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Submission + - SPAM: No EV Tax Credit If You Earn More Than $100,000 Says US Senate

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Tuesday night, the US Senate passed an amendment that would limit the plug-in vehicle federal tax credit. Currently, tax payers are eligible for a tax credit of up to $7,500 based on the size of the vehicle's battery for the first 200,000 plug-in vehicles from a given automaker. But Republican Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska introduced a non-binding amendment to the $3.5 trillion budget bill that would means-test this tax credit, restricting it to tax payers with incomes below $100,000.

Perhaps more significantly, Sen. Fischer's amendment also restricts the tax credit to EVs that cost less than $40,000. Consequently, the only battery EVs that will still be eligible for the tax credit will be the Hyundai Ioniq Electric ($34,250), Hyundai Kona EV ($38,565), Mini Cooper SE ($30,750), and the Nissan Leaf S Plus ($39,220). Chevrolet's Bolt EV and Bolt EUV are both below the price threshold, but in 2019 the automaker sold its 200,000th plug-in vehicle, at which point the tax credit began to phase out. The amendment passed, 51-48. Senator Fischer took to Twitter to say that "everyday Americans are living paycheck to paycheck because of the sharp rise in costs due to #Bideninflation. We shouldn't be subsidizing luxury vehicles for the rich using money from hard-working taxpayers." (Inflation is mostly being driven by high prices for used cars, which in turn is a result of the chip shortage.)
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Is there a "standard" way of formatting a number ? 8

Submitted by Pieroxy
Pieroxy writes: I recently created a small open source project to monitor one's computer "essential" metrics: Conkw.

As I was writing it I had to come up with a way for users to format a number. I needed a small string the user could write to describe exactly what they want to do with their number. Some examples can be: write it as a 3-digit number suffixed by SI prefixes when the numbers are too big or too small, display a timestamp as HH:MM string, or just the day of week, eventually cut to the first three characters, do the same with a timestamp in milliseconds, or nanoseconds, display a nice string out of a number of seconds to express a duration ("3h 12mn 17s"), pad the number with spaces so that all numbers are aligned (left or right), force a fixed number of digits after the decimal point, etc.

In other words, I was looking for a "universal" way of formatting numbers and failed to find any kind of standard online. Do Slashdot readers know of such a thing or should I create my own?

Submission + - DEF CON: Security Holes in Deere, Case IH Spotlight Agriculture Cyber Risk (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: A lot has changed in the agriculture sector in the last decade. And farm country’s cybersecurity bill has come duein a big way. A (virtual) presentation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpouLO-GXLo) at the annual DEF CON hacking conference (https://defcon.org/) in Las Vegas on Sunday described a host of serious, remotely exploitable holes in software and services by U.S. agricultural equipment giants John Deere and Case IH, The Security Ledger reports. (https://securityledger.com/2021/08/def-con-security-holes-in-deere-case-ih-shine-spotlight-on-agriculture-cyber-risk/) Together, the security flaws and misconfigurations could have given nation-state hackers access to Deere’s global product infrastructure, sensitive customer and third party data and, potentially, the ability to remotely access critical farm equipment like planters and harvesters that are the lynchpin of the U.S. food chain.

The talk is the most detailed presentation, to date, of a range of flaws in Deere software and services that were first identified and disclosed to the company in April. The disclosure of two of those flaws (https://sick.codes/leaky-john-deere-apis-serious-food-supply-chain-vulnerabilities-discovered-by-sick-codes-kevin-kenney-willie-cade/) in the company’s public-facing web applications set off a scramble by Deere and other agricultural equipment makers (https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulfroberts/2021/06/20/under-scrutiny-big-ag-scrambles-to-address-cyber-risk/) to patch the flaws, unveil a bug bounty program and to hire cyber security and embedded device security talent.

In addition to a slew of common web flaws like Cross Site Scripting- and account enumeration bugs linked to Deere’s web site and public APIs, the researchers discovered a vulnerability (CVE-2021-27653) in third party software by Pega Systems, a maker of customer relationship management (CRM) software that Deere uses. A misconfiguration of that software gave the researchers administrative access to the remote, back end Pegasystems server. With wide ranging, administrative access to the production backend Pega server, the researchers were able to obtain other, administrative Pegasystems credentials including passwords, security audit logs, as well as John Deere’s OKTA signing certificate for the Pegasystems server, according to the presentation.

In an email statement to The Security Ledger, a John Deere spokesperson said that “none of the claims – including those identified at DEF CON — have enabled access to customer accounts, agronomic data, dealer accounts, or sensitive personal information,” though data included in the presentation as well as prior, public disclosures make clear that sensitive data on Deere employees, equipment, customers and suppliers was exposed.

Submission + - SPAM: Edmunds Reviews Ford's BlueCruise Hands-Free Driving Technology

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: BlueCruise operates on the same principle as Super Cruise. Once the vehicle is traveling on one of the 100,000 miles of qualified roadways (Ford dubs these Hands-Free Blue Zones) and certain conditions have been met, a graphic appears in the instrument panel to let you know that BlueCruise is ready for activation. Simply press the cruise control button on the steering wheel and you can take your hands off the wheel to let the vehicle drive itself. Like Super Cruise, Ford's BlueCruise system is not autonomous. As the driver, you have to be alert and prepared to take the wheel at any time. BlueCruise will not take evasive action if there is a small obstruction in the road — a box on the freeway, for instance — and you must be ready to perform advanced maneuvers if necessary. To that end, BlueCruise includes a head and eye position sensor to make sure you're watching the road ahead. Divert your attention for too long and the system will deactivate. And because BlueCruise relies on clearly visible lane markers, traveling on highway sections that lack them will deactivate the system. The first vehicles to receive BlueCruise functionality will be two of Ford's newest models — the 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E and 2021 Ford F-150. In both cases, the BlueCruise hardware is tied to the Ford Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 package.

I had the opportunity to drive both an F-150 and Mustang Mach-E with BlueCruise, and there was no functional difference in how the system behaved in each vehicle. The system itself melds several driver aids that are already present on the majority of cars today, but with a head- and eye-tracking component that makes sure you're paying attention. Once this is established — and you're driving on a preapproved road — a ring will appear around a graphic of the vehicle in the digital instrument panel. This lets you know that BlueCruise is ready to activate. Simply press the cruise control button and acceleration, braking and turning is handed over to BlueCruise. In this way, BlueCruise functions similarly to GM's Super Cruise. The primary difference is that GM vehicles with Super Cruise have an LED light bar integrated into the steering wheel to let you know when Super Cruise can be activated. Ford's system isn't so obvious in letting you know when it's ready. When you press the cruise control button, however, the instrument panel graphics turn blue to inform you that BlueCruise is active and you can take your hands off the wheel.

The other difference between the two competing systems is that GM's Super Cruise has one prescribed distance for the adaptive cruise control (ACC) aspect. Ford has decided to treat BlueCruise like a typical ACC system in which you can choose one of four following distances. When engaged, BlueCruise does a good job at approximating typical human driving behavior. I never had to adjust the following distance from one of the medium settings, and the system gives you a few beats to put your hands on the wheel when it needs you to resume control. I didn't experience many technical issues in either vehicle on my limited test drive, but there was one instance in which I was forced to make an emergency maneuver. A Civic driver with little concern for their personal safety accelerated to merge right in front of my F-150, and the truck didn't slow down quickly enough. This wasn't necessarily a fault of BlueCruise itself — I have found that ACC systems in general are slow to react to vehicles merging into or out of my lane — but it goes to show that you still need to have your wits about you at all times.
Link to Original Source

Comment Re: Could be good, could be bad (Score 1) 112

Who has threatened to do this? However you feel about Trump, he has repeatedly stated that he will protect preexisting conditions if the ACA is repealed. He signed an executive order on September 24, 2020 to protect those as well.

Trump frequently says one thing but intends another. Trump takes credit for eliminating the Mandate.

The Mandate is exactly what makes protecting pre-existing conditions work. If you can wait and buy insurance after acquiring a pre-existing condition then insurance will not be affordable. He doesn't understand HC Insurance and apparently you don't either.

Trump doesn't really care. He has socialized health care that will land a helicopter land in his back yard and whisk him to team of specialist in a state-of- the-art hospital.

Comment Re: I'm pretty sure he believes in God now... alas (Score 2) 733

If morality is a human construct, then it is arbitrary.

I don't understand this comment. If morality is a human construct then it would not be arbitray (ie random or unrestrained) but directly related to human flourishing and welfare. Not if morality is a Super Being construct... then it might be with respect to us puny humans... arbitary.

Comment Re:I'm pretty sure he believes in God now... alas. (Score 1) 733

...regardless of what he believes or not...he's separated from God for eternity...even Pascal believed it was better to be wrong than separated for an eternity...

Pacal's wager is game theory... plain and simple. But bad game theory as he didn't fill in the whole decision/reward matrix. For example, perhaps those that didn't believe in fairy tales and anthropomophic gods and did good without the explicity reward promist are those that will be truly rewarded in the end. Where does that put you?

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