501–510 of 773 posts
This should be "hacked" by the regulator and not by the hackers. If they sold you a car with heated seats (so if the hardware is there), the heated seats should be available for the consumer to use.
You make a common argument that's deceptively anti-consumer.
Yes, this can be abused - but that's a different argument.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why I also rotate license plates and repaint my car twice a year.
you're joking, but there's a whole genre of "adversarial fashion"[0][1] dedicated to making clothing that spams these sort of public data recognition services. Hoodies with license plates, face masks with weird facial features, etc. Often optimized against actual neural networks too [0] https://adversarialfashion.com/ [1] https://www.capable.design/
There's a lot of missing the point in these threads about software locks. Building a car in a uniform way for economy of scale savings, fine. Having a software unlock for hardware you already have (but didn't pay for in the price). Fine. Using software to rent-seek on one time costs like heated seats. Not fine. Less fine too if the seat subscription can't carry to secondary market. This can he used to cripple seconda…
> Software-locked features that need to be activated by the owner paying or subscribing to a service are becoming increasingly popular in the auto industry. Sorry, WHAT? People should absolutely boycott companies that try to squeeze bucks in this miserable way.
You better be ok with building your own car then, because every major player is adding subscriptions for various features. Remote start and remote lock/unlock are the most common, along with satellite radio.
This should be "hacked" by the regulator and not by the hackers. If they sold you a car with heated seats (so if the hardware is there), the heated seats should be available for the consumer to use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That strikes me as a pretty dissonant argument on HN. If we play that out, no software creator would have a defensible way to monetize what they invested time, energy and money to create. Enforceable laws protecting IP are the difference between entire sectors of the economy existing vs. not being worth the effort.
I don't think that's true at all, or what the person you're replying to is getting at. If you sell me a bunch of hardware, that hardware is now mine, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it. If you sell that hardware with a bunch of software on it, I should again be able to do anything I want with that software. That doesn't entitle me to updates of that software, or ongoing use of the company's cloud infr…
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It's relatively clear to me... Features cost money, so I should pay for them. Wether that's via an option package (traditional) at order time OR via a software update (Tesla) after purchase doesn't matter. BUT! As long as that feature doesn't have recurring costs to the manufacturer (heated seats), it should be a one-time fee, and transfer with ownership. Something like self-driving, where there might be an active in…
Heated seats is essentially a bool somewhere in the code implemented as artificial limitation. Self-Driving is much more complex and abides much more as an argument to your view.
It's of course hard to prove as cause, but if there is a liability case it might become "interesting"
Edit: Also relevant: even without incident, the disabled heated chairs may be broken. By not being enabled Tesla doesn't have to repair them under warranty as the aren't a feature. Thus they maybe can reduce quality in the production
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying dash cams are illegal broadly there?
In Germany, dash cams specifically are a bit of a gray area, but for example CCTV of any public areas is generally illegal. https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/tesla-warns-its-camer...
I believe in Spain, generally speaking, it is legal to record your interactions with someone when you are in public.
But I think many people are not aware that this is legal, including some police officers, because privacy laws are perceived to be quite strict.
Similarly, I think dashcams are actually legal, even though most police probably think they are not.
I think these recordings can even be used in court cases, and in fact in many cases it's probably the reason why they are legal, otherwise it would be hard to see a legitimate purpose that would override the privacy drawbacks.
However, there are restrictions. Indiscriminate recording (i.e. CCTV) of public areas is illegal, as in Germany. This is also true for the entrances of personal homes: you are only allowed to have CCTV outside if it's pointing directly at your door, not the street in general (and you must post a sign).
An obvious restriction is that I think you are not allowed to publish a recording without either anonymizing the people in them or getting their permission.
An interesting restriction that comes to mind is that a few years ago, there was a court case of a man who was caught filming children on a school playground while positioned outside the school, which at the time it was presumed to be for sexual purposes, I think because of the way he was doing the recording (big lenses, I think?) and because he didn't have a legitimate motive for doing that (like being the parent of one of the children, or filming a documentary, etc).
He was sentenced and received a large fine, but I think the legal reasoning was that children on a school playground are expected to have a legal right to privacy, even though it's a public school. So the judge considered it the legal equivalent of filming someone in their private home from outside.
I'm very happy for cases like these where common sense prevails over legal / ideological dogma (even though I'm also aware of the dangers it can pose when laws aren't interpreted to the letter).
> Software-locked features that need to be activated by the owner paying or subscribing to a service are becoming increasingly popular in the auto industry. Sorry, WHAT? People should absolutely boycott companies that try to squeeze bucks in this miserable way.
BMW has plans for locking features behind subscriptions like seat heaters, heated steering wheels, recording from your car's camera, etc. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription...
There's a lot of missing the point in these threads about software locks. Building a car in a uniform way for economy of scale savings, fine. Having a software unlock for hardware you already have (but didn't pay for in the price). Fine. Using software to rent-seek on one time costs like heated seats. Not fine. Less fine too if the seat subscription can't carry to secondary market. This can he used to cripple seconda…
What's the difference between the second and the third?
Third is "I pay $5/month for heated seats for the entire time I own the car. Anyone that I sell the car to would also have to pay $5/month for heated seats."
Edit: The other version of the third option (your BMW account is not tied to this vin) is something like "I pay $50 once for heated seats in my car. If I sell it to someone, they also have to pay $50 to unlock the heated seats"