For an SMS based backdoor, no. It seems these devices are designed to use cellular connections (which makes sense since traffic cameras will be installed in remote locations).

And then most firewalls focus on inbound connections, but often do nothing to prevent a compromised device from making outbound connections. SMS could easily be used to initiate an outbound connection.

https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2025/0...

And DARPA has a whole program for it:

https://www.darpa.mil/research...

The problem is when the genuinely useful features take a back seat to user-hostile features like shoving ads in your face, or vehicle functionality which is present but disabled unless you pay more to activate it etc.

These anti features become associated with the technology, and cause users to fondly remember their older simpler cars that didn't have these negative things.

There are also useful features like navigation that are either poorly implemented, or users just don't know how to use them. This also puts users off.

Another thing that puts users off is things that break and cause unrelated functionality to stop working (like the printer/scanner combos that wont scan if there's no ink in the printer etc)...

Or newer functionality that's now mandated by law, but older vehicles get a pass. A good example here would be ABS. If you have a modern vehicle and your ABS fails the vehicle still drives perfectly well and is still safer overall than an older vehicle with no ABS, but it will fail its annual inspection for this and you might be faced with a costly repair. If you're driving an older vehicle that never had ABS at all then you get a free pass.
While i can understand the safety reasons here, this annoys people especially older drivers.

That sounds like a pretty lousy SUV...

People drive SUVs in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Las Vegas and other places which regularly see temperatures much higher than 37C, the AC works just fine and the roads are just fine.

Investors are chasing a company that achieves some kind of AI singularity. Let's set aside the fact that there's no reason to believe there is anything but diminishing marginal returns by making marginal refinements to current frontier models. Let's imagine someone hits the jackpot and gets, not even AGI, but a system that's as far ahead of today's frontier model are ahead of 2020's GPT 2.0 in performance.

Globally AI revenues are 150 billion, against a cumulative burn rate of 450 billion. A model that is a generation ahead of others would almost certainly capture the lion's share of that revenue.

If AGI magically appears as a Sam Altman has promised investors it will, a hundred million is way too low. Add, maybe, another zero to the revenues.

Conservatively, a safer assumption is that frontier models will get marginally better based on refinements in training and reinforcement and the other bits and bobs that go into these systems. The nobody is winning the lion's share of anything, at least overnight. But you have to define "safe". By "safe" I mean unlikely to lose money. But some investors are clearly defining "safe" as "having the greatest chance of owning a piece of the biggest thing ever."

I'm not following this super-closely, but if Anthropic is pursuing adding multi-step model based reasoning to their system, that could be the basis of a generational leap in capability. But if that is an approach that looks like it has a chance of working, then their competitors are no doubt pursuing the same thing. In that case you'd expect the revenue pie to grow as the scope of model utilty increases, but that growth to be split among several competitors. This could credibly result in a revenue stream for some of them that is as big as the entire industry's revenue stream today. But there's going to be hell to pay on the data center impacts end of things.

Fixed cameras are easily avoided by someone looking to commit a crime. It's not hard to map out the cameras and calculate blind spots, or to disguise yourself such that the captured footage is useless for identifying you.

A live guard can move around, and will also easily identify someone who's taken measures to obscure their face.

A current robot is somewhere between, it's basically a mobile camera so it's less predictable/avoidable than a fixed camera, but not as good as a live guard. They're limited by laws currently, otherwise you could build a terminator/robocop style robot that was armed. Now that absolutely would deter/stop crime.

They do not do network level OS fingerprinting. If you were to do that then you would find the vast majority of hosts are linux - because very few windows systems are not behind a firewall, and most firewalls are linux based.

They are reading the user-agent header from web browsers.

And it's extremely unreliable, especially for devices which are behind a firewall or proxy.

Bots don't pretend to be linux, if they're trying to hide that they are then they pretend to be windows.

Here's the problem..

Focusing on identifying incidents and making arrests... What if the robot deterred incidents from taking place at all? Surely that would be better.

In schools no matter how robust the hardware, the kids will destroy them. You'll have to buy a whole new set next year for the new kids anyway.

Apple started as a hardware company, with network services coming MUCH later.
Google were always a network first company.

There are also no shortage of concealable cameras...
A big pair of ugly glasses is obvious, you might as well be carrying a full size video camera. You can see it's there and behave accordingly. A pervert is more likely to use a small hidden camera.

Following is massively easier than leading...

If someone else has already done something, then you know it's possible and just need to work out how. And the more information you have about the existing implementation the easier it is to replicate it, as even very minimal high level information is going to steer you in the right general direction.

If you're leading then you can't be sure what is possible, you could spend a lot of resources chasing dead ends.

Most of the theatres here have extremely uncomfortable seats. A small handful of them have decent seats and charge a premium for them.
They also try to sell you large drinks, which cause you to need the toilet, so you either sit there in discomfort needing the toilet or miss a chunk of the movie. If the movie is long then your drink will go cold (or warm) and not taste good.

At home i have a comfortable seat, i can adjust the volume to suit my needs, i can pause the movie if i need to visit the toilet or get another drink etc, and there's noone else there to distract me.