We live in interesting times

… so we can root our cars :smile:

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Next stop: “troll accounts” hacking cars sat navs into driving to stupid places and not turning on unless the outside temperature is exactly 23.7 degrees!

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so what’s next? is the Honda like my malibu where you can change so many parameters through the radio? cause if so, i think it’d be a bad idea to want to root it, as it’d just make it easier to hack tbh

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This is why, if we’re going to make connected cars, we need to completely separate the operational system from the entertainment system. take the ECU and TCU (and any controllers associated with the brakes and steering0 and completely isolate them from the rest of the electronics. No shared wiring or pathways whatsoever. No wireless networking capabilites for this subsystem. Go back to a physical bus for reprogramming them. Then you can do whatever you want with your infotainment system. If a hacker gets hold of it, your car will still be operational and not hijacked.

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I might get hate for this but I just despise modern cars, I realise they are better in pretty much every way and there’s no way to stop them but I just can’t stand them as much as old cars. I miss colourful and interesting factory colours, nowadays you have to get a super car or expensive sporty trim to get a nice colour, and I love chrome, wood, and the look of the interior on old cars.
Modern cars are getting too heavy and big, back in the day when if you wanted a big or fat car you’d have to get a luxury car, American car or pick-up truck, an old Mini or Fiat 500 are real small cars something that couldn’t be replicated today.
Not to mention modern cars engine bays are a hell to work in, to replace things on a cramped on transverse engine sometimes you have to unscrew and remove the whole front end of the car.

I dunno, I just love simplicity that works, and I love the styling, feel and history behind old cars, and how innocent some of them were.
At least modern bikes are still kind of simple, I guess that explains why I still love new bikes.

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Because they do not require 18 airbags, a touchscreen multimedia with an internet connection and a 64 kph Euro NCAP frontal crash test.

Also I’ve said this at some point. Won a T-Shirt for it
https://www.carthrottle.com/post/a0LqHq/

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That was said better than I ever could’ve. But this is why I’m going back to cheap, simple cars I can beat on relentlessly. I’ll be honest. I have more fun thrashing my 4 speed slushbox equipped Honda Civic (2,554 lbs) than my Mazdaspeed 3 (3,153 lbs), if only because one of them is much more raw, cheap, and simple.

Side note: I wouldn’t call modern cars better overall. Of course they have an advantage in safety, fuel economy, and drivability, but most had to sacrifice practicality, ease of maintenance, sportiness, longevity, and/or something else to do it. And for some people, that tradeoff isn’t worth it. Like me. I want something fun and inexpensive that I can fix with duct tape and swear words, where parts are cheap enough that I need not fear beating on it. That’s why my Civic is only one manual transmission away from being my perfect daily.

For comparison (it’s not exact, but it’s all I had access to that’s close enough), I occasionally drive my mom’s 2014 Toyota Corolla (2,800 lbs). It can’t carry any more stuff than my Civic, the fuel economy isn’t that much better, and it feels like an old Cadillac from behind the wheel. Seriously, the controls feel floaty. And it’s more of a pain to service.

Of course, for many people, a modern car makes more sense. But they aren’t wholly superior. And I doubt the market will adapt to our preferences, because people like me simply don’t want new cars anyway. It would be a better investment for petrolheads to keep our older cars running longer and stronger.

Back to the point: @VicVictory is dead on there. But how will this work for autonomous cars, where they’d pretty much require some sort of connection to perform ideally (ie: Navigation and interfacing with other autonomous cars as desired by automakers)?

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Oh, I don’t like autonomous cars. I get the idea of taking the human out of the equation, only real-time autonomy requires integrating the operation system with external communication. That will be a prime, juicy target for hackers. You may remove the driver, but not the human element.

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I’m no fan either. I was just curious if anyone knew how to rectify this problem.

I realized a thing about autonomous cars today, so most of these systems work based on road markings right?

Well how the hell is that supposed to work in most of Europe, most of North America, the very south of South America and the more northern parts of Asia for 25-75% of the year? In these areas from a few months to all the time besides summer the road markings are nowhere to be seen (at least clearly) thanks to snow, cloudy ice, slush, frozen slush, cracking in the road caused by ice and especially in Europe lots of roads don’t have painted markings in slow traffic areas.

Are autonomous cars just supposed to work for people in California or something?

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For the most part, they are only being tested in places like California in the USA. And I think more people will be aware of their limitations once the technology becomes more widespread. And it’s going to put a massive thorn in the side of those who champion them.

They have already had a few issues, but the scary truth of the matter is that they are already doing better than a large percentage of the drivers on the road.

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A lot of them I believe work off of maps saved on the cars computer, those maps may have all the songs and stuff already saved on there so it doesn’t need to physically see a stop sign, it’s just needs to be marked on the map that one exsists at that location

Also cool your shit, self driving cars aren’t the end of the world

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one thing I will note though is I do recall seeing Ford doing winter autonomous tests in Michigan that appeared to be going well, but they seemed to just stay to well cleared roads where the markings were still quite visible. I do know there are people that tried Tesla AP in snow before though and it does still seem to work, but mostly from just “following” the cars ahead of it if I remember right.

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