81–90 of 253 posts
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You can't really buy a "dumb" gas car anymore either. I'm holding onto my 2011 Nissan Versa to the bitter end.
Your Versa isn't exactly dumb either. It's younger than the iPhone.
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I really, really hate this. Why not just require an annual odometer reading and multiply by vehicle weight to determine how much should be owed to cover road and transportation infrastructure costs? Far easier than maintaining a complex system to track every drivers' location over time. Ugh.
I suspect being able to assign infrastructure money to the correct county public works departments is a thing. And even on the more simple sense, your odometer read would let California tax people for miles they drove outside of California. Not that I support this initiative at all, but your suggestion misses some key issues.
One of the cars I rented (A Ford using the Sync console) had bluetooth contacts synced from the previous renter. It was just sitting there: names, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses. Being privacy conscious I deleted the contacts and the 20+ bluetooth profiles stored in the console.
I am always shocked when people make these sorts of pairings with devices they don't even own. I often see employees pairing person phones with corporate fleet vehicles too. It's unfortunately an example of where people rank convenience over privacy almost every single time.
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I mean, most people wouldn’t suspect all their contacts would get copied over to the rental car. Before CarPlay I’d routinely “just hit okay” my way though pairing my phone to the rental car.
Agreed, this seems more like a UX problem than a "people don't value privacy" problem. No reasonable person would ever expect that connecting your phone to a car's wireless audio system would transfer all your contacts -- but that's Bluetooth for you!
I live in Washington State, where the state legislature recently voted to ban sales of gasoline powered cars after 2030. Aside from the fact that I enjoy drives through some pretty empty parts of the country, especially in the Southwest, where range is a concern (e.g., I drove the Great Basin Highway a few years ago), what bothers me about that measure is this sort of data collection thing. I wouldn't mind a move to…
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Probably true, but good luck with that. As my grandfather said: "You might be right, but you don't want to be dead right." CBP already have extra authorities due to border control because crossing the border is not a constitutional right. The most egregious expansion was the declaration that all territory within 100 miles of the border is 'authorized' for all CBP's nonsense. That happens to cover about 90% of the US…
I'm having trouble understanding how 100 miles from the border covers 90% of the US population? Edit: I see - I was thinking only in terms of e.g. the Arizona southern border, however looking up the Constitution Free Zone shows that it means the entire US - California, all states connected to Cananda etc. Eidt 2: Would this mean ALL of Hawaii is in this Constitution Free Zone?
I'm curious how much and how long it takes for this to drive migrants inland away from the border... and then how long it will take for them to make an excuse to make it 200mi...
“Your phone died, you’re gonna get in the car, plug it in, and there’s going to be this nice convenient USB port for you. When you plug it into this USB port, it’s going to charge your phone, absolutely. And as soon as it powers up, it’s going to start sucking all your data down into the car.” That used to be just something seen in hostile devices. Now it's standard equipment.
So do I have to ride horses to get my privacy back now? I would totally buy a brand new car without all the "visible" electronics (by visible I mean all the screens and doodads. I don't mind ABS and other "invisible" electronics as long as they are reliable which is not a given nowadays). I don't get the point of turning the interior of a car into a smartphone experience. I watched a YT video of a Mercedess class S r…
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You can't really buy a "dumb" gas car anymore either. I'm holding onto my 2011 Nissan Versa to the bitter end.
Same here with my '93 Saab. I replaced the smart (for its time) HVAC control system with an Arduino running software I wrote, but otherwise it's bone stock. I'd love an electric too, but the way I figure it, continuing to use a fairly efficient vehicle that already exists is probably better for the environment than buying something new anyway. It takes a lot of resources and material to build a car.