3 ms·

That would at least be more expensive. Moving the cheating to harder and harder chunks of the entire system is a fine start. You can't have perfect security. Y

That would at least be more expensive. Moving the cheating to harder and harder chunks of the entire system is a fine start. You can't have perfect security. You can have security that makes bad actors pay more for the privilege of being bad actors.

frozenport 11y ago
How about testing them on the road? Worst that could happen is requiring the car maker to revert to those sub-optimal settings.
- stavrianos 11y ago
  This is how the arms race begins. Soon the manufacturers will know how much the equipment weighs, and if the car's total weight is within tolerance for that plus a test driver, the mechanisms activate. Or whatever - the point isn't the methods, it's the pattern of one-upsmanship.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    True, but there shouldn't be an arms race to begin with - one of the parties has men with guns, the other has not. VW should be sued to the ground for fucking with society like that. They should be turned into an example of what happens when you try to pull off highly damaging criminal stunts like that.
    - tormeh 11y ago
      Problem is that you don't get the people responsible if you do this. Punishing corporations only work if you do it in real time as the crimes are committed so that it has consequences for the individuals responsible.
      - MikeNomad 11y ago
        Taking VW to court now, while the cars with the software mods in question are currently in the wild, is as Real Time as it gets.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Indeed. Also, it may sound brutal but even if all the responsible evaded the hard punishment that came upon the company, the next time someone would think about pulling such a stunt off, he'd be opposed by the rest. You just need to make the consequences hard enough to bubble up the ladder and ruin the day for someone at the top.
      - Ankaios 11y ago
        The buck stops with the shareholders.
Spivak 11y ago
But this is just a band-aid fix. Personally, I would just put the user in control. Let the user decide whether they want to run their car in high mileage low emissions mode or high performance mode. Now automakers can "cheat" all they want and it makes everyone better off.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  Tht sounds like a very bad idea. When buying a car, you already have to make a tradeoff between performance, practicality and environmental impact, but at the very least you have discrete choices and you know the car will be usable. If remapping the ECU at will becomes standard, what is to stop manufacturers from basing MPG figures on a map that does 0-60 in 40 seconds? Where would you draw the line for the definition of misleading consumers? Or what's to stop rednecks from constantly running sky-high NOx and CO2 emissions?
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Your implicit argument that it's really not up to consumers to decide whether to bypass emission requirements is fine. That it's "rednecks" who would do this is not.
    - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
      My sincere apologies if this offended anyone. What would be an appropriate term in this context? Edit: I'm not a native speaker and have heard this term in use in the media to the point where I did not believe it to be a "racial slur" as wikipedia says it is. So, say I want, for instance, to represent the stereotype person who rolls coal on their diesel pickup and believes global warming is a left-wing conspiracy. Look it up on youtube if you don't know what rolling coal is. (We can get into a whole debate on whether stereotypes are inherently good or bad, but that's not the point. They're a very effective commumication tool, which is why humans are so quick to label and group other humans, but obviously they're only to be used when not offensive.)
      - 11y ago
zby 11y ago
And also it would require more people in on the conspiracy.

frozenport 11y ago

How about testing them on the road? Worst that could happen is requiring the car maker to revert to those sub-optimal settings.

stavrianos 11y ago
This is how the arms race begins. Soon the manufacturers will know how much the equipment weighs, and if the car's total weight is within tolerance for that plus a test driver, the mechanisms activate. Or whatever - the point isn't the methods, it's the pattern of one-upsmanship.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  True, but there shouldn't be an arms race to begin with - one of the parties has men with guns, the other has not. VW should be sued to the ground for fucking with society like that. They should be turned into an example of what happens when you try to pull off highly damaging criminal stunts like that.
  - tormeh 11y ago
    Problem is that you don't get the people responsible if you do this. Punishing corporations only work if you do it in real time as the crimes are committed so that it has consequences for the individuals responsible.
    - MikeNomad 11y ago
      Taking VW to court now, while the cars with the software mods in question are currently in the wild, is as Real Time as it gets.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Indeed. Also, it may sound brutal but even if all the responsible evaded the hard punishment that came upon the company, the next time someone would think about pulling such a stunt off, he'd be opposed by the rest. You just need to make the consequences hard enough to bubble up the ladder and ruin the day for someone at the top.
    - Ankaios 11y ago
      The buck stops with the shareholders.

Spivak 11y ago

But this is just a band-aid fix. Personally, I would just put the user in control. Let the user decide whether they want to run their car in high mileage low emissions mode or high performance mode. Now automakers can "cheat" all they want and it makes everyone better off.

semi-extrinsic 11y ago
Tht sounds like a very bad idea. When buying a car, you already have to make a tradeoff between performance, practicality and environmental impact, but at the very least you have discrete choices and you know the car will be usable. If remapping the ECU at will becomes standard, what is to stop manufacturers from basing MPG figures on a map that does 0-60 in 40 seconds? Where would you draw the line for the definition of misleading consumers? Or what's to stop rednecks from constantly running sky-high NOx and CO2 emissions?
- ghaff 11y ago
  Your implicit argument that it's really not up to consumers to decide whether to bypass emission requirements is fine. That it's "rednecks" who would do this is not.
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    My sincere apologies if this offended anyone. What would be an appropriate term in this context? Edit: I'm not a native speaker and have heard this term in use in the media to the point where I did not believe it to be a "racial slur" as wikipedia says it is. So, say I want, for instance, to represent the stereotype person who rolls coal on their diesel pickup and believes global warming is a left-wing conspiracy. Look it up on youtube if you don't know what rolling coal is. (We can get into a whole debate on whether stereotypes are inherently good or bad, but that's not the point. They're a very effective commumication tool, which is why humans are so quick to label and group other humans, but obviously they're only to be used when not offensive.)
    - 11y ago

zby 11y ago

And also it would require more people in on the conspiracy.