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U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

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Re: U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

#131

Post by JoshTriplett »

cogman10 wrote: post #83
rootusrootus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm generally pretty libertarian, but I'm all for throwing the book at these guys. To me that seems perfectly in line with being libertarian. One of the legitimate roles of the government is protecting people from violence by other people. Libertarians are not anarchists.

Not to my understanding. Libertarian protections are from my understanding all about the quantifiable damages that were done by any given action. They don't usually go beyond that. That's why most libertarians would be in favor of blowing asbestos insulation with the thought that "well, eventually the mesothelioma victims will sue which will stop the practice". You couldn't preemptively sue, however, as you don't hav…

(Most) libertarians still support addressing externalities.

One common libertarian solution for something unproven would be "it's your job to purchase insurance for this new way of doing things, and convince an actuary that it's safe; the insurance premiums will stop you from taking risks with unproven technologies without appropriate precautions/testing/etc".

Re: U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

#132

Post by lotsofpulp »

delecti wrote: post #77
lapetitejort wrote: post #23

I am surprised that a lawsuit started in 2021 about maintaining emission standards survived up to this point. The DOGE search terms must have misspelled "emission"

Alternatively, given who was running the show, lawsuits against ICE cars (non-EVs) might have just been outside the bounds of what they cared about.

The president's MO is to wait for bribes to whatever coin and then pardon/drop investigation. It's the art of the deal, you have something someone wants, don't give it away for free.

Re: U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

#133

Post by rsync »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #25
cogman10 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'd HAPPILY report every single truck rolling coal around me if there was a place to report that information. Hell, I've seen a truck roll coal around cop cars and, obviously, nothing happened. This is just gross privacy intrusion masquerading as "protecting the environment". We don't need 100% compliance to the law and simple prosecution/ticketing of obvious violations would go a long way towards solving the p…

For those, like me, who aren't familiar with the term "rolling coal": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

... and for those that assume, understandably, that this is strictly a US cultural phenomenon, I must (sadly) report that I saw a very new Ram 1500 dump black exhaust onto a cyclist on the 9 between Saint-Léonard and Crans-Montana. This happened in summer of 2022.

In terms of US cultural exports, for every jazz music and snowboarding I guess there has to be some coal rolling and fake service dogs.

Re: U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

#134

Post by shimman »

squibonpig wrote: post #105
EGreg wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might like my new startup, then: https://safebots.ai I spent way too much time on actually building this — with Claude and double checking everything — so an article I publish can be OK to push out. We aren’t building a bridge for thousands of cars here, it’s an article. A lot of things are automated and 95% of the time they are correct. The key is knowing whether the last mile is worth fixing, if the consequence…

I read through your presentation but I still feel pretty confused about what ur startup does. Could you explain it?

The purpose is to try to catch a sliver of all that fun money flying around in the current VC money.

Re: U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

#135

Post by selectively »

Lunatic, likely AI generated comments here.

This is an app for deliberately causing pollution. The users of that app should be criminally prosecuted and lose their license/spend a few months in prison. The price differential between this device/app and a generic ODB dongle you can buy on Amazon for ~$10 is entirely made up by the criminal features EZ Lynk offers.

The app being software versus hardware doesn't change the legal or moral situation involving it. Much like the DOJ would demand identities of people importing PlayStation 1 modchips back in the 90s, the users of this equally criminal application will be provided to the DOJ.

Re: U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

#137

Post by [deleted] »

oceanplexian wrote: post #115

These vehicle emissions laws are almost always fake compliance theater and were dreamed up by idiots. They are a huge drag on the economy and achieve absolutely nothing. For example, the reason we don’t have super efficient turbodiesel subcompacts that are perfectly legal in the EU is thanks to the so called “Clean” air act. Since the law is based on vehicle weight I can go buy a 8,000 pound truck and commute to work…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

#138

Post by nurple »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3

> The government says it needs this information to identify and interview witnesses who can testify about how the tools were actually used. Why start this whole thing, if you don't already have this information and have people willing to help you as witnesses? Sounds to me they're saying they don't have this already, but why is this investigation happening in the first place then? Rather than finding every user of th…

It's called "parallel construction".

Re: U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

#139

Post by Bjartr »

legitster wrote: post #111
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they can show that the majority of users are committing crimes with the app, that's a much stronger case than just rounding up a handful of witnesses. I still don't understand why this should even be relevant in cases like this. The thing is basically a generic OBD dongle, right? The same thing every DIY and shade tree mechanic uses to read codes and run service procedures. Suppose 20,000 people buy it and use i…

> I still don't understand why this should even be relevant in cases like this. The thing is basically a generic OBD dongle, right? The same thing every DIY and shade tree mechanic uses to read codes and run service procedures. The difference is this company provides a bunch of cloud services to roll out specific tunes at scale. From the original filing: > "EZ Lynk worked with/previewed the EZ Lynk System for at leas…

Why are they subpoenaing Apple and Google for this information instead of EZ Lynk for their own records of distribution?

Re: U.S. DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask over 100k users of car-tinkering app

#140

Post by cogman10 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #131
cogman10 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to my understanding. Libertarian protections are from my understanding all about the quantifiable damages that were done by any given action. They don't usually go beyond that. That's why most libertarians would be in favor of blowing asbestos insulation with the thought that "well, eventually the mesothelioma victims will sue which will stop the practice". You couldn't preemptively sue, however, as you don't hav…

(Most) libertarians still support addressing externalities. One common libertarian solution for something unproven would be "it's your job to purchase insurance for this new way of doing things, and convince an actuary that it's safe; the insurance premiums will stop you from taking risks with unproven technologies without appropriate precautions/testing/etc".

> (Most) libertarians still support addressing externalities.

Not really. They support it in terms of individual responsibility and not as a government role.

> The standard libertarian solution for something unproven would be "it's your job to purchase insurance for this new way of doing things"

No libertarian I'm aware of would force someone to purchase insurance. But it also does not address the externalities problem. We have in this thread an example of an externality that doesn't have a solution. Rolling coal does small amounts of damage. An insurance agent would be happy to insure someone with a modded car that rolls coal because there isn't going to be a claim related to it.

The same is true for any CO2 emitting activity. The damage is an externality that builds up with very small individual acts. I know of no way this would be addressed with libertarian philosophy (grant for me that man-made climate change is real and a problem if you want to argue against this).

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