coming soon to a car/consumer electronic near you!
pretty brazen stuff really.
- If you ever stop running it for more than a week or so: it bricks itself.
- if it ever goes to an unapproved location for a second opinion on whatever bullshit "repair" they are pushing: it bricks itself
- If the manufacturer decides to just bake in a kill date your product will just randomly die on that day
the US automobile industry looking like Cuba where cars are held together with duct tape and sheer willpower because the only alternative is an $800,000 bazingamobile that's already broken before reaching the lot
It literally already feels like that here in states that salt the roads heavily in winter.
People commonly go to other states to buy their bottom of the barrel shitboxes because at least they have solid frames that haven't rusted out yet. feels like most people here (besides the bazingas) drive beat up, smashed in, rusted out, or all three, 10-20 year old vehicles that they just barely keep on the road and functioning. Every winter there are fresh accidents galore and people just keep driving that shit because who can afford a new car, or a repair that costs 1/2 or more what they paid for the car?
This is probably enabled by the fact there are no government inspections for roadworthiness, and that only liability insurance is required so people can just drive whatever and the cops don't care to pull anyone over for things like: broken or missing headlights, taillights, turn signals, broken exhaust, no tread tires, out of date registration, major fluid leaks, smoking, anything really... unless the driver is brown
I used to drive a car with a rear bumper held in place with bailing wire. Preach!
I had a car that had a muffler barely hanging on by coat hangers.
for me it was the fuel tank skid plate that got that treatment, on the side of the interstate, after it randomly started sagging, catching the wind, and scraping the road as I drove.
And it was copper wire
which I later replaced with galvanized strap.or numerous other fixes that were similar. I don't do much driving these days but I've had a good number of shitboxes over the years
And honestly with how dangerous it is to walk on the icy sidewalks (again no municipal clearing and not much enforcement on property owners who don't clear snow/ice), bike on the icy roads in mixed traffic with cars, etc. I have a hard time blaming people for choosing to let the car get smashed up instead of their body...
I'm young and more or less healthy and pretty cautious and I've still had a couple gnarly falls walking in the winter (ice on sidewalk on a hill, ice hidden underneath snow, etc.) Luckily I didn't sustain any serious injury but someone older or less lucky would have. And it did break some electronics in my bag. And that's not like I'm trekking miles and miles, those were mostly just walking to the bus or somewhere in my neighborhood (1 mile max)
No falls on my bike yet but it'll probably happen eventually. I have studded tires on it thankfully. I might have to get some slip on studs for my boots too.
The actual talk is here from the people who did the hacking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrlrbfGZo2k and I find it more accurate and better explained than the 404media article.
