Galt's Gulch

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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago
    What does one expect from Government Motors?
    One might expect that a government bureaucrat might hack into someone's GM's "OnStar" as part of an NSA surveillance program.

    On a side note, my parents had GM bonds for decades and lost them all. They were supposed to be among the first to get proceedings from the bankruptcy according to law ... until President Zero decided he was the law.
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    • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 9 months ago
      To be fair, it is not just GM cars, of course. If you read this previous article about an attack on a Jeep Cherokee
      http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts...
      I provided a link to Sen. Ed Markey's Staff Report
      http://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/medi...
      in which revealed that no automobile manufacturer's cars are safe from hacking.
      "BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen (with Audi), and Volvo. Letters were also sent to Aston Martin, Lamborghini, and Tesla, but those manufacturers did not respond."

      "Computers in cars go back to the 1978 Cadillac Seville. The chip was a Motorola 6800, used also in early personal computers. It ran the car’s onboard display that provided eleven outputs such as fuel economy, estimated time of arrival, and engine speed. By the turn of the Millennium, upscale BMWs and Mercedes boasted 100 processors. Even the low-tech Volvo had 50."
      On my blog http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...

      I am sorry to hear about your parents' losses to a "moratorium on brains." I did not follow the gory details. So, just now, I went to Google and entered "GM bondholders…" and it offered "… screwed" to complete the phrase.
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      • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago
        GM bondholders were screwed. They had $100 K in bonds. In early 2009, right as my friends and I were in the midst of shrugging from our small business, they got a nasty letter from an Obama stooge offering them $222, telling them they had better not challenge the decision in court. It was at that point that I shrugged. When the IRS targeting of conservatives scandal broke, I was not surprised. The threatening letter is one I saved in my safety deposit box for the time when people have generally forgotten such times.

        Computers were installed in cars to control the catalytic converter, which was introduced in 1978 as you say. The catalytic converter has to switch on a 4 second cycle from fuel-rich to fuel-lean and back. This allows for both CO and unburned fuel oxidation, followed by NOx reduction (during the fuel rich half-cycle). I generally disagree with government regulation, but the requirement of the catalytic converter is one that I'm not going to argue with. Air quality improved a lot right after that, as did my breathing.

        I had read about the hacking of the Jeep, but I can't miss an opportunity to vent about Government Motors. They were the straw that broke the camel's back.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 9 months ago
    Today's news focuses on the Uconnect from Harman Electronics, which is common to several automobile manufacturers.

    “The supplier didn’t just supply radios to Chrysler but to a lot of other manufacturers," Rosekind told reporters. "A lot of our work now is trying to find out how broad the vulnerability could be."

    Rosekind did not identify the radio supplier. Charlie Miller, one of two hacking experts who uncovered the problem, told Reuters the radio was a Uconnect system from Harman International Industries Inc. Harman officials were not immediately available for comment."

    More here from Reuters:
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/0...
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