5 ms·

I really despise the "smartphone on wheels" trend. I got a used Mazda 3 which doesn't have any of that, the new models come hyperconnected, so you can "see the

by otikik 4y ago

I really despise the "smartphone on wheels" trend. I got a used Mazda 3 which doesn't have any of that, the new models come hyperconnected, so you can "see the status of your car with an App" (no thanks). Is there a list of cars which don't have remote data collection?

mackatap 4y ago
I just got a 2012 Mazda 3 and I love how dumb it is. Bluetooth audio and an aux cable is really all I want.
- derwiki 4y ago
  I recently switched back to MP3 CDs and am happy not dealing with Bluetooth or a smartphone
  - mackatap 4y ago
    Yeah, I have a bunch of cd's I'm happy to be able to use again. But it's so easy to drag and drop music onto an android phone.
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    You can go slightly more high tech and just plug a USB drive into the port. Still no bluetooth or smartphone but you get more than 700 odd megabytes of mp3s.
    - 29083011397778 4y ago
      I've taken it a step further and now just leave a Samsung external SSD plugged in (and out of sight). Better quality flash than a USB stick, and now the limiting factor for library size is the number of tracks the car can handle, instead of storage.
    - figglestar 4y ago
      I asked the sales guy about this when I bought my 2019 Subaru and he was stumped, said no one had ever asked that before. But sure enough, the car could read flash drives similar to MP3 cds.
- stinos 4y ago
  Bluetooth audio and an aux cable I'll take just the aux then, at least as long as I can. Aux (as in: 3.5mm jack on both ends or else on one end and the other one cinch or DIN to support even older devices) is something which has been working fairly universally to get music from any portable and even some not-so-portable players to amps in the past 30 years or so, extend to like 60 years to include anything compatible but with DIN (just a rough guess here, I still have some old Telefunken radio with an aux input via DIN and I'd estimate that is it's age; still works, moreover they really figured out nice warm bass from small speakers back then already). It's simple, it's a de facto standard, it really just works, it's a good idea (doubling as headphone out) and well-executed. Bluetooth audio on the other hand tries to be all of that, but I never quite got the feeling it's there yet, after all those years, and I wonder it will ever be the same level of 'just works'.
  - mackatap 4y ago
    The Bluetooth is nice because I don't have to do anything for it to work. I get in the car, hit play on my phone, and music comes out! Only downside is about a one second delay. Also nice for friends with phones that don't have 3.5mm. I've never had trouble with Bluetooth. I have a pair of wireless Sony headphones that really just work. I tap my phone to the side of them and they automatically turn on and connect. Battery lasts about a month.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    The one thing I do like about Bluetooth in a car is the ability to skip songs using the car's interface, without having to fiddle with my phone, which isn't particularly safe to do while driving.
blub 4y ago
The newest Russian cars will allegedly not have airbags or ABS, so it's a good bet that they'll be otherwise analog :-) If they manage to install ABS/ESP, they might actually be an interesting choice, if it weren't for the likely lack of EU market authorisation and spare parts.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  In Soviet Russia, driver protects car.
fariszr 4y ago
And the big thing is after maybe 3 or 4 years its already going to be outdated. While you replace your phone if its outdated, you don't do the same thing with cars. A car + phone combination is always more capable, because its almost always up-to-date and the user is already used to it.
- snoopy_telex 4y ago
  A decent number of people I know only lease cars. They upgrade cars faster then I upgrade my phone.
  - tomxor 4y ago
    That's not representative though. Imagine if the whole world refused to use any car older than 2 years... how many cars would have to be made every year? even if that made any economic sense, it certainly doesn't make any environmental sense. You might not think of it this way but those people you know are privileged, they would not be able to get a new car less than every 2 years unless there was a 2nd hand market. Cars need to last.
- pxeboot 4y ago
  > While you replace your phone if its outdated, you don't do the same thing with cars. I have family that work at a car dealership. Most of their business comes from people leasing or trading in vehicles every couple years (or less).
jsjiwfwie 4y ago
Slightly tangential, but I am beginning to despise "smart" anything, because the product developers don't seem to care at all. I just got z-wave locks from a company ultraloq, figured I don't want the integration with the app etc. I will just use z-wave and connect to my local offline hub. But once I get down to set it up, I can only connect to the hub via z-wave from the ultraloq app. I install the app and I need to register an account by providing first name, last name, email and phone number, then the only way to pair my lock with the app is by enabling bluetooth and providing location access to the app with gps enabled. I do that and then I find out that once I install the app and register the lock, I am not allowed to use it in standalone/offline mode (setup/change lock codes directly from the lock) unless I do a factory reset. Funny enough, if I factory reset, I lock is no longer connected to my hub on z-wave. Basically to use z-wave with my offline hub, I need to provide the company my gps location, first name, last name, email and phone number and stream data of lock usage every time the door is unlocked/locked to the company. How is this not a security risk for the company? If they ever get hacked, all their customer PII data including the gps location of where the locks are installed are compromised.
- verisimi 4y ago
  Smart = spy
- m463 4y ago
  > product developers don't seem to care at all They do care - it is just what they care about is diametrically opposed to your interests. The post-sales revenue stream from collected data is not only profitable, but in some cases more profitable than the sale itself.
  - zx8080 4y ago
    What is the lifecycle of the collected user personal data that companies sell? Say, it's address and name. Say, persons move every 10 years, on avg. So the company collects data that in some cases is more (much more) valuable than their main product.
  - jsjiwfwie 4y ago
userbinator 4y ago
Is there a list of cars which don't have remote data collection? Everything made before this technology existed?
- otikik 4y ago
  I should have been more explicit: I meant modern cars that don't have this "feature".
  - Silhouette 4y ago
    Is there a list of cars which don't have remote data collection? Here it is: . Unfortunately to the best of my knowledge I am not joking. This is one of the big reasons why I haven't bought a new car with modern automation and connectivity for a long time. I think they will be unreliable. I think they will be insecure. I think they will be privacy-invasive. I think the technology at the original time of sale will age quickly and manufacturers will abuse that to extract more money from current owners or any potential new owners who might buy the vehicle from them. I think the technology will allow for artificial limitations on vehicles' physical capabilities and encourage manufacturers to make pay-to-play style upgrades and rental models the industry standard. And I think there is a non-trivial risk that eventually someone will successfully exploit a remote vulnerability on a popular model and gain enough physical control over a large number of vehicles simultaneously to cause injury or even loss of life on a massive scale. Absolutely nothing I have seen about the auto industry, the people who lead it, or the people who regulate it would undermine any of those claims and apart from the last one there seems to be plenty of evidence that they are already starting to happen.
  - windowsrookie 4y ago
    Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep vehicles prior to 2016 used Sprint's CDMA network. Sprint's CDMA network is now shutdown, so they can no longer send any data back but the vehicles still function fine.
    - otikik 4y ago
      That is an interesting way to find more recent vehicles - find the ones who are "smart" but whose "supporting networks" have already died without rendering the vehicle non-functional. Thank you for the perspective. Of course this does nothing on the security side - the fact that the vehicle is still somewhat accessible from the outside makes it less secure. But not having to worry about privacy at least is nice.
pluc 4y ago
When it's not that... my dealer tried to upsell some tag protection system... but that's just an excuse for a geolocation harvest racket [1]. You just can't trust anyone today not to abuse their convenience service. [1] https://www.tagtracking.ca/privacypolicy https://www.tagtracking.ca/privacypolicy
godelski 4y ago
> I got a used Mazda 3 There is a hack[0] that you can do that will give you android auto. I do find maps on my dash is pretty helpful. There's no great place to put my phone to see maps and picking up my phone frequently to navigate isn't that great. Though sometimes I have problems with it disconnecting from my phone (cabled). But then again, I have a Scion iA (rebaged M3). I'm not sure if anyone knows of a newer (and maintained) version of this. Though there are a lot of things about android auto that piss me off and it makes me feel confident that the engineers aren't dogfooding. I get that they want voice commands, but when those fail the solution shouldn't be "pick up your phone, detach, do the thing, reattach." What a crazy failure mode. Who thought this was okay? [0] https://mazdatweaks.com/news/ https://mazdatweaks.com/news/
jandrewrogers 4y ago
You won't find any new vehicles without extensive remote data collection infrastructure, whether or not it is obvious the data is being collected. This has become a necessity for automotive OEMs due both to regulation and economics. Modern automotive hardware is almost completely undifferentiated, and this commoditization means the hardware is essentially being sold at cost. The only opportunities for differentiation, and therefore profit, in the automotive market involve leveraging the vast quantities of sensor data thrown off by vehicles. In many cases the data of interest is not even about the driver per se but the external environment. There are many use cases for this data, both by the automotive OEM and third parties. In most developed countries, both the automotive OEM and the government have a right to this data. The regulatory frameworks for this were put in place decades ago. Organizations that work with this data have great difficulty because off-the-shelf data infrastructure can't handle it in a meaningful way. Currently, exploitation has been more theoretical than practical.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tinus_hn 4y ago
Modern regulations require this technology so the list is just a cutoff date from where they went into effect.

by otikik 4y ago

mackatap 4y ago

I just got a 2012 Mazda 3 and I love how dumb it is. Bluetooth audio and an aux cable is really all I want.

derwiki 4y ago
I recently switched back to MP3 CDs and am happy not dealing with Bluetooth or a smartphone
- mackatap 4y ago
  Yeah, I have a bunch of cd's I'm happy to be able to use again. But it's so easy to drag and drop music onto an android phone.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  You can go slightly more high tech and just plug a USB drive into the port. Still no bluetooth or smartphone but you get more than 700 odd megabytes of mp3s.
  - 29083011397778 4y ago
    I've taken it a step further and now just leave a Samsung external SSD plugged in (and out of sight). Better quality flash than a USB stick, and now the limiting factor for library size is the number of tracks the car can handle, instead of storage.
  - figglestar 4y ago
    I asked the sales guy about this when I bought my 2019 Subaru and he was stumped, said no one had ever asked that before. But sure enough, the car could read flash drives similar to MP3 cds.
stinos 4y ago
Bluetooth audio and an aux cable I'll take just the aux then, at least as long as I can. Aux (as in: 3.5mm jack on both ends or else on one end and the other one cinch or DIN to support even older devices) is something which has been working fairly universally to get music from any portable and even some not-so-portable players to amps in the past 30 years or so, extend to like 60 years to include anything compatible but with DIN (just a rough guess here, I still have some old Telefunken radio with an aux input via DIN and I'd estimate that is it's age; still works, moreover they really figured out nice warm bass from small speakers back then already). It's simple, it's a de facto standard, it really just works, it's a good idea (doubling as headphone out) and well-executed. Bluetooth audio on the other hand tries to be all of that, but I never quite got the feeling it's there yet, after all those years, and I wonder it will ever be the same level of 'just works'.
- mackatap 4y ago
  The Bluetooth is nice because I don't have to do anything for it to work. I get in the car, hit play on my phone, and music comes out! Only downside is about a one second delay. Also nice for friends with phones that don't have 3.5mm. I've never had trouble with Bluetooth. I have a pair of wireless Sony headphones that really just work. I tap my phone to the side of them and they automatically turn on and connect. Battery lasts about a month.
- kelnos 4y ago
  The one thing I do like about Bluetooth in a car is the ability to skip songs using the car's interface, without having to fiddle with my phone, which isn't particularly safe to do while driving.

blub 4y ago

The newest Russian cars will allegedly not have airbags or ABS, so it's a good bet that they'll be otherwise analog :-) If they manage to install ABS/ESP, they might actually be an interesting choice, if it weren't for the likely lack of EU market authorisation and spare parts.

dehrmann 4y ago
In Soviet Russia, driver protects car.

fariszr 4y ago

And the big thing is after maybe 3 or 4 years its already going to be outdated. While you replace your phone if its outdated, you don't do the same thing with cars. A car + phone combination is always more capable, because its almost always up-to-date and the user is already used to it.

snoopy_telex 4y ago
A decent number of people I know only lease cars. They upgrade cars faster then I upgrade my phone.
- tomxor 4y ago
  That's not representative though. Imagine if the whole world refused to use any car older than 2 years... how many cars would have to be made every year? even if that made any economic sense, it certainly doesn't make any environmental sense. You might not think of it this way but those people you know are privileged, they would not be able to get a new car less than every 2 years unless there was a 2nd hand market. Cars need to last.
pxeboot 4y ago
> While you replace your phone if its outdated, you don't do the same thing with cars. I have family that work at a car dealership. Most of their business comes from people leasing or trading in vehicles every couple years (or less).

jsjiwfwie 4y ago

Slightly tangential, but I am beginning to despise "smart" anything, because the product developers don't seem to care at all. I just got z-wave locks from a company ultraloq, figured I don't want the integration with the app etc. I will just use z-wave and connect to my local offline hub. But once I get down to set it up, I can only connect to the hub via z-wave from the ultraloq app. I install the app and I need to register an account by providing first name, last name, email and phone number, then the only way to pair my lock with the app is by enabling bluetooth and providing location access to the app with gps enabled. I do that and then I find out that once I install the app and register the lock, I am not allowed to use it in standalone/offline mode (setup/change lock codes directly from the lock) unless I do a factory reset. Funny enough, if I factory reset, I lock is no longer connected to my hub on z-wave. Basically to use z-wave with my offline hub, I need to provide the company my gps location, first name, last name, email and phone number and stream data of lock usage every time the door is unlocked/locked to the company. How is this not a security risk for the company? If they ever get hacked, all their customer PII data including the gps location of where the locks are installed are compromised.

verisimi 4y ago
Smart = spy
m463 4y ago
> product developers don't seem to care at all They do care - it is just what they care about is diametrically opposed to your interests. The post-sales revenue stream from collected data is not only profitable, but in some cases more profitable than the sale itself.
- zx8080 4y ago
  What is the lifecycle of the collected user personal data that companies sell? Say, it's address and name. Say, persons move every 10 years, on avg. So the company collects data that in some cases is more (much more) valuable than their main product.
- jsjiwfwie 4y ago

userbinator 4y ago

Is there a list of cars which don't have remote data collection? Everything made before this technology existed?

otikik 4y ago
I should have been more explicit: I meant modern cars that don't have this "feature".
- Silhouette 4y ago
  Is there a list of cars which don't have remote data collection? Here it is: . Unfortunately to the best of my knowledge I am not joking. This is one of the big reasons why I haven't bought a new car with modern automation and connectivity for a long time. I think they will be unreliable. I think they will be insecure. I think they will be privacy-invasive. I think the technology at the original time of sale will age quickly and manufacturers will abuse that to extract more money from current owners or any potential new owners who might buy the vehicle from them. I think the technology will allow for artificial limitations on vehicles' physical capabilities and encourage manufacturers to make pay-to-play style upgrades and rental models the industry standard. And I think there is a non-trivial risk that eventually someone will successfully exploit a remote vulnerability on a popular model and gain enough physical control over a large number of vehicles simultaneously to cause injury or even loss of life on a massive scale. Absolutely nothing I have seen about the auto industry, the people who lead it, or the people who regulate it would undermine any of those claims and apart from the last one there seems to be plenty of evidence that they are already starting to happen.
- windowsrookie 4y ago
  Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep vehicles prior to 2016 used Sprint's CDMA network. Sprint's CDMA network is now shutdown, so they can no longer send any data back but the vehicles still function fine.
  - otikik 4y ago
    That is an interesting way to find more recent vehicles - find the ones who are "smart" but whose "supporting networks" have already died without rendering the vehicle non-functional. Thank you for the perspective. Of course this does nothing on the security side - the fact that the vehicle is still somewhat accessible from the outside makes it less secure. But not having to worry about privacy at least is nice.

pluc 4y ago

When it's not that... my dealer tried to upsell some tag protection system... but that's just an excuse for a geolocation harvest racket [1]. You just can't trust anyone today not to abuse their convenience service. [1] https://www.tagtracking.ca/privacypolicy https://www.tagtracking.ca/privacypolicy

godelski 4y ago

> I got a used Mazda 3 There is a hack[0] that you can do that will give you android auto. I do find maps on my dash is pretty helpful. There's no great place to put my phone to see maps and picking up my phone frequently to navigate isn't that great. Though sometimes I have problems with it disconnecting from my phone (cabled). But then again, I have a Scion iA (rebaged M3). I'm not sure if anyone knows of a newer (and maintained) version of this. Though there are a lot of things about android auto that piss me off and it makes me feel confident that the engineers aren't dogfooding. I get that they want voice commands, but when those fail the solution shouldn't be "pick up your phone, detach, do the thing, reattach." What a crazy failure mode. Who thought this was okay? [0] https://mazdatweaks.com/news/ https://mazdatweaks.com/news/

jandrewrogers 4y ago

You won't find any new vehicles without extensive remote data collection infrastructure, whether or not it is obvious the data is being collected. This has become a necessity for automotive OEMs due both to regulation and economics. Modern automotive hardware is almost completely undifferentiated, and this commoditization means the hardware is essentially being sold at cost. The only opportunities for differentiation, and therefore profit, in the automotive market involve leveraging the vast quantities of sensor data thrown off by vehicles. In many cases the data of interest is not even about the driver per se but the external environment. There are many use cases for this data, both by the automotive OEM and third parties. In most developed countries, both the automotive OEM and the government have a right to this data. The regulatory frameworks for this were put in place decades ago. Organizations that work with this data have great difficulty because off-the-shelf data infrastructure can't handle it in a meaningful way. Currently, exploitation has been more theoretical than practical.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tinus_hn 4y ago

Modern regulations require this technology so the list is just a cutoff date from where they went into effect.