Daily Archives: July 26, 2013


By now you've probably heard about this latest remote takeover of a car

By now you've probably heard about this latest remote takeover of a car

While it's certainly an interesting demonstration, the only thing it really proves is that when someone has physical access to anything from a phone to a car to your house, all security bets are off.  In fact it's not even a remote exploit. If you are actually connected to the car, you can do anything including reaching under the body with a pair of pliers to crush or cut brake lines. 

Ensuring the security of the electronic systems in cars is critical but so far we haven't seen anything that threatens those systems. At some point it will likely happen somewhere, but we are safe for now.?

Hackers Reveal Nasty New Car Attacks–With Me Behind The Wheel (Video)
A pair of Pentagon-funded hackers prove it’s possible to take control of your car with a few keystrokes. Time for Detroit to wake up.


Zach Nelson built a vibrating shift knob and put it in a Mustang 1

Nelson used a 3D printer to create a hollowed out shift knob and embedded a XBox 360 vibration motor and an +Arduino controller inside. The knob is tied to an +Android app that reads vehicle data from a +Ford Motor Company Shelby GT500 using OpenXC to determine the optimum shift points. ?

A young +Ford Motor Company engineer used OpenXC and a MakerBot to create a vibrating…

A young +Ford Motor Company engineer used OpenXC and a MakerBot to create a vibrating shift knob

Zach Nelson interned at +Tesla Motors while attending MIT, but then decided to go to work at Ford after graduating last year.  He jumped right into OpenXC to show how it could be used as a new way of customizing cars like the Mustang

Ford’s Vibrating Shifter Teaches Simpletons How to Drive a Manual | Autopia | Wired.com
Properly shifting a car is a skill, one increasingly being lost as automatics and — gasp! — CVTs become the norm. Which is why we’re stoked to hear an engineer at Ford has made it easier than ever for n00bs to learn how to properly row their own gears.

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Laws like this should be repealed and declared unconstitutional

We eat plenty of meat, but that doesn't we support the kinds of abuses that go on at industrial farms. We buy our meat from a local butcher and it's almost all locally grown. These kinds of laws that pull a curtain over any big business, not just agri-business are just plain wrong.

Utah law preventing filming of animal rights abuses challenged in court
A coalition of animal rights groups are looking to get Utah’s law banning the recording of agricultural facilities without consent taken off the books. PETA, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF),…

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