The hard part about this nobody is willing to experiment with their $30k+ vehicle and risk bricking it. If you want a car that doesn’t spy on you you’re gonna have to look back a decade or so.
If you'd like to experiment with bricking the head unit on your new car you can shop around and find a totaled specimen.
If all you need is a working head unit you should be able to get that for <$1000.
It's still an investment, but nowhere near $30k.
The real reason nobody bothers with this is that it's just the infotainment, and if you really want a custom one you can just buy a new head unit, or glue a tablet where the existing one resides.
You won't get access to the engage electronics, emissions controls etc. Those are all other dedicated computers.
You can just turn off via breaker the lte modem inside a tesla. Original ones had a 3g modem, they were replaced eventually with an lte one. Spying is under your control at least overall. The insidious thing is there are so many useful things in the tesla ui, you want to use it. I have experimented with disabling the modem but it was just so useful to have maps and current and accurate traffic that I quickly put it back. Also using voice commands to play music. There's just nothing as good for the phone.
There is potential for someone to make an ipad app that did all these things and connected to say your phone's hotspot so you could control everything. Soon you would be remaking android auto though. I think there's no market for a "you control your privacy" type thing.
> Reminder that those who bought it, voted for it.
I truly loathe this argument. I've seen it for cars, seen it for laptops, seen it for mobile devices. For years. People like you really think not purchasing the bad will fix stuff like this?
Purchasing decisions let you pick between competitors. That is all. You can't pick the open-source car that does not exist, unless you want to start your own car company just to build one. If you don't buy any car at all, then you simply don't exist to them, and they don't care about you.
Nobody is going to quit locking down their software just because a rounding error doesn't like it that way. They don't do it because they need people's votes, they do it because the company simply wants the software locked down, they don't care what customers think about it. Even if nobody bought the car, and everybody told them directly to offer open access, they'd probably still refuse to provide it, until and unless something like a regulation is passed that mandates it.
Cars aren't spying on you because people are voting for the spying. Nobody who buys the car is voting for it to spy on them, unless I guess their hypothetical dystopian future insurance gives them a bonus/discount for allowing them to view the data from the vehicle and they're actually okay with that.
Just look, you have a limited number of choices. You can "vote" for anything that is currently on the market. That is all the choice you have. If you want a car from the current market, you're going to have to pick one to vote for. Odds are they're all going to have some sort of surveillance-state bullshit, or the ones that don't have it are just going to be less-nice vehicles in general.
Similar to how, before Framework, everyone concerned about open-source system firmware was most likely rocking a speedy 2004 ThinkPad with a couple gigabytes of RAM. They were unable to simply vote for an actually fast, modern machine, as all of them had proprietary blobs doing who-knows-what. So someone had to come out and actually build one, and now we have Framework.
I believe that for phones, we might have Purism sometime in the 2030s, once they work out the most basic issues with their software stack, probably caused by trying to use existing Linux userland.
For cars... I haven't heard anything yet. Nobody's come out and built an open-source car company yet. So we're currently in the phase where you simply can't vote for an open-source car. Now, do you still need a car anyway? Then I guess you vote in favor of a locked-down vehicle. Even if you're not actually trying to vote, and you just need a car right now.
So that's why I hate this argument. Just because you bought a car doesn't mean you should be on the hook for "voting" for every feature the car has. You voted for the car. Doesn't mean it's perfect.
avar|2 years ago
If all you need is a working head unit you should be able to get that for <$1000.
It's still an investment, but nowhere near $30k.
The real reason nobody bothers with this is that it's just the infotainment, and if you really want a custom one you can just buy a new head unit, or glue a tablet where the existing one resides.
You won't get access to the engage electronics, emissions controls etc. Those are all other dedicated computers.
tyingq|2 years ago
NotSammyHagar|2 years ago
There is potential for someone to make an ipad app that did all these things and connected to say your phone's hotspot so you could control everything. Soon you would be remaking android auto though. I think there's no market for a "you control your privacy" type thing.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
mdp2021|2 years ago
Reminder that those who bought it, voted for it.
In economics, wallet is voting power - what you buy you feed and endorse.
LoganDark|2 years ago
I truly loathe this argument. I've seen it for cars, seen it for laptops, seen it for mobile devices. For years. People like you really think not purchasing the bad will fix stuff like this?
Purchasing decisions let you pick between competitors. That is all. You can't pick the open-source car that does not exist, unless you want to start your own car company just to build one. If you don't buy any car at all, then you simply don't exist to them, and they don't care about you.
Nobody is going to quit locking down their software just because a rounding error doesn't like it that way. They don't do it because they need people's votes, they do it because the company simply wants the software locked down, they don't care what customers think about it. Even if nobody bought the car, and everybody told them directly to offer open access, they'd probably still refuse to provide it, until and unless something like a regulation is passed that mandates it.
Cars aren't spying on you because people are voting for the spying. Nobody who buys the car is voting for it to spy on them, unless I guess their hypothetical dystopian future insurance gives them a bonus/discount for allowing them to view the data from the vehicle and they're actually okay with that.
Just look, you have a limited number of choices. You can "vote" for anything that is currently on the market. That is all the choice you have. If you want a car from the current market, you're going to have to pick one to vote for. Odds are they're all going to have some sort of surveillance-state bullshit, or the ones that don't have it are just going to be less-nice vehicles in general.
Similar to how, before Framework, everyone concerned about open-source system firmware was most likely rocking a speedy 2004 ThinkPad with a couple gigabytes of RAM. They were unable to simply vote for an actually fast, modern machine, as all of them had proprietary blobs doing who-knows-what. So someone had to come out and actually build one, and now we have Framework.
I believe that for phones, we might have Purism sometime in the 2030s, once they work out the most basic issues with their software stack, probably caused by trying to use existing Linux userland.
For cars... I haven't heard anything yet. Nobody's come out and built an open-source car company yet. So we're currently in the phase where you simply can't vote for an open-source car. Now, do you still need a car anyway? Then I guess you vote in favor of a locked-down vehicle. Even if you're not actually trying to vote, and you just need a car right now.
So that's why I hate this argument. Just because you bought a car doesn't mean you should be on the hook for "voting" for every feature the car has. You voted for the car. Doesn't mean it's perfect.