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What kind of data is my new car collecting?

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51–60 of 210 posts

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#51
post #21

Not too long ago I owned a motorcycle from the 70s. I realized at one point that it was probably EMP-proof: no fuel injection, no fuel pump, certainly no OBD anything, and a (literal) kickstarter. The most complicated thing in the wiring harness was the key cylinder and the relay for the turn signals and headlights. I miss that bike sometimes.

> I realized at one point that it was probably EMP-proof The ignition coil will probably not survive an EMP event, so the bike will not run. However, it should be pretty straight forward to wind a new ignition coil if you ever find yourself in a post-nuclear situation.

That bike is way too old for ignition coils, it almost certainly has a distributor, which could be mechanically rotated.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#52
post #21

Not too long ago I owned a motorcycle from the 70s. I realized at one point that it was probably EMP-proof: no fuel injection, no fuel pump, certainly no OBD anything, and a (literal) kickstarter. The most complicated thing in the wiring harness was the key cylinder and the relay for the turn signals and headlights. I miss that bike sometimes.

> I realized at one point that it was probably EMP-proof The ignition coil will probably not survive an EMP event, so the bike will not run. However, it should be pretty straight forward to wind a new ignition coil if you ever find yourself in a post-nuclear situation.

It can probably survive. It is just a coil, and a capacitor across the contacts. Diode rectifier in the alternator might be the weakest point.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#53
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I realized at one point that it was probably EMP-proof The ignition coil will probably not survive an EMP event, so the bike will not run. However, it should be pretty straight forward to wind a new ignition coil if you ever find yourself in a post-nuclear situation.

That bike is way too old for ignition coils, it almost certainly has a distributor, which could be mechanically rotated.

One cylinder engine has no distributor, but AFAIK coil is still needed. Where do you get high voltage for ignition from?

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#55

Not too long ago I owned a motorcycle from the 70s. I realized at one point that it was probably EMP-proof: no fuel injection, no fuel pump, certainly no OBD anything, and a (literal) kickstarter. The most complicated thing in the wiring harness was the key cylinder and the relay for the turn signals and headlights. I miss that bike sometimes.

> I realized at one point that it was probably EMP-proof

Different kind of bike, but I used to feel that way about my bicycles. However, sometime last year I was parking at the office and realised even that world is on its way out.

The No-True-Scotsman actual cyclists have largely moved to electronic shifting and such, and the utility bikes are quickly moving to e-bikes.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#57

One thing that's interesting to me is, modern cars know (relatively accurately) whether you're speeding or not. They have GPS and a database of speed limits. Also depending on what's in the car, they may know who was driving it. How long before a speed safety campaign starts arguing that car manufacturers should be handing over information about people breaking the law in their cars to law enforcement...

The information is still not even remotely accurate enough for this to work without ridiculously high levels of false positives. An obvious example would be in Germany. The autobahn for example has sections that are unrestricted, but those same sections are 130kmh (or sometimes lower) if it's between certain times or raining or whatever. Half of the time my car interprets that as just being 130. Outside of that; ther…

There are a lot of useful data points in modern cars. For instance, the compression rate of your suspension can indicate how aggressively you're cornering. This sort of thing is already being used in opt-in programs by insurers in the US. They interpret as much data as possible in an attempt to calculate for each customer a sort of driver safety rating that is then used to determine insurance rates.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#58
post #42

> A car camera for Affectiva, a company that is developing technology for measuring driver emotions, in Boston, on Oct. 6, 2018. No. Just no. Why would anyone allow collecting this kind of information? There is no way it can't (so, won't) be used against you. Everyone gets angry from time to time.

There is also no way this information is 100% accurate at all times. Emotional recognition is inherently probabilistic -- there will be false positives and false negatives, no matter how good the heuristic is. In the end, it'll be you who has to prove that you were in an emotional stable state, and not the algorithm that gets scrutinized.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#59
post #22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me answering those questions will be part of a greater process to balance power and interests between manufacturers and consumers/users. E.g., Tesla already seems to try and decide the questions in the way manufacturers would likely have them, i.e. suppressing data transmission is tampering and the problem of car reselling doesn't apply as cars cannot be resold anymore without manufacturer involvement. I thi…

> s tampering and the problem of car reselling doesn't apply as cars cannot be resold anymore without manufacturer involvement. I suspect this will become a huge societal problem if it continues like this in a car-dependent country like the US. Yes, the middle-class people will probably still be able to purchase $30,000-40,000 cars for the foreseeable future (even adjusted for inflation), but what will happen to the…

Good reliable cars are currently cheaper than ever. Of all the problems stacked against the poor, I'm not sure that cars have become less obtainable. Adjusted for inflation, the cheapest economy cars are quite inexpensive, and generally speaking, they last much longer than they did 20-30 years ago.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#60
post #20

I'd really love to see companies start being proud to be "dumb" and disconnected.

and you'll pay a very large premium for it, too, unfortunately, since the company has to close off another revenue stream.

At what point does data become so accessible as to be worthless?
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