Car showed pop-up while driving • Hacker News Board

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#151

Post by rurp » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

bondarchuk wrote: post #21

mschuster91 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are trains still running on the German rail with their displays running Windows 95/98. The embedded world in general is nuts. Unless absolutely necessary, nothing gets upgraded once a system works.

That sounds like the opposite of nuts. What would be nuts is to do a whole bunch of work to upgrade something that's already working for literally no reason at all.

Seriously! It is crazy how many software products I use have gotten categorically worse over the years.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#152

Post by KMag » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

bri3d wrote: post #45

zwieback wrote: post #3

I wonder if this could theoretically happen for the main display in front of the steering wheel. Are there safety standards carmakers have to certify to when it comes to speedometer, etc.?

Yes. Extremely strict ones having to do with the visibility, reliability, and availability of certain UI elements as well as warning lights. In the US, this is all governed by the FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards). This is part of the reason why you'll still see separate warning lights or really weird/ugly overlays for some warnings on modern digital dashboards - in many situations, the safety critical /…

I really wish smart phone display chipsets had this blit overlay functionality for TOTP (including a per-device symmetric encryption key for importing/exporting TOTP secrets such that the main processor can deny itself future access to the secret, but the phone can still generate TOTP codes, without the TOTP processor needing to store all of the secrets itself).

We've seen multiple secure enclave exploits. It's too bad some of this security functionality isn't baked into the display chipset. Yes, it's probably ugly (even if the chipset allows some forms of theming the TOTP code display), but it's better than having your brokerage account, your work login, etc. all exploited due to some 0day. It's also better than carrying around a handful of RSA physical tokens on your keychain (modulo phone breaking/being stolen/running out of battery).

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#153

Post by rurp » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #23

_moof wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend works in environmental science and his advice when it comes to cars and climate is to keep your car for as long as possible, regardless of gas vs. electric. Obviously YMMV but generally speaking the emissions "cost" of manufacturing and delivering the car in the first place is huge, and the way the numbers work out, it's better to amortize that over as long a time as you can than it is to frequently buy a re…

Your friend may understand environmental science, but clearly not economics. If you don't keep your car you'll sell it. You won't be moving the needle on how long it'll take to amortize that initial manufacturing cost, it'll just happen with someone else driving it. Likewise if you don't buy a new car someone else will, you're not going to move the needle on the overall supply. I don't recommend buying new cars, but…

Most households keep a fairly fixed number of vehicles. Selling more moderately used vehicles into the used car market will result in more old vehicles being retired sooner.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#154

Post by dotancohen » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

kyriakos wrote: post #67

raverbashing wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a farce And what if you disagree with it?

haven't tried that but I would assume you get locked out of bluelink connectivity.

You get locked out of a feature that you paid for? Presumably adding that feature increased car sales, otherwise why would the company develop the feature in the first place?

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#155

Post by freedomben » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

callalex wrote: post #37

seansh wrote: post #9

Reminds me of the old "If cars were like computers" post. https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ss44/joke/crash.htm

This list is hilarious, by my calculations about 5 of the 10 sarcastic scenarios they presented have become 100% true of the cars they themselves sell today.

Indeed, number 10 is a dead ringer and many others are too close to true for comfort. I had to pull over on the side of the road and completely stop and restart (reboot) my F-350 a number of times to get the radio to work again. Luckily that model had redundant physical controls for the environmental controls...

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#156

Post by belltaco » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

Tanoc wrote: post #62

version_five wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real impetus behind electric cars is vendor lock in and monitoring. It brings a clean slate to the currently robust repair market.

That's a minor reason. The major reason is profit margins. It costs a lot less to make an electric vehicle than an internal combustion vehicle because the drivetrain and control systems are so much simpler. Since Tesla made electric vehicles seem more "premium" that also set up the expectation to the buying public that electric cars should cost more. So an electric vehicle costs $9,000 to make compared to an internal…

> So an electric vehicle costs $9,000 to make compared to an internal combustion engine vehicle costing $14,000, but the EV sells for $60,000 while the ICE one sells for $46,000

Automotive gross margins don't seem to reflect those numbers. Tesla's are around 25%.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#157

Post by CamperBob2 » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #125

dotancohen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on a generic device that sends canbus messages, that can have inputs such as potentiometer, push buttons, toggle switches, and rotary encoders. My end goal is to have real hvac controls on my Tesla, but I'd like to abstract the device as much as possible. Fun project, and most of the hardware necessary is already out there.

That is super badass and I'd love to have something like that. Does the factory display/controls use the canbus to do their work? How much stuff can you reasonably do through that? Do you know if it varies between manufacturers?

The problem is, there's not just one "CAN/LIN bus." There are probably a dozen different segments. One device attached to one segment can only talk to the upstream gateway and whatever peripherals are on that bus segment.

Of course this isn't a problem per se, it's good design -- but it has the side effect of making it harder to hack your own car through a single point of entry other than the main OBD2 port, which is connected to the top-level gateway.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#158

Post by freedomben » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:11 PM UTC

distract8901 wrote: post #132

makeva wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name and shame

My Samsung phone has forced updates even worse than this. It will download an update silently in the background and will nag me with a new notification every couple of hours. It will let me delay the update for a random length of time before just rebooting on its own. The last update let me delay for something like 10 hours, but I've also had it reboot in the middle of the day while I was using my phone to show somet…

Dang, so this is a recent Samsung phone then? I've heard really good things about Samsung though the last one I used was the Galaxy S3 and that was my wife's phone.

What are you going to get instead? I've been pleased with the Pixel line and have delayed updates for many weeks. It will just nag me with a popup every week or so but never forces. OnePlus I've also been very pleased with and have never even gotten a nag from them.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#159

Post by jh00ker » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:11 PM UTC

I've seen a GMC SUV with a popup that says not to take your eyes off the road. It may come on while in Park, but it remains once in Drive, preventing any use of the screen until you ... take your eyes off the road to tap OK on the touchscreen. It pops up every other month or so.

There's probably a less-dangerous way to deliver the message that doesn't involve engaging in the activity cited in the message itself.

That'd be like handing out free cigarettes to non-smokers that have "cigarettes are bad for you" printed on them.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#160

Post by local_crmdgeon » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

Almondsetat wrote: post #112

pradn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I Give her my old iPhone 7 and use FaceTime now, with auto answer setting turned on in the accessibility. I didn't know this feature existed. Quite thoughtful!

unfortunately Apple seems to be the only consumer brand on earth which actually gives a crap about real disabled folks using their devices and making their lives better because of it

In general, the things that Apple does differently really do add up. That $3 Trillion isn't an accident.

I keep an old iPhone around for if I misplace mine. Turn it on, log in, everything is just there - no ads, no update loops, nada. Works perfectly. My Androids have NEVER done that.