US Finds New Secret Software In VW Audi Engines, Says Report (cnet.com) 227
An anonymous reader writes: It looks like Volkswagen's diesel scandal could keep rolling as reports claim that the automaker has three hidden software programs in its 3.0-liter engines. Concerns about the German car manufacturers' 2.0-liter engines could soon reach a conclusion, but the discovery of the hidden software has thrown the future of 3.0-liter diesels into uncertainty. That secret software in Volkswagen's 3.0-liter diesels can turn off the vehicles' emissions controls, Reuters reports, citing the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag. The emissions control system allegedly shuts off after 22 minutes, when most emissions tests take about 20. If this software does exist, it likely resides in all 3.0-liter diesels that Volkswagen sells in the U.S.. This includes the Audi Q7, Volkswagen Touareg and Porsche Cayenne SUVs. Approximately 85,000 of these cars are roaming around the US, and they're already under scrutiny for some software that VW "forgot" to tell regulators about.
Secret Software? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all secret from the get go. I don't remember getting a source code dump with my car.
Re:Secret Software? (Score:5, Insightful)
they mean secret as in not disclosed, as is required, to regulators.
Proprietary software is unsafe building material (Score:2)
As well you should have, and so should have every car owner have the means to get complete corresponding source code with build instructions. Software freedom [gnu.org] gives car owners the means to help themselves and prevent more outbreaks of this ridiculousness as Eben Moglen pointed out [nytimes.com] when we saw the first round of this.
Re:Secret Software? (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as you can build it youself, and the checksums match what's in the ECU, then this issue doesn't exist
Hmm, you must be new here. Please see Ken Thompson's 'Reflections on Trusting Trust' ( https://dl.acm.org/citation.cf... [acm.org] ) and come back once you're properly enlightened.
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I have read it, back in 2009, around Christmastime. While Wheeler's dissertation is impressive, his own list of challenges (Section 8, page 118) is fairly extensive, and many of those challenges apply to the embedded development reality (most notably, the alternative compiler necessary to create the diversity). As an ECU is an embedded, and likely a rather proprietary, platform, it is likely that an alternative compiler would not be available.
Try again.
Re:Secret Software? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not inevitable. This shouldn't be the case for well-designed builds.
When you build GCC from source (at least in a Gentoo stage-1), you build your new GCC with whatever you have lying around, then build GCC again with the GCC you just built, then finally build GCC again with *that* GCC. The last two binaries should be identical, or something's badly wrong. The first & second might differ since building GCC with some other compiler (even a different version of GCC) yields different output than the current GCC would, but the second two builds (both built by the same GCC) must be identical.
Not that any of that helps against an actively malicious compiler or toolchain of course...
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To you and the AC above, you'd hope they'd be identical, and at the level of the functionality I do believe they are identical, but at the checksum level they rarely will be. This is because often times a build time will be inserted into the software package as a build identifier. It won't affect the functionality but it'll cause checksums to fail. I ran into this when debugging what turned out to be a hardware bug and having two builds that should have been identical but behaved differently paired with
Re:Secret Software? (Score:5, Informative)
Debian have a reproducible builds project for that reason.
Punishment Must Exceed Profit (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever punishment the government inflicts, it must exceed the profit these scams generated for VW.
Otherwise, the sociopaths at the top will just call it the cost of doing business.
Also: Watch out for VW trying to use the government penalty for a tax write-off (an old oil company trick).
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Are you nuts? They're too big to fail, and you know who foots the bills for such companies!
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Do you even know what too big to fail means? I doubt it.
Re:Punishment Must Exceed Profit (Score:4, Insightful)
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To Iceland's credit, they aren't a lumbering behemoth of a nation.
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Wrong. General Motors was not bailed out. It failed. The company no longer exists. The shareholders got nothing. If you find some GM stock in your grandmother's attic you might as well use it as toilet paper, because it is worthless.
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citation needed, " a single supertanker pumps more air pollution into the atmosphere in a single day than all the cars in the world"
anecdotally i have heard the number was 5
Re:Punishment Must Exceed Profit (Score:5, Informative)
Vehical emissions account for less than 1% of all air pollution sources.
Not true. Passenger cars and light trucks account for about 10% of the global carbon footprint. And unlike you, I have sources to prove it.
https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/5301_Globalwarmingontheroad_0.pdf
To get idea of the scope of the misconception, a single supertanker pumps more air pollution into the atmosphere in a single day than all the cars in the world, VW diesels included.
You're the one with the misconceptions here. As per the above source, shipping only accounts for 2,2% of global CO2 emissions. Besides, you're the one with the misconceptions here - your idea came out of a Guardian article that focused on sulfur oxide emissions to the exclusion of everything else. This is ridiculously misleading, because cars emit next to no SOx.
I'm not defending VW, but pointing out that this VW bullshit is a distraction
And yet you're making factually inaccurate claims in order to trivialize VW's role in willfully deceiving regulators and their own customers around the world.
Carbon footprint (Score:3)
There are emissions and then there are CO2 emissions contributing to carbon footprint.
The cheating VW Diesels do very well, thank you very much, with respect to carbon footprint as they get really good fuel mileage. The problem is in doing that, they emit a whole bunch of stuff, which unlike CO2, is of more immediate and direct harm to people's lungs such as the nitric oxides ("NOx").
If you think the sum total of pollution is carbon footprint, you should be cheering VW's defiance of the pollution test
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The cheating VW Diesels do very well ... with respect to carbon footprint as they get really good fuel mileage.
In fact, for a given fuel, fuel mileage IS a direct measure of carbon emission. Essentially all the carbon from the fuel ends up in the exhaust gasses. So the better the mileage, the less the carbon emission.
Apples and oranges. (Score:2)
Apples and oranges.
The emissions under consideration in automotive emission testing and regulation are CO, NOx, and unburned hydrocarbons ("HC"), not gross carbon output.
The full-blown factory/type-certification testing can MEASURE gross carbon output as a side effect, and uses carbon balance to measure mileage for the mandated sticker label
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The claim being addressed was that "a single supertanker pumps more air pollution into the atmosphere in a single day than all the cars in the world". That statement is quantifiably false.
The "air pollution" under discussion was CO, NOx, and HC. The evidence presented as falsifying it was gross C.
The original claim MAY be false. But the counterclaim does not address it.
If you have evidence that "all the cars in the world" don't produce more CO, NOx, and HC than one supertanker, please present it. Or ask
How it went down. (Score:2, Funny)
US investigator - "So this is all the secret software right? There's nothing else?
VW spokesman - "Ja, all ist gut. No more verdammt testing software that we were dummkopfs for not disabling in a vollstandig understandable mistake."
US engineer - "Hey boss, we found three more programs that do similar shit in their 3.0 liter engines."
US investigator - "Johaaaaaaannnnn! You got some 'splanin to do"
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As I doubt Ford is doing so as they by and large don't play the super duper efficient emissions game, only doing the bare minimum to meet CAFE the amount I care is a big fat zero.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Ouch (Score:5, Interesting)
I do systems engineering work. The worst I've ever been asked to do is hack together a completely unrealistic demo environment or two, basically to give our developers time to fix something they're showing to a customer. I feel bad when customers get sold something that barely functions in the real world because of it. I can't imagine what the actual engineers who got asked to implement this "workaround" were thinking at the time. Germany has one of the best engineering cultures on the planet, so I can't imagine they felt too good about this. I can only guess their jobs were threatened -- in the US it would be something like "If you can't work 90 hour weeks, I can certainly find an H-1B who can..." Unfortunately, in any culture, having no income and a family to support is a pretty good incentive to just do what the boss says.
It'll be interesting to see what happens -- having to recall/buy back basically all of your modern diesel cars is not a cheap proposition. I work with German companies all the time for my job, and I can't imagine they don't have meticulous records of email cataloged down to the millisecond showing who put this in motion. Again, part of the culture. It will certainly be an interesting case study for MBAs, if they actually studied stuff like this in business school. (I would assume the MBAs would be doing this case study to find ways to not get caught.)
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VW's a global enterprise. Who's to say the engineers that wrote it weren’t American, Indian, or Chinese? They may not even be VW employees – maybe the specific work was outsourced, or part of a Tier 1 supplier contract. And in any of these cases, it could be an agency employee who was given a specific task. I’m not sure we can really know unless an insider tells us.
Re:Ouch (Score:5, Informative)
Gradually over time, they began relying on it more and more. With the 2.0 liter diesel engine, they didn't want to pay Mercedes to license the urea injection system. So they began used the software instead. (On the 3.0 liter engines which have urea injection, it appears to have been used as a crutch so they could get away with putting in a smaller, cheaper catalytic converter and not have to use as much urea.)
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Gradually over time, they began relying on it more and more. With the 2.0 liter diesel engine, they didn't want to pay Mercedes to license the urea injection system. So they began used the software instead. (On the 3.0 liter engines which have urea injection, it appears to have been used as a crutch so they could get away with putting in a smaller, cheaper catalytic converter and not have to use as much urea.)
Seems like you could build a urinal into the driver's seat and kill two birds with one stone here.
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An exception being if a emissions test was being run
Yeah, not innocent at all.
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Nail on the head there... MBA's will tear this apart, never asking why it was wrong, but instead asking how VW could have made it work.
VW is already busted. Lets do it again. (Score:2)
So now that we have discovered that the software manipulates the data in their cars, we are supposed to be surprised that they did this in all of their cars? How stupid are we to pretend that only some software cheats, while other software does not because the superior engine design in other models doesn't need to cheat to meet emission standards. So it turns out they lied about the superior engines too! Oh horrors! You mean there is no superior engineering that enables engines built in Germany to out
Much ado about nothing (Score:2)
Really, I think its all rather insignificant. It doesnt jeopardize consumer safety. People act like this is some kind of huge fraud, But I dont think it is, because the consumer still gets a car that is safe as advertised. Also, if you are really concerned about safety, the emissions related COLA restrictions are not your friend. Studies of COLA have shown that they actually decrease passenger safety in cars because heavier, more rigid metal body components are eliminated which leads to less protection for
So where do I go ... (Score:2)
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Does the phase "no resale value" mean anything to you?
Some of us run our cars right into the ground, so it doesn't.
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Ah yes. The unregulated bicycle engine.
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I bet VW isn't selling the good ones anymore. Likely all bad running clean ones on the lot.
What you really need is a copy of the good (cheating) ECU code, so you can fix it every time the factory mechanic fucks it up.
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They will become available right after the war. Promised! You can already start paying for one and be the first to get one!
If true fuck them (Score:5, Insightful)
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Time for mandatory open source ECUs (Score:5, Insightful)
When companies begin cheating the system by hiding their dirty secrets in the ECU's (Engine Control Unit's) binary, it seems like the proper response to this is to begin mandating that binary in the ECU be 100% open source and able to be built with open source tools. This way, the binaries can be verified as being representative of the source code and the source code can be inspected by anyone.
Continuing on like we have will only yield the same result because the best predictor of future actions are past actions.
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This would be a great opportunity for the user to drop the emissions control system in its entirety.
No problem (Score:2)
I'm sure the secret software was just there to make sure it met the emission testing specifications. No way it could be anything nefarious. *cough*
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It's just so supersecret so the evil hackerz cannot find it and make it pollute the air.
That's it! The evil hackerz found it and ... what? Hackers are evil and we're a multinational corporation, who do you believe?
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Hackers are evil and we're a multinational corporation, who do you believe?
No multinational corporation would ever do anything wrong. Report the the Corporate Re-Education Camp by 8pm this evening, and bring your family.
hu? (Score:2)
US Finds New Secret Software In VW Audi Engines
Well that's a good place to hide it. I normally look for software in a computer or the like. I'd never think to look in a engine!
Dumb Ass VW Engineers (Score:2)
VW files DMCA takedown of US government (Score:5, Funny)
VW has cause to sue. According the the DMCA, you're not allowed to "reverse engineer" their proprietary software and trade secrets. This is a clear violation of VW's copyrights and trademarks.
And as we all know, corporations have way more rights than people, and since the US government is of the people, for the people, by the people, it's people, and therefore VW has more rights than it does.
So, the US government had better watch out or they could face serious fines and jail time.
OSC (Score:2)
This is a good argument for open source cars.
Re:Witch hunt (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, fuck witch hunts that uncover willful fraud. Oh, wait, that's not a witch hunt at all.
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Do you own stock or something?
If you dont fine them greater than the profits generate how do you get them to stop?
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Just ask them to apologise [youtube.com].
Re:Witch hunt (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's hard to engage in jury nullification when there's no jury involved. Even more so when you'd be hard pressed to assemble 9-12 random people who'd agree with you.
Did you object to the BP settlements as well, or is your issue merely that NOx pollution [epa.gov] isn't as gross as oil-coated animals and shorelines? They get an "orange haze is pretty" discount?
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Why should the EPA believe that their regulations are unreasonable when all these manufacturers seem to have no trouble at all meeting them without even needing to sacrifice performance?
"All these manufacturers", if you're referring strictly to passenger-car diesel engines here, are mostly all non-US. I'm not aware of any US makers of diesel passenger cars. This is probably why US diesel passenger car emission standards are more strict than most other countries. Purely to put up roadblocks against competition from foreign diesel passenger car makers in order to favor domestic makers of gasoline engines.
Follow the money/power. Who benefits? That usually answers the who & why for most is
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Wasn't the first big spill into the gulf of Mexico. Mexican national oil company did the same thing in the 70s.
There are no additional shoes to drop, much as the environmentalists would like much more damage, they are disappointed.
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How high a fine would be fine?
A fine that doesn't make it impossible to simply tack it onto the car price would simply be part of the manufacturing cost.
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Re:Witch hunt (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to the drastically higher of pollution their cars have been spewing for years, millions of people bought these under false pretenses and will now be saddled with weaker acceleration, reduced fuel efficiency and severely lower resale value (in fact the bulk of the settlement is reserved for to fund buybacks of the vehicles at pre-scandal prices). And that doesn't take into account federal and state tax deductions and credits that were fraudulently secured or the cost of the investigation and lawsuits themselves.
This was egregious and deliberate fraud at a global scale. It deserves a harsh response.
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And that doesn't take into account federal and state tax deductions and credits that were fraudulently secured
Arguable there was not fraud there. As the person claiming the deduction would have been buy who to the best of their knowledge qualified.
Hell, go after the Animal Agriculture industry... (Score:3)
I love a good steak as much as anyone...but I'm often surprised at all the environmentalists out there that never bitch about this one section of the FOOD industry that contributes such a large portion of green house gas.
I guess the Ag/Food industry has better paid lobbyists?
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That and complaining about cows farting makes it hard to take seriously even if it is a significant source of greenhouse gasses.
Luxury SUVs (Score:2)
That's right. The chariots of the upper middle class should be exempt from the regulations they impose on their subjects.
Re:Witch hunt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Witch hunt (Score:5, Interesting)
Except those idiots are not really having much impact either. Its the rest of the people driving around much larger vehicles than they need all the time that matter. Lets just shit can CAFE standards entirely and start taxing people individually on their actual impact.
by-annual E-check - done on the dino at the tail pipe
1) measure fuel consumed over the test miles driven (to determine current fuel economy)
2) measure the PPM of interesting emissions in exhaust NOx, CO2, CO, others?
3) calculate the approximated amount of these gases emitted by using the current measured fuel economy, measured PPM of each type of gas and multiplying by the miles driven based on the odometer between this and the previous E-check.
4) apply tax rates for each gas emission type - bill the vehicle owner!
Do NOT fail anyone for a check engine light, high emissions etc, just notify them and let them pay the taxes. They will get it fixed before the next check or they will heavily again! This will incentivize individuals to actually maintain their vehicles, choose the most efficient vehicle that meets their needs because driving everywhere in their Suburban will cost more than driving a Sonic per mile in taxes. Yet by not actually limiting emissions people who actually *need* big stuff can still get it/operate it. The market will demand manufactures sell vehicles that don't result in high tax bills.
Do not make exceptions for classics etc, every vehicle gets tested every vehicle gets taxed.
Could individuals cheat by flashing their EFI control modules etc before they have their test and then putting it back after, well yes but they can do that kinda stuff in places that do checks now anyway. The smallish number of individuals that cheat won't amount to much.
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You think that vehicles that may do only a few hundred miles per year should be treated the same as vehicles typically doing over 10,000 miles?
Re:Witch hunt (Score:5, Informative)
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It seems like you overlooked this part of the poster's comment; "multiplying by the miles driven based on the odometer between this and the previous E-check."
A vehicle that's driven only a few hundred miles per year would already pay an order of magnitude less than a vehicle doing over 10,000 miles per year. Why would they need further benefits?
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If the odometer readings indicate it was only driven a few hundred miles the taxes will be essentially nothing
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Grats, you just fucked poor people who can't afford better cars and gave rich people that make enough to not care a free pass.
Re:Witch hunt (Score:5, Interesting)
That depends on the cost-per-emissions, but it would certainly leave poor people with older cars paying more than new car owners. This is why many laws have exemptions for older vehicles.
And on that note, the idea rewards wasteful people who change their car every few years, as a massive fraction of the car's lifetime environmental impact is in the production of the car....again a good reason to give older cars a break - that cost is already sunk and driving the car longer increases the interval to the next car being produced.
You may recognize these environmental incentives as being very bad for a laissez-faire capitalist economy because it discourages people from buying more junk for no good reason. This is true, as long as the environment is an externality, capitalism is an environmental suicide pact.
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the idea rewards wasteful people who change their car every few years
From an environmental perspective though that probably isn't as bad as you thing. It means a lot of vehicles with good remain service life and overall condition become available in the used market. Arguably a huge benefit to less economical well off individuals, who can benefit for access to affordable quality cars. It in turn means the even old cars that probably do negatively impact the environment disproportionately can be taken out of service. Things like bad oil seals etc, causing leaks that don't
Re:Witch hunt (Score:5, Insightful)
Grats, you just fucked poor people who can't afford better cars and gave rich people that make enough to not care a free pass.
Grats, you just discovered how capitalism works.
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Even though the idea (theory) is very interesting and looks promising because it is focused to only one aspect, I still think it is not practical and will be extremely difficult (and costly) to operate. Why? It is much easier to check up/force the cause (selling vehicles) than to patch the end (vehicle consumers). There is much smaller number to deal with. If the responsibility is pushed down to the consumers, what else do you think would happen? Who is keeping the records? How to deal with them especially
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The tax tables don't have to be a linear curve. If the rates were set on exponential curve we could easily avoid having poor people driving small cars pay much of anything while hitting bigger vehicles effectively.
As far as costing legit users thousands a year; well they hare are making a disproportionate use of a shared resource, arguably they should pay it. If its a commercial use they can pass the costs on; their competitors after all will be paying the same tax. If its hobby use well again maybe the
Re:Witch hunt (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you can't think of a reason doesn't mean they don't exist.
Here's a list of people you forgot:
Farmers
Landscapers
People who regularly trailer cars or heavy equipment for whatever reason
People with non-European sized campers - see below
People with large boats - see below
When it comes to boats and campers, you are not taking wind resistance in to consideration. Many campers in the US are much taller than the tow vehicle causing massive amounts of wind resistance. This is a consideration along with weight. Same with any large boat. If it's sticking way above the roof of the towing vehicle, it probably shouldn't be towed by your sub-compact or little crossover.
Any trailer with brakes should be pulled by a full-size truck or SUV, especially if it's towed on a regular basis. Your little car may say it has a certain towing capacity, but that is assuming optimal conditions and new parts. If you are towing on a regular basis, you *will* put more strain on the drive train, suspension, and brakes than someone who doesn't. Most cars, minivans, and hatchbacks these days seem to be built as cheaply as possible so the extra wear and tear does make a difference. Vehicles that are purpose-built for this kind of work are generally heavy-duty enough to handle it.
It makes little to no financial sense, and is wasteful, to own a dedicated towing vehicle if towing is something you do even a handful to times a year. Most families can't afford more than 2 vehicles, so if towing is something needed and both adults are working, the tow vehicle needs to double as a commuter.
The only heavy haulage work involves moving concrete, sand, or building supplies, and if that's your gig then you need a light commercial vehicle.
At least in the US, full-size trucks are the light commercial vehicle of choice and are often driven to job sites by their owners. You can't really expect a construction worker--think of an independent contractor who for sure isn't making tons of money--to own a separate work vehicle.
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"so if towing is something needed and both adults are working, the tow vehicle needs to double as a commuter."
All the reasons you state are good ones, and well taken.
But this is the flaw. To me (for what that's worth) your choice of compromise just seems the wrong way around! If I'm only going to tow for a few weeks a year then I'll gladly accept sub-optimal towing conditions (basically drive slower while towing) in exchange for optimized commuting for the rest of the year. Doing it the other way around ju
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It makes little to no financial sense, and is wasteful, to own a dedicated towing vehicle if towing is something you do even a handful to times a year.
Why not rent? I seem to end up renting a long wheelbase van a couple of time a year or so, when I have a few large things to move. Much as I aspire ot be white van man, It makes no sense to own a transit the other 363 days though.
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Nope -
Lambo hover boards: http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/free-shipping-electric-balance-scooter-lowest_60450460206.html?spm=a2700.7724857.0.0.MFbOVk&s=p [alibaba.com]
Close, but no cigar!
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It's a low grade IQ test.
Anybody who bought the heaviest Porsche available failed and should have his/her speed electronically limited for life. They will likely never notice.
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Lamborghini motor scooters?
Lamborghini tractors [wikimedia.org] are already a thing.
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So are Lamborghini tractors [wikipedia.org], what's your point?
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Wrong target... where's my coffee...
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Maybe they're applying the same engineering principles they used to make King Tiger tank turrets in WWII.
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WTF is next... Rolls Royce pickup trucks?
We have had Rolls Royce buses - well, buses with Rolls Royce engines.
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You'd be amazed just how many Porsche SUVs that I regularly see driving around here in Silicon Valley.
(No idea if they're diesel or gas, but I didn't even know such a vehicle even existed prior to moving here.)
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You'd be amazed just how many Porsche SUVs that I regularly see driving around here in Silicon Valley.
Ah the Chelsea Tactors. this is whar a Porche tactor might look like:
http://www.farmcollector.com/~... [farmcollector.com] Back/Porsche Touch Extended to Tractors/Porsche-Junior.jpg?w=550&la=en
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Explain to us all what a modern OS like Windows or Linux is... except a bunch or routines hierarchically executed.
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Typically, yes, but there are very high-end ECUs which can actually run multiple *programs* - for example F1 ECUs have separate programs to manage the KERS & TERS systems, sometimes they crash while the car is running and that's when you hear the drivers and crew talking about resets.
Re: "programs" (Score:2)
"Really? They're full "programs"?
Idiots"
I believe you might be slightly overreacting to your semantic concern.
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At least they managed to stop using the word "device".
How fucking dumb are these people?
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So in the US they'd only have 0.79 rogue programs? So whaddaja complainin' bout, sonny?
Can we get copies of the source? (Score:2)
Maybe make it bluetooth controllable for when they do checks and you turn it on/off as needed.