I am building https://framebench.dev/ in my free time. It comprises of a bunch of utilities aimed at CAN BUS related workflows. Some things that are supported as of now:
- Easily parsing UDS, ISO-TP protocol CAN frames
- Parsing CAN-DBC files
- Building CAN Frame Payloads based on messages in a DBC file.
When it comes to writing small scripts for various utility tasks, I now rely heavily on LLMs.
Additionally, lets say I would like to write something new that I don't know anything about, I now go first to a LLM, or two of them, to get an idea of what would be the best approach. It saves a lot of time that would otherwise go in research and discovery.
But I still don't trust it enough to write production level code. When I am writing something that I know will be released in a product, I steer clear of LLMs.
All of this when I am doing my day job. For my side projects, I try not to use LLMs.
I am building https://framebench.dev/ in my free time. It comprises of a bunch of utilities aimed at common workflows found in automotive industry. Some highlights:
- Easily parsing UDS, ISO-TP protocol CAN frames
- Parsing CAN-DBC files
- Building CAN Frame Payloads based on messages in a DBC file.
This is really early stage. Any thoughts are welcome.
How would such civilization even survive to discover a wheel if it can't recognize lie or misinformation. Even animals are able to lie - that's what mimicry and camouflage is all about.
Imagination is also form of a lie. You are making stuff up in your head. Without imagination you don't have innovation. Without innovation you are stuck in cave scavenging whatever you can find.
Trisolarans did evolve under much different selection pressure that requires effective mass coordination to dehydrate when deemed necessary for civilization's survival. That would probably select for rigid adherence to rules of communication vs critically evaluating every interaction. Or else you'd get a lot of "But am I being tricked into dehydrating to steal my belongings and take my job at the sophon factory? No thanks, I'll pass."
But how would progress work like that? If you are essentially an ant colony adhering to rules, how do you want to invent anything at all? The moment when you start being different through innovation, you are not following the rigid rule system and other members of your species will kill you.
That makes no sense either. Evolution means that this change happened gradually over the time. However the moment you have a group which is always honest and believes you and group which is allowed to lie, then the lying group will take over the honest group. To lie and manipulate is a massive advantage.
There was a period in my life when, just like OP, I tried many TODO apps. With each new app that I tried, I was filled with immense expectation that this finally is the app that will help me get my life in order. Needless to say, the early high was soon filled with inevitable dread, as the items and lists in the app kept on growing and I struggled to keep up with the brutal requirements of life as it is.
There were certain apps which would give the user a lot of options to customize the lists and the items in them. Customize in ways that would make the TODO item the most unique TODO item in its requirement and its quality. Such apps made me think a lot. Or should I say, overthink a lot. I would spend a lot of time trying to find the ultimate, most specific, custom setting for a TODO item that would make it unique and give it a life of its own. Looking back now, I am not sure how useful it all was. Ultimately, I ended up doing some items and not doing others. I cannot quantify what additional productivity they brought to me.
Now I dont use any TODO app at all. I just try to remember things, and I don't feel any different from the time when I was using those apps. Makes me wonder! Was I trying to invent a problem so that I could use these apps as a solution.
Perhaps that's why so many people come back to the old plain paper or a simple text file approach. Perhaps we all realize that it was perhaps not a problem after all and we would still have achieved most of what we set out to do. And even if we didn't, in the end, it doesn't matter all that much because life still goes on regardless.
> Needless to say, the early high was soon filled with inevitable dread, as the items and lists in the app kept on growing and I struggled to keep up with the brutal requirements of life as it is.
That resonates with me.
I also think that OP tried to use his TODO app for habits:
>> Todoist: Great until I realized I was gaming the points system instead of doing actual work. Turns out completing “drink water” 8 times a day doesn’t make you productive.
I use a very simple habit tracker to track the things I want to do regularly, it has no gamification, just a simple notification once per day per habit.
These days I don't use a TODO app regularly; everyday tasks such as groceries, household tasks etc. work fine without it. When lots of tasks pile up and I struggle to keep track, I use a text file. Those are usually short-lived.
I also have a shared Todoist list with my wife, but we mostly use it for as a shopping list, not really a TODO app.
I know of some modern vehicles that will not start at all if you go about removing the telematics unit.
I am not sure how long will it take before you will not be able to buy a vehicle at all without having to consent to being monitored remotely 24x7, but it will happen sooner than later. And this coming from a developing country. Pretty sure it is much worse in the developed world.
I guess the market for second hand older vehicles might see an uptick because of this and might also see a boom in demand for expertise of maintaining and rejuvenating such vehicles.
I am actually fascinated by car electronics. I had heavily modified the software on mine, but it was easier than modern stuff, no encryption of the code, and even the checksum code only triggered a DTC with no consequences.
The only module that was encrypted was the main module, but it if you knew the security PIN you could do what you wanted. It was determined by people that if you observed the jitter of the CAN line fast enough, you could leak the pin via a side channel attack.
But modern car electronics are encrypted, and some probably have security processors that might trigger some irreversible states if you tamper with them. Modern cars are basically as locked up as a PS5.
I am fascinated by what you are saying and would love to read more about it. How did you go about modifying the software of some part of your car.
Having worked in this field, I can confirm that most such parts these days come with chip supported read/write protections for part of flash that contain the code. But even with no protections, I think that being able to modify embedded firmware is a feat in itself.
> I had heavily modified the software on mine, but it was easier than modern stuff, no encryption of the code, and even the checksum code only triggered a DTC with no consequences.
What's the vintage of the vehicle? When I was in the 'car enthusiast' phase of my life ECU "reflash/remaps/tunes" were very popular and still happen on more 'modern' cars.
I’ve been following that thread very closely. Prepping myself to install cruise control but as I have a cem-b in my car, I have to solder to the board.
For the CEM, I have done no modifications, yet. I have however spent a fair amount of time, reverse engineering the AW55 firmware and have discovered virtually all the maps related to the shifting process, pressures, speeds etc. I have a completely understanding of how the firmware works.
To say I am the only one with such a complete understanding and tuning abilities for it, may not be an understatement.
It seems to be coming in multiple waves from multiple sides.
One of those is EUs ISA: First a display, now a warning and later actual interference with the driver.
And with the experiences with the current status are enough for me to be against those systems. The car doing an emergency stop because it saw a 30 sign an an adjacent road makes me not wanna purchase such a car. But there will be some time where no alternatives exist.
>>And with the experiences with the current status are enough for me to be against those systems. The car doing an emergency stop because it saw a 30 sign an an adjacent road makes me not wanna purchase such a car.
Just to be clear - I hate these systems. They are unnecessary, don't improve safety, and increase the cost of new cars for everyone.
But, no system in any car works the way you described it. Even if the car recognizes a speed limit sign from an adjecent street(which happens all the time and I have experienced it too) - the only thing that will happen is that it will bong at you, it won't do "an emergency stop". The more hardcore version of the EU laws around it will require cars to stop applying throttle when going faster than the limit, but literally no legislation proposed or implemented now or in the future requires the cars to actively slow down(ie - apply brakes without your input).
I'm sure you are overestimating what an average car buyer cares about when buying the car. From the world where people pay for listening devices to put into their homes, small tracking devices they can stick into everything and so forth. Maybe if it becomes 'fashionable' to worry about privacy, and even then it'll be because it is popular not because majority will become privacy conscious. Unfortunately.
I think stronger regulations, protections and security is the way forward. Not going against the flow, as that is unfortunately a lost battle.
I had looked into removing the OnStar unit in my first gen Chevy Volt when I bought it a few years ago. I had found the same information, if I removed it the car would have all kinds of weird behavior.
Unrelated to removing telematics, but I've also had it go completely insane when the 12V battery us even slightly low. Chevy puts their cars into a battery saver mode that disables a bunch of systems, then it throws error messages for all the disabled systems needing service.
Makes me really appreciate my 1980s pickup truck. The last owner had the dealership clean out the gas tank and their mechanic forgot to reattach the fuel pump's ground. It was happy, but even that didn't stop it from running.
If you're thinking of OnStar, it's because removing the module breaks the MOST ring. Bypass the ring around the missing module and you'll get some DTCs but everything mostly works again.
I'd imagine India has some pretty insane stuff driving around so that's not surprising. The US effectively did that (arguably even more extremely) 15 years ago with the "cash for clunkers" thing.
There's this bizarre alternative history around "cash for clunkers" where an incentive program has been rewritten as this great evil that forced older vehicles off the road. All participation was voluntary. While internet commentators bemoan the "classic" cars scrapped in the program, these were almost certainly in terrible condition - people with classic cars in good condition know their value (or at least the party taking it as a trade-in does).
In some dystopian future we may have to consent to the DMV to be tracked. They can make whatever rules they want to before they give us permission to use their roads.
AFAICT, it opens up a sidebar pain with a list of links for commonly used LLMs. Each link goes to the login page of each LLM. So I guess it's just a webpage in a sidebar pane?
OP comes up with a problem that he is facing, only to be shown the other side of the story that he may have completely overlooked. It raises questions for OP and their organization.
This also shows that in such threads, on HN, people are more likely to empathize with the employee ( which seems quite fair in this case ).
Hopefully OP got some pointers that they can go ahead and work with.
- Easily parsing UDS, ISO-TP protocol CAN frames
- Parsing CAN-DBC files
- Building CAN Frame Payloads based on messages in a DBC file.