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Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

arstechnica.com

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Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#461

Post by gbrown »

zeroflow wrote: post #43
pradn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right to point out that these problems arise across entire industries. You can't vote with your money if all otherwise good TVs have crap built into them. And it's not easy for a new entrant to gain a foothold in such a high-tech market. And even if they do, there's plenty of temptation to go down the same route of milking customers who already bought your product. Sooner or later, we won't even remember how i…

The topic with the TVs is going to be a problem for me in a few years. My current TV is from 2013 - it may have some years to go, but at some point, it will fail. I've had a short look at the market, and all the "good" brands (Samsung, LG, Sony) show horrific ads. It looks like the cheap brands simply sell your data. Then there are some local brands, which sell non-TV TV's (no tuner, there's a tax on that). They don'…

Look into the cheap Sceptre displays. They make non-smart panels with decent resolution and performance, so long as you have external speakers and use the optical audio output instead of the output from their garbage DAC.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#462

Post by betwixthewires »

bigiain wrote: post #413
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the front doors both open when the handle is pulled, locked or not The fact that the front doors both unlock when a single handle is pulled is because there's an electronic sensor and solenoid that unlocks everything when one handle is opened. I had a Pontiac Vibe (really a Toyota Matrix) that had a cable in the door unlock assembly fail. You could open the door from the outside - the external door handle was physi…

> Regardless, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine that an automotive engineer might decide to replace cable actuator with a wire and solenoid. Or with a bunch of CANBUS electromechanical hardware and some shittily written software running on the entertainment unit (with insecure cellular network connectivity). I wonder how long before someone sets up unlockyourtoyota.ru where you can send them 0.01BTC to unloc…

This made my day. You're 100% spot on. I laughed loudly at the absurd truth you painted for me.

Low effort comment I know, but I had to let you know.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#463

Post by WWLink »

zeroflow wrote: post #43
pradn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right to point out that these problems arise across entire industries. You can't vote with your money if all otherwise good TVs have crap built into them. And it's not easy for a new entrant to gain a foothold in such a high-tech market. And even if they do, there's plenty of temptation to go down the same route of milking customers who already bought your product. Sooner or later, we won't even remember how i…

The topic with the TVs is going to be a problem for me in a few years. My current TV is from 2013 - it may have some years to go, but at some point, it will fail. I've had a short look at the market, and all the "good" brands (Samsung, LG, Sony) show horrific ads. It looks like the cheap brands simply sell your data. Then there are some local brands, which sell non-TV TV's (no tuner, there's a tax on that). They don'…

Best Buy still sells a dumb TV. Sadly the Insignia N10 only goes as far as 43" and 1080p. I bought a set of the 32" model for my brothers.

Annoyingly, it STILL takes a few seconds to start up.

My living room TV is a 39" Panasonic from 7 years ago. It's dumb as a brick.. but I almost never watch TV so this is fine!

It'd be nice if you could buy a brand new 55" OLED or whatever and not have to deal with smart TV software. I guess there's the gigabyte, LG, and alienware monitors.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#464

Post by jacobolus »

servytor wrote: post #120
lkozma wrote: post #8

was posted here sometime ago: The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you boug…

Unrelated, but one of my favorite quotes from PKD is this one from Now Wait for Last Year: --- “All right," Eric agreed. "If you were me, and your wife were sick, desperately so, with no hope of recovery, would you leave her? Or would you stay with her, even if you had traveled ten years into the future and knew for an absolute certainty that the damage to her brain could never be reversed? And staying with her would…

You may enjoy this recent article about Stephen Glass (infamous news fabulist) whose wife suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s.

https://airmail.news/issues/2021-12-4/loving-lies

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#465

Post by WWLink »

donmcronald wrote: post #48
xyst wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Apple Car actually materializes, I fear this will become the new standard. All cars come with all bells and whistles, but you have to pay monthly fees in order for them to function. - Want heated seats? $1/month - Want remote lock/unlock? $2/month - Want to remove rate limiting? $5/month - Want GPS in your car? $10/month - Want to use your "frunk"? $10/month - Want Apple CarPlay? $15/month - Want to activate h…

> Want to update your car's computer? $199 per update $210 after shipping for navigation updates in a GM vehicle. Welcome to the future! https://gmnavdisc.navigation.com/product/Catalog/Catalog_Che...

The android based software randomly updates itself all the time. But it likes crashing and stuff too.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#466

Post by mdorazio »

Thaxll wrote: post #354
servytor wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrelated, but one of my favorite quotes from PKD is this one from Now Wait for Last Year: --- “All right," Eric agreed. "If you were me, and your wife were sick, desperately so, with no hope of recovery, would you leave her? Or would you stay with her, even if you had traveled ten years into the future and knew for an absolute certainty that the damage to her brain could never be reversed? And staying with her would…

Very similar to the great movie Arrival. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life

Note that the meaning in the book was almost wholly changed for the film. A big part of the book was that by learning to think 4-dimensionally (via the alien language), the scientists found that free will did not exist. The narrator had no choice in how to act with her child - she was simply acting out a predefined narrative...

"I suddenly remembered that a morphological relative of 'performative' was 'performance,' which could describe the sensation of conversing when you knew what would be said: it was like performing in a play."

...

"Before I learned how to think in Heptapod B, my memories grew like a column of cigarette ash, laid down by the infinitesimal sliver of combustion that was my consciousness, marking the sequential present. After I learned Heptapod B, new memories fell into place like gigantic blocks, each one measuring years in duration, and though they didn't arrive in order or land contiguously, they soon composed a period of five decades. It is the period during which I know Heptapod B well enough to think in it, starting during my interviews with Flapper and Raspberry and ending with my death."

The movie left this key message out almost entirely.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#467

Post by [deleted] »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #424
xtracto wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the things Toyota has done is to establish itself as a reliable automaker of quality. People specifically think of Toyota/Honda as the vehicle makes which are most likely to last a long time and put up with abuse. I find these and Apple "apologies" funny: "Fucking Apple and their monopolistic practices!!! ... but they are so pretty , there's nothing as pretty in the market". Well, having bad market practices…

>"I find these and Apple "apologies" funny" In what way is it an apology? People will continue to buy [product] despite the producer utilizing some bad market practices if they feel like they are still getting something valuable from the exchange. I am still angry about losing the audio jack on my iPhone but not enough switch platforms. >"Well, having bad market practices is part of the product feature, so you can vo…

[deleted]

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#468

Post by betwixthewires »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #357
wikibob wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurd victim blaming. The problem is there is a door handle that is designed with a failure mode such that pulling the handle DOES NOT OPEN THE DOOR.

I agree; it's like all the rollaway accidents that happen now because of electronic shifters: https://www.safetyresearch.net/the-persistence-of-rollaway/ Design matters, and bad designs can literally be deadly. Why auto mfgs feel the need to "innovate" with shifter designs is beyond me. The worst part is how every mfg seems to be implementing a different design of bad electronic shifters, from wheels and touchscreens…

It's not just auto manufacturers. It seems literally everything is being designed with a philosophy of "fuck the user" in mind. I cannot think of a single thing more complicated than a concrete block that functions better now than previous versions did 10 years ago, and I'm sure there are some things that work at least as good, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#469

Post by senectus1 »

zeroflow wrote: post #6

That is just bullshit. A $8/mo charge for a app based remote start? I could live with that. Servers need power, the app needs updates etc. A $8/mo charge for something which does not incur costs for Toyota? Hell no. It seems like bit by bit - every single industry is going down a fucked up route. TVs with built in ads? Cars with pay-by-month features? DRM locked coffee machines? I really hope, there is some sort of e…

$8 a month is a LOT.

I'm sick of this new "subscription lifestyle" thats going on. I loathe subscription services.

Its death (of your income) by a thousand papercuts.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#470

Post by mensetmanusman »

lkozma wrote: post #8

was posted here sometime ago: The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you boug…

This reminds me of the Charlie card for using the subway in Boston:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kacASNARakQ

It has fun history, apparently they were going to introduce a nickel tax to get off the subway, so the legend is that Charlie never got off, because he didn’t have a nickel.

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