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Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

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Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#41
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pretty much. correct me if I am wrong, but these T&C treated like "local" laws (in respect to interaction of client and business within their interaction) within most jurisdictions by courts. so even if T&C does not make sense, usually courts are in favour of enforcing them. unless some severe contradiction with constitution or alike, or serious harm to people or something, they would throw away T&C in cases. but AFA…

> T&C treated like "local" laws. so even if T&C does not make sense, usually courts are in favour of enforcing them. unless some severe contradiction with constitution or alike It's not a "law", it's always under the law like any contract. And a court will not enforce illegal terms unless something very shady is afoot. The law always takes precedence , Even "lowly" laws, not just the constitution. In case of conflict…

That's how local laws work. The higher jurisdiction always takes precedence over the more local one.

Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#42
With the software supply chain running amok recently having anything connected feels like playing Russian roulette and I say this as somebody who is running home assistant for years. I’m particularly paranoid about connecting my ev (non-vw) to it now, feels like a serious footgun today, would’ve been convenient three months ago, true.

Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#43

This comment has really nice translation of corpo-speek to human language : https://github.com/robinostlund/homeassistant-volkswagencarn... Why are they shooting them selves in the feet? Is this really a tangible income stream? Is it really increasing security?

Most executives make commercially disadvantageous decisions in exchange for more power.

It's practically a law of business: executives prioritize their power first and their company's profit margins second. This is one reason why outsourcing coding was so popular despite not saving money and being so commercially disastrous - execs were in the driving seat with that relationship much more than they were with us.

Despite what some people will tell you about how the home assistant consumer segment "doesn't matter" (it does) it really is more about the tangibility of control over data vs the intangibility of lost consumer goodwill.

Companies are not profit maximizing at all costs. The shareholders and the executives are not a singular body they have different and sometimes wildly divergent interests.

Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#44
post #5

There needs to be a law that makes remote attestation - no matter who provides the root certificates, Google/Apple/GrapheneOS - illegal. There is only one use for this technology right now, and it is to prevent people from doing what they want to do with the devices they own, while also making interoperability cryptographically impossible. This is anti-competitive and should simply be illegal.

There is a real chance that in 5-10 years, there will be laptops and smartphones running open processors and operating systems with UX and and an OS comparable or better than the proprietary equivalent, but which are effectively useless to the average consumer because it is cryptographically impossible to use them for anything due to remote attestation proliferating more and more

Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#45
post #30

I mean, it was founded by the Nazi party, they single handedly destroyed diesels through the world's largest scam, what ethics can you really expect from them? I find it extremely funny when people boycott Teslas for being "Nazi" but won't boycott actual Volkswagens that was founded by the real Nazi party and to date - followed some of the most unethical practices in automative history :)

Just because the Nsdap party created something that doesn't mean you can automatically treat it is bad. That is prejudice. Something bad happening decades and decades after the party's dissolution is not going to be directly related. It is a reach to think unsupported third party apps breaking is related.

Yup, I wonder if Israelis visiting Germany avoid highways.

Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#46

/me scratches VAG cars from a possible new EV purchase. I hate Elon as much as the next guy, but Tesla is still playing the API game way better than the rest of the pack (even with the "not so new" Tesla Fleet API change)

Fleet api kinda sucks, but esphome via ble is solid. Even managed to connect $10 macropad so kids in back can control music.

Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#47
post #11

Garmin recently did something similar, resorting to tls fingerprinting to prevent unofficial logins to their api (via the popular garth library). They lost a lifetime customer in me - i think i have spent close to 20k on garmin gear between my wife and myself, watches, gps devices for cars, boats, and hiking gear. If they refuse to give me access to my data, i will (a) lobby for laws to be passed to make this mandato…

Huh, I completely missed that. I've been using python-garminconnect [0] for a few months without issues. I agree though that it's annoying, though not reason enough for me to switch away from Garmin yet.

  [0]: https://github.com/cyberjunky/python-garminconnect

Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#48

Quite a few other manufacturers have done the same thing. I use a reverse engineered Polestar library to get charging status but I'm in the middle of building a CANBUS sniffer to do the same job because I don't trust they won't do the same thing as this. I don't really understand it, it doesn't seem to offer a huge potential revenue stream and it pisses off the people who are most invested in your product.

Right? I imagine there would be a non-trivial sales/marketing boost for the one/first company (in any segment) to fully embrace HA. IKEA is arguably a good example of this.

Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could equally illustrate the difference between long established multi national companies with an overbearing corporate culture vs young upstart companies with a dynamic startup culture.

The question is why doesn't Germany have any young upstart auto companies when the US and China do? The question being the rhetorical kind.

It's not like the US has that many either. It's not the kind of winner-takes-all network effects industry that attracts venture capital outside of the Musk reality distortion field.

Re: Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion

#50
post #47
post #11

Garmin recently did something similar, resorting to tls fingerprinting to prevent unofficial logins to their api (via the popular garth library). They lost a lifetime customer in me - i think i have spent close to 20k on garmin gear between my wife and myself, watches, gps devices for cars, boats, and hiking gear. If they refuse to give me access to my data, i will (a) lobby for laws to be passed to make this mandato…

Huh, I completely missed that. I've been using python-garminconnect [0] for a few months without issues. I agree though that it's annoying, though not reason enough for me to switch away from Garmin yet. [0]: https://github.com/cyberjunky/python-garminconnect

Same here. I've been scraping the data from my Garmin watch for years with very little problems (first with https://github.com/tcgoetz/GarminDB, then https://github.com/sealbro/dotnet.garmin.connect).

The only annoyance is that Garmin requires 2FA if you enable the ECG feature on your smart watch/fitness tracker, but I have a small program that reads the 2FA codes from my Gmail inbox and supplies them to the scraper without too much trouble.

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