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What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

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Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#331

Post by wholinator2 »

cipheredStones wrote: post #229
throw16180339 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The car has an automatic system which can prevent the driver from operating it, but no one outside the car can trigger that system, which is clearly what the "kill switch" posts were claiming. That assumes that the feature is implemented securely, which is hardly guaranteed. Would you bet a large sum that it wasn't exploitable? I wouldn't.

No. But "new cars will have mandatory automated controls to prevent drunk driving, which may be implemented insecurely in a way that creates major vulnerabilities" (very reasonable) is not the same claim as "Joe Biden signed a bill that would give law enforcement access to a ‘kill switch’ that will be attached to ALL new cars" (blatantly false). The fact that there are real concerns about something doesn't justify ig…

I think the greatest concern is that the cops don't seem to care about personal privacy at all. They'll do anything that's physically possible to do to prove guilt of a person, they have the Power of The State behind them. They're going to get access to this technology and they will use it to stop vehicles, it's simply a matter of time. Police in the US only ever get more powerful, more militaristic, more immune to consequences. There's an easily visible path from where we were before the bill to where the poster (incorrectly) claims we're at. Just because they don't currently have the power doesn't mean we should be taking every affordable step towards giving it to them.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#332

Post by _huayra_ »

floydnoel wrote: post #292
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 89 BMW ... and an 83 Land Cruiser I'm with you. Our daily drivers are 2011 Mitsu, 96 Toyota, 92 Buick and a 63 Dart. Also a 61 Sunliner for when it's not-summer. The Mitsu is unfortunately drive-by-wire; I mostly avoid it.

The Cybertruck is the only vehicle on the market that has drive-by wire. There was previously an Infiniti model that was partially drive by wire.

I'm guessing that car is "drive-by-wire" via the throttle, which has not been an actual cable in most cars for decades at this point. Steer-by-wire is indeed just the cybertruck at this point afaik.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#333

Post by _huayra_ »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #294
BurningFrog wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selfdriving taxis solves much of the 98% unused car problem.

They also create problems in terms of extra journeys as a private car will go from A to B, whereas a taxi goes from C to A to B to C. It's quite amusing as people try to come up with more efficient use of cars and typically end up reinventing public transport (e.g. buses, trains etc).

Bro just platoon the autonomous taxis into a convoy, give them separated lanes, and get rid of the rubber wheels and add steel wheels and steel lane guides for maximum efficiency. It's obviously new and revolutionary!

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#334

Post by cratermoon »

sgt wrote: post #259
volemo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How large is your family? Why do you need so many cars?

People who have many cars usually don't do it because of necessity, but because they love tinkering with the old automobiles.

At peak teenager/young adult time my family owned six cars. That's for two adults and three driving-age kids. The sixth car was something my dad, who was an old-school motor head of the sort who grew up using feeler gauges, just kept around for no obvious reason but to tinker now and then.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#335

Post by rpcope1 »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #87
dclowd9901 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you here. I have an 89 BMW (which is old enough to have an actual servo motor attached to the intake manifold for cruise control) and an 83 Land Cruiser (whose most advanced feature is that it controls its emissions using vacuum controlled pneumatic circuitry). I'm very glad I've put in the time to learn how to work on cars because I have zero interest in the tech direction of modern vehicles.

> 89 BMW ... and an 83 Land Cruiser I'm with you. Our daily drivers are 2011 Mitsu, 96 Toyota, 92 Buick and a 63 Dart. Also a 61 Sunliner for when it's not-summer. The Mitsu is unfortunately drive-by-wire; I mostly avoid it.

Almost every early electronic throttle like that drives like pure ass, and newer ones are hit or miss at best. Toyota seems have done a decent job with it, but everyone else kind of keeps pooching it.

That falls in with a lot of stuff that felt like it might have made sense on race cars that I don't understand why people keep asking for on street vehicles (drive by wire throttle, CVTs, huge wheels with rubber band tires, certain kinds of traction and stability control, viscous coupled or electronic "all wheel drive" (not 4WD), along with the Subaru boxer 4 people get Stockholm syndrome over); all I can figure is that people are just OK driving stuff that drives and behaves like total shit.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#336

Post by inahga »

b112 wrote: post #317
markus_zhang wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I'm going to buy a new car in the following years, wondering which cars don't have those? I don't mind old gas cars but I don't have the knowledge to tell whether the car contains those eSIMs.

These days, the better question is in which cars can you disable the esim. Some have a fuse you can pull for the modem, without disabling anything else. Others you can pull the antenna, and add a resistor instead.

In some disconnecting the antenna isn't enough, it just reduces the range of the modem. Another option is if the modem can be physically removed.

e.g. http://sandsprite.com/blogs/index.php?uid=7&pid=462&year=201.... I think this head unit is shared amongst Chrysler vehicles, so Chrysler is an option (but then you'll have two problems).

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#337

Post by _huayra_ »

ddingus wrote: post #266
brailsafe wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time A bit besides the point, but isn't it wild how inherently wasteful personal cars are? Every time the thought crosses my mind to get another one, if I don't stop at the cost, I stop at the fact that I'll have this giant chunk of metal sitting idle on the street or somewhere else nearly all the time. It'd be useful in an extreme minority of cases (for…

That depends doesn't it? I keep my cars for a long time. 200k miles is the usual, and that has held true buying used a little ways north of 100k miles already on the board. If we designed for very long car life, the waste equation would look different. Toyota does, and there are a small number of people planning on half a million miles. Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality pr…

> Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality problems or deliberate design intent change?

I'm hoping they fix this. There's almost no other reason to buy a Toyota other than this reliability reputation.

It seems like the way to go now is a naturally-aspirated Subaru, which I ended up after all the Toyota dealers near me treated me like a chump (which apparently is common; Toyota doesn't have as much "say" over their dealers as other similar companies afaik). Subies have basically been iterations on the same engine for a decade (the FB series), and the brand cannot afford to do much goofy R&D. They're also still dealing with the head gasket reputation despite that being >10 years old at this point (almost 20).

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#338

Post by _huayra_ »

markus_zhang wrote: post #291
afh1 wrote: post #25

The scary part is not the GPS installed by the fleet company that previously owned the car, which in all likelihood was just forgotten there, but the GPS and eSIM that comes with most (all?) new cars and that in most (all?) new cars cannot be disabled. Apart from privacy concerns of your data being used or sold by the car vendor, government outreach is also a concern. There was a bill announced in the US for all new…

Since I'm going to buy a new car in the following years, wondering which cars don't have those? I don't mind old gas cars but I don't have the knowledge to tell whether the car contains those eSIMs.

Subarus don't precisely fit this criteria, but you can opt out of 3rd-party data sharing in all 50 states.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#340

Post by snozolli »

afh1 wrote: post #25

The scary part is not the GPS installed by the fleet company that previously owned the car, which in all likelihood was just forgotten there, but the GPS and eSIM that comes with most (all?) new cars and that in most (all?) new cars cannot be disabled. Apart from privacy concerns of your data being used or sold by the car vendor, government outreach is also a concern. There was a bill announced in the US for all new…

tech which was called a "kill switch". Media rushed to say it's not really a kill switch, just "sensors or cameras to monitor the driver’s behaviors, head or eye movements" and "block the driver from operating the vehicle". So... a kill switch.

It's not a kill switch, the link you provided explains that it's not a kill switch, yet you still call it a kill switch.

If you were paying any attention, then you know that idiots online were portraying this as the cops being able to remotely disable your car at their will.

In fact, the requirement is for the vehicle to pull safely to the side of the road when it detects an impaired driver (DUI or medical emergency). There is no external initiation, it's entirely self-contained.

It's not a kill switch. It's not remotely like a kill switch.

Having personally been within minutes of crashes involving a drunk driver who blew a stop sign and smashed into a fire hydrant, and another driver experiencing a health emergency who crashed through an intersection at 80mph in a 25mph zone, I say bring it on. Ignore the Rogan-sphere FUD peddlers.

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