7 ms·
It doesn't mention it in this article but this could also have a profound effect on John Deere and allowing farmers to fix their own hardware. https://motherbo
by skunkworker 8y ago
It doesn't mention it in this article but this could also have a profound effect on John Deere and allowing farmers to fix their own hardware.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-americ...
https://hackaday.com/2018/02/11/will-john-deere-finally-get-their-dmca-comeuppance/ https://hackaday.com/2018/02/11/will-john-deere-finally-get-...
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoI'm terrified. I saw John Deere code, and its tortuous. Nobody should try to fool with it without serious study.
- smt88 8y agoThis is also true of elevators. The vendors intentionally write awful code so that only they can fix it.
- eveningcoffee 8y agoThis is quite horrifying. I am not sure if the elevator ride will be the same again for me.
- komali2 8y agoOther than the space shuttle, by measuring deaths vs distance traveled per person, the elevator is the safest form of transportation. https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/2qbjw2/request_in_deathsmeter_what_is_the_safest_form_of/cn4reyl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/2qbjw2/requ... though I recommend reading more into it and doing your own math.
- cgio 8y agoIsn't soyuz better than space shuttle on this metric?
- komali2 8y agoNot if we account for the "lost cosmonaut" ;)
- aj7 8y agoHow bout deaths per person-trip? After all, you’re mainly going in circles.
- 666lumberjack 8y agoThe post you link actually states the opposite, that Elevators are more dangerous than all the other listed methods of travel except the Space Shuttle.
- mortenjorck 8y agoMy building replaced its elevators last year, and one car still has an “activate Windows” overlay in the corner of the screen. A recent change to the floor selection wallpaper has somehow resulted in the button font in another car mysteriously reverting to Verdana. All I can do is remind myself there’s a mechanical interlock to keep the car from free-falling.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoEscalators have mechanical interlocks and they've been failing a lot recently. Time to take the stairs.
- Symbiote 8y agoI've never seen a lift controlled by a touchscreen. Is there any way for blind people to use it?
- mortenjorck 8y agoThere’s a secondary interface at wheelchair height with a Braille-equipped keypad where you can type in a floor.
- smt88 8y agoDon't be horrified for your safety. The software controls where the empty elevator goes. Many of the safety features, like the brakes, are tested regularly under the law and separate from the technician/programmer's work.
- deforciant 8y agoI live in central London in a 3-4 years old building (24 floors) and the elevators are truly a joke. Every 3-6 days they somehow get out of sync with which floor they are currently on, especially if you go first to -1, after that pretty much every floor will be wrong :) I always wonder who wrote it.
- Natanael_L 8y agoIt's probably trouble with the sensors in combination with bad capacitors, which cause the motors to not accelerate the elevator at the rate which it is programmed to expect, so it doesn't quite exactly know where it is. Tldr it's glitchy.
- WalterBright 8y agoI know a guy who built an elevator system single board computer to control it. The big problem was the power to the board - the motor turning on and off and the old electrical system made it very spiky, which would cause the computer to glitch. He built in a lot of self-checking in the computer, but it would still fail once a day or so. He eventually fixed that by having the computer just hardware reset itself regularly.
- chendragon 8y agoWas there any particular reason that the problem could not have been resolved through hardware since the hardware was a new development?(i.e. a UPS or better filtering?)
- WalterBright 8y agoThe customer refused to resolve the issues with the electric power. My friend did add lot of filtering, but said he'd reached a limit.
- mattkevan 8y agoUsed to work in the centre point tower on Tottenham Court Road. The lifts had no buttons inside the car, your security tag would program in the floor, so you had to get in the right one otherwise you’d be stuffed. There was a restaurant open to the public at the top, so in the evening the lifts would be full of forlorn diners trying to find their way out. The computer would often crash and reboot mid journey - the lift would stop, the lights would go out and the screen would run through a boot sequence, before starting up again. I once saw a technician tinker the system and he genuinely had a bunch of five inch floppy disks.
- bduerst 8y ago"If it's not broken, don't touch it" For the longest time Zara used an MS-DOS based POS system, and hey, it worked.
- paulie_a 8y agoAnd then you get hacked. Pos code is junk, and the os they run on is outdated and unsupported. It's amazing any of it actually works.
- mito88 8y agoand it's ugly.
- cweiss 8y agoOTOH - DOS probably has a pretty low vulnerability profile and it's _very_ well known. Most modern POS terminals run Windows 7. Which is more secure?
- paulie_a 8y agoWin 7 if you are lucky, most run xp. Modern ones run Android or iOS. But to your point you can basically go back to the archives of the 90s internet and go on a shopping spree of vulnerabilities for dos looking at Trojan/virus code.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoIs POS point of service/sale or piece of <expletive>?
- Natanael_L 8y agoAll of the above
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoThe former is a strict subset of the latter.
- romwell 8y agoHow is that fact making you terrified in the context of this discussion?
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoJD uses desktop simulators, then simulation using real hardware on test stands with recorded data, then field trials, then controlled trials with partner operators. THEN they release to the public. I'm terrified somebody will think their tweak is 'obviously safe' and share it online and before we know it a combine will run through an elementary school.
- romwell 8y agoAh, so you are afraid people that people who use and repair tractors, and can already break them in many ways that you don't understand (e.g. mechanically), will break them in a way you do understand (using software!), and so you would rather have those ways be illegal to keep you from worrying. Using your line of reasoning, we should close down repair shops altogether. How can we trust people without engineering degrees work on something like brakes? Before we know it, we'll see buses full of schoolchildren on fire or something. The fearmongering aspect of "combine running through an elementary school" aside (although perhaps the fact that schools aren't usually located in corn fields and have walls could warrant a reminder), I personally find the general approach of "I am afraid of X, so let's make/keep X illegal" terrifying.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoMake up any story you like, but please don't attribute it to me. That's just a Strawman and we expect better here. I won't respond any more, since I'm pretty sure that's trolling.
- davemp 8y agoGP is phrased pretty poorly and disrespectfully. Though I think there is a decent underlying point. People are generally pretty good at not putting questionable, critical parts into vehicles. Hopefully that holds for the software "part" as well. Maybe if software engineering moves towards better testing practices, we'd have reliable methods to test whether firmware was safe or not. Many states already require vehicle safety inspections to address concerns such as yours. I could see states requiring manufactures work with the state to provide a way to inspect the firmware for safety, (not just checking the hash against the manufacturer code).
- thealfreds 8y agoI'm wondering which part? Theres a lot of weird stuff going on on the prescription side of things but thats more about the weird formats that get used. Most of the internal and data stuff is pretty solid but never saw any of the systems stuff from the machines themselves so unsure how messy that might be. They've always been big on contractors so it wouldn't surprise me on the readability of some of that stuff.
- jeremyjh 8y agoThe article said this has already been the case for commercial farm equipment since 2015.
- krrrh 8y agoIt is actually mentioned: “Repair of motorized land vehicles (including tractors) by modifying the software is now legal. Importantly, this includes access to telematic diagnostic data—which was a major point of contention.” Along with this flabbergasting detail: “You may find this hard to believe, but one major point of discussion at the hearing was whether letting people repair cars and tractors would allow them to pirate music and movies using the vehicle’s entertainment systems. In their 2015 filing, John Deere speculated that farmers might pirate Taylor Swift music using their equipment. Fortunately, the Copyright Office saw through that argument.”
- tclancy 8y agoI know an anti-SLAPP suit doesn't address this kind of thing, but I would like to see an actual SLAP for the attorney willing to make that argument.