Hacker News Reader

The car won't shut off because that would be a dangerous thing to do in traffic.

The car will alert the driver than something is wrong and should stop as soon as it is safe.

Because stopping engine abruptly in middle of highway could be very dangerous.

A lot of cars also have so-called "limp mode" where some failures cause car to limit engine power and other stuff, basically to get to the next point the car can be stopped and towed to shop

View on HN

So you're saying a car has software features in the ECU preventing the user from destroying a car. So does the switch in its software (OS).

We're talking about someone taking a device, hacking it, installing some random software (whatever hacked version of linux runs on switch), and that software does not have the feature of limiting the max brightness at an accaptable (non-damaging level). So the same as if you took an ecu of a car, put linux on it, didn't implement the limp mode feature and then blame the hardware for overheating.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com