Intrinsically/semantically no but the expectation is that the texts are encrypted at rest and the keys are password and/or tpm+biometric protected. That’s just how this works at this point. Also that’s the government standard for literally everything from handheld devices to satellites (yes, actually).

At this point one of the most likely threat vectors is someone just taking your shit. Things like border crossings, rubber stamped search warrants, cops raid your house because your roommate pissed them off, protests, needing to go home from work near a protest, on and on.

RF analysis is kinda difficult, you’d need to take the car out into the middle of nowhere and have access to fairly good equipment. A tinySA would maybe work if you’re very patient but data transmissions are generally very bursty so it may be difficult to nail down where it’s coming from in a sane amount of time.

One option would be to try to figure out if there are any FCC filings for your car. All filings will have pictures of whatever module is being used and what antenna systems it uses which may give you a good idea of where it is and what it looks like. There should be an FCC ID mentioned somewhere at the beginning or end of the cars manual. Googling that should bring up some stuff.

Fuck HDMI. The committee makes doing custom hardware near impossible unless you’re a mega corp

https://github.com/nivekuil/rip This is what you’re looking for

The lower layers all already at least moderately well encrypted, what they’re doing here is trying to pull the unencrypted device ID necessary to establish a connection. It’s not really what you’re sending (though traffic frequency analysis may be included) and more about just figuring out where a particular phone is so they can physically track the user.

I didn’t ratify my city’s bullshit zoning laws but they’re still a threat to me

I’d argue the year of the Linux desktop passed years ago and now it’s just a saturation game. Most serious SW development is now on Linux laptops/desktops, Android owns the mobile space and versions are starting to make huge inroads in the laptop space. You can buy gaming systems running it trivially now.

Conversely, casual users of windows are dying off, fewer non technical people are using desktops for anything at all. Only institutional users are buying Windows keys and they’re some of the easiest to get on Linux because of the cost savings, particularly if you run Linux server infrastructure, a fight we already won over a decade ago.

AGPL just in case they try to put your brain waves into the cloud

The one pictured is a more modern model, but the original L96 is, with 90s era machine tools, the one that’s probably easier to make in a garage. All the stampings on the sten are substantially more difficult to create as a one-off, but the action on the L96 just needs a lathe and a broach or EDM, all the rest of it a series of very simple milled components and a composite stock that you could build a mold for out of fiberglass and Bondo.

I want a 1995 ranger that’s electric, those things were great

Yes, but there’s already a steep tariff, it would be nice to let them light a small fire under the us automakers so they make better products for us, instead were kinda just letting them be evil and lazy.

Not if it’s electric (for emissions)

I ran the numbers myself a while back, it’s not pretty at all.

Until you hear about people traveling >200mi and getting their commercial pilots licenses entirely on conventional takeoff fixed wing electric aircraft (see pipistrel electro) it’s safe to assume this vtol industry is grounded. The conventional fixed wing aircraft are wildly more efficient in terms of battery mass fraction and range but they don’t get investors excited like a personal quadcopter for the (ultra wealthy) masses.

Those words sound cool and mean literally nothing

Yeah but the people running this seem to only be interested in pivoting between whatever the current grift is. We should come up with a word for people who do that, maybe something like “grifters”.

IME those groups aren’t very libertarian, they’re closer to American Taliban religious fundamentalism.

I hate that it needs to be said but love that they said it so plainly

There might be a few layers to this one. Drones are becoming a central part of strategic production and the US doesn’t really have many competitive companies manufacturing small ones at volume.

They need to force the domestic market to build up local expertise and manufacturing capacity in the event that small drones are the direction warfare ends up going more broadly.

The us defense apparatus is still on the fence about this given that their volume of use in Ukraine could be more of an aberration due to the respective industrial bases and static nature of the war. That said the numbers are insane enough that they warrant some action just in case.

Because it’s a prisoners dilemma. They don’t have the money to suddenly buy a billion Teslas and trillion solar panels so either they burn the coal they have because everyone else is too, or they just give up trying to become an advanced economy while everyone else keeps polluting.

In either case tens of millions of people die on the subcontinent, but in one of them at least they get to improve their economy.

Now that’s how you kill all the gophers