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Most people already carry infotainment devices in their pockets that can be attached to holders and charging ports in the car. Even better if you connect a hub with some SSD storage to keep movies/music.
I feel the whole infotainment thing bundled in cars is redundant and explicitly made to be non-modular so that they can get you into their walled garden.
That is fair but some emissions control software and such is run through the same computer, I agree on the tactile sensation but I wouldn't want to tie critical car functions into a smartphone so you would still need a computer and if you are gonna put a computer in at least some functionality based on spare processing power makes sense
Running it through the same computer is a bad practice, imho. Remember the Jeep Hack where researchers were able to dig into the integrated infotainment system and control the brakes?
I wouldn't want to have critical car functions (or emissions control, regulatory software, ADAS, telematics, etc) depend on the same device that someone might be using to connect to the internet and/or run Android Auto apps. Regardless of whether it's integrated or not.
I guess it might be ok to share energy and some non-critical capabilities with the infotainment system.. but you can do that through a USB-C connection without requiring it be integrated directly in the vehicle. Imho they should be isolated, and what best way of isolating it than being completely different computers?
I dont think cars should connect to the Internet if you don't want them to so live commands shouldn't be an issue but if you are talking about programming preset commands in having the apps be open source would fix that for the most part by adding that auditing layer
Open source software is not bug free. I'd argue there are more vulnerabilities caused by human error than there are caused by malicious actors. More often than not, malicious actors are just exploiting the errors/gaps left by completely legit designers.
Running those open source apps in a separate computer, isolating infotainment from the more critical software, would be an even stronger safety layer, imho.
They aren't bug free but that is the same as closed source and requiring open source would prevent malicious actors from doing as much while also letting anyone who wanted to pentest and granularly access the code have complete access and find as many if not more weaknesses than a dedicated corporate bug hunting team
I agree, which is why I think running those open source apps in a separate computer, isolating infotainment from the more critical software, would be a stronger safety layer.
Them being separated should, imho, be a precondition, so that it can minimize accidents and exploits in cars that might be running software that is not immediately up to date as a result from publicly and well known vulnerabilities being discovered as the code evolves.