https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/18/when-even-our-fridges-are-online-a-meltdown-is-inevitable/
Nevertheless, governments around the world continue to make themselves – and as a result, their populations – easy targets. German finance minister Lars Klingbeil is pushing ahead with new legislation to forcibly replace every last one of the nation’s previously manually operated offline cash registers with fancy new electronic web-linked ones, to ‘improve record keeping and combat tax evasion’. Once again, it all sounds very convenient… until someone in a Moscow basement inevitably breaks into them and wipes all the accounts clean.
Of course, governments aren’t alone in their vulnerability to all kinds of gimmicks. Our growing laziness as a society is certainly playing a role, too. In 2020, security researchers hacked into a web-connected coffee machine and caused it to spew out boiling-hot water on command. Then they caused the machine to demand a ransom – via a pixelated image of a devil’s face, which was projected on to the coffee machine’s display screen. All very inconvenient – and for what? The privilege of being able to command the thing to brew you a piping-hot cappuccino via your iPhone while you’re out of the house? Why?
Flick 🏴
npub1jf…46l59
2026-10-18 14:25:11 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1jfqvrfs9ugkatjaz58jlyr0v87eg8hge3mv9v8d4ce95462anjqq046l59Seen on
wss://relay.ditto.pubPublished at
2026-10-18 14:25:11 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/18/when-even-our-fridges-are-online-a-meltdown-is-inevitable/\n\nNevertheless, governments around the world continue to make themselves – and as a result, their populations – easy targets. German finance minister Lars Klingbeil is pushing ahead with new legislation to forcibly replace every last one of the nation’s previously manually operated offline cash registers with fancy new electronic web-linked ones, to ‘improve record keeping and combat tax evasion’. Once again, it all sounds very convenient… until someone in a Moscow basement inevitably breaks into them and wipes all the accounts clean.\n\nOf course, governments aren’t alone in their vulnerability to all kinds of gimmicks. Our growing laziness as a society is certainly playing a role, too. In 2020, security researchers hacked into a web-connected coffee machine and caused it to spew out boiling-hot water on command. Then they caused the machine to demand a ransom – via a pixelated image of a devil’s face, which was projected on to the coffee machine’s display screen. All very inconvenient – and for what? The privilege of being able to command the thing to brew you a piping-hot cappuccino via your iPhone while you’re out of the house? Why?",
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