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TVs, too.
Get your dumb 4K monitors here: http://www.atyme.net/product-category/tv-line-up/uhd4k/ Before they stop selling them without "smart" tech.
You can also find other brands on Amazon.
https://www.walmart.com/browse/electronics/sceptre-tvs/3944_...
Yeah, my last car purchase was an exercise in locating a vehicle without any "smart" technologies. Car manufacturers are the last corporate group I'd trust with anything they are not heavily regulated to provide, such as basic safety measures such as the seat belts they fought for years not to provide. I plan on this being a car I nurse forever, as it is going to be a generation of extremely intrusive data collection…
What car did you end up buying?
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> why can I not gut my catalytic converter & change some programming so my car says the outputs are fine? Because the state wants me to get rid of my old functional car to support the economy of newer more expensive vehicles. ...also probably to protect the environment?
You have to have an incredibly inefficient vehicle for manufacturing and shipping a new one to be an environmental positive...
> “There’s just massive amounts of data being collected, and if you want the service, you have to agree to it. And people do agree to it, and they have relatively little control over things,” Scassa says. I'm curious what this will do to the used car market in 10-15 years. Say the original owner consented to all this data tracking. They go to sell the car to buy a new one, and the 2nd owner does not agree to the trac…
I wonder if anyone will jump at the market for cars that don't track you. I wonder who would fund that.
As long as self-driving a car will be allowed (and I predict this will become quickly impossible the moment self-driven cars will share the space with autonomous vehicles) I will refrain buying any car collecting AND transmitting data without my consent. Yes that means in ten years or so I will be riding a used shabby old car.
A used shabby car can be completely rebuilt, not just the engine, for a tenth of the cost of a new car.
You can get a new car for $15k in the US. "completely rebuilding" a used car of any quality, by any definition, is likely to surpass 15k in labor alone, unless you're doing the work entirely by yourself, at which point it's likely to cost 15k in tools.
It's also 32 years old, gets 14-15mpg, and drives like a truck. It's a 1988 Chevy Suburban. I bought it a few years ago, for $1450 and really haven't put much into it overall. It runs reasonable well (still some things to figure out) and is comfortable. If I had some money I'd fix some of the things wrong with it and update the interior with seats out of a newer model, but overall, it just works.
And that's what I see going UP in value over time. To think I could own a car that could tell some corporate partner where I went for lunch is just unfathomable. I can't afford to own a car that "cool" and I'm glad for it.
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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…
> ... cars cannot be resold anymore without manufacturer involvement. This seems like a violation of long-standing consumer protection laws and precedents.
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I've heard allegations that some of the newer TVs will automatically scan for open networks in the background.
They very well might scan even with no networks configured (some Wi-Fi stacks scan in the background by default; it can reduce the the time the user has to wait when selecting an SSID or initiating a connection), but has anyone claimed that they actually connect? I think that would make headlines.
The idea that they'd have some kind of generic login for this would be hilariously insane and definitely make headlines.
But the idea of eg samsung brokering a deal with comcast to get conditional access to comcast modems to upload telemetry data in exchange for a modest access fee?
You could even market this feature directly to consumers: If you're in a house that rents a modem from comcast, your samsung smart TV "just works", and nobody has to fiddle with the wifi password.
There's no evidence that this happens today, but I'd be surprised if it hadn't been pitched repeatedly, and was currently under construction in some form.
> “There’s just massive amounts of data being collected, and if you want the service, you have to agree to it. And people do agree to it, and they have relatively little control over things,” Scassa says. I'm curious what this will do to the used car market in 10-15 years. Say the original owner consented to all this data tracking. They go to sell the car to buy a new one, and the 2nd owner does not agree to the trac…
That said, I believe that there is very limited legal recourse for a vehicle OEM who wants to prevent an end user from changing the data collection and upload features of their vehicles. The worst thing would be potentially voiding the warranty, but for 10-15 year old used vehicles, that's not an issue.
I work as an in-house counsel at a vehicle OEM (likely not one you've heard of). Our end customers are generally large companies, so it may be different for personal passenger vehicles, but we actively plan for the contingencies where our end users switch out their telematics module, or request to have the telematics data stream be directed to another service provider. Further, in our market, the idea that the customer wouldn't want telematics at all is not really likely, but we also plan for that possibility.
So, I don't believe the used market isn't as big of a deal as you may think. The real concern for personal vehicles is losing essential warranty or service options for new vehicles by turning off the data collection.
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.
There is an urban fantasy series called "The Rivers of London" series after the first book (or "Peter Grant"-series after the main character) and magic interferes with (in the sense of completely fries ) more complicated electronics there, so his master (the last fully qualified wizard of Great Britain) also drives an old Jaguar that is all-mechanical and therefore magic-proof. Very entertaining series with lots of r…