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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

#591

Post by jbay808 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #586
jbay808 wrote: post #363

I wonder if this, too, is a symptom of near-zero interest rates. With an interest rate of zero, future cash flows are valued equal to present cash flows. That increases the net present value of recurring payments (approaching infinity, actually). So it becomes increasingly attractive for companies to discount the initial sale price in exchange for a recurring payment. In a higher interest rate environment, that would…

Heh. No. You really don't need macroeconomics to explain Toyota's decision making here... not everything is a nail, and that's one hell of a hammer you're holding.

I wouldn't, if it were just Toyota. But it's not. A lot of businesses are transitioning away from one-time sales to recurring revenue / subscription models.

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

#592

Post by ok_dad »

oofoe wrote: post #571
grangerg wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a RokuTV. There's ONE ad on part of the home screen, and it's not animated. The OS doesn't feel bloated or slow at all. It ain't perfect, of course, but I'd never get a Vizio, Samsung, or LG anymore.

“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it further” A single ad now on a network connected device is no guarantee that it will remain that way. Especially as it becomes "optimized" for revenue from all possible sources. It is unfortunate that the rest of this stuff is so infested that a single ad (for now) seems reasonable.

Yes and Roku used to have zero ads, so...

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

#593

Post by brokenmachine »

wlesieutre wrote: post #143
wedowhatwedo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why non-apple customers feel that apple is this way. I have a Mac and an iphone and haven't paid Apple a penny since the purchase of the devices.

iCloud's free storage tier still being stuck at 5 GB as the base phone storage has grown to 128 GB is the main thing I'd criticize. You realistically can't use iCloud for photo storage or backups with that plan. I bet most people can blow through that just with Messages history if they have anyone sending them videos. I think the upgrade prices are reasonable, $1/month for 50GB and $3/month for 200GB, but I can see c…

Don't forget disallowing local backups for no reason other than moneygrubbing.

$3/month for 200Gb is reasonable in your opinion, but people who don't buy Apple can buy a 2T drive for $50.

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

#594

Post by yumraj »

dylan604 wrote: post #580
yumraj wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, I'm truly shocked that someone asked "how come in a movie...". I know it sounds stupid to even ask that, but my question/concern came from that for someone who is not aware of such a thing, after watching movies I would have never even thought to look for it had I ever been in such a situation. Referring to also the story above about the women who was stuck in the car. So, if all is true, then the movies i…

>So, if all is true, then the movies in this case are doing a serious disservice. Yes, modern cars have these pull tags in them. I don't know how new, but the first car that I bought new with a trunk was a 2007 model. It had them. They are even glow in the dark for easier locating in a closed/dark environment. However, if you are ever in a real life situation trying to decide that the "movies" didn't do it this way i…

I understand and not disagreeing with any of that.

Since I don’t make the point of putting myself in a trunk normally nor do I RTFM :(, my point, put in another way, was that if I had seen it in a movie I would have known that something like that exists. That is all.

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

#595

Post by brokenmachine »

null_object wrote: post #171
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…

> 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 Wow I have NO IDEA how anyone managed the jump from this story about Toyota to a totally imaginary anti-Apple rant. Writing this on a 2013 Apple iPad Air that has not cost me a single cent to use every day for the last 8 years.

>I have NO IDEA how anyone managed the jump from this story about Toyota to a totally imaginary anti-Apple rant

Because Apple are the nickel-and-dime masters.

From removing headphone sockets in order to sell stupidly expensive wireless headphones, to stupidly overpriced soldered memory and storage upgrades, to the 30% appstore fee scam, to disallowing local backups to promote their iCloud storage racket, to unrepairable devices where you can't even replace a battery, to keyboards that need motherboard replacement to replace a key, to disallowing WebGPU so victims can't play online games instead of the games they take their 30% cut from, to proprietary connectors that they abandon a year later, to iPhone displays that can't even be replaced with another legitimate iPhone display, they do everything in their power to lock-in and bleed their victims dry.

Literally everything they do is a scam to nickel-and-dime their victims.

Every item they sell has all these arbitrary limitations just so they can take a cut.

They are usually the first to do every terrible consumer-hostile action because their victims are locked-in suckers with Stockholm syndrome whose devices don't work with any other companies devices or accessories.

And then other companies see their success and copy them.

So naturally any conversation about companies being assholes will skew towards discussing Apple, because they are the biggest and most successful assholes.

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

#596

Post by dylan604 »

yumraj wrote: post #594
dylan604 wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So, if all is true, then the movies in this case are doing a serious disservice. Yes, modern cars have these pull tags in them. I don't know how new, but the first car that I bought new with a trunk was a 2007 model. It had them. They are even glow in the dark for easier locating in a closed/dark environment. However, if you are ever in a real life situation trying to decide that the "movies" didn't do it this way i…

I understand and not disagreeing with any of that. Since I don’t make the point of putting myself in a trunk normally nor do I RTFM :(, my point, put in another way, was that if I had seen it in a movie I would have known that something like that exists. That is all.

Honestly, the only reason I knew about mine was the salesperson at the dealership pointed them out to me. Maybe I had an exceptional sales rep?

I've seen cars flip and roll over and continue driving in a movie, yet I wouldn't expect my car to do that. I've seen modern cars get hot wired in a movie, yet I wouldn't be able to do to a modern car. I'm just saying you're putting way too much faith in movies my friend ;-)

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

#597

Post by taneq »

garmaine wrote: post #554
mdorazio wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,'…

That was the conclusion of the movie. I remember because I hated it so much. It destroyed the story imho.

I thought in the movie it was cast as her choosing to accept it and cherishing the time they'd have left together? Maybe I missed the predestination theme (or maybe it was just implied... although you could say it's implied for any story involving travel or communication between different times.)

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

#598

Post by fuzzfactor »

klipklop wrote: post #9

The solution is to vote with your wallet. These days consumers are pretty weak willed though and are willing to put up with almost any level of abuse for their shiny new toy. Look at what consumers are willing to (overpay) for during the pandemic as an example of that. $500 NVIDIA graphics cards going for $2000... Eventually people fed up with it will "jailbreak" their cars like the farmers did with John Deere tracto…

Even if this is fully legitimate everywhere else, in Texas it might trigger support for refunds on purchases according to the Deceptive Trade Practices Act

You would need a lawyer but you would not have to be defrauded, merely "deceived".

And it might make a difference when you realized you were deceived.

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

#599

Post by eqth »

jacobolus wrote: post #464
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…

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

walled

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

#600

Post by cabalamat »

holoduke wrote: post #436
brokenmachine wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too late now for her of course, but you can take the headrest off the seat and use the metal prongs to smash the windows to get out.

Front windshield is easy to brake from the inside. A gentle push with your feet will crack it. Some harder kicks will remove it for sure.

Have you actually tried this?
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