The Twitter OP cannot put links into his main tweet because the algorithm will downrank him.

Isn't it just great?

This is a rabbit hole that beckons.

I guess you could argue that it wasn't a reasonably well constructed car.

The only way I can think of is “don’t buy a car made within the last 25 years”

Most people push button, aim steering wheel, and voila.

One answer to this I would presume is: there are no other new cars for sale without this flaw.

Why there aren't regulations or forced options in the market without these functions (as well as with physical control knobs instead of touch surfaces) is a good question too. There is huge demand for cars without most of this nonsense, yet I don't see that demand being met.

I doubt anyone wants a car whose infotainment system can be improperly updated to cause catastrophic power and engine failure while driving, if given this information and a choice to avoid it.

Because afaik, all the modern cars have this as a 'feature', but there's lots of other nice features they have.

The best of both worlds right now is an earlier modern car where the 2g/3g modem can no longer connect to the outside world. Even better if you can pull the modem, but they're usually up behind a lot of trim.

That’s not what is going on here. These cars are not being intentionally shut down remotely. Instead, a software update for some computerized components of the car was pushed down to the cars and installed with the owners permissions, but that update apparently has severe bugs that should have been caught by QA.

That's a hell of an assumption.

If we're talking about population distributions, I would argue that "having lived in war zones" puts you well outside the center of the curve.

Most people have a variety of things they are looking for in a car they want to purchase, and other factors are more important to them than this one, which they figure probably won't happen anyway. There may be few options that aren't updateable over the air, and those options don't meet their other criteria -- if they even get that deep into considering it, which they probably don't, they just aren't really thinking about it. But even if they did. you don't have the option of buying your perfect fantasy car. I'd like to buy a car with manual mechanical controls instead of touch screen controls, but there aren't that many options for that either, and they may not meet my other needs.

But direct answers:

1. They don’t know that can happen. The salesman doesn’t point it out.

2. They figure all cars will be that way soon so why worry about it.

3. It’s never happened to anyone before so why worry about it.

4. We don’t know anyone who has ever had to flee from oppression in their car so why worry about it. And this is America, if that’s what we’re worried about we’ll stock up on ammo.

Etc

Consumers tend to heavily underestimate the point in time from which cars started absolutely relying on modern electronics.

The fact that this possible proves the point: OTA updates are dangerous and should be banned.

Its the CFAA for you and me, but not for corporate thee.

Sony was the first mass application of "lol nope, we sold a feature we decided to remove. Too bad". If our government cared about citizenry, this should have been a criminal and civil case both, under computer fraud and abuse act. But no criminal anything was done, and users go what, $20, 10 years after the fact?

If I did this, I'd be rotting in a jailcell for 20 years.

Also, adding features on its own is great, but obviously stuff like what happened here can't be allowed to happen, and those Samsung or LG smart fridges that became advertising boards is obviously also not acceptable...

Easy to call the bullshit out, hard to actually define the responsibilities of a manufacturer in a law.

Even better, a "right to modify everything you own, in any way you like". Don't you like the micro-controller installed by the manufacturer? Buy another one, with the correct firmware programmed from scratch, and swap it off.

We are already well into a new era of software, in which software can be programmed by itself, especially Rust. What is missing is money transactions for software companies and their employees located everywhere in the world.

"Devices with no surprises". Retail shops in conjuction with electronics engineers put new controllers in everything and re-sell it. Open source software, auditable by anyone and modified at will.

Programs for every car, every refrigerator etc cannot be programmed by a company located in one place, not even 10 places. It has to be a truly global company.

In other words, I want your device, I don't want your closed source software.

Anything else than words that already have existing meanings. With that motivation, they could have said "... update that exploded all ..." since it's a really severe situation, but obviously we/they should use words that has the right meaning instead.