COBB Tuning Hit With $2.9 Million Fine Over Emissions Defeat Devices

September 20, 2024 by Maya Posch 110 Comments

Recently, the EPA and COBB Tuning have settled after the latter was sued for providing emissions control defeating equipment. As per the EPA’s settlement details document, COBB Tuning have since 2015 provided customers with the means to disable certain emission controls in cars, in addition to selling aftermarket exhaust pipes with insufficient catalytic systems. As part of the settlement, COBB Tuning will have to destroy any remaining device, delete any such features from its custom tuning software and otherwise take measures to fully comply with the Clean Air Act, in addition to paying a $2,914,000 civil fine.

The tuning of cars has come a long way from the 1960s when tweaking the carburetor air-fuel ratios was the way to get more power. These days cars not only have multiple layers of computers and sensor systems that constantly monitor and tweak the car’s systems, they also have a myriad of emission controls, ranging from permissible air-fuel ratios to catalytic converters. It’s little surprise that these systems can significantly impact the raw performance one might extract from a car’s engine, but if the exhaust of nitrogen-oxides and other pollutants is to be kept within legal limits, simply deleting these limits is not a permissible option.

COBB Tuning proclaimed that they weren’t aware of these issues, and that they never marketed these features as ’emission controls defeating’. They were however aware of issues regarding their products, which is why they announced ‘Project Green Speed’ in 2022, which supposedly would have brought COBB into compliance. Now it would seem that the EPA did find fault despite this, and COBB was forced to making adjustments.

Although perhaps not as egregious as modifying diesel trucks to ‘roll coal’, federal law has made it abundantly clear that if you really want to have fun tweaking and tuning your car without pesky environmental laws getting in the way, you could consider switching to electric drivetrains, even if they’re mind-numbingly easy to make performant compared to internal combustion engines.

Creating A Twisted Grid Image Illusion With A Diffusion Model

September 18, 2024 by Maya Posch 4 Comments

Images that can be interpreted in a variety of ways have existed for many decades, with the classical example being Rubin’s vase — which some viewers see as a vase, and others a pair of human faces.

Where things get trickier is if you want to create an image that changes into something else that looks realistic when you rotate each section of it within a 3×3 grid. In a video by [Steve Mould], he explains how this can be accomplished, by using a diffusion model to identify similar characteristics of two images and to create an output image that effectively contains essential features of both images.

Naturally, this process can be done by hand too, with the goal always being to create a plausible image in either orientation that has enough detail to trick the brain into filling in the details. To head down the path of interpreting what the eye sees as a duck, a bunny, a vase or the outline of faces.

Using a diffusion model to create such illusions is quite a natural fit, as it works with filling in noise until a plausible enough image begins to appear. Of course, whether it is a viable image is ultimately not determined by the model, but by the viewer, as humans are susceptible to such illusions while machine vision still struggles to distinguish a cat from a loaf and a raisin bun from a spotted dog. The imperfections of diffusion models would seem to be a benefit here, as it will happily churn through abstractions and iterations with no understanding or interpretive bias, while the human can steer it towards a viable interpretation.

Continue reading “Creating A Twisted Grid Image Illusion With A Diffusion Model” →

Thermal Runaway: Solving The Bane Of Electric Vehicles

September 17, 2024 by Maya Posch 86 Comments

Although battery fires in electric cars and two-wheeled vehicles are not a common phenomenon, they are notoriously hard to put out, requiring special training and equipment by firefighters. Although the full scope of the issue is part of a contentious debate, [Aarian Marshall] over at Wired recently wrote an article about how the electric car industry has a plan to make a purportedly minor issue even less of an issue. Here the questions seem to be mostly about what the true statistics are for battery fires and what can be done about the primary issue with batteries: thermal runaway.

While the Wired article references a study by a car insurance company about the incidence of car fires by fuel type (gas, hybrid, electric), its cited sources are dubious as the NTSB nor NHTSA collect statistics on these fires. The NFPA does, but this only gets you up to 2018, and they note that the data gathering here is spotty. Better data is found from European sources, which makes clear that battery electric vehicles (BEVs) catch fire less often than gasoline cars at 25 per 100,000 cars sold vs 1529/100k for ICE cars, but when BEVs do burn it’s most often (60%) from thermal runaway, which can be due to factors like a short circuit in a cell, overcharging and high ambient temperatures (including from arson or after-effects of a car crash). Continue reading “Thermal Runaway: Solving The Bane Of Electric Vehicles” →

PC Floppy Copy Protection: Electronic Arts Interlock

September 17, 2024 by Maya Posch 8 Comments

Continuing the series on floppy copy protection, [GloriousCow] examines Electronic Arts’ Interlock system. This was used from 1984 to 1987 for at least fourteen titles released on both 5.25″ and 3.5″ floppies. Although not officially advertised, in the duplication mark sector the string ELECTRONIC ARTS IBM INTERLOCK. appears, hence the name. Compared to other copy protection systems like Softguard Superlok this Interlock protection poses a number of somewhat extreme measures to enforce the copy protection.

The disk surface of Side #0 of the 1984 mystery-adventure title, Murder on the Zinderneuf (Credit: GloriousCow) — The disk surface of Side #0 of the 1984 mystery-adventure title, *Murder on the Zinderneuf* (Credit: GloriousCow)

Other than the typical issues that come with copying so-called ‘booter’ floppies that do not use DOS but boot directly into the game, the protection track with Interlock is rather easy to spot, as seen on the right. It’s the track that lights up like a Christmas tree with meta data, consisting out of non-consecutive sector IDs. Of note is the use of ‘deleted’ sector data marks (DDAM), which is a rarity in normal usage. Along with the other peculiarities of this track it requires an exact query-response from the disk to be accepted as genuine, including timings. This meant that trying to boot a straight dump of the magnetic surface and trying to run it in an emulated system failed to work.

Reverse-engineering Interlock starts with the stage 0 bootloader from the first sector, which actually patches the End-of-Track (EOT) table parameter to make the ridiculous number of sectors on the special track work. The bootloader then loads a logo, which is the last thing you’ll see if your copy is imperfect.

Decrypting the second stage bootloader required a bit of disassembly and reverse-engineering, which uncovered some measures against crackers. While the actual process of reverse-engineering and the uncovered details of Interlock are far too complex to summarize here, after many hours and the final victory over the handling of an intentional bad CRC the target game (Murder on the Zinderneuf from 1984) finally loaded in the emulator.

After confirming the process with a few other titles, it seems that Interlock is mostly broken, with the DOS-based title ArcticFox (1987) the last hurdle to clear. We just hope that [GloriousCow] is safe at this point from EA’s tame lawyers.

Interested in more copy protection deep dives? Check out the work [GloriousCow] has already done on investigating Softguard’s Superlok and Formaster’s Copy-Lock.

The Rise Of Self-Cleaning, Cat-Killing Litter Boxes

September 17, 2024 by Maya Posch 68 Comments

Machines that automate the various tedious tasks that come with being a servant in a cat’s household — like feeding and cleaning Mr. Fluffles’ litter box — are generally a godsend, as they ensure a happy cat and a happy human. That is, unless said litter box-cleaning robot kills said cat. That’s the gruesome topic that [Philip Bloom], also known as the bloke of the One Man Five Cats channel on YouTube, decided to investigate after coming across a report about a certain Amazon-bought unit.

The theory of a self-cleaning litter box: a happy Mr. Fluffles.

Although he was unable to get the (generic & often rebranded) unit off Amazon UK, he did get it via AliExpress for £165 + £80 shipping. Although this version lacks the cute ears of other variants, it’s still effectively the same unit, with the same moving components and mechanism. An initial test with a cat plushie gave the result that can be observed in the above image, where the inner part with the opening will move upwards, regardless of whether a cat is currently poking through said opening. Once the victim is stuck, there is no obvious way to free the trapped critter, which has already led to the death of a number of cats.

The other self-cleaning litter boxes which [Philip] owns have a number of safety features, including a weight sensor, an infrared sensor above the opening to detect nearby critters, a top that will pop off rather than trap a critter, as well as a pinch sensor. During a test with his own hand, [Philip] managed to get injured, and following a banana test, he had a nice banana smoothie.

What takes the cake here is that after [Philip] connected the mobile app for the litter box, he found that there was a firmware update that seems to actually change the machine to use the pinch and infrared sensors that do exist in the litter box, but which clearly were not used properly or at all with the shipped firmware. This means that anyone who buys any of these self-cleaning litter boxes and does not update the firmware runs the significant risk of losing their pet(s) in a gruesome incident. In the video a number of such tragic deaths are covered, which can be rather distressing for any cat lover.

Of note here is that even with the improved firmware, any issue with the sensors will still inevitably lead to the tragic death of Mr. Fluffles. If you do want to obtain a self-cleaning litter box, make sure to for example get one of [Philip]’s recommendations which come with a paw stamp of approval from his own precious fluff balls, rather than a random unit off Amazon or AliExpress.

Continue reading “The Rise Of Self-Cleaning, Cat-Killing Litter Boxes” →

The Universe As We Know It May End Sooner Than Expected

September 16, 2024 by Maya Posch 44 Comments

The 'Sombrero Potential' as seen with the Higgs mechanism. — The ‘Sombrero Potential’ as seen with the Higgs mechanism.

One of the exciting aspects of some fields of physics is that they involve calculating the expected time until the Universe ends or experiences fundamental shifts that would render most if not all of the ‘laws of physics’ invalid. Within the Standard Model (SM), the false vacuum state is one such aspect, as it implies that the Universe’s quantum fields that determine macrolevel effects like mass can shift through quantum field decay into a lower, more stable state. One such field is the Higgs field, which according to a team of researchers may decay sooner than we had previously assumed.

As the Higgs field (through the Higgs boson) is responsible for giving particles mass, it’s not hard to imagine the chaos that would ensue if part of the Higgs field were to decay and cause a spherical ripple effect throughout the Universe. Particle masses would change, along with all associated physics, as suddenly the lower Higgs field state means that everything has significantly more mass. To say that it would shake up the Universe would an understatement.

Of course, this expected time-to-decay has only shifted from 10⁷⁹⁴ years to 10⁷⁹⁰ years with the corrections to the previous calculations as provided in the paper by [Pietro Baratella] and colleagues, and they also refer to it as ‘slightly shorter’. A sidenote here is also that the electroweak vacuum’s decay is part of the imperfect SM, which much like the false vacuum hypothesis are part of these models, and not based on clear empirical evidence (yet).

Usagi Electric’s Paper Tape Reader Is Ready To Hop With The Tube Computer

September 16, 2024 by Maya Posch 25 Comments

After previously working out a suitable approach to create a period-correct paper tape reader for his tube-based, MC14500B processor-inspired computer, [David Lovett] over at the Usagi Electric farm is back with a video on how he made a working tape reader.

The assembled paper tape reader as seen from the front with tape inserted. (Credit: David Lovett, Usage Electric, YouTube)

The tape reader’s purpose is to feed data into the tube-based computer, which for this computer system with its lack of storage memory means that the instructions are fed into the system directly, with the tape also providing the clock signal with a constant row of holes in the tape.

Starting the tape reader build, [David] opted to mill the structural part out of aluminum, which is where a lot of machining relearning takes place. Ultimately he got the parts machined to the paper design specs, with v-grooves for the photodiodes to fit into and a piece to clamp them down. On top of this is placed a part with holes that line up with the photodiodes.

Another alignment piece is added to hold the tape down on the reader while letting light through onto the tape via a slot. After a test assembly [David] was dismayed that due to tolerance issues he cracked two photodiodes within the v-groove clamp, which was a hard lesson with these expensive (and rare) photodiodes.

Although tolerances were somewhat off, [David] is confident that this aluminum machined reader will work once he has it mounted up. Feeding the tape is a problem that is still to be solved. [David] is looking for ideas and suggestions for a good approach within the limitations that he’s working with. At the video’s end, he mentions learning FreeCAD and 3D printing parts in the future. That would probably not be period-correct in this situation, but might be something he could get away with for some applications within the retrocomputing space.

We covered the first video and the thought process behind picking small (1.8 mm diameter) photodiodes as a period-correct tape hole sensor for a 1950s-era computing system, like the 1950s Bendix G-15 that [David] is currently restoring.

Continue reading “Usagi Electric’s Paper Tape Reader Is Ready To Hop With The Tube Computer” →