8 ms·

The connected car may be the dumbest idea ever, but it’s not going away

24 points by shawndumas 10y ago

cm3 10y ago
If you accept that modern cars, like game consoles or tractors, do not belong to the buyer anymore as they used because of the impossibility of maintaining them, we can start treating vehicles as leased exclusive-use transportation devices. Then, we can start managing traffic intelligently and save everybody time and decrease accidents. We also can stop worrying about drunk driving. But, if we get rid of ownership of devices, we can have always available and always functioning devices that will arrive at your foot step in 5 minutes. That said, I'm concerned about the avenue of control and monitoring this will provide, but it will happen either way, so we better deal with it properly instead of suing Uber in 3 years. What this leaves out is people who genuinely enjoy driving as a pastime and would face a problem. I don't have a good answer for that except that private pilots also deal with it right now and we might be best served looking there for what did/didn't work.
- rhino369 10y ago
  You own your game console and tractor. You are just legally banned from modding the software on it. Just like you can't modify the reciever on your AR-15 or the transmit power on the 802.11 wifi devices. I don't see any reason you'd need to have common ownership to implement 3rd party traffic control.
  - frik 10y ago
    John Deers newest tractors, Tesla's S and Microsoft's Windows 10 are very different from what we are used to. You simply don't/can't own those products. In reality, those corporations have complete control over the device. Only they can activate it for you, it's dongled to your account, you cannot sell it in aftermarket, they can deactivate it with a killswitch and remove or add functionality over air without your knowledge, they can spy on you and the device phones home without any way to completely deactivate it. It's very wrong. People who want to own things, should be able to own things. We aren't slaves, right? People who want to rent/lease a service, may be able to do so as well.
  - cm3 10y ago
    This may have been true in the past, but when consoles require an internet connection to function, it's a small step to turning it into a dead, black box. Even if it provides an offline mode, it will usually require a periodical sync with an online service and this is where you're at the whim of Microsoft, GM, Tesla, Sony, Ford, you name it. > I don't see any reason you'd need to have common ownership to implement 3rd party traffic control. You don't have to, but once vehicles work in a swarm and do not function stand-alone, you lose the benefits of pretend ownership. I suggested leasing a vehicle and thereby making it clear that you don't own it.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    John Deere is trying to retain de facto ownership of their tractors through an abuse of copyright law. Dissembling about "selling" a product that the customer cannot use as they desire (as long as they don't copy the firmware) is fraud. Also, except for circumventing any DMCA-covered "protection" on the firmware, you are not legally banned from modifying it. Use != copy. At best, you might be civilly liable for copyright violations. The law that restricts what you can do with the AR-15 is (I believe) criminal law. Transmission power is similarly banned. (through executive regulation, I think?) -- As for traffic control, common ownership is not only a terrible erosion of property rights, it also smells similar to border-security-only "security". "we can implement traffic control with common ownership" sounds similar to "we don't need encryption because we have a firewall". The only thing central ownership gets you is a false sense of security.
FussyZeus 10y ago
There are people driving 50 year old cars today back when those cars were utter trash brand new. Every time I read a new story about some horrible thing a couple of engineering students were able to do to a "connected" car with a couple of lines of code and the right knowhow, I appreciate my old 300 even more. If every new car is connected, I'm not buying a new car. Simple as that.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Eventually you won't have a choice. How I see this breaking down is that once the automation and connectivity tech has had a chance to be proven statistically safer, the insurance companies will move in. First, discounts for driving a fully automatic car. Smaller, then larger. Then, normal cars' insurance gets more expensive as the automatics proliferate. Eventually prohibitively so. Finally a break point is reached where the legislators see that allowing comparatively death-trap like normal cars on public roads is irresponsible, and they become banned. Car makers react by eventually ceasing production of manual drive cars by all but special request and for special uses.
  - kardos 10y ago
    It could also play out that the risky poor drivers end up choosing self-driving cars and the low-risk drivers continue to drive as always. Although, a self-driving car would be convenient for overnight driving....
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      On a macro level, there is no such thing as a "low risk driver" when you're comparing a meatbag with all its imperfections against a chunk of silicon who never gets sick or tired, never overlooks the smallest detail, and is constantly rechecking its assumptions thousands of times per second. You could be the most attentive, conscientious driver in the entire world - you will eventually make a mistake, possibly a fatal one.
      - 10y ago
Havoc 10y ago
Can't say I see the problem? The security thing - that can be fixed. Can't be that hard to isolate the brakes etc from the LTE modem in a sensible manner. And I also think there will be tangible benefits. e.g. if you think about live traffic routing on Waze etc. That is still pretty damn primitive in terms of interactions that are possible yet already fairly useful.
- curried_haskell 10y ago
  Can't be that hard..... oh, but it is.
  - Havoc 10y ago
    >Can't be that hard..... oh, but it is. No more so than securing any other piece of tech connected to the internet & the same principles apply. Split it into zones like you would a corporate network & stick firewalls in between to separate the fluffy online stuff from the core systems. That is ultimately where this is going - a mini network of devices on wheels. And if something is really too hot to connect at all then you can always isolate that system completely. Obviously its not going to be 100% fool proof but then again nothing is.
- rcthompson 10y ago
  I don't think law enforcement wants cars' breaks to be isolated from their LTE modems. They're going to want that mythical back door that only they can open.
- Matthias247 10y ago
  It isn't hard, and for most cars the isolation should be in place: The [CAN] Bus for the modem (and that for OBD2) is not the same one as the one that is used for stuff like brakes. They are interconnected through some Gateway device which filters signals, so that you can't manipulate all vehicle state from all positions within the vehicle. Of course it's only some amount of protection (if you are able to compromise the gateway software), but far better than nothing. However some car manufacturers don't have separated networks (due to cost reasons).
lnanek2 10y ago
He's missing some of the capabilities already being demo'ed in labs. Connected cars won't just talk to the internet and stop lights like he mentions in the article, they'll also talk to the road (e.g. beacons with the speed the limit, warnings the road is wet, has construction ahead, etc.) and other cars (e.g. there's a pot hole in 100 meters, there's a slow down, etc.). Long ago their were PDAs before there were smartphones and they weren't always connected to the internet or capable of connecting to each other. Our smartphones are always connected, however, and are capable of so much more. Eventually people will think the same about cars. So features better than "Fitbit for cars" are coming.
hanief 10y ago
Connected is not inherently a bad thing. It can be useful as long as the computer in the car can think and act independently; just like human.
maxerickson 10y ago
Controller Area Network. It seems sort of unlikely that we will be having fiascos like the jeep hack in 5 years. They mostly mitigated that by correcting the stupid configuration of the connection over the cellular network. It's also easy to imagine that new systems will not trust the messages coming from components that have an outside network connection.
sahaskatta 10y ago
The security risks associated with connected cars are getting resolved. Bringing internet connectivity to cars helps improve people's lives in a lot of ways: - OTA updates. The reality of software: there will be bugs. With WiFi or LTE connectivity, you can fix fundamental issues by pushing updates to batches of cars in rolling cycles. - e911. If you were to be in an accident, the vehicle can dial out to emergency services automatically with details about the vehicle's location and condition. - Analytics. Every YC tech company most likely collects some form of data about how people use their product. Why? To be able to discover flaws and improve their offering. Car companies can build significantly better vehicles by collecting bits of anonymous telemetry from vehicles.
- frik 10y ago
  In case of an accident, the cars speaks with the emergency hotline in english. That's how it works in Ford and Lexus cars (current gen) and that's the best solution! (offline text-to-speech solution based on Nuance tech, GPS antenna, connects via Bluetooth to cell phone, if the user agreed) and no phone home or spying
- cm3 10y ago
  As long as control software in cars is held to the same quality standard as that found in planes, I don't mind OTA updates. If it isn't, the risk of critical regressions will be high. I believe before long we'll have an FDA-like body that has to approve software updates or whatever process works for planes. It'll apply to cars, smart heating, smart plumbing, smart wiring, smart kitchens, etc.
- rhizome 10y ago
  Almost all of us already have a device in the car that is updated OTA and can be told to call 911. Car screens should just be dumb bluetooth-connected (or cable, or dock port) phone display mirrors, probably with a manufacturer-supplied app. Attack surface is a thing, there is no state of resolution that can be achieved, especially when people have to own multiple disparate architectures.
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
ape4 10y ago
Can you disconnect your "connected car". eg don't get a 4G account for your Chevrolet.
jakeogh 10y ago
Step by step towards the universal killswitch.

24 points by shawndumas 10y ago

cm3 10y ago

If you accept that modern cars, like game consoles or tractors, do not belong to the buyer anymore as they used because of the impossibility of maintaining them, we can start treating vehicles as leased exclusive-use transportation devices. Then, we can start managing traffic intelligently and save everybody time and decrease accidents. We also can stop worrying about drunk driving. But, if we get rid of ownership of devices, we can have always available and always functioning devices that will arrive at your foot step in 5 minutes. That said, I'm concerned about the avenue of control and monitoring this will provide, but it will happen either way, so we better deal with it properly instead of suing Uber in 3 years. What this leaves out is people who genuinely enjoy driving as a pastime and would face a problem. I don't have a good answer for that except that private pilots also deal with it right now and we might be best served looking there for what did/didn't work.

rhino369 10y ago
You own your game console and tractor. You are just legally banned from modding the software on it. Just like you can't modify the reciever on your AR-15 or the transmit power on the 802.11 wifi devices. I don't see any reason you'd need to have common ownership to implement 3rd party traffic control.
- frik 10y ago
  John Deers newest tractors, Tesla's S and Microsoft's Windows 10 are very different from what we are used to. You simply don't/can't own those products. In reality, those corporations have complete control over the device. Only they can activate it for you, it's dongled to your account, you cannot sell it in aftermarket, they can deactivate it with a killswitch and remove or add functionality over air without your knowledge, they can spy on you and the device phones home without any way to completely deactivate it. It's very wrong. People who want to own things, should be able to own things. We aren't slaves, right? People who want to rent/lease a service, may be able to do so as well.
- cm3 10y ago
  This may have been true in the past, but when consoles require an internet connection to function, it's a small step to turning it into a dead, black box. Even if it provides an offline mode, it will usually require a periodical sync with an online service and this is where you're at the whim of Microsoft, GM, Tesla, Sony, Ford, you name it. > I don't see any reason you'd need to have common ownership to implement 3rd party traffic control. You don't have to, but once vehicles work in a swarm and do not function stand-alone, you lose the benefits of pretend ownership. I suggested leasing a vehicle and thereby making it clear that you don't own it.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  John Deere is trying to retain de facto ownership of their tractors through an abuse of copyright law. Dissembling about "selling" a product that the customer cannot use as they desire (as long as they don't copy the firmware) is fraud. Also, except for circumventing any DMCA-covered "protection" on the firmware, you are not legally banned from modifying it. Use != copy. At best, you might be civilly liable for copyright violations. The law that restricts what you can do with the AR-15 is (I believe) criminal law. Transmission power is similarly banned. (through executive regulation, I think?) -- As for traffic control, common ownership is not only a terrible erosion of property rights, it also smells similar to border-security-only "security". "we can implement traffic control with common ownership" sounds similar to "we don't need encryption because we have a firewall". The only thing central ownership gets you is a false sense of security.

FussyZeus 10y ago

There are people driving 50 year old cars today back when those cars were utter trash brand new. Every time I read a new story about some horrible thing a couple of engineering students were able to do to a "connected" car with a couple of lines of code and the right knowhow, I appreciate my old 300 even more. If every new car is connected, I'm not buying a new car. Simple as that.

Karunamon 10y ago
Eventually you won't have a choice. How I see this breaking down is that once the automation and connectivity tech has had a chance to be proven statistically safer, the insurance companies will move in. First, discounts for driving a fully automatic car. Smaller, then larger. Then, normal cars' insurance gets more expensive as the automatics proliferate. Eventually prohibitively so. Finally a break point is reached where the legislators see that allowing comparatively death-trap like normal cars on public roads is irresponsible, and they become banned. Car makers react by eventually ceasing production of manual drive cars by all but special request and for special uses.
- kardos 10y ago
  It could also play out that the risky poor drivers end up choosing self-driving cars and the low-risk drivers continue to drive as always. Although, a self-driving car would be convenient for overnight driving....
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    On a macro level, there is no such thing as a "low risk driver" when you're comparing a meatbag with all its imperfections against a chunk of silicon who never gets sick or tired, never overlooks the smallest detail, and is constantly rechecking its assumptions thousands of times per second. You could be the most attentive, conscientious driver in the entire world - you will eventually make a mistake, possibly a fatal one.
    - 10y ago

Havoc 10y ago

Can't say I see the problem? The security thing - that can be fixed. Can't be that hard to isolate the brakes etc from the LTE modem in a sensible manner. And I also think there will be tangible benefits. e.g. if you think about live traffic routing on Waze etc. That is still pretty damn primitive in terms of interactions that are possible yet already fairly useful.

curried_haskell 10y ago
Can't be that hard..... oh, but it is.
- Havoc 10y ago
  >Can't be that hard..... oh, but it is. No more so than securing any other piece of tech connected to the internet & the same principles apply. Split it into zones like you would a corporate network & stick firewalls in between to separate the fluffy online stuff from the core systems. That is ultimately where this is going - a mini network of devices on wheels. And if something is really too hot to connect at all then you can always isolate that system completely. Obviously its not going to be 100% fool proof but then again nothing is.
rcthompson 10y ago
I don't think law enforcement wants cars' breaks to be isolated from their LTE modems. They're going to want that mythical back door that only they can open.
Matthias247 10y ago
It isn't hard, and for most cars the isolation should be in place: The [CAN] Bus for the modem (and that for OBD2) is not the same one as the one that is used for stuff like brakes. They are interconnected through some Gateway device which filters signals, so that you can't manipulate all vehicle state from all positions within the vehicle. Of course it's only some amount of protection (if you are able to compromise the gateway software), but far better than nothing. However some car manufacturers don't have separated networks (due to cost reasons).

lnanek2 10y ago

He's missing some of the capabilities already being demo'ed in labs. Connected cars won't just talk to the internet and stop lights like he mentions in the article, they'll also talk to the road (e.g. beacons with the speed the limit, warnings the road is wet, has construction ahead, etc.) and other cars (e.g. there's a pot hole in 100 meters, there's a slow down, etc.). Long ago their were PDAs before there were smartphones and they weren't always connected to the internet or capable of connecting to each other. Our smartphones are always connected, however, and are capable of so much more. Eventually people will think the same about cars. So features better than "Fitbit for cars" are coming.

hanief 10y ago

Connected is not inherently a bad thing. It can be useful as long as the computer in the car can think and act independently; just like human.

maxerickson 10y ago

Controller Area Network. It seems sort of unlikely that we will be having fiascos like the jeep hack in 5 years. They mostly mitigated that by correcting the stupid configuration of the connection over the cellular network. It's also easy to imagine that new systems will not trust the messages coming from components that have an outside network connection.

sahaskatta 10y ago

The security risks associated with connected cars are getting resolved. Bringing internet connectivity to cars helps improve people's lives in a lot of ways: - OTA updates. The reality of software: there will be bugs. With WiFi or LTE connectivity, you can fix fundamental issues by pushing updates to batches of cars in rolling cycles. - e911. If you were to be in an accident, the vehicle can dial out to emergency services automatically with details about the vehicle's location and condition. - Analytics. Every YC tech company most likely collects some form of data about how people use their product. Why? To be able to discover flaws and improve their offering. Car companies can build significantly better vehicles by collecting bits of anonymous telemetry from vehicles.

frik 10y ago
In case of an accident, the cars speaks with the emergency hotline in english. That's how it works in Ford and Lexus cars (current gen) and that's the best solution! (offline text-to-speech solution based on Nuance tech, GPS antenna, connects via Bluetooth to cell phone, if the user agreed) and no phone home or spying
cm3 10y ago
As long as control software in cars is held to the same quality standard as that found in planes, I don't mind OTA updates. If it isn't, the risk of critical regressions will be high. I believe before long we'll have an FDA-like body that has to approve software updates or whatever process works for planes. It'll apply to cars, smart heating, smart plumbing, smart wiring, smart kitchens, etc.
rhizome 10y ago
Almost all of us already have a device in the car that is updated OTA and can be told to call 911. Car screens should just be dumb bluetooth-connected (or cable, or dock port) phone display mirrors, probably with a manufacturer-supplied app. Attack surface is a thing, there is no state of resolution that can be achieved, especially when people have to own multiple disparate architectures.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago

ape4 10y ago

Can you disconnect your "connected car". eg don't get a 4G account for your Chevrolet.

jakeogh 10y ago

Step by step towards the universal killswitch.