Today, a group of independent security researchers revealed that they’d found a flaw in a web portal operated by the carmaker Kia that let the researchers reassign control of the Internet-connected features of most modern Kia vehicles—dozens of models representing millions of cars on the road—from the smartphone of a car’s owner to the hackers’ own phone or computer. By exploiting that vulnerability and building their own custom app to send commands to target cars, they were able to scan virtually any Internet-connected Kia vehicle’s license plate and within seconds gain the ability to track that car’s location, unlock the car, honk its horn, or start its ignition at will.
That‘s it. My commute is 5 miles a day. I don’t take my bike in all kinds of weathers, but if I include additional trips for activities like shopping or city council meetings that takes me to around 1000 miles. The rest is for sports. Obviously, both kinds of biking are heavily weighted towards summer months.
My commute is not that dangerous, as most of it is on paths without cars. I only cross two streets with any significant amount of traffic. I have been in more dangerous situations on langer rides, but I try to take roads without a lot of traffic. Strava is a great app for that, as it shows you routes other cyclists frequently take, which tend to be safer.
My local car dealership recently had for sale a completely refurbished circa 1988 Audi and I was so tempted to buy it. For starters, it was a beauty red sports model that looked straight out of an 80s Transformers episode. But I was also kind of craving the days when my car wasn’t a part of the fuckiing internet. They almost had me paying $C 90,000 out of pure nostalgia.
Yeah, I didn’t buy it. It’s too much money and it would have cost and arm and a leg to maintain it. It was more suitable as a toy for a rich person. I don’t have that kind of scratch.
oh one other thing that I just remembered, the first time I remember this guy wading into anything political was right after trump took office in 2017, this guy Michael Anton got a mid-tier job in the whitehouse, and Anton had a history of some really combative posting on various menswear web forums, which Derek had routinely roasted
What I remember made him famous was when he got after some younger conservative male fuckhead of some prominence but not as big as Shapiro, so, like a Wohl or Kirk or something type, who claimed to be wearing a bespoke suit, and he went into excruciating detail, examining the stitching and even to the point of calling the tailor who did the work, to show how that was not the case.
I think my favorite car I ever had was an A6 2.7T. Can’t remember the year, but was probably probably around 2001. I sometimes wish I’d kept it, but in recent years I haven’t seen a single one from that era on the road.
I do like that my AC is now connected to the internet so that I can manage the temperature in my house when I am not home. That’s about the only thing I can think of where there is a real tangible consumer benefit to me of the internet of things.
I still remember when Audi basically disappeared from America after they had that instant acceleration problem. I thjnk people may have even died. My friends on I used to joke by hitting the gas hard and say “Just got that new Audi part installed”.
Does anyone remember this being a thing or am I dreaming?
You should check with your utility to see if they have any programs where you let them control your thermostat to save you money. There are companies out there who can match your usage curve (what temperature you keep your house) to the minimum price curve if you have time of use rates. They’ll minimize heating and cooling during expensive time periods and shift that usage to cheaper times by pre-cooling or pre-heating the house. It turns smart thermostats into genius thermostats.
Glad you said that, because I definitely saw one of those and I thought it was a bit lucky that I would have caught the post that made this guy low key famous.
I definitely remember the acceleration thing, “I’m Audi 5000” came to mean “I’m leaving quickly”. But I don’t think they disappeared, just took a huge PR hit.
Was spurred by a 60 minutes expose back when 60 minutes could impact society. Their sales fell off but they didn’t disappear.
Audi sales collapsed, from 74k units in 1984 to 12k by 1991. The timing added insult to injury; sales fell exactly during the same years when Lexus arrived to battle for the hearts and wallets of America’s up-scale consumers. Lexus quickly became the latest suburban driveway prestige symbol.
Apparently there was never any evidence to support CBS’ story about the Audi 5000. Apparently Audi came close to leaving the US in 1993.
