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Thousands of Mazdas in the Seattle area are stuck on a single FM radio station

729 points by walrus01 5y ago

CHB0403085482 5y ago
- noughtme 5y ago
  They can't XD. Someone in public radio zero dayed the Mazda infotainment by sending an image in the RDS feed.
  - cbsks 5y ago
    Source? That sounds like a really cool hack if it’s true
    - noughtme 5y ago
      see above https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30268294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30268294 (HD Radio, not RDS)
  - myself248 5y ago
    I don't think RDS/RBDS can do images, can it? I'm pretty sure that's an HD Radio/NRSC-5 function.
  - tedivm 5y ago
    It's not even that they sent an image, it's that they didn't put an extension on the filename of the image.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sodality2 5y ago
  > “At this point I think it’s almost a safety issue. I don’t have my backup camera or my navigation system. It’s just weird.” This seems like a pretty serious issue. Not just the radio. https://www.geekwire.com/2022/youre-listening-to-kuow-like-it-or-not-mysterious-glitch-has-mazda-drivers-stuck-on-public-radio/amp/ https://www.geekwire.com/2022/youre-listening-to-kuow-like-i...
  - jthrowsitaway 5y ago
    These are conveniences. Yes, backup cameras have been mandated for ~7 years now in the US. One can surely still drive safely without looking at a screen.
    - peeters 5y ago
      A backup camera is more than a convenience. It gives you visibility that you simply cannot get without it. Unless the rear half of your car is transparent, every time you back up you do so with a blind spot directly where you're driving. There's a reason these cameras are mandatory on new builds.
    - macintux 5y ago
      Modern vehicles have very high belt lines for crash safety, but that also makes for even larger blind spots.
    - hiptobecubic 5y ago
      Yes, but less safely. Hence the mandate.
    - YLE118 5y ago
      The flashing at full brightness, then dimming, then brightening again before rebooting isn't exactly fun at night.
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    Definitely a safety issue IMHO. It's common on the road to see signs that say "accident ahead, tune to XXX AM" or similar emergency warnings. If you can't tune in to be warned of danger ahead it's a bit of a problem.
- SilasX 5y ago
  Funny you suggest that -- I ran into a similar frustration with a Ford running Microsoft SYNC (voice command system) in 2008. If you hit the phone button while a phone was not set up via bluetooth, that would disable the rest of the sound system (i.e. anything other than telling you it can't find a phone). No matter which button you pushed, it couldn't switch away from the phone. Only by stopping and restarting the engine could you get out. [1] But these Mazdas can't even get out that way! [1] See item 8: http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2008/07/setting-sync-straight-or-sync-sucx.html http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2008/07/setting-sync-strai...
mdoms 5y ago
I have to ask, why do Americans always refer to radio stations with a 4-letter code? Most places are just the frequency and the station name (94.2 The Rock, 98.8 Radio Hauraki, etc) but I'm pretty sure every single time I have seen an American refer to a radio station they say something like "KUOW 94.9".
- alexb_ 5y ago
  The FCC mandates that stations have either a 4 or 3 letter call sign. Ones on the west coast start with K, east of that is W. Since they all have to identify themselves to the FCC with these call signs, it's convenient to advertise the channel with that name as well. Not every station does this, some like to not talk about the call sign at all in their name, but most advertise with it for simplicity.
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    >Since they all have to identify themselves to the FCC with these call signs, it's convenient to advertise the channel with that name as well Not just that, it's required by federal law to announce the callsign once an hour, in both radio and OTA television. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_identification#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_identification#United_... (If you watch sports broadcasts on OTA TV you might notice a subtle overlay pop over the content at the top of the hour) Made more sense in the analog era, when tuning was done by twiddling a potentiometer and you never quite knew exactly what frequency you were on.
    - terinjokes 5y ago
      Though the identification you hear may be that of the originating station in the case of a simulcast. Many years back Clear Channel would simulcast hurricane coverage across most of their stations in Florida, resulting in them all identifying as "Newsradio 610 WIOD Maimi". (Though a YouTube search suggests iHeartMedia now pitch- and speed-bends to say all the legal identifiers very quickly.)
  - oblio 5y ago
ale42 5y ago
The page reads "A few weeks ago cellphone companies — and KUOW — switched to a 5G signal." What's the link between 5G and an FM radio station, anyone has an idea?
- wickedsickeune 5y ago
  None they are extremely different frequencies, plus FM radio is not even digital.
  - srj 5y ago
    In this case it's an HD radio broadcast, which is digital.
    - trelane 5y ago
      It's digital, but still in the broadcasters FM allocation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio It has nothing to do with 5G, which is a cell technology. 5G has low (600-900MHz) medium (microwave) and high ("mm wave"), and is far away from broadcast FM frequencies (USA is 88-108MHz) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/fm-frequencies-end-odd-decimal https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/fm-frequencies-end-odd-decim...
      - srj 5y ago
        My wild guess would be that there's something in the HD broadcast causing the issue. Something as simple as a metadata field being too long could trigger a bug in the headunit firmware. The HD broadcast spec seems non trivial and largely closed off so it wouldn't surprise me that there'd be buggy implementations.
        trelane 5y ago
        That sounds likely, given the easier issues.
- 5y ago
josephd79 5y ago
perfect way to drive up listeners, sell more ads.
walrus01 5y ago
Some further info: https://www.geekwire.com/2022/youre-listening-to-kuow-like-it-or-not-mysterious-glitch-has-mazda-drivers-stuck-on-public-radio/amp/ https://www.geekwire.com/2022/youre-listening-to-kuow-like-i...
greyface- 5y ago
> “Between 1/24-1/31, a radio station in the Seattle area sent image files with no extension, which caused an issue on some 2014-2017 Mazda vehicles with older software,” the Mazda statement said.
- throwaway3kmv9 5y ago
  "radio station in the Seattle area sent image files" If that's not a sign that people are making the simplest things Way More Complicated Than Necessary(tm) I don't know what is.
  - noahtallen 5y ago
    I mean, yes, but at the same time, album art is a pretty normal thing to have along with music. And actual cellular data is just radios, but on different wavelengths and whatnot. So it’s not really a stretch to imagine sending arbitrary data along with music over a radio wave. And some of that data is actually very useful, like the track name or artist name.
    - prmoustache 5y ago
      You are supposed to look at the road when driving, not a screen full of album arts.
      - akira2501 5y ago
        My car has four seats. Sometimes there are people in the other ones.
        austhrow743 5y ago
        My car not only has four seats like this commenters, it also allows you to be in it while stationary.
        5y ago
epivosism 5y ago
Growing up in the 90s you could tell when digitification came in - radios and tvs started to take forever to change stations. Radios used to be mechanical devices - punch a button and the new station would immediately start playing. Same for tvs. I feel like the invisible degradation of responsiveness in TV and radio is an un-noticed contributor to their decline. Most of the time I don't bother even scannig the airwaves when I get to a new town cause it's too annoying. More generally it seems like when industries are growing, there is competition in this kind of area, but later on this dies off. I wonder if there's a structural reason for this?
- oakwhiz 5y ago
  It would be very cool to replace the stock radio with a software-defined radio receiver. I really doubt vehicle manufacturers would be interested in offering that, though.
  - yurishimo 5y ago
    It's also expensive. The infotainment is the gateway to whatever you'd likely want to do and with the emergence of CarPlay and Android Auto, your "radio" is updating constantly. The actual circuit to make a radio work is also tiny. Some early smartphones included a radio tuner in the hardware.
    - Johnythree 5y ago
      The problem however is the RF interference generated by the central processor and the display. Adding an AM or FM radio is easy. The hard part is adding the necessary shielding.
    - PickledHotdog 5y ago
      Some still do. Recent model Motorolas still sport FM radio functionality
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      It can't be that expensive. The Pioneer Supertuner III came out in the 1980s and it is considered a state-of-the-art receiver even today. If they could put it in a < $500 head unit 35 years ago, it should cost a nickel today.
encryptluks2 5y ago
I thought by purchasing a car that I owned it but boy was I wrong. It will hopefully be the last time I spend more than 40k just to rent something from the manufacturer.
pigbearpig 5y ago
Well, maybe they can try to listen to the 99% Invisible podcast in the meantime. Oh wait, https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-virus/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-.... 2016 was apparently a good year for Mazda infotainment systems.
- GrifMD 5y ago
  For those curious, I skimmed the transcript and basically a "%" followed by a "I" in an audio file name cause a weird shutdown behavior on the infotainment system.
  - derbOac 5y ago
    I have a different model car and I've been noticing a similar thing since getting a new phone, where sometimes it will just freeze and reboot when bluetooth is being used, and I can't quite figure out why. I thought it was random but am now wondering if there's a pattern I haven't noticed yet.
  - CSSer 5y ago
    It’s just bad code and even worse error handling. The program runs a heartbeat that lets the rest of the car know all is well when things are running smoothly. When the program hangs, the heartbeat stops. When the heartbeat is interrupted for long enough, it’s programmed to reboot. With that in mind, when the owner queues up the podcast the system attempts to decode an unsanitized string (the podcast title) as if it were percent/URL encoded. When it encounters an error because “% I” is not a valid character reference, it hangs. The worst part is that the car owner was told that a firmware update would “likely” fix it but they would have to pay for it.
    - hodgesrm 5y ago
      This seems like grounds for a class action lawsuit. Owners have been harmed by loss of car function and they are reasonably numerous.
    - jmgao 5y ago
dudeinjapan 5y ago
Growing up in mid 90s Seattle the debate was always between KUBE 93.3 for hip-hop or 107.7 "The End" for alternative (KNDD). This debate destroyed friendships. Getting stuck on KUOW would be a kafka-esque purgatory.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  I was one of the weirdos that listened to 89.5, a station ran by a high school.
  - darknavi 5y ago
    Dude, C89.5 was the shit. No shame in that. What a cool program if you think about it. I wish more highschool was tangible skills like that.
  - dudeinjapan 5y ago
    Run by Nathan Hale I remember it well. My buddies and I at Lakeside were inspired by this to try to get our school to run its own station, when that got denied we looked at options for building a pirate radio station but ultimately decided against it. We ended up building a recording studio at Lakeside instead.
  - RyJones 5y ago
    I still listen to it! Also KBRD 680, when I can. A radio station playing public domain music picked by a parrot? sign me up
- clemailacct1 5y ago
  Remember the T-Man show in the morning on KUBE93?
  - dudeinjapan 5y ago
    Oh man of course I do!!
- tomcam 5y ago
1970-01-01 5y ago
I'm thinking somebody forgot a "." in their station logo and this is the result. >Station Logos use file-naming conventions with version numbers (this is accomplished in the image client). This is useful for storing and cataloging station logo images in the receiver. https://hdradio.com/broadcasters/engineering-support/station-logo-service/ https://hdradio.com/broadcasters/engineering-support/station...
- wyldfire 5y ago
  Seems like the receiver should use values it can trust to index the logos. Some kind of simple hash would be trivial to implement and likely as effective. If this is what could happen when you omit a dot, good luck if there's a malicious payload. Infotainment systems generally won't get the safety critical audits/oversight that other car systems would get.
- mbreese 5y ago
  Probably more related to this line: > It is critical that the station call sign be transmitted correctly. Station Logos follow a file-naming convention that includes the station call sign. This way the receiver can quickly read the call sign and determine if the Station Logo is already archived for immediate display. The filename for a Station Logo includes the station call sign, the program number, and the version number. Sounds like they didn't sanitize their inputs. This is going to be a huge hassle for everyone involved.
  - nomilk 5y ago
    I hope for Mazda's sake there aren't any stations called bobby tables.
    - zeusk 5y ago
      bobby tables; rm -rf / --no-preserve-root
  - JoBrad 5y ago
    Weird that other car models aren’t affected, though.
divbzero 5y ago
> “Luckily I am an NPR listener so that’s fine,” Smith said. Many Seattleites would also be happy if it were stuck on KEXP.
- dihydro 5y ago
  I love the Song of the Day podcast from them. Highlights so many good artists.
whalesalad 5y ago
Not that big a deal, just need to find the UART port and get out your old reliable RS232 cable, reverse engineer the device, then you should be able to change the radio station.
- jaimex2 5y ago
  You can probably just use Forscan to program the change already.
  - consp 5y ago
    Does it now support non ford based models as these are of Mazda's own design and at least the infotainment is not comparable to ford sync which runs qnx (or Windows CE embedded for older versions). The relationship ended in 2015 afaik.
- aksss 5y ago
  You laugh but tapping into the UART on the Mazda CMU is totally a thing. https://mazdatweaks.com/serial/ https://mazdatweaks.com/serial/ I think people have even managed to side load electron apps on it. Mazda’s CMU may be the closest thing to DD-WRT in a car that you can get, but confess I’m not too familiar with what else might compete for that title.
dihydro 5y ago
99% Invisible found out that Mazda has a bug in their radio that cannot parse special characters. See their article here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-virus/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-...
- CSSer 5y ago
  Mazda’s response at the time was pretty disheartening too. Pay us for a firmware update and it’ll probably fix it. The owner said ‘no thanks’ because it was too expensive (and honestly ridiculous in principle in my opinion). Now Roman Mars, the owner of 99% Invisible, releases a separate version of every episode with “Mazda safe titles”
  - pronlover723 5y ago
    Seems like he should do the opposite, Only release versions with Mazda unsafe titles with a note "Doesn't work on Mazda. Contact their customer support here to complain"
    - Talanes 5y ago
      It was the % in the show title that fouled up the Mazdas, so they were already doing that before the fix. Even then it was a nearly invisible problem for the podcast itself, not something that would have been significant enough to investigate and correct for if that wasn't also content for the show.
      - scim-knox-twox 5y ago
        > a nearly invisible problem 99% invisible
      - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
        The % sign broke mazda's infotainment system? That's really bad, I mean the % is even in the basic ascii character set. Unless they try to interpret titles as JS or HTML or something. That too would be bad.
tomkat0789 5y ago
I see several comments expressing that they haven't used the radio in years. I still use mine every time I get into my mid-2000s Honda! I'd be cursing the tech gods if they locked me into a single station! I guess I'm not the only one or nobody would have noticed the bug. My knowledge and following of music is spotty, so radio is key to my discovery of new songs. On long road trips I tend to find good new (to me) songs, as well as get amused by some weird ones. A few highlights from the odd but fun stuff: - Driving through rural Ohio at midnight I randomly seeked to a station playing "Clean Up the Ghetto by the Philidelphia International All Stars. - On a Sunday morning in southern Mississippi I heard some happy old dance music accompanied by the jolly but incomprehensible New Orleans drawl of the DJ. - Driving through West Virginia I heard "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" 3 times on the same morning on different stations. I don't road trip extremely often but surfing the radio is something I look forward to when I do! I usually get a taste of the local culture and a window outside of my urban tech bubble.
rconti 5y ago
Love the self-deprecating humor: "So who, or what, is responsible for trapping these Mazda owners in a public radio echo chamber they can’t escape, even by car?"
js2 5y ago
I have a 2016 CX-9. It’s been years since I looked into this, but the Mazda infotainment system is running Linux. You used to be able to login to it over the USB port, but they locked that down at some point with a firmware upgrade so that you could only get to it over a serial connection that you could get to if you were comfortable removing the console. The UI is developed by a U.S. company and I think is JavaScript based. Ah, here you go: https://mazdatweaks.com/ https://mazdatweaks.com/ (I retrofitted CarPlay support to mine via an upgrade Mazda offered a couple years after I got the car and I think that closed off access to tweaking, but I forget. I’m generally happy with the UI but I wish it booted faster. It’s a good 1-2 minutes after starting the car before it’s responsive.)
- decafninja 5y ago
  IIRC Tesla's touchscreen UI is running React Native?
  - coder543 5y ago
    Tesla uses Qt. Ford is using an HTML-based interface in the Mach-E (and vehicles which get infotainment systems derived from that new generation of infotainment system). I've seen rumors that Ford is using React to power that interface, but I wasn't able to pin down any real sources. This explains to some degree how Tesla is able to have such a buttery smooth UI on such terrible Intel Atom hardware (until recently.. they're switching to much better hardware now). At the same time, the Mach-E interface is not very smooth at all, but it is functionally pretty good. I think Ford should have a leg up on rapidly improving their infotainment interface, given that I would expect React to make some things easier than Qt... but Ford has so far failed to demonstrate that they can effectively distribute OTA updates, regardless of early promises. Hopefully they get that figured out soon.
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      "Buttery smooth" with complicated React UIs is entirely possible if you design it right. Unfortunately too many people just assume that whatever they throw at it will be fine.
donatj 5y ago
My radio in my 2005 Chrysler Crossfire has a weird bug where if I set it to 92.5 KQRS it works fine for about a minute and then suddenly changes station to some country station ~105 that I don’t have as any sort of preset. It’s done this since I bought the car in 2010 and never had a similar behavior with any other stations. It’s really bizarre.
- silverlyra 5y ago
  Might be a bug involving the station's broadcast of and/or the stereo's support for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_frequency
  - donatj 5y ago
    Interesting… I wonder if maybe they are wrongly broadcasting an alternate frequency. I wonder if there’s an easy way to inspect the radio stations “metadata”. I have done some basic fiddling with SDR but am not at all competent.
- can16358p 5y ago
  I have a Ford Ranger 2020 and I never listen to radio, always listen on Bluetooth. For some reason it switches to an AM station (that I never listen to) from my Bluetooth and shows a TA icon (even when TA is toggled off, and it's not even used in my country, and the AM station has nothing to do with TA). After reading this I started to wonder if it might be something similar/related. I even thought of removing the antenna as I never use radio anyway. Have you done anything about your issue that you can recommend?
  - pzduniak 5y ago
    I'm certain the TA toggle is broken in my 2019 Hyundai i30N. Disabled every radio-related setting, somehow an FM station managed to force the system to switch to it from Android Auto every 5 minutes. TA is also not used in my country. Infuriating.
- jhoechtl 5y ago
jbirer 5y ago
This is really needed for me who is a channel change maniac.
jll29 5y ago
We're already in the dystopian world of Brazil - modulo the 27B-6 and Harvey Tuttle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eosrujtjJHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eosrujtjJHA
oasisbob 5y ago
Interesting, see 3.4.2 Data Inputs. NRSC-5 In-band/on-channel Digital Radio Broadcasting Standard: https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/documents/standards/nrsc-5-d/nrsc-5-d.pdf https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/docum...
lightwords 5y ago
There is one amusing bug which might be related to this in Mazda 2018. If you add the same station twice to your favourites(easy to accidentally do) and then you click the station lower in the list the UI kicks you up and down in the list endlessly. This is because on each render it checks your station state and just pick the station with the same name randomly in the list.
foobarbecue 5y ago
Wait, people are using the cell network for car radio now?
YesThatTom2 5y ago
Mazda’s entertainment system has had interesting bugs before. Like… it used to crash if your song title accidentally looks like a printf statement https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brh8jm https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brh8jm
- CSSer 5y ago
  It's interesting because this is all over this thread, but it's not actually a string interpolation issue. It's an issue with percent encoding[0]. They talk about it likely being an interpolation issue at first but end up ruling it out. [0]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-2.1 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-2.1
PaulRobinson 5y ago
From a press release geekwire got: “Between 1/24-1/31, a radio station in the Seattle area sent image files with no extension, which caused an issue on some 2014-2017 Mazda vehicles with older software,” the Mazda statement said. “Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) has distributed service alerts advising dealers of the issue.” The statement goes on to say that “dealers are currently experiencing parts delays due to shipping constraints” and that MNAO plans to “support impacted customers with replacement parts. These customers should contact their local Mazda dealer who can submit a goodwill request to the Mazda Warranty department on their behalf, order the parts, and schedule a free repair when the parts arrive.” The Mazda representative did not reply to GeekWire’s follow-up questions about what actually malfunctioned in these vehicles and what parts would need to be replaced.
- driverdan 5y ago
  What does that mean? Sent image files where? How did those image files impact car radios?
  - jlack 5y ago
    HD radio can broadcast images for the radio station, etc. that is displayed when you are tuned to that channel.
  - tcskeptic 5y ago
    I suspect they are talking about this: https://radiodns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Guidelines-on-Provision-of-Station-Logos-to-Automotive-Receivers-February-2018.pdf https://radiodns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Guidelines-o... Essentially small images sent OTA that allow stations to "Brand" themselves on automotive receivers.
    - dmix 5y ago
      So a bug in the HD Radio app which has some very poor process architecture/sandboxing if it can take over the whole interface.
dncornholio 5y ago
Most car software is rubbish. So far, everything that my car replaces with a touchscreen that used to be a physical switch is a complete downgrade. My car features a D-pad on the wheel that also works if you swipe over it, resulting in bad inputs and causing all kinds of frustration. It's my first new car and I'm feeling like I want my old car back. I seriously hate touchscreen controls and my only physical input is faulty
- the_snooze 5y ago
  It's probably reasonable to assume that car touchscreens are designed more to "look cool" at the time of sale than to actually be usable over the life of a vehicle. Car salesmen get to show off all sorts of high-tech bells and whistles, and that's more immediately impressive to buyers than the long-term practicality of physical knobs and switches.
  - Cxckers 5y ago
    Hopefully, those same customers will know better when coming to buy their next car after that, therefore reducing desire for touchscreen controls and hopefully, their extensive usage
    - the_snooze 5y ago
      I doubt that'll happen. It'll probably take the same trajectory as (smart) TVs: these crappy designs become the industry norm and it becomes very difficult to find alternatives.
      - Loughla 5y ago
        This is the answer. I would prefer to buy physical switches and dials, but the options just aren't there. So I'm stuck with laggy, buggy, bad software and a stupid touchscreen full of features that I will never use. Seriously, who needs to be able to play movies in their car's center front console?
mey 5y ago
I wonder if the FCC is going to get involved. 47 CFR § 2.1(c): Harmful Interference. Interference which endangers the functioning of a radionavigation service or of other safety services or seriously degrades, obstructs, or repeatedly interrupts a radiocommunication service operating in accordance with [the ITU] Radio Regulations.
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  It's not the signal that's causing the issue, but the crap software interpreting it.
tomhunters 5y ago
Are all of our Mazda cars are sluggish?
Beta-7 5y ago
If something like this was present on a web app it would have 10 different tests so it wouldn't happen. How come the car/infotainment system isn't subject to the same requirements like other softwares? Is there something obvious i am missing?
- jakear 5y ago
  This is the first time I’ve seen “a web app” used as a shining beacon of stability. In short, you can’t test a negative. It’s easy to test “when the car receives a transmission in X format, Y happens”, but not “there does not exist a transmission format X such that when the car receives it, Y happens”. Memory safe languages can help here, as would fuzzing. But the only true test would be a formal verification, which is a real pain (and even then you’re only testing against a single Y). What you really want is “there does not exist any transmission that could result in any bad behavior”, which can only really be tested in that large scale fuzzer we call Production.
  - Beta-7 5y ago
    Fair enough, what i meant by "web app" was a project with a 100th of the budget of a car company.
jlkuester7 5y ago
Talk about a captive audience....
danrocks 5y ago
Mazda MX-5 Miata. Best card I've ever had.
gtirloni 5y ago
>A few weeks ago cellphone companies — and KUOW — switched to a 5G signal. But many cars are still only equipped with 3G and glitch when faced with the newer 5G Sorry but what? FM radio station switched to 5G phone standard? And supposedly the 3G receiver in the car is affected? shakes head
- nonfamous 5y ago
  It’s not what happened in this situation, but it’s not hard to imagine one that might. Perhaps the receiver software requires a regular data update via the 3G network, and when 3G shuts down the receiver doesn’t work anymore?
kevinventullo 5y ago
I recently went car shopping and the only aspect of the software I was interested in was how hard it was to activate Apple CarPlay. My assumption is that Apple/Google will have infinitely higher software quality standards than any car manufacturer, so I’ll outsource to them as early as possible.
- delusional 5y ago
  Seeing the quality of android auto, I'm not sure you're right.
  - kevinventullo 5y ago
    Fair enough, I’ve only used Apple CarPlay and assumed Android Auto was comparable.
- yellow_postit 5y ago
  Apple CarPlay had a recent bug for a few months that broke wireless connection unless you did a full reset (recently patched). Great when it works though.
geephroh 5y ago
And more info from the Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thanks-to-a-glitch-some-seattle-mazda-drivers-cant-tune-their-radios-away-from-kuow/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thanks-to-a-glitch...
sircastor 5y ago
I read a lot of people in these sorts of threads mention how they hate their car infotainment systems, and how they just wish it were Android Auto or CarPlay. I wanted to offer a little insight into it. I worked for an Auto Manufacturer for 7 years. Infotainment systems are developed as a partnership (usually) between a vendor and the auto company. The hardware is often developed by a different company, I like to think of them as old-school stereo manufacturers: Bosch, Pioneer, etc. The development cycle is somewhere between 12-36 months, and that's still quite a bit before the vehicle actually rolls off the assembly line. Many customers like CarPlay or Android Auto. Both represent a cost to the manufacturer, and require ceding the design space to another company which is very visible to the customer. Brand is a big deal for car makers, and giving that space up is hard.
- CSSer 5y ago
  > are developed as a partnership (usually) between a vendor and the auto company. Depending on the manufacturer this is true for most of the car nowadays, right? I watched an engineering teardown of the new all-electric Mustang Mach E recently and they even used different vendors (which produced parts of vastly different calibers of quality) for the rear and front motors[0]. Point taken about ceding the branding power to the vendor, especially when that vendor is big and scary like Apple or Google. [0]: https://youtu.be/jWOPMtejm_Y?t=768 https://youtu.be/jWOPMtejm_Y?t=768
  - sircastor 5y ago
    >Depending on the manufacturer this is true for most of the car nowadays, right? I believe so. I was thinking specifically of the OS work and how it would be contracted out to a provider, and the hardware for the Infotainment would go out to another. > I watched an engineering teardown of the new all-electric Mustang Mach E recently and they even used different vendors (which produced parts of vastly different calibers of quality) for the rear and front motors[0]. One of the interesting things about EVs is that a lot of traditional OEMs don't have the expertise in-house, so things like motors (which would normally be something in-house) end up being designed and manufactured by someone else.
- 5y ago
UncleOxidant 5y ago
If your car radio ends up stuck on an FM station you could do a lot worse than having it get stuck on KUOW.
grej 5y ago
I would have loved to hear the Car Talk guys chat about this one. Rest in Peace Tom Magliozzi.
gigel82 5y ago
We own a 2014 CX-5 near Seattle, and it doesn't appear to have been affected. Perhaps you needed to be tuned to that station in that time-frame to get the bug.
- wvenable 5y ago
  The 2014 model has an older infotainment unit. It's a completely different implementation from later models.
thebeardisred 5y ago
My initial bet would be that something is causing a kernel panic in the control plane side of the radio. This is then leading to the UI not being able to pass any messages before the system locks up. Watchdog timer expires and resets everything. This is based on the line "...causing radios to reboot when they connect to KUOW’s 94.9 FM signal."
dopamean 5y ago
i wonder if they can send a new image that fixes the problem
novaurora 5y ago
Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oR79ja1u-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oR79ja1u-o
xwz7611 5y ago
My Mazda3 2019 now shows an mpg at about 15, yet with a full tank of gas I can still drive about 300 miles.
robertlagrant 5y ago
This headline is just the best.
neallindsay 5y ago
The Ars Technica story has more useful info: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/radio-station-snafu-in-seattle-bricks-some-mazda-infotainment-systems/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/radio-station-snafu-in-... Apparently the radio evaluates image files based on the extension on their name, and not by looking at the image headers. If you send a radio station logo with no file extension it gets stuck in a permanent reboot loop. :-(
8bitsrule 5y ago
Yet another of the disadvantages of switching from analog to digital ;->
minusSeven 5y ago
So could this be because of 5G because if I remember right the latest 5G roll out caused a lot of problems for airlines?
glonq 5y ago
I had a 2014 mazda with this system; it's my son's car now. The infotainment system is not great. Lots of little bugs and quirks and uglies, so I'm not surprised that it suffered this glitch.
coleca 5y ago
As someone who just traded in their 2019 Mazda CX-5, this doesn't surprise me at all. I couldn't wait for my lease to end. The car was great, but the infotainment system was horrible. It would take 5+ minutes to boot up from a cold start during which time you couldn't change the volume, mute the radio, change inputs, or even change the station. I learned quickly to always change the station off Howard Stern when exiting the car in case my daughter was a passenger on the next trip. On long trips you would have to three finger reset the head-unit because it would just stop responding, play at full volume, only play out of one channel after a GPS announcement, and other random oddities. I brought it back to the dealer multiple times to get firmware updates only to be told "Yeah that's how it was designed".
zucked 5y ago
Sounds like an excellent time to do a pledge drive with NO ESCAPE.
AdamN 5y ago
KUOW ftw!
w0mbat 5y ago
A remember a problem in the past where use of % in metadata would bork some car radios due to an unescaped string being passed to printf. The Sirius menus on my wife’s Subaru have been broken for years due to some problem with the guide format changing. Sirius don’t care because you can still tune to any of their stations with the dial, but there are hundreds.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  That was also Mazda. It caused some trouble for 99% Invisible listeners: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-virus/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-...
Zigurd 5y ago
This is an example of how Tesla gambled and won in developing an integrated information display. One might think making an electric car is challenging enough that not relying on an outside supplier for the entertainment system is foolishly enlarging the problem. Instead it was legacy car makers with many separate systems with separate hardware and software that ended up victims of a chip shortage and lack up OTA upgrades.
rejor121 5y ago
Just give me back my old radio with a volume and seek knob. Seriously, these are problems created by tech and we don’t need them.
emiliosic 5y ago
The 5G twist is pure BS. These cars (Circa 2016) have no modem that connects directly to the head-unit, and if they do are a separate module that's 3G only. My theory is that the radio station sent some unicode characters on their RDS feed that crashes the system, it probably cached it (These head-units run on Linux, and is well known in some hacker circles), so now it's in some kind of loop. It won't be the first time that RDS feeds with some unusual combinations crash the head-units. If Mazda has a new firmware, these can be upgraded via the USB ports by booting into a recovery mode.
jimmaswell 5y ago
Do modern car radios use solid state storage so this can't be fixed by removing the battery?
dillondoyle 5y ago
I love reading about all these parsing image 'hacks' or I guess here passing empty or null values. Just imagine a smart car + NSO software. Could turn it into a moving surveillance machine. Or if can control it maybe cause some 'accidental deaths' looks like a single car fatality. I would hate to see electronic warfare break out it seems like everything will just be totally bricked.
minimilian 5y ago
Do all new cars have software?
ljp_206 5y ago
KUOW with no KEXP is a tough fate in Seattle, but not the worst, though, that's ignoring losing all other functions of your stereo. Interesting that this essentially seems to brick the unit and no reset can fix it.
betimsl 5y ago
I don't see this as a problem. Most of Mazda customers listen to NPR anyways.
- avgDev 5y ago
  Source?
  - betimsl 5y ago
    Oh come on, it was more as a joke. But there are certain kind of people who buy Mazdas, usually upper middle class that appreciate the quality Mazda provides. Their cars are reliable and most ergonomic of all. It's not hard to see that most of these people listen to NPR. No?
Yes2020 5y ago
Honda Ridge lines ( older style) navigation system's clocks went out to lunch in January, 2022 and will not show correct time until GPS satellites do some sort of time sync in August. No fix until that happens.
parasense 5y ago
Folks are saying the radio station transmitted side-band data that resulted in the effective bricking. Others are saying that's not the issue, it's the software/firmware in the radios. So looking at the specification here: https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/documents/standards/nrsc-5-d/reference-docs/1020s.pdf https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/docum... ... On page 20, We see that images need not have an extension, because the transport stream is required to specify a mime-type. If one can prove that somehow that mime-type was not set, then perhaps the radio station and/or the technology provider for their broadcast transmission equipment could be held liable. I'm not sure how the process of discovery would look for something like that. Seems more likely Mazda could be in the position to sustain significant warranty claims in court if their hardware is found to be defective, or their testing & QE procedures to be lacking.

729 points by walrus01 5y ago

noughtme 5y ago
They can't XD. Someone in public radio zero dayed the Mazda infotainment by sending an image in the RDS feed.
- cbsks 5y ago
  Source? That sounds like a really cool hack if it’s true
  - noughtme 5y ago
    see above https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30268294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30268294 (HD Radio, not RDS)
- myself248 5y ago
  I don't think RDS/RBDS can do images, can it? I'm pretty sure that's an HD Radio/NRSC-5 function.
- tedivm 5y ago
  It's not even that they sent an image, it's that they didn't put an extension on the filename of the image.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sodality2 5y ago
> “At this point I think it’s almost a safety issue. I don’t have my backup camera or my navigation system. It’s just weird.” This seems like a pretty serious issue. Not just the radio. https://www.geekwire.com/2022/youre-listening-to-kuow-like-it-or-not-mysterious-glitch-has-mazda-drivers-stuck-on-public-radio/amp/ https://www.geekwire.com/2022/youre-listening-to-kuow-like-i...
- jthrowsitaway 5y ago
  These are conveniences. Yes, backup cameras have been mandated for ~7 years now in the US. One can surely still drive safely without looking at a screen.
  - peeters 5y ago
    A backup camera is more than a convenience. It gives you visibility that you simply cannot get without it. Unless the rear half of your car is transparent, every time you back up you do so with a blind spot directly where you're driving. There's a reason these cameras are mandatory on new builds.
  - macintux 5y ago
    Modern vehicles have very high belt lines for crash safety, but that also makes for even larger blind spots.
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    Yes, but less safely. Hence the mandate.
  - YLE118 5y ago
    The flashing at full brightness, then dimming, then brightening again before rebooting isn't exactly fun at night.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Definitely a safety issue IMHO. It's common on the road to see signs that say "accident ahead, tune to XXX AM" or similar emergency warnings. If you can't tune in to be warned of danger ahead it's a bit of a problem.
SilasX 5y ago
Funny you suggest that -- I ran into a similar frustration with a Ford running Microsoft SYNC (voice command system) in 2008. If you hit the phone button while a phone was not set up via bluetooth, that would disable the rest of the sound system (i.e. anything other than telling you it can't find a phone). No matter which button you pushed, it couldn't switch away from the phone. Only by stopping and restarting the engine could you get out. [1] But these Mazdas can't even get out that way! [1] See item 8: http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2008/07/setting-sync-straight-or-sync-sucx.html http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2008/07/setting-sync-strai...

I have to ask, why do Americans always refer to radio stations with a 4-letter code? Most places are just the frequency and the station name (94.2 The Rock, 98.8 Radio Hauraki, etc) but I'm pretty sure every single time I have seen an American refer to a radio station they say something like "KUOW 94.9".

alexb_ 5y ago
The FCC mandates that stations have either a 4 or 3 letter call sign. Ones on the west coast start with K, east of that is W. Since they all have to identify themselves to the FCC with these call signs, it's convenient to advertise the channel with that name as well. Not every station does this, some like to not talk about the call sign at all in their name, but most advertise with it for simplicity.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  >Since they all have to identify themselves to the FCC with these call signs, it's convenient to advertise the channel with that name as well Not just that, it's required by federal law to announce the callsign once an hour, in both radio and OTA television. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_identification#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_identification#United_... (If you watch sports broadcasts on OTA TV you might notice a subtle overlay pop over the content at the top of the hour) Made more sense in the analog era, when tuning was done by twiddling a potentiometer and you never quite knew exactly what frequency you were on.
  - terinjokes 5y ago
    Though the identification you hear may be that of the originating station in the case of a simulcast. Many years back Clear Channel would simulcast hurricane coverage across most of their stations in Florida, resulting in them all identifying as "Newsradio 610 WIOD Maimi". (Though a YouTube search suggests iHeartMedia now pitch- and speed-bends to say all the legal identifiers very quickly.)
- oblio 5y ago

ale42 5y ago

The page reads "A few weeks ago cellphone companies — and KUOW — switched to a 5G signal." What's the link between 5G and an FM radio station, anyone has an idea?

wickedsickeune 5y ago
None they are extremely different frequencies, plus FM radio is not even digital.
- srj 5y ago
  In this case it's an HD radio broadcast, which is digital.
  - trelane 5y ago
    It's digital, but still in the broadcasters FM allocation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio It has nothing to do with 5G, which is a cell technology. 5G has low (600-900MHz) medium (microwave) and high ("mm wave"), and is far away from broadcast FM frequencies (USA is 88-108MHz) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/fm-frequencies-end-odd-decimal https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/fm-frequencies-end-odd-decim...
    - srj 5y ago
      My wild guess would be that there's something in the HD broadcast causing the issue. Something as simple as a metadata field being too long could trigger a bug in the headunit firmware. The HD broadcast spec seems non trivial and largely closed off so it wouldn't surprise me that there'd be buggy implementations.
      - trelane 5y ago
        That sounds likely, given the easier issues.
5y ago

josephd79 5y ago

perfect way to drive up listeners, sell more ads.

walrus01 5y ago

Some further info: https://www.geekwire.com/2022/youre-listening-to-kuow-like-it-or-not-mysterious-glitch-has-mazda-drivers-stuck-on-public-radio/amp/ https://www.geekwire.com/2022/youre-listening-to-kuow-like-i...

greyface- 5y ago

> “Between 1/24-1/31, a radio station in the Seattle area sent image files with no extension, which caused an issue on some 2014-2017 Mazda vehicles with older software,” the Mazda statement said.

throwaway3kmv9 5y ago
"radio station in the Seattle area sent image files" If that's not a sign that people are making the simplest things Way More Complicated Than Necessary(tm) I don't know what is.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  I mean, yes, but at the same time, album art is a pretty normal thing to have along with music. And actual cellular data is just radios, but on different wavelengths and whatnot. So it’s not really a stretch to imagine sending arbitrary data along with music over a radio wave. And some of that data is actually very useful, like the track name or artist name.
  - prmoustache 5y ago
    You are supposed to look at the road when driving, not a screen full of album arts.
    - akira2501 5y ago
      My car has four seats. Sometimes there are people in the other ones.
      - austhrow743 5y ago
        My car not only has four seats like this commenters, it also allows you to be in it while stationary.
        5y ago

epivosism 5y ago

Growing up in the 90s you could tell when digitification came in - radios and tvs started to take forever to change stations. Radios used to be mechanical devices - punch a button and the new station would immediately start playing. Same for tvs. I feel like the invisible degradation of responsiveness in TV and radio is an un-noticed contributor to their decline. Most of the time I don't bother even scannig the airwaves when I get to a new town cause it's too annoying. More generally it seems like when industries are growing, there is competition in this kind of area, but later on this dies off. I wonder if there's a structural reason for this?

oakwhiz 5y ago
It would be very cool to replace the stock radio with a software-defined radio receiver. I really doubt vehicle manufacturers would be interested in offering that, though.
- yurishimo 5y ago
  It's also expensive. The infotainment is the gateway to whatever you'd likely want to do and with the emergence of CarPlay and Android Auto, your "radio" is updating constantly. The actual circuit to make a radio work is also tiny. Some early smartphones included a radio tuner in the hardware.
  - Johnythree 5y ago
    The problem however is the RF interference generated by the central processor and the display. Adding an AM or FM radio is easy. The hard part is adding the necessary shielding.
  - PickledHotdog 5y ago
    Some still do. Recent model Motorolas still sport FM radio functionality
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    It can't be that expensive. The Pioneer Supertuner III came out in the 1980s and it is considered a state-of-the-art receiver even today. If they could put it in a < $500 head unit 35 years ago, it should cost a nickel today.

encryptluks2 5y ago

I thought by purchasing a car that I owned it but boy was I wrong. It will hopefully be the last time I spend more than 40k just to rent something from the manufacturer.

pigbearpig 5y ago

Well, maybe they can try to listen to the 99% Invisible podcast in the meantime. Oh wait, https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-virus/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-.... 2016 was apparently a good year for Mazda infotainment systems.

GrifMD 5y ago
For those curious, I skimmed the transcript and basically a "%" followed by a "I" in an audio file name cause a weird shutdown behavior on the infotainment system.
- derbOac 5y ago
  I have a different model car and I've been noticing a similar thing since getting a new phone, where sometimes it will just freeze and reboot when bluetooth is being used, and I can't quite figure out why. I thought it was random but am now wondering if there's a pattern I haven't noticed yet.
- CSSer 5y ago
  It’s just bad code and even worse error handling. The program runs a heartbeat that lets the rest of the car know all is well when things are running smoothly. When the program hangs, the heartbeat stops. When the heartbeat is interrupted for long enough, it’s programmed to reboot. With that in mind, when the owner queues up the podcast the system attempts to decode an unsanitized string (the podcast title) as if it were percent/URL encoded. When it encounters an error because “% I” is not a valid character reference, it hangs. The worst part is that the car owner was told that a firmware update would “likely” fix it but they would have to pay for it.
  - hodgesrm 5y ago
    This seems like grounds for a class action lawsuit. Owners have been harmed by loss of car function and they are reasonably numerous.
  - jmgao 5y ago

dudeinjapan 5y ago

Growing up in mid 90s Seattle the debate was always between KUBE 93.3 for hip-hop or 107.7 "The End" for alternative (KNDD). This debate destroyed friendships. Getting stuck on KUOW would be a kafka-esque purgatory.

notreallyserio 5y ago
I was one of the weirdos that listened to 89.5, a station ran by a high school.
- darknavi 5y ago
  Dude, C89.5 was the shit. No shame in that. What a cool program if you think about it. I wish more highschool was tangible skills like that.
- dudeinjapan 5y ago
  Run by Nathan Hale I remember it well. My buddies and I at Lakeside were inspired by this to try to get our school to run its own station, when that got denied we looked at options for building a pirate radio station but ultimately decided against it. We ended up building a recording studio at Lakeside instead.
- RyJones 5y ago
  I still listen to it! Also KBRD 680, when I can. A radio station playing public domain music picked by a parrot? sign me up
clemailacct1 5y ago
Remember the T-Man show in the morning on KUBE93?
- dudeinjapan 5y ago
  Oh man of course I do!!
tomcam 5y ago

1970-01-01 5y ago

I'm thinking somebody forgot a "." in their station logo and this is the result. >Station Logos use file-naming conventions with version numbers (this is accomplished in the image client). This is useful for storing and cataloging station logo images in the receiver. https://hdradio.com/broadcasters/engineering-support/station-logo-service/ https://hdradio.com/broadcasters/engineering-support/station...

wyldfire 5y ago
Seems like the receiver should use values it can trust to index the logos. Some kind of simple hash would be trivial to implement and likely as effective. If this is what could happen when you omit a dot, good luck if there's a malicious payload. Infotainment systems generally won't get the safety critical audits/oversight that other car systems would get.
mbreese 5y ago
Probably more related to this line: > It is critical that the station call sign be transmitted correctly. Station Logos follow a file-naming convention that includes the station call sign. This way the receiver can quickly read the call sign and determine if the Station Logo is already archived for immediate display. The filename for a Station Logo includes the station call sign, the program number, and the version number. Sounds like they didn't sanitize their inputs. This is going to be a huge hassle for everyone involved.
- nomilk 5y ago
  I hope for Mazda's sake there aren't any stations called bobby tables.
  - zeusk 5y ago
    bobby tables; rm -rf / --no-preserve-root
- JoBrad 5y ago
  Weird that other car models aren’t affected, though.

divbzero 5y ago

> “Luckily I am an NPR listener so that’s fine,” Smith said. Many Seattleites would also be happy if it were stuck on KEXP.

dihydro 5y ago
I love the Song of the Day podcast from them. Highlights so many good artists.

whalesalad 5y ago

Not that big a deal, just need to find the UART port and get out your old reliable RS232 cable, reverse engineer the device, then you should be able to change the radio station.

jaimex2 5y ago
You can probably just use Forscan to program the change already.
- consp 5y ago
  Does it now support non ford based models as these are of Mazda's own design and at least the infotainment is not comparable to ford sync which runs qnx (or Windows CE embedded for older versions). The relationship ended in 2015 afaik.
aksss 5y ago
You laugh but tapping into the UART on the Mazda CMU is totally a thing. https://mazdatweaks.com/serial/ https://mazdatweaks.com/serial/ I think people have even managed to side load electron apps on it. Mazda’s CMU may be the closest thing to DD-WRT in a car that you can get, but confess I’m not too familiar with what else might compete for that title.

dihydro 5y ago

99% Invisible found out that Mazda has a bug in their radio that cannot parse special characters. See their article here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-virus/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-...

CSSer 5y ago
Mazda’s response at the time was pretty disheartening too. Pay us for a firmware update and it’ll probably fix it. The owner said ‘no thanks’ because it was too expensive (and honestly ridiculous in principle in my opinion). Now Roman Mars, the owner of 99% Invisible, releases a separate version of every episode with “Mazda safe titles”
- pronlover723 5y ago
  Seems like he should do the opposite, Only release versions with Mazda unsafe titles with a note "Doesn't work on Mazda. Contact their customer support here to complain"
  - Talanes 5y ago
    It was the % in the show title that fouled up the Mazdas, so they were already doing that before the fix. Even then it was a nearly invisible problem for the podcast itself, not something that would have been significant enough to investigate and correct for if that wasn't also content for the show.
    - scim-knox-twox 5y ago
      > a nearly invisible problem 99% invisible
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      The % sign broke mazda's infotainment system? That's really bad, I mean the % is even in the basic ascii character set. Unless they try to interpret titles as JS or HTML or something. That too would be bad.

tomkat0789 5y ago

I see several comments expressing that they haven't used the radio in years. I still use mine every time I get into my mid-2000s Honda! I'd be cursing the tech gods if they locked me into a single station! I guess I'm not the only one or nobody would have noticed the bug. My knowledge and following of music is spotty, so radio is key to my discovery of new songs. On long road trips I tend to find good new (to me) songs, as well as get amused by some weird ones. A few highlights from the odd but fun stuff: - Driving through rural Ohio at midnight I randomly seeked to a station playing "Clean Up the Ghetto by the Philidelphia International All Stars. - On a Sunday morning in southern Mississippi I heard some happy old dance music accompanied by the jolly but incomprehensible New Orleans drawl of the DJ. - Driving through West Virginia I heard "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" 3 times on the same morning on different stations. I don't road trip extremely often but surfing the radio is something I look forward to when I do! I usually get a taste of the local culture and a window outside of my urban tech bubble.

rconti 5y ago

Love the self-deprecating humor: "So who, or what, is responsible for trapping these Mazda owners in a public radio echo chamber they can’t escape, even by car?"

js2 5y ago

I have a 2016 CX-9. It’s been years since I looked into this, but the Mazda infotainment system is running Linux. You used to be able to login to it over the USB port, but they locked that down at some point with a firmware upgrade so that you could only get to it over a serial connection that you could get to if you were comfortable removing the console. The UI is developed by a U.S. company and I think is JavaScript based. Ah, here you go: https://mazdatweaks.com/ https://mazdatweaks.com/ (I retrofitted CarPlay support to mine via an upgrade Mazda offered a couple years after I got the car and I think that closed off access to tweaking, but I forget. I’m generally happy with the UI but I wish it booted faster. It’s a good 1-2 minutes after starting the car before it’s responsive.)

decafninja 5y ago
IIRC Tesla's touchscreen UI is running React Native?
- coder543 5y ago
  Tesla uses Qt. Ford is using an HTML-based interface in the Mach-E (and vehicles which get infotainment systems derived from that new generation of infotainment system). I've seen rumors that Ford is using React to power that interface, but I wasn't able to pin down any real sources. This explains to some degree how Tesla is able to have such a buttery smooth UI on such terrible Intel Atom hardware (until recently.. they're switching to much better hardware now). At the same time, the Mach-E interface is not very smooth at all, but it is functionally pretty good. I think Ford should have a leg up on rapidly improving their infotainment interface, given that I would expect React to make some things easier than Qt... but Ford has so far failed to demonstrate that they can effectively distribute OTA updates, regardless of early promises. Hopefully they get that figured out soon.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    "Buttery smooth" with complicated React UIs is entirely possible if you design it right. Unfortunately too many people just assume that whatever they throw at it will be fine.

donatj 5y ago

My radio in my 2005 Chrysler Crossfire has a weird bug where if I set it to 92.5 KQRS it works fine for about a minute and then suddenly changes station to some country station ~105 that I don’t have as any sort of preset. It’s done this since I bought the car in 2010 and never had a similar behavior with any other stations. It’s really bizarre.

silverlyra 5y ago
Might be a bug involving the station's broadcast of and/or the stereo's support for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_frequency
- donatj 5y ago
  Interesting… I wonder if maybe they are wrongly broadcasting an alternate frequency. I wonder if there’s an easy way to inspect the radio stations “metadata”. I have done some basic fiddling with SDR but am not at all competent.
can16358p 5y ago
I have a Ford Ranger 2020 and I never listen to radio, always listen on Bluetooth. For some reason it switches to an AM station (that I never listen to) from my Bluetooth and shows a TA icon (even when TA is toggled off, and it's not even used in my country, and the AM station has nothing to do with TA). After reading this I started to wonder if it might be something similar/related. I even thought of removing the antenna as I never use radio anyway. Have you done anything about your issue that you can recommend?
- pzduniak 5y ago
  I'm certain the TA toggle is broken in my 2019 Hyundai i30N. Disabled every radio-related setting, somehow an FM station managed to force the system to switch to it from Android Auto every 5 minutes. TA is also not used in my country. Infuriating.
jhoechtl 5y ago

jbirer 5y ago

This is really needed for me who is a channel change maniac.

jll29 5y ago

We're already in the dystopian world of Brazil - modulo the 27B-6 and Harvey Tuttle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eosrujtjJHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eosrujtjJHA

oasisbob 5y ago

Interesting, see 3.4.2 Data Inputs. NRSC-5 In-band/on-channel Digital Radio Broadcasting Standard: https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/documents/standards/nrsc-5-d/nrsc-5-d.pdf https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/docum...

lightwords 5y ago

There is one amusing bug which might be related to this in Mazda 2018. If you add the same station twice to your favourites(easy to accidentally do) and then you click the station lower in the list the UI kicks you up and down in the list endlessly. This is because on each render it checks your station state and just pick the station with the same name randomly in the list.

foobarbecue 5y ago

Wait, people are using the cell network for car radio now?

YesThatTom2 5y ago

Mazda’s entertainment system has had interesting bugs before. Like… it used to crash if your song title accidentally looks like a printf statement https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brh8jm https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brh8jm

CSSer 5y ago
It's interesting because this is all over this thread, but it's not actually a string interpolation issue. It's an issue with percent encoding[0]. They talk about it likely being an interpolation issue at first but end up ruling it out. [0]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-2.1 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-2.1

PaulRobinson 5y ago

From a press release geekwire got: “Between 1/24-1/31, a radio station in the Seattle area sent image files with no extension, which caused an issue on some 2014-2017 Mazda vehicles with older software,” the Mazda statement said. “Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) has distributed service alerts advising dealers of the issue.” The statement goes on to say that “dealers are currently experiencing parts delays due to shipping constraints” and that MNAO plans to “support impacted customers with replacement parts. These customers should contact their local Mazda dealer who can submit a goodwill request to the Mazda Warranty department on their behalf, order the parts, and schedule a free repair when the parts arrive.” The Mazda representative did not reply to GeekWire’s follow-up questions about what actually malfunctioned in these vehicles and what parts would need to be replaced.

driverdan 5y ago
What does that mean? Sent image files where? How did those image files impact car radios?
- jlack 5y ago
  HD radio can broadcast images for the radio station, etc. that is displayed when you are tuned to that channel.
- tcskeptic 5y ago
  I suspect they are talking about this: https://radiodns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Guidelines-on-Provision-of-Station-Logos-to-Automotive-Receivers-February-2018.pdf https://radiodns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Guidelines-o... Essentially small images sent OTA that allow stations to "Brand" themselves on automotive receivers.
  - dmix 5y ago
    So a bug in the HD Radio app which has some very poor process architecture/sandboxing if it can take over the whole interface.

dncornholio 5y ago

Most car software is rubbish. So far, everything that my car replaces with a touchscreen that used to be a physical switch is a complete downgrade. My car features a D-pad on the wheel that also works if you swipe over it, resulting in bad inputs and causing all kinds of frustration. It's my first new car and I'm feeling like I want my old car back. I seriously hate touchscreen controls and my only physical input is faulty

the_snooze 5y ago
It's probably reasonable to assume that car touchscreens are designed more to "look cool" at the time of sale than to actually be usable over the life of a vehicle. Car salesmen get to show off all sorts of high-tech bells and whistles, and that's more immediately impressive to buyers than the long-term practicality of physical knobs and switches.
- Cxckers 5y ago
  Hopefully, those same customers will know better when coming to buy their next car after that, therefore reducing desire for touchscreen controls and hopefully, their extensive usage
  - the_snooze 5y ago
    I doubt that'll happen. It'll probably take the same trajectory as (smart) TVs: these crappy designs become the industry norm and it becomes very difficult to find alternatives.
    - Loughla 5y ago
      This is the answer. I would prefer to buy physical switches and dials, but the options just aren't there. So I'm stuck with laggy, buggy, bad software and a stupid touchscreen full of features that I will never use. Seriously, who needs to be able to play movies in their car's center front console?

mey 5y ago

I wonder if the FCC is going to get involved. 47 CFR § 2.1(c): Harmful Interference. Interference which endangers the functioning of a radionavigation service or of other safety services or seriously degrades, obstructs, or repeatedly interrupts a radiocommunication service operating in accordance with [the ITU] Radio Regulations.

maerF0x0 5y ago
It's not the signal that's causing the issue, but the crap software interpreting it.

tomhunters 5y ago

Are all of our Mazda cars are sluggish?

Beta-7 5y ago

If something like this was present on a web app it would have 10 different tests so it wouldn't happen. How come the car/infotainment system isn't subject to the same requirements like other softwares? Is there something obvious i am missing?

jakear 5y ago
This is the first time I’ve seen “a web app” used as a shining beacon of stability. In short, you can’t test a negative. It’s easy to test “when the car receives a transmission in X format, Y happens”, but not “there does not exist a transmission format X such that when the car receives it, Y happens”. Memory safe languages can help here, as would fuzzing. But the only true test would be a formal verification, which is a real pain (and even then you’re only testing against a single Y). What you really want is “there does not exist any transmission that could result in any bad behavior”, which can only really be tested in that large scale fuzzer we call Production.
- Beta-7 5y ago
  Fair enough, what i meant by "web app" was a project with a 100th of the budget of a car company.

jlkuester7 5y ago

Talk about a captive audience....

danrocks 5y ago

Mazda MX-5 Miata. Best card I've ever had.

gtirloni 5y ago

>A few weeks ago cellphone companies — and KUOW — switched to a 5G signal. But many cars are still only equipped with 3G and glitch when faced with the newer 5G Sorry but what? FM radio station switched to 5G phone standard? And supposedly the 3G receiver in the car is affected? shakes head

nonfamous 5y ago
It’s not what happened in this situation, but it’s not hard to imagine one that might. Perhaps the receiver software requires a regular data update via the 3G network, and when 3G shuts down the receiver doesn’t work anymore?

kevinventullo 5y ago

I recently went car shopping and the only aspect of the software I was interested in was how hard it was to activate Apple CarPlay. My assumption is that Apple/Google will have infinitely higher software quality standards than any car manufacturer, so I’ll outsource to them as early as possible.

delusional 5y ago
Seeing the quality of android auto, I'm not sure you're right.
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  Fair enough, I’ve only used Apple CarPlay and assumed Android Auto was comparable.
yellow_postit 5y ago
Apple CarPlay had a recent bug for a few months that broke wireless connection unless you did a full reset (recently patched). Great when it works though.

geephroh 5y ago

And more info from the Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thanks-to-a-glitch-some-seattle-mazda-drivers-cant-tune-their-radios-away-from-kuow/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thanks-to-a-glitch...

sircastor 5y ago

I read a lot of people in these sorts of threads mention how they hate their car infotainment systems, and how they just wish it were Android Auto or CarPlay. I wanted to offer a little insight into it. I worked for an Auto Manufacturer for 7 years. Infotainment systems are developed as a partnership (usually) between a vendor and the auto company. The hardware is often developed by a different company, I like to think of them as old-school stereo manufacturers: Bosch, Pioneer, etc. The development cycle is somewhere between 12-36 months, and that's still quite a bit before the vehicle actually rolls off the assembly line. Many customers like CarPlay or Android Auto. Both represent a cost to the manufacturer, and require ceding the design space to another company which is very visible to the customer. Brand is a big deal for car makers, and giving that space up is hard.

CSSer 5y ago
> are developed as a partnership (usually) between a vendor and the auto company. Depending on the manufacturer this is true for most of the car nowadays, right? I watched an engineering teardown of the new all-electric Mustang Mach E recently and they even used different vendors (which produced parts of vastly different calibers of quality) for the rear and front motors[0]. Point taken about ceding the branding power to the vendor, especially when that vendor is big and scary like Apple or Google. [0]: https://youtu.be/jWOPMtejm_Y?t=768 https://youtu.be/jWOPMtejm_Y?t=768
- sircastor 5y ago
  >Depending on the manufacturer this is true for most of the car nowadays, right? I believe so. I was thinking specifically of the OS work and how it would be contracted out to a provider, and the hardware for the Infotainment would go out to another. > I watched an engineering teardown of the new all-electric Mustang Mach E recently and they even used different vendors (which produced parts of vastly different calibers of quality) for the rear and front motors[0]. One of the interesting things about EVs is that a lot of traditional OEMs don't have the expertise in-house, so things like motors (which would normally be something in-house) end up being designed and manufactured by someone else.
5y ago

UncleOxidant 5y ago

If your car radio ends up stuck on an FM station you could do a lot worse than having it get stuck on KUOW.

grej 5y ago

I would have loved to hear the Car Talk guys chat about this one. Rest in Peace Tom Magliozzi.

gigel82 5y ago

We own a 2014 CX-5 near Seattle, and it doesn't appear to have been affected. Perhaps you needed to be tuned to that station in that time-frame to get the bug.

wvenable 5y ago
The 2014 model has an older infotainment unit. It's a completely different implementation from later models.

thebeardisred 5y ago

My initial bet would be that something is causing a kernel panic in the control plane side of the radio. This is then leading to the UI not being able to pass any messages before the system locks up. Watchdog timer expires and resets everything. This is based on the line "...causing radios to reboot when they connect to KUOW’s 94.9 FM signal."

dopamean 5y ago

i wonder if they can send a new image that fixes the problem

novaurora 5y ago

Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oR79ja1u-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oR79ja1u-o

xwz7611 5y ago

My Mazda3 2019 now shows an mpg at about 15, yet with a full tank of gas I can still drive about 300 miles.

robertlagrant 5y ago

This headline is just the best.

neallindsay 5y ago

The Ars Technica story has more useful info: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/radio-station-snafu-in-seattle-bricks-some-mazda-infotainment-systems/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/radio-station-snafu-in-... Apparently the radio evaluates image files based on the extension on their name, and not by looking at the image headers. If you send a radio station logo with no file extension it gets stuck in a permanent reboot loop. :-(

8bitsrule 5y ago

Yet another of the disadvantages of switching from analog to digital ;->

minusSeven 5y ago

So could this be because of 5G because if I remember right the latest 5G roll out caused a lot of problems for airlines?

glonq 5y ago

I had a 2014 mazda with this system; it's my son's car now. The infotainment system is not great. Lots of little bugs and quirks and uglies, so I'm not surprised that it suffered this glitch.

coleca 5y ago

As someone who just traded in their 2019 Mazda CX-5, this doesn't surprise me at all. I couldn't wait for my lease to end. The car was great, but the infotainment system was horrible. It would take 5+ minutes to boot up from a cold start during which time you couldn't change the volume, mute the radio, change inputs, or even change the station. I learned quickly to always change the station off Howard Stern when exiting the car in case my daughter was a passenger on the next trip. On long trips you would have to three finger reset the head-unit because it would just stop responding, play at full volume, only play out of one channel after a GPS announcement, and other random oddities. I brought it back to the dealer multiple times to get firmware updates only to be told "Yeah that's how it was designed".

zucked 5y ago

Sounds like an excellent time to do a pledge drive with NO ESCAPE.

AdamN 5y ago

KUOW ftw!

w0mbat 5y ago

A remember a problem in the past where use of % in metadata would bork some car radios due to an unescaped string being passed to printf. The Sirius menus on my wife’s Subaru have been broken for years due to some problem with the guide format changing. Sirius don’t care because you can still tune to any of their stations with the dial, but there are hundreds.

wlesieutre 5y ago
That was also Mazda. It caused some trouble for 99% Invisible listeners: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-virus/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-...

Zigurd 5y ago

This is an example of how Tesla gambled and won in developing an integrated information display. One might think making an electric car is challenging enough that not relying on an outside supplier for the entertainment system is foolishly enlarging the problem. Instead it was legacy car makers with many separate systems with separate hardware and software that ended up victims of a chip shortage and lack up OTA upgrades.

rejor121 5y ago

Just give me back my old radio with a volume and seek knob. Seriously, these are problems created by tech and we don’t need them.

emiliosic 5y ago

The 5G twist is pure BS. These cars (Circa 2016) have no modem that connects directly to the head-unit, and if they do are a separate module that's 3G only. My theory is that the radio station sent some unicode characters on their RDS feed that crashes the system, it probably cached it (These head-units run on Linux, and is well known in some hacker circles), so now it's in some kind of loop. It won't be the first time that RDS feeds with some unusual combinations crash the head-units. If Mazda has a new firmware, these can be upgraded via the USB ports by booting into a recovery mode.

jimmaswell 5y ago

Do modern car radios use solid state storage so this can't be fixed by removing the battery?

dillondoyle 5y ago

I love reading about all these parsing image 'hacks' or I guess here passing empty or null values. Just imagine a smart car + NSO software. Could turn it into a moving surveillance machine. Or if can control it maybe cause some 'accidental deaths' looks like a single car fatality. I would hate to see electronic warfare break out it seems like everything will just be totally bricked.

minimilian 5y ago

Do all new cars have software?

ljp_206 5y ago

KUOW with no KEXP is a tough fate in Seattle, but not the worst, though, that's ignoring losing all other functions of your stereo. Interesting that this essentially seems to brick the unit and no reset can fix it.

betimsl 5y ago

I don't see this as a problem. Most of Mazda customers listen to NPR anyways.

avgDev 5y ago
Source?
- betimsl 5y ago
  Oh come on, it was more as a joke. But there are certain kind of people who buy Mazdas, usually upper middle class that appreciate the quality Mazda provides. Their cars are reliable and most ergonomic of all. It's not hard to see that most of these people listen to NPR. No?

Yes2020 5y ago

Honda Ridge lines ( older style) navigation system's clocks went out to lunch in January, 2022 and will not show correct time until GPS satellites do some sort of time sync in August. No fix until that happens.

parasense 5y ago

Folks are saying the radio station transmitted side-band data that resulted in the effective bricking. Others are saying that's not the issue, it's the software/firmware in the radios. So looking at the specification here: https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/documents/standards/nrsc-5-d/reference-docs/1020s.pdf https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/docum... ... On page 20, We see that images need not have an extension, because the transport stream is required to specify a mime-type. If one can prove that somehow that mime-type was not set, then perhaps the radio station and/or the technology provider for their broadcast transmission equipment could be held liable. I'm not sure how the process of discovery would look for something like that. Seems more likely Mazda could be in the position to sustain significant warranty claims in court if their hardware is found to be defective, or their testing & QE procedures to be lacking.