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Cosmic Rays Causing Toyota Problems!!!


chevysoldier

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Darn fool stars going nova and exploding their fool cosmic rays all over the Universe...

Blaming cosmic rays is like trying to win the lotto. Sure, but not today.

The tipster says that, "The automotive industry has yet to fully embrace fault-tolerant architectures and software development methods that are used widely by the avionics industry," and that the chips used by Toyota may not be hardened against interference.

The tipster also writes that, "SEUs have traditionally occurred at high altitudes in aircraft and spacecraft and the avionics industry has successfully countered these events through highly redundant electronics and software."

NHTSA is not commenting on the story, but Toyota is. The company told the Free Press that its systems, "are not the same as typical consumer electronics. The durability, size, susceptibility and specifications of the automotive electronics make them robust against this type of interference."

Testing for the problem, the story says, "would involve putting vehicles in front of a particle accelerator and showering them with radiation, a step that experts said would help resolve the question."

Automotive is shielded as well as commercial or military aviation or space craft? *cough*bullshit*cough*. Not even close...

Even the European automotive standards for shielding are about twice what is in effect for USA sold vehicles.

Cosmic rays will flip a data bit from one to zero or vice versa. Or make a little brief flash on a tv screen. Not change an entire data stream to a different value. And even if it changed a value in the computer itself, the programming should redundantly deal with it.

I'd rather worry about a bad spark plug driving by, and whacking my computer with a "spark gap" EMP pulse. That would make for a bad day.

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I'm saying electromagnetic interference.

There was an article in USA Today describing how some phones and phone activities effect automotive computers. The one I remember is when Blackberrys ring an incoming call, the "fly by wire" steering on Corollas will cause the steering wheel to shake.

Or the airbags going off. Or touching the electronic ignition key to a phone can sometimes wipe or change the code.

Cellphones can cause car trouble - USA Today

Could electronics be what's causing runaway cars? - USA Today

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Not saying this is the reasoning behind toyota but what I had "heard" was cosmic rays have been messing with airline instruments since something like the 40s. They have systems that double, triple and quadruple check data for integrity. Also there is no way to shield against cosmic rays, hence the triple checks. But I don't pretend to know anything about this kind of stuff.

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Not saying this is the reasoning behind toyota but what I had "heard" was cosmic rays have been messing with airline instruments since something like the 40s. They have systems that double, triple and quadruple check data for integrity. Also there is no way to shield against cosmic rays, hence the triple checks. But I don't pretend to know anything about this kind of stuff.

Think about this really long and hard. Cosmic rays are focusing only on Toyota vehicles?

No vehicle out there has the proper shielding. And just like ReconRat said, it wouldn't change an entire data stream. This whole thing is a crock of shit.

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Think about this really long and hard. Cosmic rays are focusing only on Toyota vehicles?

No vehicle out there has the proper shielding. And just like ReconRat said, it wouldn't change an entire data stream. This whole thing is a crock of shit.

No, I wasn't saying they were focusing on Toyota, just the fact of the rays and planes was my point.

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Wait, you mean they don't use coax to run signal/power to everything in the car? ZOMFG!

As compared to double and triple shielding on everything in aircraft (or fiber optics). Which is actually meant to prevent interference from lightning strikes while in the air. Also works to prevent most everything else.

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