It was after decades of stripping money from work into larger pools of capital, thanks to Reagan and Thachter style deregulation; so much money looking for unreasonably high ROI and unencumbered by the need to get consent from the governed or pass inspections from regulators causes trouble where ever it touches.
Think of dropping a water balloon onto a pin. It pops instantly, but the water (like the temperature and overpressure) takes a while to dissipate into a puddle.
The past 40 years we went from pinball and arcade machines, to most men playing some sort of game on a personal device (phone, console, computer etc). I could see the next 40 years capturing women in the same capacity given the right infrastructure and content.
Cutting someones breaks requires physical access to the hardware.
Changing:
if (brakeDepressed()){
engageBrake();
}
To:
if (brakeDepressed() && currentTime < '5/6/26 4pm EST'){
engageBrake();
}
Can be deployed to thousands of vehicles, and would stop brakes from working during peak commute time on the East Coast.
Someone who can write out that code with that specificity should know there are countless technical and procedural ways to help prevent that sort of thing from actually making its way into consumer vehicles (or that OTA updates would be the only avenue to accomplish that). In a properly designed system, the only real fear here is a state-level attack. And I just don't think getting every Honda to crash at 4pm is a vulnerable enough attack vector to make this hypothetical worthy of much thought.
How do you know that a car is the result of a properly designed system before you get behind the wheel (or step in front of it?).
>the only real fear here is a state-level attack
Why isn't this a valid concern? We should just be fine with russia or china having the ability to remotely hack all of our cars and kill/spy on individuals, even critical members of our leadership? What about our own government? What about some terrorist launching formerly state-level malware from his basement with the help of AI?
Not only state actors. Vulnerability can be exploited by non-state actors. A terrorist getting hold of this capability to crash every Honda at 4pm introduces new challenges. The impact of 9/11 was not about how many people were killed. But it terrorized the population with that act. People stopped getting into flights. Imagine similar stuff with our daily routine cars.
State level actors have plenty of money to find any exploit around those protections and some need little incentive. They can hire a spy to cut my break line but their gain is much lower vs the cost. They don't care about me at all anyway except if I'm in a group of 100k people they can get at once.
> the only real fear here is a state-level attack.
This is blatantly false. In the real world there was a major recall after security researchers (not state actors) demonstrated that they could remotely interfere with safety critical systems. OTA updates without user involvement are a massive security vulnerability. So are internet connected safety critical systems. Neither should be legally permissible IMO.
> I just don't think getting every Honda to crash at 4pm is a vulnerable enough attack vector to make this hypothetical worthy of much thought.
Setting aside assassinations do you just have no imagination? There have been all sorts of crazy disgruntled worker sabotage stories over the years. Mass shooters exist. Political and religious terrorists exist.
For a specific mass scale state level hypothetical imagine that the US enters a hot war with a peer adversary for whatever reason. The next day during the morning commute the entire interstate system grids to a halt, the hospitals are completely overwhelmed, and the entire supply chain collapses for a week or so while we pick up the pieces. With a bit of (un)luck it might happen to catch an oil tanker in the crossfire while it was in a tunnel thereby scoring infrastructure damage that would take years to fix.
> should know there are countless technical and procedural ways to help prevent that sort of thing
Sometimes when I look at code it feels like I was led into a weird surprise party celebrating structure and correctness, only for everyone to jump out as soon as I get past the door to shout, “Just kidding - it’s the same old bullshit!” All that to say, we’re about as good or worse as anyone else, at our respective jobs.
Meanwhile, Amazon and its executives are union-busting to keep worker rights minimal, running a nation-wide law enforcement surveillance network, supporting Republican politicians and all of their anti-American policies and practices, lobbying to oppose anti-trust enforcement to keep hold of their illegal market positions and keep our economy weak, and they own one of the nation's largest newspapers specifically so they can control the narrative over their own actions. And that's all happening right here, in the US, influencing our laws and our media, right now today, not in some theoretical future.
So yeah in terms of entities that are actually doing real harm to Americans, Amazon beats China no question.
There are threats from without and threats from within.
China isn't going to physically invade the US. They want to take our place as the world's cultural leader and relegate the US to approximately the current state of the UK.
Companies like Amazon want to increase the wealth of the owners at any cost including domestic political capture. They would see the country being run by oligarchs like Russia.
What if in the time between initialization of cosmic_ray to False, and the time this if statement executes, a legitimate cosmic ray flips the bool bit representing cosmic_ray?
This is a really good point and a common error in bit flip detection code. To avoid this kind of look-before-you-leap hazard the following is recommended:
The cynic in me things the Dems take the legislative branch next year, curtail executive power but are unable to undo anything and then win a massively nerfed executive position in 2028.
I'm with you. I also think it would not take long before we all found out that the Supreme Court only embraces limitless executive power when the office is held by their party. We've already seen evidence of that, Trump has succeeded using arguments that Biden failed with just a couple years ago. Right about the time 2028 rolls around, the Supreme Court will suddenly decide that they've gone too far and need to reel in an out-of-control executive branch.
I'd prefer they have housing somewhere to live and not in the streets! Just not in my neighborhood, man that's a mouthful, maybe NIMNH? Doesn't really roll off the tongue though...
I think you're vastly over estimating property taxes. Texas is less than 2% on average assessed on home value. I'd be curious about your example of what "most mortgages" payment breakdown looks like, like year 5 in texas on a 300k house putting 5% down and a 5% interest rate. Look at principle, interest, property taxes, and avg insurance payment.
"I think you're vastly over estimating property taxes."
You're implying that this needs to be the biggest monthly cost, which I don't agree with. Eventually you will pay off your mortgage, leaving you with just property tax and (technically optional at that point) insurance. The duration of payment matters. I will end up paying more in property taxes in my life than I will in interest - 20 years below 4% vs 50+ years of paying 2+%.
2% on even a $200k house is $333/month. That's a lot for low income people. The principal and interest on $180k is about $960/mo on a 5% 30yr. So he property tax is 25% of the payment.
So instead of me overestimating property tax, I feel that you are underestimating how much that money is worth to low income people.
30 year loan at 4% (not feasible today) means 115k in interest paid after putting 20% down. It would take way longer than 50 years to pay more in property taxes than interest.
Nothing moved. You gave me the 2% property tax from TX. The other person gave me the dorm in Atlanta. I gave you a real example where I will pay more in property tax than I will in interest. Property tax varies from state to state and won't be the same everywhere. I'm not sure why you're using yet another state, Alabama, for your example except to just cherry pick. But we're getting off track - $1200/yr perpetually is a lot of money for low income people.
Not in relation to his body which is the concerning interaction. Though contact with a 150mph tire would have had similar if not the exact same consequences as a 300 mph tire.
