this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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Cyberpunk
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I'm with you, but we have seen software bugs in aircraft and space. Probably defense too.
A bug that completely bricks your vehicle is unacceptable.
Yes, this is spooky. Even in Windows, when your OS is bricked by an update, there are resources to get it into safe mode and roll it back.
It's corporate neglegence to make the car operate on critical software that doesn't have safe modes or a means to roll back to stable operation.
But people will have to die from it before regulations are enforced to assure this is the case.
All software dependent devices should have jailbreak alternatives.
You shouldn't trust a customer to fuck with the OS of a vehicle. Vehicles aren't computers, breaking them can endanger yourself and others.
Obviously we can't trust the companies to properly maintain our vehicles in good faith, and we cant trust captured regulatory departments to keep the auto companies in line.
We're watching in the whole Tesla affair that companies are glad to endanger families by the hundreds of thousands to preserve a rising profit. Corporations have no interest in our safety, whereas we do.
So yes, its up to the end-user to aftermarket the Hell out of any stock vehicle to assure it will run in emergencies, and fail to brick when the company shows incompetence or malice.
No, the solution is not to deregulate automobiles.
I never said that it was. I said that regulation of automobiles isn't doing any good to keep companies in check or serve the public.
I'm beginning to suspect whether you are engaging this dialog in good faith.
"Regulation isn't working, so it's up to us to do something wildly irresponsible and dangerous instead of working towards better regulation"
Go away
Nah, you can block me if you like.
You accuse me of endorsing wildly irresponsible and dangerous action while ignoring the manufacturers have already engaged in wildly irresponsible and dangerous action.
This tells me you're not interested in solutions but the interests of the car makers.
So in the interests of protecting others from your further attempts to deceive and disseminate false propaganda, maybe I should keep an eye on you for a while.
Some people maintain their own vehicles. Some people even build them from scratch. Is the OS unique or are you against any vehicle work outside of a dealership?
I can trust a user to install a part or an application, to maintain their car and update software. I don't trust them to make their own engine and drive it on public roads. Software that's responsible for the life and death of others on the road should be certified and you shouldn't touch it except in the ways that have been certified safe to do so.
That seems consistent with your opinion on the OS but I'm not sure it's consistent with your opinion on public safety. People currently rebuild engines from junk, they replace their own brakes, convert their cars to run on different fuel sources. I would feel that tinkering with firmware poses, at worse, a similar risk. It doesn't strike me as especially new or threatening. How do you feel about the right to repair?
Do you draw the line at creating something new? Because with hobby cars, they build them from kits or gather parts from a bunch of junkyards and reassemble them into working, often customized machines. No dealership or assembly line involved. And it is not uncommon to build sleeper cars by swapping in an engine the car was never meant to have. This can involve modifying the frame and rearranging other components to accommodate it. I'm not sure where the line for making their own engine is - is it a new configuration of existing components or do you mean like milling a new engine block? Either one has software analogies.
I've been skeptical of cars having OSs advanced enough to need updates, and I'd personally air gap them from both the Internet and the onboard entertainment system. But a glitchy OS doesn't strike me as being far worse than the stuff I mentioned above done badly. States might have to figure out how to inspect them the way they do with the rest of the car (in states that actually do vehicle inspections at least).
There was a GPS enabled range finder, sometimes it displayed the coordinates of what you were looking at, sometimes it gave your coordinates.