Auto Manufacturing Down Under

I had no idea.

"Toyota announced it will shut down its Australian manufacturing by 2017. Quite simply, it's cheaper to manufacture elsewhere (especially here in the U.S.) and ship to Australia. The company had been trying to reduce its labor costs by amending contracts, but that got nixed by the country's court system. Toyota was the last of the automakers to announce that it is leaving Australia. Once it pulls out, Australia will have no consumer carmaker."

Via Ace of Spades HQ

Interference and Airbags

Bad - Radios pick up interference from a GPS and gets noisy.
Worse - Airbag picks up interference from a mobile phone and is disabled.

Local Police use iPads

Speaking of tech in the car, our local constables are using iPads in their cruisers.

Another Story about Tech Enabling the Bad Guys

Instead of just disabling your phone, thieves can use your wireless entry and ignition systems to steal your cars. So does this require a minimum level of sophistication, thus the net gain is positive as your run of the mill thief will be stopped? Or are there going to be downloadable executables for script kiddies?

But that won't stop us from wanting more tech in our cars. How did we get around without remote starters, status reports via e-mail, integrated Pandora, Microsoft SYNC, etc? Horsepower is for Luddites.

Via Slashdot.org and Slashdot.org