I think there’s a colourable argument for trespass - they changed the train software to make the lockout harder to remove. One could argue that the manufacturer only had permission to upload improvements to the software, and they were not uploading an improvement.
A polish-speaking friend of mine has been helpfully blogging about the mess, and it does look like LOTS of legal issues are (slowly) coming down the pipeline, as well as a myriad of social and business consequences. Most of the government agencies are computer or tech-based, due to the technical nature of the incident. But the big crimes in their eyes look to be sabotage and fraud, with the really big (metaphorical) guns being slowly wheeled into position.
That’s a reflection of one of the quirks of the Empire’s legal system: namely, they don’t want to have charges which overlap. Thus, trespass is strictly defined as being somewhere without the owner’s permission, and is entirely distinct from whatever you might do there - which is where the sabotage comes in.
Now, that mysterious GSM modem providing access to bits of the CAN bus that wasn’t on the plans - that may constitute trespass, and definitely constitutes illegal entry.
I think the “upgrade” is still trespass in addition to another count of sabotage - as noted before in the “returning the shopping cart discussion”, you can have conditional permission, and here, the owner’s permission to access the system to upload software is likely conditional on genuine updates being uploaded. Since there wasn’t a genuine update, there was no permission to upload software, hence trespass. The second count of sabotage is because they’ve further broken the train by removing the fix for the first instance of sabotage, which was the original bricking mechanism.
Had that GSM modem been on the plans, however, I doubt the Imperials would complain about it’s existence. What the company did with that access is still nasty, however.
“Yes, it’s there, it’s on the plans, it’s how we do over-the-air updates and fixes.”
“Blocking the reset that bypassed your own company’s bricking code is not a fix.”
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Oh, the train mess gets worse! Now the manufacturer of the trains is threatening to sue the people who fixed the bricked trains, and demanding that the “compromised” trains be removed from service because they have been “hacked” which is, in the manufacturer’s eyes, a clear safety issue.
Manufacturer is also saying it’s entirely justified to brick a train that is repaired by someone who isn’t THEM because they made the train and therefore should have right of first refusal, no matter what the government repair contract says.
Government needs to say “Oh, is that how you want to play? Then you are in violation of the contract you won to provide the trains and need to return the money. Immediately, and with interest.”
“You have gall. I admire gall. If it is used well.”
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“Great, so now your shirt is glowing blue AND dirty yellow. Remind me again why we’re bothering with your planet?”
Well, maybe not. We’re wanting our clothes to look pretty (to us), and they do look pretty to our limited sensory capabilities. We just don’t have the right technology to get the senses to see the fault, and thus, in this respect, I put to you that we’re primitive but not barbarians. And being a primitive not-barbarian is a condition easily fixable with better technology.
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I suppose that’s fair.
At some point, thinking of that house remodeling story elsethread, someone is going to have to have a serious conversation about why your 2”x4” boards aren’t 2”x4” any more.
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The short version is a mixture of “odd measurements” and “marketing.”
“Odd measurements” starts out with how back in the good old days, the boards were 2"x4" before drying and curing.
“Marketing” is the classic marketing things of promising much yet delivering little.
Oh, yeah, I know the history.
I just am perhaps a little too tired to engage in arbitrarily many rounds of “When You Modify The Territory You Change The Fucking Map, Clarence! This Is Not Hard!”, which probably can’t be said of them.
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So, the performative art-destroyers finally managed to destroy one:
Y’know, this is going to be relevant to the darker cousin of Post-Contact Hilarity, 'cause museums lend valuable artwork to each other from time to time.
And someone with an axe to grind is going to try and target the exact wrong piece of artwork.
And shortly thereafter, everyone is going to learn just how real societies treat shit-for-brains Entropy cultists. They ain’t gonna like it one bit.
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“Just think of it as evolution in action.”
Oh, no, some of us are going to enjoy the show, because we agree with how to treat Entropy Cultists.
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Today in “this is some bullshit”:
Boneless wings can have bones, Ohio Supreme Court rules | Wichita Eagle (kansas.com)
(Of course, they’re also not wings as well as not being boneless, so that’s a double fraud…)
((There was also a debate about buffalo wings without a capital letter to indicate that the buffalo indicates an origin location, which ended up in a messy case. Messy because the plaintiff hired a genetic engineer to demonstrate what an actual wing of a winged buffalo would be like, and then it got loose. Shortly thereafter the shit hit the fan, and anything else unwise enough to not look up.))