I don't care what I have to do to attain that. If that means replacing the radio. I will do it. If you brick my car if I don't have a Manufacturer Approved radio, I will go rebuild some grandfathered antique car.
No smart watches, home automation devices, wearable fitness devices, none. I've used some of them at one point or another and in hindsight, while they did bring some benefit (mostly convenience), I found their privacy, financial, environmental costs to be just too high to justify the marginal benefits.
Give me a minimal Linux machine and the vibrant Linux community where we fix each others' issues and I'm a happy engineer and a human being :)
Not really. And, Not everyone have good intentions.
Risk analysis is part of software development. And, we know where it lands once corrupt forces will take over.
Eventually people get used to it. That's the main selling point, always. We are commoditizing literally everything, it's happening under our nose and we just let it happen. Until finally alternatives come and we need to pay double to have something we used to have 20 years ago (conceptually speaking, not technically) for a normal/cheaper price.
Can we boycot this? Yes, by buying products whose pricing model is old and outdated. And that's typically not the shiny one...
Look at the European market: manual gears everywhere. Look at the UK, South African and Autraslian market: the car is inversed, with the wheel on the right.
The car market seems way different than the phone market. It's not an information platform, it moves matter. It's not virtual, it's real. It's not luxury like the phone used to be, people life depends on it already. It's not a free market, but heavily regulated.
And a car is very, very expensive. Second hand is a huge thing. You don't replace your car every 2 years. The market for maintenance and service is it's own industry, and the state is deep in it. Not to mention the the huge quantity of material you need just to build one car.
Finally, if a car fails, a BSOD becomes quite literal.
Farmers equipment is being bricked when they try to repair their multi-$100K machinery. It's the food we all eat that is at risk over some software update or a farmer had to perform necessary repairs by swapping a tractor's ECU.
The classic car community continues to thrive and the aftermarket has plenty of parts available. My daily driver (perhaps not so daily for the past year or so...) doesn't need any software to start and drive, and that's the way I like it. It doesn't have the fuel efficiency or cleanliness of a modern car, but I guess that's just the cost of freedom and comfort for which I don't mind paying.
...and every time someone brings up the "safety" argument, I tell them that motorcycles are still legal.
Yes. Plus: I want it to be like a simple microwave that does what I need: heats for a certain amount of time at a certain power level. 2 physical knobs.
Give me back my late grandma microwave. Two knobs. Nothing more.
Also, in an industrial microwave the magnetron itself rotates, so there's no silly rotating plate business. Just put food in, turn the dial, take food out, and clean up is a snap.
For microwaves, my ranking is inversely correlated with price.
Every bmw, Mercedes Benz, and every luxury car does this today. Millions of them on the road.
And it doesn’t brick the car, just anything in the path of the unapproved device (which guess where your radio sits)
But this is to avoid fake parts from being installed in your car.. so catch 22?
Services grafted on to various appliances and consumer articles are going to be the norm unless we push back. Hard.
LMAO! OK, who's gonna tell him about the ads on the radio?
- be turned off by turning off the radio - are not inherent to the operation of the vehicle
How long will it be until there is an ad that makes it confusing how to dismiss it and uses a police siren to get your attention? How long until someone uses the radio to ransomware your car using a remote code execution vulnerability?
Radio is optional as you can switch it off at any time, change the volume, is not imposed by the manufacturer, and you had the option to listen to your own cassetes and later CDs and digital for 50+ years.
I know it’s what you want but is it preventable? What’s the difference when today there are LED screens across the intersection you are trying to navigate that are intensely bright and displaying moving images? I’d argue that dimmer images in the car would be less distracting. However we appear on track to get both these dismal options. I won’t be buying a car with build in advertising, but given the frequency I change cars, this isn’t really any change.
Could you imagine ransomware on your CAR? While you are driving in it?? No thank you.
As long as companies (or people) are allowed/able to make cars without ads in them, then it will be possible.
If the government mandates, or market conditions dictate (due to monopolies or insufficient demand/profit incentive), that ads will be in cars, then it will not be possible, at least for new cars.
Looking at the uproar from moves by Circut[1] and others makes me question how out of touch some of these companies are.
I think companies need to realise a subscription needs to deliver constant tangible value to the consumer.
1.https://connpirg.org/blogs/blog/usp/angry-crafting-moms-blow...
> The dealer, United Traders, bought the car directly from Tesla at an auction on November 15, 2019. At the time of that auction sale, the Model S had Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving Capability options installed, which the original owner had paid a combined $8,000 for, as listed on the Monroney that Tesla gave the dealer. On November 18, Tesla ran an audit of the software in its vehicles, including the Model S now owned by the dealership, and removed Enhanced Autopilot. The automaker did not inform the dealer of the changes to the Model S, so the dealer sold the sedan to Alec on December 20 believing the car contained what was on the Monroney.
Music and TV subscriptions? Not great (I want to buy something once and own it), but at least those are luxury purchases.
Cars? Not ok - that's critical for me (and many others) to get to my job (bad public transit in the area), groceries, etc.
> “You can easily see a major backlash to all this,” said Gartner analyst Michael Ramsay.
I wonder how one can maximize that potential backlash, so as to cut this terrible idea off as soon as possible.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2021/04/...
Then tell your friends and family about it. Hopefully, at least one or two of them will understand or agree. Even if nobody follows your example, you’ve planted the idea in their heads.
If you have a blog or social media, write about this. Again, it’s unlikely people will change their minds only because of you, but this will plant the seed of doubt.
Over time, this might become big enough to be a political issue. If it affects the driver’s privacy an the car’s safety it definitely can. Then it’s time to call your representatives.
If you're like me you just want a car that get's you from point A to point B reliably and safely. You're probably thinking they will always be an option for a straightforward mechanical machine.
But that may not be the case. Regulators are increasing demands for more and more electronics and a lot of that is driven (I assume) by car industry lobby.
Essentially, the best thing a car industry can achieve is to turn your car into a computer or iphone. This way they can release new models every year and increase the the pressure to buy more.
Right now a 20yo car is still good to drive around and not that much has improved, but what are you going to do it the new software update is no longer compatible with your car? :)
And obviously, more higher complexity.higher failure means more profits on component sales.
That's more o an issue of the big German car manufacturers having outsourced their HW and SW development to suppliers who compete on cost so UX was never in the budget.
Still, I do prefer having physical switches for the critical functions of a car regardless of how polished the touch UX is.
For related 'food for thought', see Cory Doctorow's "Car Wars" which combines car software hacking with self-driving vehicles for a unique near-future sci-fi story.
Edit: downvotes? Instead, you could respond with why you disagree and we can have a discussion.
Do you think there will not be jailbreaks? It has been happening with John Deere tractors: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xykkkd/why-american-farmers-...
A neater hack would be for the jailbreak to delete itself and restore the original software when it detects that the car crashed, e.g. do it on airbag deployment.
You bring up a good point, but that assumes that there are problems with the replacement car software.
People repair and modify their own cars today and most insurers do not object unless their is some kind of gross negligence / unsafe modifications.
The only ways out are social (consumers acting en masse to exert market pressure) or legal (regulation). You can't hack your way around this issue - as the attacker, the strong crypto that exists (and enables things like firmware signing) is not on your side.
My country has (since fall of USSR) been one of the biggest used car markets in Europe, and as cars have added more and more electronics people have started figuring out how they work and developing tools to work around them.
I recently came across (randomly browsing) a device developed here that plugs into the OBD port and disables the AdBlue system (an extra fluid you need to fill up often, which reduces emissions on newer diesel engines, if you don't the vehicle refuses to start). The advertising was targeted at commercial vehicles. It's not illegal for the manufacturer to make, and if the driver of the truck is ever stopped by police they just pull it out. Nobody is any the wiser. But saving ~5% of the fuel costs definitely affects the bottom line of the company.
One of the themes in "Car Wars" is that laws are created which make it illegal to run unapproved software on the self-driving cars.
The reasons cited for the laws are "for safety", but it seems like a thin veneer over the car manufacturer having complete control of the car's software, and by extension the car itself.
Even if unfeasible now, they will be in future.
But it will be a struggle back and forth.
Does car insurance prevent car owners from doing their own maintenance or modifications?
Does the car insurance require the car owner to only go to specific shops / dealerships for repairs?
There have already been examples where hire cars are stuck in parking garages because of no signal to reach their servers.
I went camping recently, so I rented a 4x4 for a few days. I needed to pick up family from the airport, I'll just rent a car for a few hours. Want to go for a hike up north, rent a car for a day.
All I have to do is Lime-style, book one on the app, tap my car on the windshield to unlock and it's mine.
Parking? No problem, the government has designated parking spots for rideshare vehicles.
It could be cheaper, but with my frequency of use, it's cheaper than owning a car.
The main drawback is that it requires a bit of planning: on the weekends, everybody wants a car.
I can count with one finger the companies that have survived multiple waves of this model over the last 15 years. They have "poor" cars, but enough of them, parked in "centralized" locations to ease maintainance, but enough of these locations spread out, great prices for a day, a weekend, etc.
Most other companies that tried this have ended up defaulting the moment they had to repair their first wave of cars.
The ones that still "survive" have gone through defaults, mergers, and have "infinite" amounts of money (e.g. owned by car manufacturers that use them as a way to get people "try" their cars as opposed to a "profitable" business). These are kind of "gimmicks" that you use when you pick somebody from the airport to show them around in a nice car. For everyday stuff, these are expensive enough for competing with Uber, and at that point, I just take a Uber. For one day trips they are also expensive enough that, if you take 3 days per month, owning a cheap car is actually cheaper and more practical than using these....
The idea of a car having the same connectivity is just a minefield of privacy, security and generally anti-consumer issues. I am not optimistic either that pushback against such concerns will force manufacturers to amend these practices.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25934286 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25313480
As long as you don’t have to connect it… I couldn’t find a decent toothbrush that didn’t have Bluetooth, but it doesn’t matter, I just ignore it.
I saw one in the store - it would keep the coffee heated and... bluetooth + app required. gah.
Require owner's/user's consent to connect. If no consent, no connect. Device's offline capabilities must still work and it must not nag you or otherwise use dark patterns to force a consent out of you.
That would be a relatively minor extension to gdpr.
I own my TV, because the house's DNS is forced through pihole and the apps can't upgrade unless I want them to.
I own my car, because it's the kind with no touch screen, no untouchable black box running it. (I miss my first car, released the same year as the C64.)
This is/was inevitable. I really think that we will be able to buy a car whose basic features can be locked/unlocked on subscription, and I am not talking about fancy features, but basic ones like speed, types of brakes, etc. It might not be a bad idea to reduce the price of a car considering you produce only one type and customize it at "runtime". And BTW, it's somehow already the case. I bought a Ford with 100 HP and the seller told me that with "some external help" I can get up to 125HP because the engine is the same as the one for the 125HP model. I was like "what the hell?". Of course the downside is that if you get into a bad accident and the insurance finds out, you're on your own. But that's another story.
A pay as you go model would also be fun. The more you press the pedals the more you pay:)
https://medium.com/illumination/in-2030-youll-own-nothing-an...
Fingers crossed, but realistically one can only expect the worst.
So no I will not love any further encroachment and actively resist it.
Can't wait to submit my new business idea to the next YC round: selling isolation.
Every time someone puts a computer between the user and the real world is an opportunity to extract more control and revenue from the user. The incentives to make your life experience shitty are far in excess of the incentives to make it enjoyable.
I'd actually prefer a leased EV. Battery degrades, customization is impossible and privacy is not very relevant, so why own it if they re going to stuff it with in-app-purchases? The EVs worth owning will be custom made/converted cars.
I have considered getting a Subaru Outback, a Toyota RAV4, and a Honda CR-V. All of them have 'lane-centering' features, but none of them are good at present. And none of the companies say that they will allow OTA (or any other periodic) updates, even though presumably it would be possible to improve performance without upgrading the hardware.
Why do they do this? Because their business model is to keep selling/leasing new cars. They don't want you to have the newest tech on your older car.
If they had subscriptions for features like these, it would give them a different incentive, which could be good in some cases. It might still be bad on balance (like if they charged huge amounts for these features), but there could be some significant upsides.
1. There is a huge power imbalance between a car company and a car "owner" (licensee?)
2. The incentives on the car company side are not aligned with the desires of the car owner.
3. The will be incented to lock you in, a la the google/apple store.
4. You now have sunk costs in a hardware platform. What if you want to change from Honda to Toyota?
5. Almost no one is good at making software, and that includes car companies. One year marketing driven turnarounds won't help with safety.
I think a healthy market would have more OTA offerings, which could be purchased outright (if you planned to have the car for many years) or paid year-to-year. Basically, there has been very little innovation/competition in this space, and Tesla is shaking things up. I see that as a good thing, since innovation and competition will make things better for customers on balance.
That's a huge feature.
OTA updates means:
1. An attack vector that will (when, not if) be exploited by bad guys.
2. An attack vector that will (when, not if) be exploited by the manufacturer itself to make your car worse (Tesla already doing this sometimes).
A secure and reliable car must not be modifiable remotely.
Just going off of your example, they're most likely just going to provide support for 2 years ( if that ), and then say "sorry, the newest version of lane keep assist isn't available for your model". A la Apple.
Macs from 2013 are supported by the newest macOS.
iPhones and iPads from 2013 got the latest security update a month ago.
iPhones and iPads from 2015 and 2014 respectively are supported by the latest iOS and iPadOS.
Classic Apple, right?
will car manufacturer's have replacement brains, such that the car can get security updates?
will we just keep running Linux 4.12 in the year 2038?
1. It requires some level of support from the car makers and they typically don't make significant functionality changes in software updates (eg: my car as a wide-screen aspect ratio but Android Auto displays in a smaller portion. The car probably needs an update to fix that but it's been 1.5 years so that's not gonna happen.)
2. Car makers do not want to give Google even more data and will lobby/restrict access as much as needed so theh control user data and sell it themselves to profit.
CarPlay has a better shot since Apple can strong-arm people into doing what they want but Google is not in that position position car makers since everyone saw what happened to Android OEMs battling to differentiate.
On the other hand, a pricing model that makes the sale price cheaper and loads more of the profit into optional add-ons is great for me. So long as I can get from A to B, I'm happy with zero options and a cheaper car.
My family recently got a new car, and as part of the sale, the dealer activated trial subscriptions for all sorts of things, blah blah this, blah blah that. I don't even remember.
I do like some of the software features, but they're the ones that are not by subscription, such as the thing that keeps me from driving off a cliff. I'm not getting any younger, and don't mind a little bit of help.
A car is a huge investment for many. It is better to own one outright than rent it out.
updates are usually shoved in with no alternative, and they often lead to the need for further purchases down the line
As it is, my car lost value the day I drove it off the lot. Most of the time it sits doing nothing at all, sans getting older and losing more value.
If ever there was a life pain that screams subscription + pay as you go it's personal transportation.
First off, the companies daft enough to try this without enough subtlety would get quickly knocked off the market, and if it doesn't naturally die out, expect a huge Jailbreaking community to arise in the near future. Either way paywalling critical utilities from a car will never work.
No, no, no. I'm purchasing a car for upwards of $30,000 (and it's always more, between dealer fees, the cars just happening to only have the priciest interiors, salesmen and their pushy pitches, interest on loans, etc.); they don't need another $5 a month for fucking software updates.
They can mange it today just fine (my car desires a wi-fi connection so it can get these updates), they're just being greedy if they charge.
