The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (to which they are all signatories) effectively prevents these countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. Unless they are willing to face international sanctions and economic ruin, that’s the end of the story.

If you leave the treaty are you still subject to international sanctions if you develop nukes? Me thinks not. That makes the treaty a paper tiger.

The NPT was only useful when the lines were clear and larger nations would come to the aid of smaller ones when they were attacked. That's no longer the case.

"raison du joure these days"

I had to laugh out loud too when I read this.

You probably will. It's similar to steam engine and mechanical power loom.

I wish other car makers were as reasonable as Honda here.

No "evil valet" with half a brain cell would waste time hacking the head unit if they have physical access to the car. They would simply hide a spying device somewhere in the car.

Not to mention that people with Civics are never targets of three letter agencies.

I'm hoping this comment is a joke? It's kind of nonsensical.

> I wish other car makers were as reasonable as Honda here.

I doubt they did this on purpose.

> No "evil valet" with half a brain cell would waste time hacking the head unit if they have physical access to the car.

Keep in mind that head units usually also contain historic data; stuff like left-over synced phone contacts in SQLite databases, historic location data collected either explicitly for telemetry or accidentally in log files etc.

Additionally, head units usually have access to a lot of internal buses in a car; depending on manufacturer there's sometimes some level of firewalling effort, for example through a Gateway module, but these firewalls are usually quite weak when they are present at all (see: the famous thing with Honda unlock and starter release working with no cryptographic material through the same CAN bus as the headlights). This means that the infotainment can usually control some part of the car, and is much more powerful than a tracking device.

Plus, implanting code (or just extracting the data that's already there) from a head unit leaves much less evidence than adding an additional tracker.

> Not to mention that people with Civics are never targets of three letter agencies.

???

The question marks are because it’s practically a trope that the most interesting subjects disguise their importance by driving Civics and such.

Literally a plot point in Breaking Bad.

That's what Civic-driving people who are of interest to The Agency would say :)

John Cena drives a Civic Type R famously :)

Not sure if you’re being sarcastic/satirical or not. If you are, fine.

But if you’re not - why would someone driving a civic not be a target of an intelligence agency? It’s one of the most common cars about there, so if you want to fade into the background it’s a perfect car. Also, lots of otherwise “normal” people - scientists, engineers, journalists, lawyers - likely drive Honda civics.

A spying device hidden in the car may be found. Something installed directly within the car’s firmware is somewhat less likely to be found.

Whenever we get to talking about three letter agencies, i wish people spent more time thinking about their threat model. Is the TLA surveilling me because they're broadly interested in everybody? OK then, the return on investment isn't there to pull an evil maid attack on public randos. If the TLA is interested in you because of who you specifically are, the average individual can't begin to plug all the possible holes in their lives.

As a Honda owner (but the kind the company probably doesn't really really love since i'm still driving a 2006) i actually think it's better for the long haul that their cars are hackable given physical possession.

Everyone should have security robust against nation-state actors by default in the most popular consumer products, so that people who need it can hide in the masses. I hope LLM-assisted “offensive security research” makes insecure software fully unusable so that companies finally take security seriously.

I wasn’t making any comment on whether cars should be hackable or not, simply that saying “people with Civics are never targets of three letter agencies” is a little silly.

You think there isn’t some boring scientist or engineer with classified access who doesn’t drive a boring civic to work?

It seems that a lack of respect is the real issue here. A few years ago, you would have been met with silence, which is probably equally infuriating.

Agreed. It's been like that for years.

The only two letter combination that is not already used by another language.

The shopping centre where I shop frequently (Europe) has a large outdoor parking space and every 20 meters or so there's a little kiosk where you can return the cart. People do because it's actually easier to return it than to worry about crashing into it when you're getting out of the parking spot. From time to time an employee goes out and collects all the carts from kiosks and gets them back to the shop. I don't know if it's the same way in the US, maybe some people don't return it simply because they parked too far from the entrance.

Not so much a kiosk, but American grocery stores often have one parking spot every other row that is blocked off with a fence/barrier and marked as a cart return storage. But that has its own problems because if someone hastily shoves a cart in there instead of stacking them in line it takes up too much space and creates a dangerous extrusion into the adjacent spots.

Or, better yet, asked people what they want: whether the phone should crash or slow down when the battery is choking.

Maybe they could have put this option on that screen with all the other options Apple lets you tweak.

I'd prefer a faster horse.

Disable transparencies in Settings then. Simple.