I work at one vendor currently and have worked at a few prior. The difference is astounding - my previous gigs, including one of the biggest vendors ever was exactly as you said. My current gig is exactly the opposite - strong focus on real security insights and value, none of the box-ticking bs, and a great roadmap. It is rare, but when everyone at the org, and especially the product side really know how attacks play out - you can make a real impact on the world.

Okay, but how much would it cost to hire a hacker or red team to breach your systems? Is it more or less than $10M? If I had one competent hacker and a year do you think you could stop me? How about three people and a year?

You're right that a generator must be taken care of, but a truck with an inverter is very different from a generator if you plan to power something significant. The truck+inverter will probably keep your fridge and lights running, but can't power your whole house unless you get an oversized aftermarket alternator, which will cost more than the generator probably will (aftermarket car parts aren't cheap).

Does Google really have Android though? Android is open source with a flexible enough license that if Google ever tried to tighten their grip too much, they'd lose the dev community quickly. They own the Play store and Google services, but you can create an AOSP device (a non Play/Google services device) with no issues, and some chinese/low-end players already do that exactly to avoid some of the licensing costs and requirements.

They may have had a very good handle on Android talent in the start, but now every facet of Android engineering has a non negligible community outside of Google.

I'm not saying it's like Google has nothing, but their position in the Android universe is one or two bad moves away from slipping from their grip at any moment. It's not a hard link like Apple's.

My smart home is also my home security solution, so I wanted it to work through a (short) power failure.

Getting a UPS for my Home Assistant node was the easy part. Like you, I was worried about the many nodes scattered throughout the house that needed power.

The solution I've come to for now is using a USB plug for mains power, that goes through a DIY USB battery bank charging board (that I got off AliExpress) that's plugged into an 18650 cell. Most of these boards can either charge or provide a 5v out, but some are happy to do both at the same time, and can act as a mini-UPS.

I totally agree.

It's also great to see how with a little technical know-how, you can avoid paying 100s of dollars for some IoT tech that is reliant on more people buying overpriced hardware for it to work in the future, and instead - go for DIY or cheap hardware (e.g.: SonOff) which gets a huge audience due to their low prices, which guarantees someone like me will spend the time to get it properly supported soon enough...

All of a sudden, the premium product becomes the inferior product, because it will have a smaller market share, and therefore, fewer hackers :-)

> These chips are intricate enough to potentially contain backdoors. While it is something I never thought about with respect to Espressif, it does seem plausible that they could be a target.

As the old saying goes, "the S in IoT stands for security" - I choose to trust Google/Amazon and their peers to have an Internet-connected device, but everything else (95% the IoT devices I have) gets sectioned off to a dedicated VLAN & WLAN with no Internet access (and no access to the rest of my network).

This keeps me safe, and keeps the devices safe from each other (micro-segmentation in the access level). No need to trust what has minimal interfaces, and then I don't worry as much if I don't roll software updates every week...

Good luck getting around what extremely well paid lobbyist will do. This country sadly has been corrupted by money.

FWIW, there's a study that looked at patent filings and paper publications for inventors in small vs. large companies.

It seems that as a whole, when people choose the Big-X route, they tend to make fewer inventions and publish fewer papers and their inventions and papers get cited less.

So, in theory, by going to work in Big-Tech, you're choosing greater comfort and prestige, while reducing your overall impact on the world, while the startup route holds much more expected impact, but a much higher likelihood of reduced financial comfort.

There's a part of me that thinks that nations that encourage hoarding talent would be less successful than those that encourage innovation, and therefore, I wonder if we need some sort of innovation grant (i.e.: for every successful patent application/company registration/etc. that is NOT fraudulent, the submitter gets 24 months of financial support at the median income level, so they can chase that dream)

I call this "resume engineering". Some years ago, I decided to pass on a very impressive position at one of the then-hottest tech unicorns. I kinda liked the people, thought the tech was cool, but didn't see any way for the company to succeed.

As I thought, that company died, firing 100s of folks before the end.

It's been a few years, but a former colleague who took that job, managed to land an impressive title at my previous employer, above my level at the time... I have since left that company (unrelated), moved to a startup, and couldn't be happier.

My opinion is that titles don't matter. At all.

Compensation does matter, but you have to also value your happiness and factor that as well.

titles certainly matter and some fields have very specific definitions as to roles and levels of responsibility. medical workers come to mind.

Then they should demand higher wages. And if that's too high a cost for the restaurant - they should raise their prices or close their business. Tipping does not make sense, and makes even less sense for takeout.