It's old news but in PA they ruled setting auto insurance rates by gender wasn't 'fair' so PA made starting insurance rates the same for everybody.

linky

End result? Women's rates when up and men's went down...totally what they were going for I'm sure

Actually most things can be negotiated for. What determines it is the relative price. If it's 5 bucks, they aren't likely to negotiate because they have very little profit margin.

If it's $100K, there's going to be multiple 1000s in wiggle room.

But mostly, you list examples of buying 'goods' and not services. Services are inherently more negotiable since it's time vs money instead of stuff vs money. (basically the same as above)

That's cute. You believe government with no oversight is competent?

And your proof that these LOVEINT 'self-reporting' incidents were the result of periodic reinvestigation is....what?

Self reporting != admitting it to people already looking into something.

There wasn't any investigation even started with most of them...until they came forward.

That does not bode well since *most* people aren't going to self-report.

because in an electric car, changing the setting on the radio can actually change the setting on your brakes.

When connections are made via code, you have NO idea what changing one setting is going to do because it's writing to a common location that multiple things are reading from.

Is that scenario realistic? Of course not, but any one who programs has experience changing setting A and watching B, C and Q go haywire just because somebody didn't document what they were doing.

yeah but this would become actual reality

"Would you want a car that would crash twice a day for no reason?"

I can fully agree with this statement. However it's not the point I was making. What about someone worse than a minimum wage greasemonkey....like me? Perfectly legal today....

Is there a source for this? I know things like ultra-light aircraft have very low regulatory hurdles, but cars on the open road? I thought there were minimums in place that get stricter every year. Like how all new cars need a tire pressure monitoring system?

Genuinely curious :)

flamebait, really? just wow.

The large percentage of people who have been 'disciplined' over misuse have self-reported their offenses...i.e. they have no idea of the scope.

had an idiot reprogram the brake software. Sure he's 'liable' but you're now dead...

On the same front, I've always marveled that anybody can work on their own brakes...and legally drive on the roads. Sure lots of people are more than capable of doing so, but I know you wouldn't want to be in front of me if I had worked on my brakes :)

Given how much more complex software can be than a physical mechanism, the implications of every yahoo reprogramming their cars does make me wonder. I agree with the EFF's idea here, it's my car I should be able to work on it, but is there something perhaps too far from that? The odometer is a good example. It's *possible* to roll one back, but there certainly tamper resistant preventions to this in place. Should computers in cars have the same thing?

How far do you take it? Do I simply disable the 'input' to the odometer, but not the spedometer...thereby 'rolling back' my odometer via omission rather than overt act.

It's going to be an interesting, ahem, ride :)

They had to create an entire CATEGORY of spying called LOVEINT because so many of them were spying on their spouses, partners or potential dates. While the semantics over what was 'authorized' can be debated, that large numbers of agency personnel had access to the data to troll at their leisure without fear of reprisal still hasn't been refuted.

really?

on it's own *maaaaaaaybe* but after the non-stop drivel of ridiculous stories, this is prime April Fools material.

Actually you should be compensating them for use of the laptop for non-business purposes. Now, granted most sane companies have it built into the contract to allow off time usage to a point.

But if you get the laptop infected with a virus on your personal time usage...do you compensate them for their work to clean it?