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Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

arstechnica.com

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Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#21

Post by bravetraveler »

complaintdept wrote: post #15
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #9

Are they just banking on people not caring enough or knowing about the refund process? Clearly it can't be better off for them to refund hundreds of thousands maybe even 1m+ people. We need laws that step in to make this impossible. Hardware should be designed so that it can be reused. Make it so that people can just reflash the memory at a minimum. There's no reason for something like this to become e-waste. And the…

Write your elected representatives, preferably by snail mail (they take it more seriously that way). With Right to Repair being talked about so much right now, the time could be right to get this into the public mind. Car Thing could be what nucleates anti bricking legislation.

Conversely, stop voting for people that need coerced to their job. I know this is reductive - save your fingers.

Write, but do the not-vote-thing if they don't listen. The desire to not be hoodwinked has already been expressed. Just not this specific way.

Or, expressed more positively I guess, vote for those who don't need goaded to do the obviously good thing.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#23

Post by jamesy0ung »

murillians wrote: post #12
dylan604 wrote: post #10

"Some remain frustrated by the scheduled obsolescence of hardware that was only released to the general public in February 2022. Car Thing first released to a limited number of subscribers in October 2021." What is the purpose of this device in the first place? In 2021/2022, smart phones with bluetooth or usb/audio cables were in full effect which is how I'm assuming >99.999% of users use Spotify. Were there Spotify…

Car Thing was only a remote for your phone's Spotify app. It was targeted towards people that had bluetooth or aux inputs to their car's stereo, but not Apple CarPlay or Android Auto that allowed you to control Spotify directly through the radio.

If it’s a remote for Spotify on your iPhone, I don’t see why they are bricking it. It shouldn’t be that much effort to keep it working.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#27

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

bravetraveler wrote: post #21
complaintdept wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Write your elected representatives, preferably by snail mail (they take it more seriously that way). With Right to Repair being talked about so much right now, the time could be right to get this into the public mind. Car Thing could be what nucleates anti bricking legislation.

Conversely, stop voting for people that need coerced to their job. I know this is reductive - save your fingers. Write, but do the not-vote-thing if they don't listen. The desire to not be hoodwinked has already been expressed. Just not this specific way. Or, expressed more positively I guess, vote for those who don't need goaded to do the obviously good thing.

Why not go even farther than that? Admit political knowledge is virtually impossible, and just stop engaging in the political process at all. Save your time and energy for something easier, like cutting edge theoretical physics or becoming a billionaire.

Such is the point argued by Dr. Mike Huemer in his essay In Praise of Passivity [1], and to this date I've never found a clearer piece of writing on the matter.

[1]: https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/files/Studia_Humana/Studia_Hum...

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#28

Post by goodluckchuck »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #9

Are they just banking on people not caring enough or knowing about the refund process? Clearly it can't be better off for them to refund hundreds of thousands maybe even 1m+ people. We need laws that step in to make this impossible. Hardware should be designed so that it can be reused. Make it so that people can just reflash the memory at a minimum. There's no reason for something like this to become e-waste. And the…

We don’t need more laws. We need to repeal the arbitration act, and let things like this get resolved in court, where we can establish a precedent against this kind of stuff.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#29

Post by ChildOfChaos »

I'm out of luck. I bought the car thing via a third party as I'm in the UK where it was never sold. I get that is the risk of such things, i.e if the device malfunctioned I wouldn't be able to do anything, but it's still Spotify's decision that has hurt me, what's worse is this was a gift.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#30

Post by hoherd »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

I wonder if there's licensing issues with them doing so? Like I assume they didn't make all the hardware and firmware involved. Kind of a shame when companies do this. I also wonder how long till the hacker community starts hacking these things any way? Seems like a worthy device to hack, though I can't imagine there's millions of these out there. I'd love to buy a 2nd hand one and install custom software on it if so…

Spotify almost certainly developed Car Thing using license encumbered software, and this illustrates how encumbered licenses are anti-freedom and are causes of unnecessary e-waste.

Thankfully folks have started organizing to reverse engineer the device:

- https://github.com/err4o4/spotify-car-thing-reverse-engineer...

- https://hackaday.com/2024/05/30/old-spotify-car-thing-hacks-...

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