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Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

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Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#441

Post by raxxorraxor »

this_user wrote: post #90
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…

German companies, especially old school industrial ones like VW, have a very hard time understanding open platforms. The view everything through the lense of liability and compliance first. Their thinking is that if someone runs their app on a custom ROM and uses that to manipulate the app in any way, and that causes some extremely hypothetical damage, that they might be held liable for not having prevented this situ…

They have a hard time to understand software in general, software developers have a very low standing in German engineering and engineering culture has long been replaced by finance people.

And I don't think the liability is the primary problem, they have a problem with freedom and fear that they lose some mechanism for monetisation. This is why you get subscriptions for heating your arse.

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#442

Post by otsukare »

h4kunamata wrote: post #351

VW won't be missed! Cars weren't meant to be computers on wheel. I bought a 2025 Suzuki because it is a manual and there is no firmware update, no internet connection, GOS Android Auto is all I get and only if my phone connects with the car. It is so weird how companies in 2026 still making such bad mistakes.

I've used a 2023 Suzuki S-Cross (manual fwiw) and this doesn't match my experience. Which model are you using?

They have an app [0] (which doesn't sync correctly for me, and their support is awful). When working it shows things like where you last parked, fuel efficiency, and allows you to remotely lock the vehicle, so it has internet access.

I sent Suzuki a Subject Access Request as a workaround to gain access to the data, and received months of extremely accurate location, speed, etc data.

There are also software updates, you just have to do them yourself [1]. They also didn't work for me.

Software aside however, they are extremely reliable cars, most of which seems down to their simplicity.

[0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=suzuki.app.a02...

[1]: https://www.infotainment-system.com/en/device/summary

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#443

Post by virgilp »

gib444 wrote: post #291
virgilp wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are all these "broken and dangerous"? In my car (Volvo) they work rather well. Perhaps sign detection sometimes misses signs, but so do I so I can't fault it. The others though, I rank them all somewhere between "genuinely useful" and "absolutely awesome"

N.B. I didn't write /all/ were "broken and dangerous" But some personal examples: - Auto high beam assist saw a car at a side junction, turned off high beam, then turned back on, mimicking a 'flash' to let the car out, which they acted on by pulling out. I had to brake hard to avoid them. I was doing 60 mph - I was on the motorway and a stranded vehicle was on the hard shoulder and the driver decided to exit from the…

Admittedly mine is somewhat high end, and I have seen broken implementations (which is what I think you describe; e.g. for auto high beam assist mine will redirect the beams around isolated cars, won't completely switch to low beams except in heavy /heavier traffic; and when it does, it takes at least several seconds to switch back - which makes it impossible to do the kind of "flash" you describe).

But I'm kinda' surprised by the cruise control, I don't think I ever drove a car, even a rental, where cruise control wasn't at least "genuinely useful". Even the non-automatic one. How does it "not take into account vehicles in other lanes"/ what makes it dangerous?

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#444

Post by Cider9986 »

bjackman wrote: post #408

I have no plans to buy a car but I'm curious: what is the sensible choice for technical people with a reasonable amount of money? I rent cars whenever I travel to the US and I've never not been pissed off by a car's software. If you live in a country that makes it practica/affordable and you don't need too much range, I wonder if buying an old car with a broken engine and paying someone to do an electric conversion i…

I would get a Rivian because you can disable all connections.

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#445

Post by treszkai »

inigyou wrote: post #440
this_user wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German companies, especially old school industrial ones like VW, have a very hard time understanding open platforms. The view everything through the lense of liability and compliance first. Their thinking is that if someone runs their app on a custom ROM and uses that to manipulate the app in any way, and that causes some extremely hypothetical damage, that they might be held liable for not having prevented this situ…

They have to, because German society is extremely litigious and based on finding loopholes in rules. You know how some religious groups will string a rope between two houses, count it as a roof as long as they're within a certain horizontal distance of it, so they can follow the rope on occasions when the religion says they have to stay inside, and they think God enjoys them finding these loopholes? Germany is like t…

What do you base this information on? I live in Germany and have no idea what you're talking about.

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#446

Post by mnw21cam »

Arainach wrote: post #400
mnw21cam wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "enormous costs" is a strong argument here. The annual MOT is usually under £50, and that includes a fairly comprehensive roadworthiness check and emissions check. A stronger argument would be that a car owner could change some settings on their car specially to pass the emissions check, and then set them back to dirty afterwards each year.

An MOT is a cost to every driver every year - significant in money and in time - plus the cost of running the infrastructure to provide the testing. All so that a few people can tune engines? No thanks.

It's not just so that a few people can tune engines. The majority of the MOT is the roadworthiness check.

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#447

Post by MichaelZuo »

rickdeckard wrote: post #401
podnami wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve spent time doing software at VW and a few of its subsidiaries, and this matches my experience. Compliance is everything, and SAFe (Scaled Agile) is deployed as a blunt instrument. Management treats software exactly like hardware production lines—everything is just an "engineering process" that can be optimized on a spreadsheet. The underlying assumption is that individual engineering talent is just an interchang…

> Management treats software exactly like hardware production lines That's exactly my observation as well. Classic hardware-producing companies have an immense respect on the step of entering mass-production, as whatever issue that slipped through will be multiplied and physically spread across the world. So they come from the mindset that the dominant mindset is to minimize the SURFACE-area of potential risk. This m…

Why shouldn’t software be treated with the same rigor at Volkswagen scale?

Pretty much all software products typically talked about on HN are laughable at that scale, they have crashes or weird bugs way more often than the six sigma norm of 99.9999% reliability.

For example, I don’t think it’s even possible nowadays to buy a new iPad and use it with default apps and settings for any significant duration continuously. It’s well under 1 million minutes of uptime before failure and a hard restart is needed.

So anything more complex than the simplest possible use case of an iPad is even more of a joke under hardware norms.

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#448

Post by joemazerino »

HybridStatAnim8 wrote: post #293
joemazerino wrote: post #234

Yeah this has less to do with VW and GrapheneOS and more to do with Google Play's attestation. Many apps don't work with sandboxed GMS/microG currently and more will come as we get closer to a locked down version of Google's Android.

GrapheneOS has 99% app compatibility with sandboxed google play. Apps do not have issues with sandboxed google play at this time.

When is the last time you tried the MyQ garage opener app?

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#449

Post by rickdeckard »

inigyou wrote: post #440
this_user wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German companies, especially old school industrial ones like VW, have a very hard time understanding open platforms. The view everything through the lense of liability and compliance first. Their thinking is that if someone runs their app on a custom ROM and uses that to manipulate the app in any way, and that causes some extremely hypothetical damage, that they might be held liable for not having prevented this situ…

They have to, because German society is extremely litigious and based on finding loopholes in rules. You know how some religious groups will string a rope between two houses, count it as a roof as long as they're within a certain horizontal distance of it, so they can follow the rope on occasions when the religion says they have to stay inside, and they think God enjoys them finding these loopholes? Germany is like t…

No idea what's your source on this, but I see you're spanning quite some "rope" from

a.) a global company in the car-industry being cautious of exposing ANY risk-surface in a product because every issue making it to the field doesn't just bear the risk of very expensive recalls/fines but may also put people's ACTUAL lives in danger, to

b.) the country Germany and its whole society

> If anyone with money finds a technicality to sue you on, they will.

In the car-industry you don't need anyone with money to sue you. If you ship a car which is found to endanger participants of traffic, your company may not recover from the aftermath for years...

Re: Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users

#450

Post by deanishe »

treszkai wrote: post #445
inigyou wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to, because German society is extremely litigious and based on finding loopholes in rules. You know how some religious groups will string a rope between two houses, count it as a roof as long as they're within a certain horizontal distance of it, so they can follow the rope on occasions when the religion says they have to stay inside, and they think God enjoys them finding these loopholes? Germany is like t…

What do you base this information on? I live in Germany and have no idea what you're talking about.

Same. It doesn't sound at all familiar, but Germans are a relatively litigious bunch (so many have legal insurance). Suing your neighbour because their cigarette smoke wafts into your kitchen. That sort of thing.

But "unlimited liabilities" gives entirely the wrong impression. German courts do not award punitive damages, and fees are generally capped below that amount in dispute.

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