I can assure you that quite a few early steering-lock systems could be engaged by turning the key past OFF into LOCK. Some did have a safety; the lock barrel had a collar that had to pushed down before the ignition could move into the LOCK position. A badly worn ignition would easily slip into LOCK without any noticeable resistance.

It would not be an issue for any car built after the early-80's. LOCK required that PARK be engaged, push key in before turning to LOCK, AND key removed. On manual trannys ACC/AUX is between LOCK and OFF; Key has to be pushed in to select LOCK, and LOCK will not engage until key is removed.

* oops forgot the *

* assuming that the vacuum assist unit, and its input line/check-valve are not leaking.

The vacuum assist unit stores enough vacuum for more than two or three braking events.* Each event will get progressively less assist.
Power steering goes away instantly, but in most cases the difference is not critical above 10 MPH. Even a mildly experienced driver will feel the loss of assist and compensate. Below 5 MPH loss of assist can be crippling. Make sure you do not need to steer at low speeds if you lose the assist, unless you have very good upper body strength.

I once had to drive a Mid-size 70's pontiac out from a location deep in the Santa Cruz mountains after it had suffered a serious cooling system failure. (serious hose crack)
This was accomplished as follows:
1) allowing the vehicle to cool down to ambient. (we had just arrived at our destination when the cooling system failure was discovered. So this was easy... we will deal with the issue when we are ready to leave...)
2) carefully duct-tape cracked hose.
3) refill cooling system.
4a) Run engine ONLY when power is required to overcome gravity/rolling friction.
4b) Use engine braking. (lower gears in automatic transmission)
4c) Avoid hard acceleration.
4d) Anticipate increased braking and steering effort.
4e) Use downhills to increase speed before shutting off engine.
4f) Encourage following vehicles to pass as quickly as possible (hazard-lights, pulling to right, hand signals)
4g) Be very careful to turn the ignition key no further than OFF, and turn it back to RUN/ON. (this is to keep the fuel system pressurized)

End result was the engine never even got close to over-heating during this limp-home effort. Since the cooling system never got significantly pressurized, or heated, the duct-tape retained a very good seal.

  It took a lot more effort to convince the owner of the car (my GF at the time) and the other passengers that this approach would work. None of them were particularly car savvy.

The whole point of Incorporation LLP, and LLC are to put a firewall between company assets and personal assets. Very specific conditions have to be met before 'the corporate Veil' can be 'pierced.' Trust me, no one would take any significant business venture on if there was not a limitation of liability. Now then, that being said; deliberately sweeping a dangerous defect (like the one described in the TFS) under the rug should be a criminal matter, and the people who acted to make it happen should be facing charges. Limited liability should not protect bad actors.

I am struggling to understand why this is even an argument on /. There must be too many web-code-monkies on /. now. Properties of Materials used to be part of the geek 101 course requirements.... Toughness, hardness and strength are taught in high school chemistry.... WTF, /.?

^^ this

The whole point of having a car that comes out of a collision looking like a crumpled beer can is to reduce the v that the meat-monkey experiences inside the can.

Not so long ago crashing into tree(s) at 80+ MPH was a fatality for the occupants of the vehicle. I think Tesla is already way ahead of the curve.

Did you actually drill down into the details? It IS a backdoor, but It IS NOT a hardware back door.

It is an IPC protocol between the baseband processor and the application processor. The baseband processor can make IPC request for the application processor to modify its FLASH file system. It is a generic service. I am guessing (as are the people who found the backdoor) it was used for development/debugging and got left behind. Stupid oversight for sure. There is nothing sneaky about it at all, and the backdoor has no special privileges beyond libc-bog-std file system calls. The rest of the IPC command table reads about like you'd expect for a protocol between the app processor and the baseband.

All this shows is that Samsung is just as stupid about security as everyone else.

^^ this. Anti-depressant is a misnomer. They are more like an emotional damping element.... a shock absorber for your mind.

At one point in my life I was living in Seattle and did not know that drinking the tap water there is a REALLY BAD IDEA....

Look up Manganese poisoning.... Though I have never seen a study that says so, I think Seattle's high suicide rate might be explained not by weather and SADS, but by chronic Manganese poisoning.

I saw a doctor about some mild depressive episodes I was experiencing and got diagnosed with (after a few tests: "Are you drinking tap water? yup you guessed it...) Manganese poisoning.

The treatment was filter the tap water, or better yet don't drink it at all. Also, a prescription for Zoloft. "Take this for 8 weeks while you detox and at the end you'll be back to 'normal'." After the Zoloft kicked in full tilt two weeks later, my emotional range flat lined. Nothing was fun, nothing was interesting, nothing was ... depressing.... angering... sad... everything was ... nothing. Someone could have spit in my face and shouted abuse at me and gotten a blank, unconcerned look from me... it would have gone right over my head. I was empty; zombified. I was just alive. Fucking-potted-plant-alive. Not even potted-petunia-oh-shit-not-again-alive.

After another week on the Zoloft I dimly realized that it was going cause me to walk in front of a speeding Metro bus before the 'script was exhausted. I stopped taking it, and drifted back to sad, sleepy, weepy Eyore for the rest of my detox. That was a relief. I could feel shit again.... Yay! Shit!

Don't get me wrong... I believe that psychotropics can help people 'normalize' when they have extreme emotional/mental health issues. However, they are depressing drugs.

I was working for M$ at the time so maybe that was exacerbating the situation... set and setting... all that.

To support regen, the Tesla behaves exactly like a single pedal golf-cart. (some go-carts do this too, which is annoying as hell because the crossover from acceleration to braking often has almost no dead-space) Obviously there is more going on here... the regen effect is adaptive to driving conditions, and the owner can adjust it's behavior quite liberally. Though I have not driven a Tesla more than a few hundred feet I have been a passenger fairly often. regen has a distinct feel to it. An experienced driver, riding shotgun, will notice it quite readily. It feels a bit like engine braking a manual transmission vehicle, but more subtle. Obviously the regen was designed to feel like this form of braking, but it does not feel quite the same, and the lack of a real ICE means you really don't hear the motoring at all. In the Tesla all you real notice is a change in the rolling noise, as the load shifts on the suspension.

Regen detects when you take your foot out of the accelerator, and how far out of the accelerator you take it. Regen is applied accordingly. It takes some getting used to because it does not feel 'normal, where 'normal' would be engine braking a ICE. It has enough dynamic rage though to avoid using the service brake until you actually desire the vehicle to come to a complete stop. It will respond to steep hills etc because it is detecting your accelerator commands through the pedal and matching that to current speed.

  Applying the service brake on a Tesla is a little weird too. There is a slight lag as the brake system is assisted by a servo-motor drive, not vacuum assisted. For a fraction of a second it feels like there is going to be no assist... hard brake pedal... then it goes softer as expected during assisted braking.

The other funny thing is that Tesla S emulates automatic transmission drift. I took my foot off the brake after stopping. After about 2 seconds the car began to creep forward at about ~0.5 m/s. On 'feeling' the leading edge of a tire stop marker in the garage, it hesitated and then increased torque slightly to push against that resistance (I could hear the PWM tone shift). When the tire went over the threshold of the marker, I could feel regen holding the car back from performing an uncontrolled 'drop' into the base of the tire-stop portion of the marker. As the downward motion of the tire ceased, I touched the brake and that was it. No lurching, lugging, bouncing... smooth as silk response to the situation with as little energy dissipation as required to 'chalk' the tire.

Now mind you this was my first experience in the driver seat of a model S.... I have driven lots of different kinds of cars, trucks, heavy vans, sport cars and electric 'golf-cart' vehicles including some that are street legal (as in having a real service brake) None of them felt quite in control as much as the Tesla... And yeah it feels a little weird.

The mode selector is on the tree. So no... not a sports car feel at all. Overall the Tesla feels most like a high-end sport-ispired sedan. It doesn't feel coupe like at all.

Oh his 5 digit id didn't give you a clue.... dbill you should know better.

Drones... unlike fighters are NOT 'man rated' This by itself lowers the cost of drones compared to a manned craft by an order of magnitude. If a drone system fails you get a crater in a field, and lose a few tens of millions in hardware. When a man rated system fails you get a crater, lose potentially hundreds of millions in hardware, and lose one or more human assets worth at least as much as the hardware in terms of cash, and time spent training them.

Japan lost the Pacific air war mostly because they could not replace fighter pilots at a rate that kept pace with demand. They had little problem producing hardware to be flown. This led to minimalistic flight training with depleted their hardware at an ever increasing rate.

Drones change that equation, as time consuming training is not lost when a hardware asset is lost. How long does it take you to recover from getting blown to shit in EveOnline? Well there ya go. That is what drones are all about.

That is all.

Do you have a newsletter? I would like to subscribe to it.

This!

Heros don't pick fights they cannot possibly win. They jump in having a good notion of the risks they face. They PREPARE for those risks. Fire fighters, EMTs and many beat cops are heros because they use(d) their training and equipment to help people, and protect property.

full disclosure: I am a trained & experienced FFT2 with high-angle rescue and white-water rescue training.