modified a 240v European cloth iron to run from a US dryer outlet, and it performs much better than the stock 110v device.

Not exactly reviews but BigClive 'disassembles' devices, especially lights and investigates the circuits. That said, I don't remember any IOT devices.

https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom

(2016)

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