The future sucks

[seahawk]

2 hours ago, Harold Jones said:

My newish car has 'adaptive cruise control' it will adjust speed to maintain following distance and remain between the lane lines with no input from the driver.  It is fantastic for long drives on the midwestern interstate system and the many four lane US highways in rural areas around here.  It's a fucking death trap on winding back roads since it can follow the lane lines but really doesn't understand downhill curves with a tightening radius. Under the right conditions I say my car is a way better driver than I am but those conditions are a pretty tight window of use. 

Newer version of adaptive cruise control use the navigation data to handle this. This just needs a bit more processing power, but is easily doable today.

[rmgill]

I love this idea. Until there’s some sort of network outage, or someone hacks your car’s navigation system to crash you into a bridge abutment. 
 

Car electronics are horribly insecure. Just put another device on the can bus or swap one out and you are in. Its a terribly insecure network protocol and the wireless links make it more so. 

Cyberpunk game/story lines are replete with this cars and their computers as an attack method for good reason. Masamune Shirow covers this well in Ghost in the Shell in a couple of instances. 

 

Here is a primer on hacking CAN-Bus.

https://medium.com/@yogeshojha/car-hacking-101-practical-guide-to-exploiting-can-bus-using-instrument-cluster-simulator-part-i-cd88d3eb4a53

 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Another 30 years, if not sooner, we will see cars steal themselves to order.

IMHO, if people cant drive a car, take a bus instead. Or get a chauffeer.

[Stargrunt6]

58 minutes ago, Ivanhoe said:

 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Shit, im going to have to go with piling on Elon. Sorry guys.

[Tim the Tank Nut]

here is a crazy thought:

drive your car and pay attention to everything around it.  I've got my stable of forever cars from points ignition to fuel injection and enough spares to go a very, very long time.  I like the later 90's stuff.  It does everything the new stuff does without any internet connection of any sort.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I see you, and raise you. Flies in my teeth, what flies?

[Harold Jones]

3 hours ago, seahawk said:

Newer version of adaptive cruise control use the navigation data to handle this. This just needs a bit more processing power, but is easily doable today.

Network coverage in the rural parts with twisty two lane roads would make that problematic. Right now it's a nice to have for long trips.  Making it more capable would make it more dangerous

[rmgill]

I am going to channel my grandfather here a bit.

If you're in the drivers seat, autopilot or NOT you're in charge of the car. It's your decision ultimately. You're managing the systems and turning it off when it's doing something that's not valid. If the autopilot is going to steer you into a crowd of people, stop the car.  Pilots of aircraft who have to manage the systems are still the folks flying the planes, regardless of autopilot or instrumentation. 

It's rarely going to be the maker of the autopilot, and really only if you cannot assert control because the system doesn't cede control when you grab the wheel and attempt to assert control. 

[Mr King]

They are going to put us into auto driving cars we rent not own and they are going to show a constant stream of ads. Don't want to see so many ads? Pay a higher subscription fee.  You're still going to see ads, just not as many.

[rmgill]

I'll rebuild a 70s muscle car before I settle for that crap. 

 

[Ssnake]

Well, I don't own a car. Where I live, I don't need one. Where I need one, I rent. If you rent, well, you get to experience whatever the rental company gives to you. So, yes... you can "turn off" the software that moves your steering wheel. Until you restarted the ignition, then it's on again. Also, do I really trust the software running the user interface that tells me that the software that just moved my steering wheel is now "off"? Is it really off? Or just in a state where it's still active, except that some software inhibitor prevents it from sending active steering commands to the steering wheel?

We don't need hackers to go through the car's entertainment system (why is it there in the first place?!), from there into the CAN bus, and then to hack basically everything they like; sure, we'll get that too. But how about ordinary bugs? I know how software is made. There will be bugs that escape your automated tests because you didn't think of every possible factor combination. There will be bugs that are rare enough to escape detection. There will be bugs because a cosmic ray flipped a bit somewhere. Can we trust the hardware? Can we trust the compilers? Do those writing the compilers know that the machine code generated with their product will make life or death decisions? Hey, can't we throw in some highly opaque machine learning to "enhance the experience"?

 

So, you think you can evade the madness by owning cars without all the software crap in it? Think again. The people around you will have them, and the bugs in those cars could just as well kill you.

[Mr King]

One of the things that bothers me about the looming future of private vehicle ownership is big daddy government can at whim push a button and disable a populations vehicles en masse.

[Ivanhoe]

23 minutes ago, Mr King said:

One of the things that bothers me about the looming future of private vehicle ownership is big daddy government can at whim push a button and disable a populations vehicles en masse.

With CBDC (central bank digital currency), they absolutely plan on cutting political opponents off, which means no mortgage/rent payment, can't buy gas at the pump, etc.

[seahawk]

10 hours ago, Harold Jones said:

Network coverage in the rural parts with twisty two lane roads would make that problematic. Right now it's a nice to have for long trips.  Making it more capable would make it more dangerous

At the moment cars have a full set of navigational data onboard and get only up-dates over the air. I think this will not change, when the systems are more deeply integrated, as the navigation data is key for many driving aids.

[Stuart Galbraith]

6 hours ago, Mr King said:

One of the things that bothers me about the looming future of private vehicle ownership is big daddy government can at whim push a button and disable a populations vehicles en masse.

They have been able to do that for decades.

 

[Ivanhoe]

For you Luddites concerned about auto-thoritarian things;

 

[rmgill]

Just in time. California DMV Puts 42 million Car Titles on Blockchain

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/08/california-dmv-puts-42-million-car-titles-on-blockchain/


As someone notes in the comments, this is a backdoor to stripping out any IC powered cars and working the social credit score down to people. Since it's searchable and instant. 

[Stargrunt6]

8 minutes ago, rmgill said:

Just in time. California DMV Puts 42 million Car Titles on Blockchain

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/08/california-dmv-puts-42-million-car-titles-on-blockchain/


As someone notes in the comments, this is a backdoor to stripping out any IC powered cars and working the social credit score down to people. Since it's searchable and instant. 

Throw in plate reading software, mandated gps, yeah, bad

[Ivanhoe]

I have a sibling who lives in California. During the lockdown I realized I might be faced with running a rescue op. When things get really bad there, the dilemma is the rescue op go/no-go decision. What value of Psuccess below do I abort? 

 

 

[rmgill]

Depends on where and how far to the border. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

7 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

I have a sibling who lives in California. During the lockdown I realized I might be faced with running a rescue op. When things get really bad there, the dilemma is the rescue op go/no-go decision. What value of Psuccess below do I abort? 

 

 

There was a TV programme made some 10 years ago on the rise of Social media and the use it has for manipulating the population. Some of the tech pioneers were getting out of California and buying remote ranchs, saying dark things about how bad things were going to be when the hammer fell. I entirely understand what the hell they were on about now.

There is more and more important technological hurdles being held in fewer and fewer hands. AI, robotic driving, search engines, social media. The possiblity of a shadow Government setting themselves up, protecting themselves with their own media companies, is more real now than it was in the early 1900's. And the Oligarchs of that era certainly did try. This time they might just pull it off.

[sunday]

4 hours ago, rmgill said:

Depends on where and how far to the border. 

Edited August 2, 2024 by sunday

[DB]

On 7/30/2024 at 1:46 PM, Harold Jones said:

My newish car has 'adaptive cruise control' it will adjust speed to maintain following distance and remain between the lane lines with no input from the driver.  It is fantastic for long drives on the midwestern interstate system and the many four lane US highways in rural areas around here.  It's a fucking death trap on winding back roads since it can follow the lane lines but really doesn't understand downhill curves with a tightening radius. Under the right conditions I say my car is a way better driver than I am but those conditions are a pretty tight window of use. 

Can you imagine self-driving cars maintaining 60mph on those Dorset back-roads? After all, they're allowed to because that's the speed limit.

[sunday]

Now, that is a frightening prospect!