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Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

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Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#251

Post by plqbfbv »

bluGill wrote: post #176
bogeholm wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abou…

> 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.

Emissions scale with performance, and inversely of fuel efficiency. So the environment may not be the most important point, but I'm pretty sure fuel efficiency is high on the list when you're picking a compact or long-range car that is supposed to be fuel efficient.

Also, by advertising as compliant to green specs something that wasn't, means people may have been swayed to purchase irregular cars despite them not being really green, only due to the fact that they may have received rebates and contributions for the purchase, regardless of whether "being greener" ranked high on their decision metrics.

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#252

Post by goobatrooba »

bojan wrote: post #86
moooo99 wrote: post #70

It is amazing how Volkswagen keeps messing up. I am currently in the market for a new car, an EV specifically. Volkswagen brands were at the top of my list for many reasons, among them the excellent driving assist implementation. I got an offer from a dealer three weeks ago and was going to order the car, then the API for the community integration got turned off. I decided to hold back and see what comes from it. Now…

Same here. I'll be in a market soon and I had my eyes on a VW i4 or a Škoda Enyaq, but this makes me seriously reconsider. I really wanted to support local industry and buy a European product this time, but they are making it seriously difficult (no, don't get me even started on Stellantis).

I was hesitating between a VW ID.4 and Peugeot 5008 (7 seater, much space). In the end I went for the Peugeot and it's fine. The ID was much more fun to drive, but I would have lost space and paid a lot more.

Peugeot is reasonable and works. Charging could be faster and WLTP longer, and once I had the screens restart while on the motorway which thankfully did not affect driving but was pretty terrifying. All that to say - go ahead and buy European. You'll have some issues but for me all better than to get a china car with who knows what data exfiltration and hidden issues, or a Tesla that will lock you in when the car burns. EU companies are too boring to spy and too risk averse to have tesla-like issues..

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#253

Post by gib444 »

afarah1 wrote: post #36

Driving a rental car in Germany almost makes me cheer for the ongoing bankruptcy of their auto industry. It really needs a full reset at this point. Sad thing is EU law mandates for a modem in the car as well as intrusive driving aids that actually make driving less safe by constantly driving your attention away from the road[1]. So there is no hope to get a minimally decent car in Europe in the near future, unless a…

> constantly driving your attention away from the road

Absolutely agree! After a few minutes you realise you forgot to disable one of the 'features' and then get distracted trying to do that.

Lane keep assist is broken and dangerous

Auto high beam assist is broken and dangerous

Auto cruise control is broken and dangerous

Collision detection-avoidance is broken and dangerous (thinks you're going to crash quite often in our narrow, built-up areas in the UK)

Speed sign detection is broken

Hell, even automatic wipers, after all these years, is far from perfect. I feel they should have had to prove themselves with that before being given anything more important

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#254

Post by estebank »

bilsbie wrote: post #233

Tangentially speaking what are the downsides to running graphene?

The things I've found:

- RCS doesn't work at all on non-Owner accounts, switching to the owner account is necessary to receive them (I use a secondary account for my "main" account, the owner is left empty except for a Google Fi associated account)

- Immediate auto-update can cause phone to turn off and not turn on overnight (you can change the setting)

- Google Wallet won't work for payments (in Europe you can instead use Curve)

- The default AOSP app selection is in general worse than the Google provided ones (you can install them, after installing Google Play Services, which is sandboxed)

- Getting Google Fi to work required some fiddling initially, pretty sure it was because of my use of the non-Owner account

- Some banking apps will refuse to work (mine work fine)

- You can get Android Auto working, but by default so many things are sandboxed that applications and TTS won't show up unless you spend the time enabling permissions

Overall I am happy with it. It does feel a bit less polished than stock Android (because of the interaction of apps and more strict sandboxing), but for most people who don't care about Google Wallet and are ok installing Play Services and any necessary Google apps, the experience feels pretty much like a de-Gemini'd/de-bloated Android.

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#255

Post by mrhottakes »

themafia wrote: post #202
aka13_404 wrote: post #31

This is sadly not even the full extent of it. What they did is, they locked their api entirely for anything that is not play protect certified. That means, all the cool stuff that was doable via community-driven projects is now dead in the water. The "app" they provide is 60% advertisement, 30% features, and I unironically preferred using a Home Assistant connection instead of of it for everything. Even for automatio…

I feel like that should be a warranty claim. You sold me one car with a specific set of features and now you've updated it into a different one lacking those features. It's not the same car. You broke it. Fix it or pay me for it's value.

They have plenty of boilerplate in the warranty to be sure they don't have to pay you for this.

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#257

Post by [deleted] »

aka13_404 wrote: post #31

This is sadly not even the full extent of it. What they did is, they locked their api entirely for anything that is not play protect certified. That means, all the cool stuff that was doable via community-driven projects is now dead in the water. The "app" they provide is 60% advertisement, 30% features, and I unironically preferred using a Home Assistant connection instead of of it for everything. Even for automatio…

[deleted]

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#258

Post by jimmydddd »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #208
zie wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was just engineers engineering their way into creating Electrify America :)

I am pretty sure that was not the engineers, but someone higher up the food chain ordering people to do that. I might be wrong, but maybe I missed the obvious "/s" or "/i" here.

Yes, but Hans, that one rogue guy in engineering, did get assigned 100% of the blame from the PR dept.

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#259

Post by mrhottakes »

mystraline wrote: post #96
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone was jumping and praising mobile Eco-systems. Literally who?

The app-devs were salivating on striking it rich on a garbage app. The rest of us groan when we hear "DOWNLOAD OUR APP" or grocery stores that want you to install their spyware coupon app. These days, nost apps are just data exflitrators, spyware portals, and surveillance pricing initiatives, wrapped up with a "FREE THINGY" wrapping.

> These days, nost apps are just data exflitrators, spyware portals, and surveillance pricing initiatives, wrapped up with a "FREE THINGY" wrapping.

This describes almost every "tech" product

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#260

Post by dreamcompiler »

aka13_404 wrote: post #31

This is sadly not even the full extent of it. What they did is, they locked their api entirely for anything that is not play protect certified. That means, all the cool stuff that was doable via community-driven projects is now dead in the water. The "app" they provide is 60% advertisement, 30% features, and I unironically preferred using a Home Assistant connection instead of of it for everything. Even for automatio…

Rivian would have gone out of business a year ago if VW had not approached them with an offer of $5.8B to rewrite all of VW's car software [0]. Because VW knew their own software sucked.

I wonder if this is a result of Rivian writing VW's software or if that effort hasn't yet borne fruit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivian_and_Volkswagen_Group_Te...

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