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Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

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Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#51

Post by swearwolf »

UncleEntity wrote: post #25
skyyler wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please rethink using "bad apples" in this context in the future. The saying about bad apples is a warning about the corrupting influence of a single corrupt person on a group. It's always confused me, too. You don't leave rotten apples in your fruit bowl.

I’ve given this quite a bit of thought recently because, well… The common usage of “a few bad apples” has changed to mean the group isn’t responsible, as a whole, for the actions of a few instead of the old warning about removing the bad ones before they corrupt the bunch. Like during the “peaceful” protests a couple years ago. It was the “bad apples” who were burning police cars and looting stores, the group has no…

I hated the rioting of 2020 as much as the next guy, but it’s worth remembering that the bad apples doing the rioting because another group of bad apples kept killing black people and getting away with it.

You do have a point about the flattening of everyone who came to Washington on January 6th down into a caricature of the worst of them. That happens a lot in the media these days. See also, protestors, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, etc. One side highlights the worst of each group, and the other selectively highlights the best.

Sucks, but apparently everyone decided we have to pick sides about everything, and stick to them at all costs.

Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#52

Post by hattmall »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #19
tyingq wrote: post #13

I have to wonder if this is one of those somewhat "implanted" stories to get support for moving towards John Deere style DRM on some of their parts. That is, not that it's made up, but that perhaps the scale is being exaggerated a bit. Edit: Yes, I'm aware there's some DRM. So far, though, not as locked down as the example of John Deere, cryptographic control that requires phone-home, etc.

The article implies the control units are coded to the vehicle's VIN at least to some degree and mentions Freightliner asks people to look out for logged errors indicating someone attempted to use a control unit from a different VIN. There's also mention of a separate password function. However, if there's a market for these units, someone's likely developed a tool to "re code" the control units. But: "Moving toward"…

Shit like that should really be illegal.

Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#53

Post by zdragnar »

Syonyk wrote: post #47
cowtools wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Maybe just need to reuse more hardware. Standardize and commodify replacement parts for mobile devices like framework/fairphone. Reduce the amount of IoT crap in toasters/etc. Use multiseat instead of thin clients. Upcycle old computers.

> I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Electron says, "Hold my beer!" I would love to see lower software requirements, more long lived systems, etc. Meanwhile, Microsoft is obsoleting... basically the last decade+ of hardware for Windows 11. It's an uphill fight.

Meh, I keep multiple electron apps, node processes, and chrome windows and tabs open at the same time, and they're really not at all CPU intensive (except for node running tsc builds or tests). It's the RAM usage that is annoying, and even that isn't too terrible.

Edit: of course, I'm running swaywm on linux, so my environment is generally pretty light as it is compared to Windows.

Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#54

Post by Starlevel001 »

cowtools wrote: post #42
Syonyk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So how long does the microchip shortage continue? Warning: Paid Pessimist point of view (I've done computer security for far, far too long). Indefinitely. It doesn't recover. Because (modern, leading process) microchips are the sort of globe spanning supply chain problem that works great, right up until it doesn't. Coolant for some laser is made in this country that's at war. Some critical surface processing chemic…

I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Maybe just need to reuse more hardware. Standardize and commodify replacement parts for mobile devices like framework/fairphone. Reduce the amount of IoT crap in toasters/etc. Use multiseat instead of thin clients. Upcycle old computers.

> I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes.

Maybe developers should take some responsibility and stop fucking writing code that's slow as shit and unusable on anything past their company-paid for macbook pros.

In an ideal society programmers would be sat down and given a seven year old mid-range laptop and threatened that if their program lags in the slightest they would be fired and blacklisted from the industry.

Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#55

Post by Syonyk »

Starlevel001 wrote: post #54
cowtools wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Maybe just need to reuse more hardware. Standardize and commodify replacement parts for mobile devices like framework/fairphone. Reduce the amount of IoT crap in toasters/etc. Use multiseat instead of thin clients. Upcycle old computers.

> I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. Maybe developers should take some responsibility and stop fucking writing code that's slow as shit and unusable on anything past their company-paid for macbook pros. In an ideal society programmers would be sat down and given a seven year old mid-range laptop and threatened that if their program lags in the slightest they would be fired and…

Nah. "Raspberry Pi Day at Google." One day a week, your dual Xeon workstation is replaced with a Raspberry Pi 4. 8GB. Overclocked if you want.

It is absolutely adequate to do a lot of things one wants to do. But it will show when you've done something stupid with CPU.

I'm still bitter that Google ruined the Blogger editor interface. Fancy, shiny new interface... that lagged horribly if you had a low power CPU and a bunch of photos in a post. The old interface handled it perfectly, because I wrote an awful lot of blog posts on an old Atom netbook with a nice keyboard.

But, yes, any new hardware performance is more than chewed up by new software abstractions.

Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#56

Post by Syonyk »

zdragnar wrote: post #53
Syonyk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Electron says, "Hold my beer!" I would love to see lower software requirements, more long lived systems, etc. Meanwhile, Microsoft is obsoleting... basically the last decade+ of hardware for Windows 11. It's an uphill fight.

Meh, I keep multiple electron apps, node processes, and chrome windows and tabs open at the same time, and they're really not at all CPU intensive (except for node running tsc builds or tests). It's the RAM usage that is annoying, and even that isn't too terrible. Edit: of course, I'm running swaywm on linux, so my environment is generally pretty light as it is compared to Windows.

I generally try to use ARM small board computers as much as possible. They really struggle with running a bunch of Electron stuff at the same time, and while you can reasonably use some modern websites on them, it's amazing just how much absolute crap you can get rid of with NoScript/Ghostery/etc, and still have a perfectly functional website.

My massive, powerful, "Do absolutely everything!" computer in college was a dual Pentium III 866, with 768MB RAM. And a hex core, 2GHz ARM box with 4GB RAM can't do half as much, because of just how heavily bloated software is. I still write code, browse the web, chat with people... and I need radically more resources because that's what software development has decided is easy. Meanwhile, stuff like Hexchat for IRC just... uses no resources and works as wonderfully as ever.

Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#57

Post by astrange »

speed_spread wrote: post #45
nr2x wrote: post #21

So we’ve gotten to the Gibson “high tech low life” stage officially. “Case picked up the powertrain control module from the table and nodded at the fence across the table…”

I'm currently reading "Idoru" for the first time and it feels contemporary. Much of Gibson's work is no longer science-fiction.

Too bad the name of the book is spelled wrong. Maybe he didn’t have any fact checkers.

Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#58

Post by zdragnar »

Syonyk wrote: post #56
zdragnar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, I keep multiple electron apps, node processes, and chrome windows and tabs open at the same time, and they're really not at all CPU intensive (except for node running tsc builds or tests). It's the RAM usage that is annoying, and even that isn't too terrible. Edit: of course, I'm running swaywm on linux, so my environment is generally pretty light as it is compared to Windows.

I generally try to use ARM small board computers as much as possible. They really struggle with running a bunch of Electron stuff at the same time, and while you can reasonably use some modern websites on them, it's amazing just how much absolute crap you can get rid of with NoScript/Ghostery/etc, and still have a perfectly functional website. My massive, powerful, "Do absolutely everything!" computer in college was…

I'm guessing RAM is your limiting factor. I've got about 20 tabs open across two chrome windows (separate profiles) and I'm using less than 3gb for my entire system. CPU usage is basically nil since I'm not doing much at the moment but typing.

Throwing slack / spotify / vscode / steam / whatever else on top of that could easily bump it up several more gb. VScode is pretty good, up until you start adding in language servers. The quality of the rest is really hit or miss.

Edit: Out of curiosity, I opened steam, and it immediately took up a little bit of ram, then by the time it finished "loading" it ballooned up to a gig- presumably because of all the fancy animated images and video players and what not the storefront needs. I could definitely do without those things, though I imagine they do correlate to more purchases (there's a name for it, I forget- something about moving images triggering a capture of attention going back to hunting / fight or flight response).

Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#59

Post by donthellbanme »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #19
tyingq wrote: post #13

I have to wonder if this is one of those somewhat "implanted" stories to get support for moving towards John Deere style DRM on some of their parts. That is, not that it's made up, but that perhaps the scale is being exaggerated a bit. Edit: Yes, I'm aware there's some DRM. So far, though, not as locked down as the example of John Deere, cryptographic control that requires phone-home, etc.

The article implies the control units are coded to the vehicle's VIN at least to some degree and mentions Freightliner asks people to look out for logged errors indicating someone attempted to use a control unit from a different VIN. There's also mention of a separate password function. However, if there's a market for these units, someone's likely developed a tool to "re code" the control units. But: "Moving toward"…

No post body was provided.

Re: Rash of parts thefts is leaving Freightliner trucks inoperable

#60

Post by riffraff »

zdragnar wrote: post #53
Syonyk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Electron says, "Hold my beer!" I would love to see lower software requirements, more long lived systems, etc. Meanwhile, Microsoft is obsoleting... basically the last decade+ of hardware for Windows 11. It's an uphill fight.

Meh, I keep multiple electron apps, node processes, and chrome windows and tabs open at the same time, and they're really not at all CPU intensive (except for node running tsc builds or tests). It's the RAM usage that is annoying, and even that isn't too terrible. Edit: of course, I'm running swaywm on linux, so my environment is generally pretty light as it is compared to Windows.

Multiple electron apps run just fine on my 2015 MacBook pro too. Yes the ram usage is annoying but it's not unusable.

OTOH my battery is dying, and may not be worth replacing.

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