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Cars are also digital service platforms which can and do take away things. I am currently playing a safety score minigame to unlock enhanced driving features. I

by elif 5y ago

Cars are also digital service platforms which can and do take away things. I am currently playing a safety score minigame to unlock enhanced driving features. If I pay $2000 my software will enable my minivan to have a 0-60 of a Ferrari. This is all premised upon a connectivity package I'm obligated to pay for but have been gifted for a year by the manufacturer. To put it more bluntly, my eyeballs are watched by AI to make sure I pay attention enough to deserve the full use of my vehicle.. it's beyond punitive, it requires my positive behavior. ALSO bonus, if I did something with my vehicle that resulted in losing my account, I would also lose access to my home electricity system.

jstanley 5y ago
What car is this?
nudpiedo 5y ago
What car is it? In what country did you purchase it? To me that sounds beyond reality…
- coliveira 5y ago
  It starts with a T.
  - jstanley 5y ago
    Why not just say what it is?
    - coliveira 5y ago
      Use your imagination.
tsatsawayy 5y ago
Most cars do not do this. Teslas are famous for their DRM, restrictive connectivity, and shady upsells. Those will show up in the "cons" column of any honest review. A normal car in 2022 will not constantly surveil you. No critical functionality is tied to an online account in any non-Tesla mass-produced car that I am aware of.
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  Neither of these points are true. Other manufacturers like Toyota are getting into the "features as a service" game with things like keyless entry. On the surveillance point, I worked for an auto software company that partnered with a big auto manufacturer on a feature. We were granted access to an API that could geolocate any vehicle made by this company in real-time given its VIN. I volunteered my car's VIN to test with (I drove the same make as the company we partnered with) and confirmed that the API returned real-time location data on my 2019 vehicle. If you own a car that was built in the last 10 years, you are more than likely emitting your location to an internal service maintained by the manufacturer.
  - noelherrick 5y ago
    That is amazing since VIN's are often visible from the outside. This is just so open to abuse, especially if it was a casual to lookup as you make it seem (no verification that you were the owner and for just a lark). We as engineers need to establish a code of ethics. Seriously, every profession needs to have a "do no harm" clause because clearly companies have zero ethics.
    - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
      To be clear, we signed a contract that explicitly prevented this API to be used for anything other than our particular commercial use case and access to production creds to this service was heavily restricted. I never once saw the service being abused, but you're absolutely right. The question I kept asking myself was: who is out there using this service against the vendor's TOS for whatever reason? This industry was largely built and shaped by people that didn't care at all about the rules, and the longer I work in this field, the more cynical I become about the effectiveness of just adding more rules. It feels like a pinky promise at this point.
  - Kon-Peki 5y ago
    This is true, for example: https://www.toyota.com/privacyvts/ https://www.toyota.com/privacyvts/ You do have the ability to opt-out, but it's not usually a simple process.
htrp 5y ago
You got a model X?

by elif 5y ago

jstanley 5y ago

What car is this?

nudpiedo 5y ago

What car is it? In what country did you purchase it? To me that sounds beyond reality…

coliveira 5y ago
It starts with a T.
- jstanley 5y ago
  Why not just say what it is?
  - coliveira 5y ago
    Use your imagination.

tsatsawayy 5y ago

Most cars do not do this. Teslas are famous for their DRM, restrictive connectivity, and shady upsells. Those will show up in the "cons" column of any honest review. A normal car in 2022 will not constantly surveil you. No critical functionality is tied to an online account in any non-Tesla mass-produced car that I am aware of.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
Neither of these points are true. Other manufacturers like Toyota are getting into the "features as a service" game with things like keyless entry. On the surveillance point, I worked for an auto software company that partnered with a big auto manufacturer on a feature. We were granted access to an API that could geolocate any vehicle made by this company in real-time given its VIN. I volunteered my car's VIN to test with (I drove the same make as the company we partnered with) and confirmed that the API returned real-time location data on my 2019 vehicle. If you own a car that was built in the last 10 years, you are more than likely emitting your location to an internal service maintained by the manufacturer.
- noelherrick 5y ago
  That is amazing since VIN's are often visible from the outside. This is just so open to abuse, especially if it was a casual to lookup as you make it seem (no verification that you were the owner and for just a lark). We as engineers need to establish a code of ethics. Seriously, every profession needs to have a "do no harm" clause because clearly companies have zero ethics.
  - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
    To be clear, we signed a contract that explicitly prevented this API to be used for anything other than our particular commercial use case and access to production creds to this service was heavily restricted. I never once saw the service being abused, but you're absolutely right. The question I kept asking myself was: who is out there using this service against the vendor's TOS for whatever reason? This industry was largely built and shaped by people that didn't care at all about the rules, and the longer I work in this field, the more cynical I become about the effectiveness of just adding more rules. It feels like a pinky promise at this point.
- Kon-Peki 5y ago
  This is true, for example: https://www.toyota.com/privacyvts/ https://www.toyota.com/privacyvts/ You do have the ability to opt-out, but it's not usually a simple process.

htrp 5y ago

You got a model X?