8 ms·

My iphone can't kill someone else moving 70 mph down the highway during the normal course of its operation.

by phdp 2y ago

stavros 2y ago
Not if the Mossad has anything to say about it.
- otterley 2y ago
  WTF, dude. The iPhone wasn’t designed to be an explosive device.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    Samsung Note 7: hold my battery.
  - ant6n 2y ago
    > The iPhone wasn’t designed to be an explosive device. …just like those pagers.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Ajedi32 2y ago
      The pagers actually were designed to be explosive devices. I'm guessing you didn't dig into the details of that story and just saw the headlines?
    - wongarsu 2y ago
      The pagers were designed as explosive devices and specifically marketed to Hisbollah leaders, with fake justifications for the added weight from the explosives. In contrast, no iPhone teardown has shown any explosives, and Apple still has a reputation for saving weight wherever possible. If you have an iPhone that mysteriously has only a fraction of the battery capacity of a normal iPhone it might be time to worry if you have the Mossad version with inbuilt explosives. But otherwise I wouldn't worry too much. A battery explosion would be inconvenient but much less effective
      - tromp 2y ago
        > with fake justifications for the added weight from the explosives. There was negligible weight increase, as the battery was significantly shrunk to allow hiding the explosive inside [1]. > At some point, Hezbollah noticed the battery was draining faster than expected, the Lebanese source said. However, the issue did not appear to raise major security concerns - the group was still handing its members the pagers hours before the attack. [1] https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/HEZBOLLAH-PAGERS/mopawkkwjpa/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/HEZBOLL...
leesec 2y ago
This has nothing to do with his point, which is that its a software update, not a typical 'recall'
- soared 2y ago
  It lends credence to how severe the language needs to be. A car recall is very serious and implies people need to take action. A software update is meh, I’ll look at that later. Seemingly a Tesla software update is more aligned aligned with “recall - update your stuff” rather than “update - do this whenever”
  - reverendsteveii 2y ago
    I've had several cars subject to recall and every one of them was "go ahead and bring it into the dealer whenever, show them this notice and they'll fix it". I imagine there could be some "drop everything and get this fixed right now" issues but I think the idea that every recall is a drop everything issue is more in alignment with your intuition than the reality on the ground.
    - genewitch 2y ago
      It's more if I own the car "pink slip" there is not really a way to compel me to get a recall repair. Obviously this is different, now, because of some cards and models for the car ECU.
      - genewitch 2y ago
        s/some/SIM/
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      A car with an active recall is in violation of FMVSS and can't legally be sold by dealerships (or the manufacturer) until the recall is fixed. It's very much a "drop everything" issue for regulated parties in the automotive space. It's only as a consumer that you get to take your time and deal with it whenever, which I think is a very reasonable tradeoff.
adamdecaf 2y ago
An iPhone hitting someone in the head at 70mph could indeed kill them.
nkozyra 2y ago
> My iphone can't kill someone else moving 70 mph down the highway during the normal course of its operation. How do you know if you haven't tried?
- barbazoo 2y ago
  Maybe they have!?
  - TrainedMonkey 2y ago
    Phones certainly have distracted plenty of people going 70mph... some of those distractions have been fatal. I would imagine scant few of those distractions had been due to security breaches, but probably not zero. We could imagine a following scenario: a clever virus spreads via zero day exploit to every iphone. The virus uses accelerometer to detect velocity over 70mph and initiates a bedlam protocol a minute after that. Your phone starts blaring maximally offensive content at max volume, controls are locked. Particularly effective when connected to car speakers. The scenario is highly improbable, but there is a vector for a phone security flaw to be extremely impactful.
buttercraft 2y ago
Welllll it can if you're looking at it instead of the road. But I get your point
homebrewer 2y ago
Sure it can, if the overcharge protection built into the battery malfunctions for some reason. There is speculation that a battery overcharge bug was fixed in a recent update issued to old Pixels.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
You'd be surprised how many phones are involved with car accidents though. The issue here is with the word recall, which is slightly alarmist This is a bit of a non-event for owners and they'll get a completely routine over the air firmware upgrade soonish with some mandated changes. No dealers are involved. Just a simple update. Somehow a lot of these recalls are limited to the US only. Which raises a few questions of course about the rest of the world and what Tesla is doing there. I think it's just the language and the processes of the NHTSA that result in this clickbaity reporting. Also a lot of cars ship without over the air update capabilities. What happens with recalls for those? For example, when the wheels may come off in a Toyota (NHTSA 23V432000), it's somehow less news worthy than when it is about a Tesla. That one got a "do not drive" advice along with the recall BTW, as you'd hope. It only affected a few hundred cars fortunately. But I bet more care owners and mechanics did work to double check they weren't affected. That happened 2 years ago. Not all recalls are similarly scary, of course. Most are quite boring actually. Especially Tesla ones. There's a helpful tool (https://datahub.transportation.gov/stories/s/NHTSA-Recalls-by-Manufacturer/38mw-dp8u/ https://datahub.transportation.gov/stories/s/NHTSA-Recalls-b...) that allows you to slice and dice recall data by manufacturer. There are a lot of recalls. The vast majority are real recalls involving component replacements from car manufacturers that are mostly not Tesla. Tesla seems to be able to address their issues via software mostly. By the numbers, maybe be careful with Ford, GM, or Toyota. Lots of recalls for those. Parts falling of causing crashes. Electrical failures resulting in drive train failure mid drive. You know, minor issues like that. Totally not worth reporting on hacker news because it doesn't involve Tesla or Elon Musk. This also raises a few interesting questions about the software quality of other manufacturers. Apparently they ship bug free software (try explaining that to VW owners) or their software is just not getting a lot of scrutiny. Is Ford really that good at software or updating it? Or maybe the NHTSA is a bit selective with their scrutiny here? On a positive note, really nice of them to do free QA for Tesla.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  Recall is a specific legal notification that's required for non-compliance with US laws. Other countries have different processes, different terms, and different laws. Even when they are issued with the same terms for the same problem, they're generally less covered by news media. NHTSA doesn't require that manufacturers issue recall notices for other countries for obvious reasons. Some countries pay attention to US recalls and issue their own, like this recall issued by Germany [0] following the publication of a US recall [1]. There's no NHTSA conspiracy against Tesla. If anything, they're overly lenient on Tesla compared to other manufacturers. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts/screen/webReport/alertDetail/10011042?lang=en https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts/screen/webReport/ale... [1] https://www.tesla.com/support/recall-brake-fluid-level-sensor https://www.tesla.com/support/recall-brake-fluid-level-senso...

My iphone can't kill someone else moving 70 mph down the highway during the normal course of its operation.

by phdp 2y ago

My iphone can't kill someone else moving 70 mph down the highway during the normal course of its operation.

stavros 2y ago

Not if the Mossad has anything to say about it.

otterley 2y ago
WTF, dude. The iPhone wasn’t designed to be an explosive device.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Samsung Note 7: hold my battery.
- ant6n 2y ago
  > The iPhone wasn’t designed to be an explosive device. …just like those pagers.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Ajedi32 2y ago
    The pagers actually were designed to be explosive devices. I'm guessing you didn't dig into the details of that story and just saw the headlines?
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    The pagers were designed as explosive devices and specifically marketed to Hisbollah leaders, with fake justifications for the added weight from the explosives. In contrast, no iPhone teardown has shown any explosives, and Apple still has a reputation for saving weight wherever possible. If you have an iPhone that mysteriously has only a fraction of the battery capacity of a normal iPhone it might be time to worry if you have the Mossad version with inbuilt explosives. But otherwise I wouldn't worry too much. A battery explosion would be inconvenient but much less effective
    - tromp 2y ago
      > with fake justifications for the added weight from the explosives. There was negligible weight increase, as the battery was significantly shrunk to allow hiding the explosive inside [1]. > At some point, Hezbollah noticed the battery was draining faster than expected, the Lebanese source said. However, the issue did not appear to raise major security concerns - the group was still handing its members the pagers hours before the attack. [1] https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/HEZBOLLAH-PAGERS/mopawkkwjpa/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/HEZBOLL...

leesec 2y ago

This has nothing to do with his point, which is that its a software update, not a typical 'recall'

soared 2y ago
It lends credence to how severe the language needs to be. A car recall is very serious and implies people need to take action. A software update is meh, I’ll look at that later. Seemingly a Tesla software update is more aligned aligned with “recall - update your stuff” rather than “update - do this whenever”
- reverendsteveii 2y ago
  I've had several cars subject to recall and every one of them was "go ahead and bring it into the dealer whenever, show them this notice and they'll fix it". I imagine there could be some "drop everything and get this fixed right now" issues but I think the idea that every recall is a drop everything issue is more in alignment with your intuition than the reality on the ground.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    It's more if I own the car "pink slip" there is not really a way to compel me to get a recall repair. Obviously this is different, now, because of some cards and models for the car ECU.
    - genewitch 2y ago
      s/some/SIM/
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    A car with an active recall is in violation of FMVSS and can't legally be sold by dealerships (or the manufacturer) until the recall is fixed. It's very much a "drop everything" issue for regulated parties in the automotive space. It's only as a consumer that you get to take your time and deal with it whenever, which I think is a very reasonable tradeoff.

adamdecaf 2y ago

An iPhone hitting someone in the head at 70mph could indeed kill them.

nkozyra 2y ago

> My iphone can't kill someone else moving 70 mph down the highway during the normal course of its operation. How do you know if you haven't tried?

barbazoo 2y ago
Maybe they have!?
- TrainedMonkey 2y ago
  Phones certainly have distracted plenty of people going 70mph... some of those distractions have been fatal. I would imagine scant few of those distractions had been due to security breaches, but probably not zero. We could imagine a following scenario: a clever virus spreads via zero day exploit to every iphone. The virus uses accelerometer to detect velocity over 70mph and initiates a bedlam protocol a minute after that. Your phone starts blaring maximally offensive content at max volume, controls are locked. Particularly effective when connected to car speakers. The scenario is highly improbable, but there is a vector for a phone security flaw to be extremely impactful.

buttercraft 2y ago

Welllll it can if you're looking at it instead of the road. But I get your point

homebrewer 2y ago

Sure it can, if the overcharge protection built into the battery malfunctions for some reason. There is speculation that a battery overcharge bug was fixed in a recent update issued to old Pixels.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

You'd be surprised how many phones are involved with car accidents though. The issue here is with the word recall, which is slightly alarmist This is a bit of a non-event for owners and they'll get a completely routine over the air firmware upgrade soonish with some mandated changes. No dealers are involved. Just a simple update. Somehow a lot of these recalls are limited to the US only. Which raises a few questions of course about the rest of the world and what Tesla is doing there. I think it's just the language and the processes of the NHTSA that result in this clickbaity reporting. Also a lot of cars ship without over the air update capabilities. What happens with recalls for those? For example, when the wheels may come off in a Toyota (NHTSA 23V432000), it's somehow less news worthy than when it is about a Tesla. That one got a "do not drive" advice along with the recall BTW, as you'd hope. It only affected a few hundred cars fortunately. But I bet more care owners and mechanics did work to double check they weren't affected. That happened 2 years ago. Not all recalls are similarly scary, of course. Most are quite boring actually. Especially Tesla ones. There's a helpful tool (https://datahub.transportation.gov/stories/s/NHTSA-Recalls-by-Manufacturer/38mw-dp8u/ https://datahub.transportation.gov/stories/s/NHTSA-Recalls-b...) that allows you to slice and dice recall data by manufacturer. There are a lot of recalls. The vast majority are real recalls involving component replacements from car manufacturers that are mostly not Tesla. Tesla seems to be able to address their issues via software mostly. By the numbers, maybe be careful with Ford, GM, or Toyota. Lots of recalls for those. Parts falling of causing crashes. Electrical failures resulting in drive train failure mid drive. You know, minor issues like that. Totally not worth reporting on hacker news because it doesn't involve Tesla or Elon Musk. This also raises a few interesting questions about the software quality of other manufacturers. Apparently they ship bug free software (try explaining that to VW owners) or their software is just not getting a lot of scrutiny. Is Ford really that good at software or updating it? Or maybe the NHTSA is a bit selective with their scrutiny here? On a positive note, really nice of them to do free QA for Tesla.

AlotOfReading 2y ago
Recall is a specific legal notification that's required for non-compliance with US laws. Other countries have different processes, different terms, and different laws. Even when they are issued with the same terms for the same problem, they're generally less covered by news media. NHTSA doesn't require that manufacturers issue recall notices for other countries for obvious reasons. Some countries pay attention to US recalls and issue their own, like this recall issued by Germany [0] following the publication of a US recall [1]. There's no NHTSA conspiracy against Tesla. If anything, they're overly lenient on Tesla compared to other manufacturers. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts/screen/webReport/alertDetail/10011042?lang=en https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts/screen/webReport/ale... [1] https://www.tesla.com/support/recall-brake-fluid-level-sensor https://www.tesla.com/support/recall-brake-fluid-level-senso...