Seeing this reminded me of an old handheld electronic pinball game I found in my grandparents' attic as a kid. I figured it had to be almost this old, possibly predating the Merlin, and so Googled it... Sure enough, it is from 1979 and invented by one Bob Doyle.

Yes, this! According to a quick check on Newegg, a GB+ Flash drive can be had retail for less than $3.50 USD. Bulk-buy millions from China and I expect it's quite a bit less (and they only have to work once...). Instructions: "Plug this into the port under the dash the next time you drive. When the light on the port turns green, remove it." No taking off work to visit the dealer, no "professional installation" costs, no wasted fuel, no remote exploits. Plus, the customer gets a free thumb drive for their trouble. Score.

I shudder to compare that to the cost of of embedding a cellular radio in every vehicle (AEC-Q200 qualified, extreme temperature and shock rated), plus supplying data service to them (even if they can schmooze a sweet bulk rate there too for very infrequent usage). You'd need a whole lot of recalls to break even on that.

(That's without it being a last-minute-bolted-on hacker's paradise, and the many other practical considerations, such as: Recalls are sometimes issued for vehicles 10+ years old. Do YOU know what wireless standard your cell carrier will support in 10 years? Or if they will still be in business, or still honor the agreement and provide service for as long as the vehicle/radio continues to be operational?)

I like the idea in theory, but I have to say the hair on the back of my neck stands up stiff at the thought of giving a vendor - or worse, a government - the power to legally mandate forced install of software on something you've already paid for as a condition of your continuing to use it. If it's anything like the wider consumer product world, not every update is in the consumer's best interest, and said consumer will not be able to pick-n-choose, only get patched up to "current" as maintained by the vendor.

"Yes, we fixed a significant bug in the cruise control module in r27, making this a mandated safety update. Meanwhile, we got in a snit with the media center vendor around r25 or so, so mp3 and handsfree features have been removed. Oh, since it runs FooOS, you now need a Foo Account to use the builtin GPS or update the maps. It collects your location history, but they pinky-swear it won't be used for anything naughty. Ah yeah, around r23 there was a patent dispute with the airbag vendor, so uh..."

See also: Playstation 3 Linux, OnStar remote surveillance mode, Sony Rootkit, disappearing ebooks and other vendor "self-help" features in any number of gadgets, Kindle text-to-speech...

My work bought one. We were looking for a consumer-level (RepRap-level) FDM printer for quick prototyping; Lulzbot TAZ came pre-assembled and calibrated (no need to spend billable hours fiddling with it before first print), had a large build area and unlike some other RepRap-derived designs, is truly open-source.

Suits might care about a silly name; engineers not so much :-)

Wait, someone can control something by physically plugging something into a control port designed for that purpose?

It's a neat trick, but if the bad guy has physical access, it doesn't take a wireless dongle in the CAN port to mess shit up...

The actual text of the reviews is not included, but the description of the implicated posts suggests that in at least some cases, it may have been possible to correlate the description of work performed to a customer record, or potentially rule out the reviewer as a customer (e.g. the New Jersey customer). With many caveats and unknowns, of course.

10. The negative reviews in Exhibit 5 are false and
defamatory. For example, user âoeBob G.â from Oakton allegedly
relates how he was in a desperate need of emergency carpet
cleaning and was ripped off. User âoeChris H.â from Washington
reported that his precious rugs were shrunk. User âoeJ8.â from Falls
Church reports that he was charged for work never performed.
User âoeYB.â from Fairfax reports that unauthorized work was
performed and his rug was stained. One user, âoeAris P.â from
Haddonfield, N.J. reports that the price was double the quote and
that Hadeed was once bankrupt. Many of the negative reviews
report that the price was double what was charged [sic]. After
combing it customer records, Hadeed was at a loss to find record
of these allegations. Regarding Aris P., in particular, Hadeed
conducts no business in New Jersey.

The above sound like they are written as pretty clear-cut customer testimonials (e.g. I actually did business with X, was quoted Y, charged Z), but this ruling brings up an interesting question: what is VA's legal criterion for being a "customer" to post reviews? An example that comes to mind is a user that posts a negative review of a business because the owner was rude/threatening/racist/etc., and left the business for this reason prior to completing a purchase. The Yelp page of a local yarn store is full of such reviews, where the prospective customer indicates he/she left in disgust before purchasing (i.e. does not assert that any purchase was made or service rendered). Would such reviewers also be unmasked?

+1 to this. The spread of good/bad/awful passwords (according to the authors' somewhat ad-hoc classification) is not too surprising on its own, but this data also has a strong selection bias toward users with lax security practices in general: this dataset consists exclusively of users with an active malware infestation.

Nah, they're totally using the car's ECU to mine bitcoin.

This is neat, although (as others have pointed out) not exactly a new idea. In a world where all cell phones have a speaker and microphone under software control (and in most cases, an accelerometer, supporting a "clink to sync" mechanism for short-term pairing), how did the concept of NFC, i.e. a separate antenna*, receiver chip and extremely application-specific software stack, ever get off the ground?

The typical adult human cannot hear frequencies above about 15KHz (a child can - anyone remember that flyback whine from CRT televisions? - but only if the amplitude is high enough), whereas the phone mic samples at typically 22KHz or 44KHz. The antialiasing filters on them are invariably shit, so ultrasonics on the 22KHz device will just alias into the passband and make your decoding job almost easier.

* (And if we are going to put a big, low-frequency RFID antenna in the phone anyway, where, oh where, is my builtin induction charging support?)

It really depends on the company you work for. I know that at many larger companies, there is all sorts of lawyer-inspired "wisdom" on how firing/layoffs and employee notices are handled. You know, layoffs happen on a Friday afternoon; immediately escort an employee giving notice out of the building so they don't bug your system, etc.

But, it does not always have to be that way.

A tiny datapoint: I work at a small company (~30 employees) in an at-will state. In nearly 10 years' employment, I have never seen an employee laid off with less than 4-6 weeks notice. Likewise, I have never in that time seen an employee leave with less than 2 weeks' notice, despite the fact that anyone legally could. The vast majority have likewise given 4-6 weeks' notice. I don't think it is coincidence :-)

I know it is not representative of all companies, but at this particular one, a security guard with a box does not materialize at your desk the moment you announce that you are leaving. There are many reasons an employee leaves; most of them are not "fuck you". In recent memory, some reasons were that an employee had to return to their hometown to care for aging parents, were going off to get their masters/PhD, or their spouse couldn't find work in the area or couldn't stand the climate, or of course the usual "better offer" / change of pace. In each case, the employee gave several weeks' notice and it was greatly appreciated. It allowed time for some knowledge transfer, cleaning up any loose ends and transitioning projects to someone else. I suspect that if the company did escort on-the-spot, or the boss/owner didn't work so hard to avoid layoffs and give ample notice when they did happen, employees would give a lot less notice too. It's really a two-way street, and depends a lot on your company culture.

There's one in-the-wild I've heard of where the thief busts off one of the motorized side mirrors - a quick kick takes it right out - plugs a hackytool into its wire harness and unlocks the doors via CANbus command.

Sounds suspiciously like what a < font > tag does. (The claim does not distinguish between the "predetermined location" being a local or network resource, as if such a distinction would be meaningful. And, considering that the "reference to a location" is via a resouce-indentifier string in both cases [the 'RI' in URI], it sounds pretty similar to me.)

The phenomenon is real, at least for the ability to see and be annoyed by "relatively" (below a a kHz or two) low frequency PWM. I'm one of "those people" who see the DLP rainbow effect and PWM-dimming car taillights and backlights (they don't make me sick or anything, but it's a bit distracting). That said, I have never, ever seen detectable flicker from a CFL bulb. (Most likely they are usually running at ultrasonic frequencies so that the tiny magnetics inside don't emit audible buzzing. Phosphor glow probably doesn't hurt either.)