There is no doubt in my mind that competent hackers will be able to bypass the internet checks and redirect the DRM save/load requests to a local server. This is routine stuff.

The thing that could make this difficult is if Ubisoft transforms or processes the data on their servers before returning it to the client. In this situation, if Ubisoft was sufficiently devious, a real crack might never appear (without a leak from Ubisoft), as the hackers would need to reverse engineer this processing, which might be unfeasible.

The submitter's point is that the original firmware underwent extensive long term bug testing before it was released. This is embedded software, where testing is much more involved than with desktop software.

Most importantly, this is not a bug fix. Being able to press the gas and brake at the same time is not a mistake, and is essential for some kinds of performance driving. Imagine if every time you gently tapped the brake your car would cut the throttle.

This firmware update changs the very basics of how the car drives, and has been rushed together in 3 months, which certainly means Toyota engineers haven't had the time to test it in the stringent manner that embedded software requires.

I personally would not take a firmware upgrade that made my car less responsive to my inputs.

This is very similiar to the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) that was used by some F1 teams last year such as McLaren and Ferrari. The system failed because the gains weren't enough to offset weight and bulk of the system. All F1 cars weigh 600kg, but the cars themselves are actually much lighter and need to be ballasted to reach this weight. The distribution of this ballast is very important, as keeping the center of gravity low on a race car is critical. Cars with KERS has a higher center of gravity than other cars because the KERS systems couldn't be placed as low as ballast. Add to that the loss of development time on other areas of the car, and the result is that all of the teams with KERS performed very poorly. This Porsche could make a hybrid system work, as it has more design flexibility and a longer race. Fuel savings will be exxagerated by the extreme length of the race, which is 12 times longer than the maximum time allowed for an F1 race.