I am not a lawyer, but this is clearly illegal under EU law.
As a EU citizen, please sign this petition https://www.change.org/p/eu-data-act-durchsetzen-autoherstel...
Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
171–180 of 497 posts
Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
#172I don't know how large a group who will do this is - but if the UK bans VPNs I can see Graphene having a very large target on its back. - Buy Pixel, Get Graphene - Use FDroid, don't sign up for Google Play, download Tor browser - Censorship resistant access to the internet without handing over your ID. Pixel being a fairly popular phone in the UK is the interesting bit - if you had to buy some niche device I couldn't…
Who said the UK is going to ban VPN? Genuine question. That's news to me and I'm here.
Apologies for the youtube shorts link, but Liz Kendall was on LBC yesterday talking about VPNs:
https://youtube.com/shorts/WvHl3G6KojI
I believe they're "doing research" into it, which basically means they don't understand how any of it works.
Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
#173Isn't this for the same reason why you can't do banking on an unlocked bootloader phone? There's no way to verify the integrity of the system, and any malicious app can just grab your banking credentials or enable criminals to unlock and drive away with your car.
GrapheneOS requires a locked bootloader and supports using deveice attestation via the generic attestation functionality in the Android Open Source Project.
Play integrity is an anticompetitive tool that ignores this, and artificially limits itself on GrapheneOS. It is not due to any incompatibility.
Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ridiculous, but are we only saying that because we're on HN or is it because the portion of the userbase who thinks it's actually a bad thing is the larger one?
Who cares if it's the larger one, so long as they are the correct one?
VW, presumably.
Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Volkswagen brands were at the top of my list for many reasons You should definitely reevaluate how you constructed your list. VW has a history of being scummy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal ) and their ICE cars are notorious for being unreliable compared to the Japanese car-makers. To be fair, EVs do change the equation a bit, but given their scandal plagued past, there's no way I woul…
As opposed to the rest of the auto industry which has a stellar track record of adhering to emissions and fuel economy regulations /s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device
And they lobbied governments to keep the tests a joke (e.g. test emissions on downwhill roads):
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/24/uk-franc...
Of course the governments probably lobbied for this stuff because it improves their car industry tax profits/employment numbers.
Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
The emissions scandal is completely different, because in that case they were illicitly making the car work better for its owner.
Unless, of course, said owner cared for the environment
Said owner cares about their experience above the environment. Sure people care about the environment, but it is always lower than all the other factors in their personal list of things they worry about.
That is why so many rich fly private jets to environment conferences. People put Greenpeace and similar bumper stickers on their SUVs that never go off road and rarely have more than one person inside. They care about the environment, but only when it doesn't impact anything else in their life.
Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
The emissions scandal is completely different, because in that case they were illicitly making the car work better for its owner.
Unless, of course, said owner cared for the environment
They can always drive less frequently or more slowly, that's within their power.
Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
There must be 10s of millions of x86 PCs with unlocked bioses in the UK. The issue won't be running an open device. The problem is software - what does someone running Linux do if the government mandates online services require proprietary attestation APIs? It's scary how quickly the banning is moving. The problem is what happens next. When they realise that banning things doesn't really work. The next logical step i…
> what does someone running Linux do if the government mandates online services require proprietary attestation APIs? One dual-boots to a reputable Linux vendor’s signed/sealed OS image with secure boot enabled in BIOS, so that the attestations are valid; financially supports said vendor; contacts them quarterly with check-ins on the status of their lockdown+attestation roadmap and uses professional journalism approa…
Linux intends to be left out of all this attestation garbage because it completely undermines the point of fully owning and controlling your own devices. I don't want or need to ask permission before I run a program - not from random megacorporations, and ESPECIALLY not from any of the various governments. If some third party service wants to make sure I'm not doing anything nefarious, they should do it at the border of their servers and the services they offer.
Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
#179Google Play has been a huge drag on innovation and security in the mobile ecosystem. I'm actually looking forward to the time when AI kills the mobile app ecosystem so that every phone manufacturer can bundle their own "vibe-code-your-own-app" system with their devices, and the Google Play monopoly is broken.
I see a future where it is easier for startups to create their own mobile devices than to deliver certain functionality through the Google and Apple platforms where your own data will be used against you and where their devices can record you 24/7 without any remediation to ensure privacy.
Unlikely for most. For some situations yes, but for most situations customers are going to demand that you work with their existing phone.
Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
#180VW blocking third party to access their servers is one thing, the thing that I find shocking is that you need to access VW servers to obtain your charging data while this should be directly available locally from the car.
The historical data is aggregated in some "cloud" rather than in the car, but if you want to collect and aggregate the data locally, you can still, for now at least. Car Scanner Pro and ABRP (A Better Route Planner) are both really popular for EVs for this exact use case, and both support VW EVs; they read battery charge state / voltage / temperature and operating states (speed, consumption, etc) using both standard…
I've seen some great successes using HomeAssistant combined with one of these that connects your vehicle's various CANbuses (via OBD port) to Wifi/BLE. https://www.meatpi.com/products/wican