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Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

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291–300 of 307 posts

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only new legislation and regulations can get us out of here. From the same goverments that want more state surveillance and even buy the private profile data from data brokers? Only a new ...revolution would get us out of here...

Most of the governments you are talking about are voted on by the people. And when the people care, the governments change. When the people don't care, yes, the government does want lots of data. However, people do often care about such things and that limits the government.

>Most of the governments you are talking about are voted on by the people. And when the people care, the governments change.

People have been getting the opposite of what they explicitly vote for, for ages...

Just some recent examples:

In Europe an example is the popular sentiment against further unckecked immigration for example, and people voting politicians promising against that, and getting more.

Or how in the US how people voted someone promising no new wars, talking against foreign interventionist policy and so on, and see what they got.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The carbon in food is not captured or emitted in any coherent sense here. The crops are grown (capturing the carbon in the first place) for the purpose of feeding people -- in the same way that modern American forestry for paper is functionally carbon neutral (ignoring transport and processing) because the trees are in equilibrium. The counterfactual of not eating the food results in fewer crops and basically the sam…

From the end notes, I think the author's response would be that the carbon equivalent emissions come from the fossil fuel used in growing, fertilizing, harvesting, transporting, refrigerating, packaging, and so-on. The larger point of the book is that specific accounting is messy, but if we proceed anyway we can get to the rough orders of magnitude that are more useful.

Bananas are like transport and refrigerator maxing! It can't possibly be the literal optimum of that metric.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you suggest people do about it?

What did they do in 1789?

I guess my point was - you're one of the people you're complaining about if you're not revolting yourself. I also am not of the opinion that violent revolution would fix anything for the better, but that's not really relevant.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#294
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did check but did not find the reference. What exactly are you quoting? I do not see that in any of the parent comments. I also doubt Maxwell was well versed in leetspeak. She was a career socialite. Getting visas and documents under different names is not anything other than garden variety use of aliases. All kinds of people who are not mega-wealthy do this, legally and illegally. I am specifically questioning the…

> I did check but did not find the reference. What exactly are you quoting? I mean man, I didn't ask you to search for my verbatim quote (it's an one-off llm answer). Search for her SSN. You can google it, it's here on the first page under "'Application Info" for example: https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01653... Also in meta pages about the documents: https://github.com/rhowardstone/Epstein-res…

I genuinely gave you the benefit of the doubt. I used duck duck go and searched several combinations of related terms and also asked chat gpt, “man”. And found nothing. Why would you quoting an “one-off llm answer” as a fact remotely be responsible? We all know how reliable that is. Why would you not cite your source in the first place “man”? This is straight up conspiracy theory BS but I wanted to understand where you were coming from and give it the benefit of the doubt. Nobody is changing their SSN to a vanity SSN and you know it.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#295
I requested my personal data from Lexus to see what they had on me.

Not only did they store sensitive data about me, it also included personal data about 2 random Toyota owners who were incorrectly linked to my email address. I could see their full names, phone numbers, home addresses, details about their cars and every interaction they'd had with their dealers. It is a goldmine for a bad actor.

And this is despite me not signing up for "Connected Services", because Toyota/Lexus's privacy notice says they too may sell your location and driving behavior to third parties including insurance companies if you enable features like Emergency SOS.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#296
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that just be aware that you will eventually be spending more than just buying a new car just to keep the current one in good repair. Car collectors get around this because they use have a different car as the daily driver, and their collected car is repaired and only used in parades and such. You are also turning away a lot of the advances in electric vehicles. Paying for gas in your old car, could be more…

> You can do that just be aware that you will eventually be spending more than just buying a new car just to keep the current one in good repair. I'm pretty sure you haven't run the numbers on this assertion. That would be essentially impossible. Average new car price in the US is near $50,000: https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/10/13/ave... The absolute cheapest new cars in the US are around $24,000:…

Yeah. For fifty grand I'm pretty sure you can keep a 2010 Tacoma running until the heat death of the universe.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also akin to Roko's basilisk's - the people who don't realise how pervasive and invasive it has become seem the happiest while the ones like us who've often been around computers since the 80's and just watched our society sleep walk into it feel the worst. That many of us then end up working for the companies doing it makes for a bad feeling across the industry.

You’re sort of describing the central problem of my existence: the skills I have to offer in the marketplace of work are only skills utilized by people whose goals I abhor. I got into this because I loved solving problems. Now my problem is that the problems at hand are mostly dehumanizing and further the goals of people intent on dehumanizing everyone but them. I leaned my ladder against the wrong wall and started c…

There's certainly a lot of money in ad tech and surveillance, but there's a lot of other software out there too.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#298
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without studded tires it’s very difficult to ride a bike on snow or ice.

Have you ever tried on snow ? Many bikers roams winter Finland and Russia without studded tires. Avoiding the ice is a great advice indeed, with or without those tires.

Actually no I can’t recall the last time I tried to ride a bike in the snow. But I know inherently that snow itself would be alright, but snow is almost always accompanied by a layer of ice below, which simply can’t be fine. This is the case in Canada at least.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#299
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the only solution unless something radically changes. For me, I will never own a car with any kind of screen on the dash.

You can do that just be aware that you will eventually be spending more than just buying a new car just to keep the current one in good repair. Car collectors get around this because they use have a different car as the daily driver, and their collected car is repaired and only used in parades and such. You are also turning away a lot of the advances in electric vehicles. Paying for gas in your old car, could be more…

Car collectors are not the same thing as drivers of old cars. Collectors don't want to put miles on their collectables because they want the cars to maintain (or increase) their value. It's not a question of cost. Older cars are simpler, particularly pre-electronic ignition, and easier to repair.

Just as a random example, you can get a rebuilt automatic transmission for a '69 Ford Mustang for about $350 on ebay. The cheapest transmission (not rebuilt, just taken from a wreck) you'll find for a 2020 Mustang is about $540.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also akin to Roko's basilisk's - the people who don't realise how pervasive and invasive it has become seem the happiest while the ones like us who've often been around computers since the 80's and just watched our society sleep walk into it feel the worst. That many of us then end up working for the companies doing it makes for a bad feeling across the industry.

You’re sort of describing the central problem of my existence: the skills I have to offer in the marketplace of work are only skills utilized by people whose goals I abhor. I got into this because I loved solving problems. Now my problem is that the problems at hand are mostly dehumanizing and further the goals of people intent on dehumanizing everyone but them. I leaned my ladder against the wrong wall and started c…

Now you have a different problem to solve!
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