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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

#501

Post by Spooky23 »

ddingus wrote: post #389
Spooky23 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honda is similar without the Toyota attitude. I’d never buy a Toyota, ever. All of the newer safety doo-dads are less reliable. Where I live, the road salt effectively caps effective lifespan of a car to 180-220k miles. The exhaust and suspension maintenance started to approach or exceed the cars value.

I recently did a Toyota to Honda and back to Toyota cycle. I liked the overall performance of the Honda. Little things like slightly more aggressive gear ratios, steering and such were superior on the Honda. Economy was almost a push, but the edge goes to Toyota. The Honda got my attention for service and repair more than the Toyota cars have. And Honda had the advantage overall. My Toyota was older than the Honda, b…

The dealer thing varies by region. I’ve run into stuff with relatives like:

- Difficult basic activities. Like you can’t talk to anyone without an appointment. When you need to talk about something they aren’t interested in talking about, they get busy.

- Aggressive & deceptive upsell on service, as in service advisor demanding an unnecessary $750 repair as a condition to honor a battery warranty.

- Trying to steal deposits for unfilled car orders. “Sorry, we can’t get the car you put a $1000 deposit on, and we don’t do refunds.”

- Ridiculous up charges, scammy deal accessories, ripoff financing and market adjustments. My sister was trying to buy a Grand Highlander, which was a hot car. I think Toyota punishes dealers by putting on allocation for hot cars, so they try to pump every nickel possible.

In my sisters case, it was so insane I was able to find her a better deal for an equivalent Lexus. Whatever contract the Toyota dealers have, they don’t allow the manufacturer to effectively manage the brand.

My experience with Honda is you get the usual car dealer fluff, but they aren’t aggressive. There’s also more dealers, at least in places that I live in, so there’s more competitive juices at work on the sales side.

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

#502

Post by _huayra_ »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #442
_huayra_ wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 do…

Subaru CVTs are not famous for their longevity.

I mean don't expect to beat on them, under-maintain them, etc, like one can a lot of older Toyota gear, but used within parameters, they have lasted my family (almost all of whom drive CVT Subies) well over 1m miles at this point without any big failure.

Key thing is to change the CVT fluid at least at the 60k interval (some countries say to do it every 30k, but that seems excessive). The "it's a lifetime fluid" thing is a total lie; it's the "lifetime of the CVT", so when it grenades itself, that's its lifetime ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#503

Post by RobRivera »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #489
potato3732842 wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time Is the bubble gum bought with the unlimited resources known as "other people's money"? Political will is zero sum or close to it. It is wasteful to rile people up over hypotheticals when there is no shortage of non-hypotheticals that are just as odious which simply have not been publicized.

To handwave this away as a simple hypothetical when this whole discussion is spurred by a thorough analysis by the Mozilla foundation showing this exact issue is, frankly, dishonest. I don’t really know how else to respond. We are having this debate because of a report with credible evidence and accusations. The burden is on you and Nissan et al to convince me to trust them with my biometrics and other info/activity…

You don't syrike me as open minded awoo

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

#504

Post by pnw »

tempest_ wrote: post #95
pnw wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a list at https://www.tesla.com/support/privacy and you can request a copy. They state never sell or rent your data to third-parties, and sentry and dashcam data is only stored locally. They anonymize the data they do use, presumably for AI training.

> sentry and dashcam data is only stored locally. That must be new https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

I believe that was autopilot footage that was uploaded for training after opting-in, not sentry video. And yes, they changed the policy as noted in the article.

"Several years ago, Tesla would receive video recordings from its vehicles even when they were off, if owners gave consent. It has since stopped doing so."

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

#505

Post by codingdave »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #304
codingdave wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, you need to do that engineering yourself. And ICE engines are heavy, so it typically is reasonable to work out as the lighter engine compensates for the battery weight. It is a design task, not a project killer.

If modern EVs are anything to go by, the battery weight will be substantially more than the weight of an ICE engine plus gearbox etc. But yes, it'd be for the hobbyist to figure out the details and whether it is safe enough to drive.

I'm not sure modern EVs are anything to go by. They are trying to meet the needs of a broad audience whereas you know exactly what you need out of a vehicle. For example, if you only need a 50 mile range, not 250, that is 80% of the weight down. No major manufacturer would put that out, but most drivers do less than 50 miles a day.

There are all kinds of design choices that can be made to fit completely within the original specs of the chassis.

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

#506

Post by pdonis »

xnx wrote: post #395
pdonis wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Speed limits and red lights being on the honor system isn't working. Speak for yourself. I don't need a nanny monitor in my car to drive safely. Nor do the vast majority of drivers. There are about 150 billion cars in the world. Only a very tiny fraction of them kill people. And punishing all the people who do drive responsibly because of the mistakes of the tiny fraction of drivers who don't is getting things back…

> There are about 150 billion cars in the world. This is wrong by ~100x. "There are about 1.475 billion vehicles on Earth in 2024.": https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-the...

Even with the smaller number, there are still only a tiny fraction that kill people.

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

#507

Post by Forgeties79 »

RobRivera wrote: post #503
Forgeties79 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To handwave this away as a simple hypothetical when this whole discussion is spurred by a thorough analysis by the Mozilla foundation showing this exact issue is, frankly, dishonest. I don’t really know how else to respond. We are having this debate because of a report with credible evidence and accusations. The burden is on you and Nissan et al to convince me to trust them with my biometrics and other info/activity…

You don't syrike me as open minded awoo

I’m sorry you feel that way.

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

#508

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cipheredStones wrote: post #240
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one person is criticizing Big Pharma because they use shoddy trial methodology when they can get away with it and heavily market minor variations on existing drugs, and another person is criticizing Big Pharma because they're poisoning our blood with fluoride in service to the Illuminati, it's not appropriate to lump them together and say "Big Pharma's critics are in the right." But it's also not appropriate to…

> But it's also not appropriate to lump them together and say "Big Pharma's critics are in the wrong." And accordingly, I didn't ever say that this was a good bill or all its critics were in the wrong. A lot of people in this thread seem to be reading that into my comments, but all I did was take issue with a misrepresentation of an article that argued against a specific negative claim about the bill. Which I think i…

> And accordingly, I didn't ever say that this was a good bill or all its critics were in the wrong. A lot of people in this thread seem to be reading that into my comments, but all I did was take issue with a misrepresentation of an article that argued against a specific negative claim about the bill.

You were responding to a criticism of the article. The technology is a kill switch, which critics rightly oppose, whether or not it's a law enforcement kill switch. Here's the specific false claim from the article being criticized:

> experts say that technology doesn’t amount to a “kill switch,”

The authors are laundering the false claim through the mouths of "experts" (by which they apparently mean "proponents of the bill"), but 'that technology doesn't amount to a "kill switch"' is false. The authors then go on to knock down the narrower claim that it's a law enforcement kill switch, which is the straw man.

The article you're defending is doing the thing you're criticizing, i.e. using the narrow point (not a "law enforcement" kill switch) to malign the general point (it's a kill switch). If they were actually trying to be nuanced they'd be admitting that it's a kill switch and only distinguishing what kind of kill switch it is.

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

#509

Post by sebstefan »

_proofs wrote: post #469
sebstefan wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there some reason I should side with you over them, or just your opinion? If the courts decided that there was an expectation of privacy on public roads, would you agitate to change the law so there wasn't? Sure! It would make infringing on road safety much more difficult thus reduce your chances of getting run over by people who are speeding, running red lights etc. And if you're driving, I think everyone would…

at this rate you might as well parade yourself naked around town or city, and advertise your medical history so that you can clearly demonstrate to the world your sanity.

Hello

Motor vehicles killed 3566 people every month in 2022, that's the death toll of the 9/11 attacks every 25 days.

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

#510

Post by sebstefan »

sebstefan wrote: post #468
Lio wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think you should not have an expectation of privacy when driving? Do you not consider reasonable to have an expectation of innocence when going about your business?

> Some other good ones: there should not be an expectation of privacy when performing surgery. There should not be an expectation of privacy when performing the monopoly on the legal use of force.

There should be an expectation of privacy when travelling on foot, bike, or any vehicle that doesn't require a license to operate, though.
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