There is a meaningful difference in that it is a secured boot option. Not sure what that means if your UEFI is compromised or if a virus is stored within other hardware, but it is something.

A lot of organizations need good "limp mode" strategies for when things go to shit. Ideally those allow you to use what systems are still unscathed rather than reverting to pen and paper. This can be one of those solutions for places that are invested in Citrix [still, for some reason], and is a little lower risk than telling everyone to reboot with the "emergency thumb drive".

Brainless repetition of marketing mush. The suits associate tap-tapping on a screen with instant gratification, which is very saleable. But it's a little too brusque to put it like that, so it becomes "get things done quickly". This is a guy whose job is beating you over the head with what he wants you to buy, until you acquiesce. The fact that it makes you do things more slowly, and makes it harder to multitask, doesn't matter. He is BMW; you will buy.

I know in the smartphone space, people have completely given in to the call of the machine. Are they really going to want to submit again, to their cars now, too? When they already have the dopamine hit in their pocket? But for an addict it's never enough, now they need it while driving too. Thought about from that perspective, it makes sense. The addict lifestyle no longer appeals to me, but I recognize there are a bunch of them out there. He is probably correct in identifying a demand.

I hope the good engineers being held hostage at BMW manage to break free and start a company focused on developing and building cars. Not seat subscriptions and piping ads into your dash.

MS has been doing that for a good while, which is why in the few cases I have installed Windows on something, I have had to boot a Linux rescue disk to download a network driver Windows was missing.

Way to over-interpret the example! It doesn't matter if it's client, server, embedded, isolated standalone. A method where root can "gain" root access is not a security issue.

Sorry, this is not the strawman you're looking for. I never commented on Mythos combing through Firefox.

It's an inherent risk. It can be engineered out to a degree, but it requires a program of PPM to actively manage the risk, because seals can corrode, fittings can come loose, etc.

My neighbor once had to do a study for one of the luxury German car brands. They did not like the sound of the buttons and wanted to add a transducer to the dash to give it a bit more oomph. Money was not a concern there...
For a cheap brand, I get that they want to shave off something from the price. For BMW? Nope.

From here in the UK, this is just so striking. Here, we have a single design of number plates (more or less), optimised for readability, with a (more or less) uniform requirement to be on both the front and back of the vehicle. They are so legible that ANPR systems (=US ALPRs) don’t need clevercreepy AI to decipher them, and so they don’t. So we don’t have Flock, and the system is under the control of a public service with a fair amount of oversight, and while it is capable of being abused and has indeed been abused, the scope for abuse is much more limited.

See also: breathalyser rules; how police officers behave on traffic stops and on car chases (largely); etc.

I agree that there are actual ICE-specific failure modes that can cause a fire in a car that’s parked and switched off. It’s also true that the article got itself muddled by not talking about any of those!

There have been several recalls for this kind of failure mode:
* Ford Bronco Sport / Escape (2024): Ford recalled about 42,650 2022–23 vehicles because a fuel injector could crack and leak fuel into the engine compartment. NHTSA explicitly says the fuel could reach hot engine or exhaust components, creating a fire risk.
* Jaguar F-PACE (2024): Certain 2024 F-PACEs had an incorrectly specified plastic oil-filter cap that could crack. Pressurised engine oil could leak onto hot components such as the turbocharger and exhaust manifold, potentially starting an engine-compartment fire. JLR says it had received reports of a small number of actual fires.
* Kia vehicles (2025): A piston-ring problem could eventually damage the engine, including creating a hole through which engine oil could leak onto a hot exhaust component. Kia explicitly identified fire as a consequence.
* Volkswagen vehicles (2025): Another recall involved cylinder-head-cover screws that could loosen, allowing engine oil to leak. VW says that if the oil reaches hot engine components, a fire could occur.

I think it’s fairer to say that OEMs *can* use smaller “starter” batteries for EVs than for ICE, and that some, but not all, do. Tesla does. But Polestar, for example, still uses a 70aH in the Polestar 2. Prob decided it was easier not to re-engineer that system, although it’s obviously a waste

>"vegans are pretty harmless and their obnoxious virtue-signalling should be regarded with amused tolerance."

[joke time]

How do you know if someone is a vegan?
Don't worry, they will tell you over and over...

And each time it was clearly the wrong one.

They've been roughly, not exactly, the same.

I have some family from there, and spent some time there, so I ended up eating all kinds of Xylitol concoctions.

It sounds like the study measured blood concentrations of xylitol, that would be at the time of death. I'm hoping that previous exposure doesn't have the same effect.

It sounds like it finds the most bugs in code with the least human attention given to it (old drivers, etc.) In other words, it gets the low-hanging fruit.

So it's better than nothing, but not as good as human review. It could have a place in the security ecosystem. Will it come at the expense of human reviewers, though? Because then it's a net negative.