721–730 of 773 posts
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Your car is filmed and recognized by other teslas.
That's why I also rotate license plates and repaint my car twice a year.
Why Steve Jobs Never Had License Plates on His Car https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-l...
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you're joking, but there's a whole genre of "adversarial fashion"[0][1] dedicated to making clothing that spams these sort of public data recognition services. Hoodies with license plates, face masks with weird facial features, etc. Often optimized against actual neural networks too [0] https://adversarialfashion.com/ [1] https://www.capable.design/
Gait detection renders any of this obsolute sadly.
If it worked this would be a solved case https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/washingtondc/ne...
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> Or, if you are in that specific, very small target group for e.g. ransom etc, I am, as are many thousands of other people, in different fields. Although some of my personal circumstances contribute to my risk being especially high, even within these fields. > you probably should've been investing in home security beyond a front door camera anyways. I have, to an extent that has been called unreasonable by multiple…
"gun restrictions, and strict self-defense laws in Europe are huge limitations that all contribute to vastly decreased personal security for me and my family" Even in germany it is quite easy to legally own a gun. All you have to do is be a member of a Schützenverein ("shooting club") for some time. What is indeed very hard, is get permission to carry a gun with you. But your main point seems to have been about home…
No, you are completely right, I had forgotten about that possibility!
Indeed, my main worry with gun laws in Europe is about home security, where the advantages can outweigh the drawbacks if you have a high risk profile, not about carrying them in public which I think could lead to other problems.
The hunting guns are much better than nothing, that's for sure!
> (Also most abductions for ransom happen outside, easier to snatch someone from the road, than come into his home)
From my experience (i.e. the many cases I'm familiar with, not that I've been a victim), this is not true, although I'm also familiar with cases like you describe.
But perhaps I'm simply not familiar with the cases that you know about, or about general statistics. I'm more familiar about cases similar to my risk profile.
> But you can also surprise them with security, they were not aware of and after that initial attack advantage, time is on your side. (Emergency call and panic room).
There are scenarios of home invasion for kidnapping purposes that I'm familiar with, which have really happened in Europe not too long ago, and which are impossible to defend against without extreme measures or very significant lifestyle changes, even taking into account what you just mentioned (which I'm obviously familiar with) but I really don't feel comfortable sharing more information.
> Yeah, because a common bodyguard mainly creates visibility.
Indeed, but even ignoring that (and the cost which is usually not a problem in these circumstances) there can also be quite a few more drawbacks that you didn't mention, but again, I don't really want to get into it.
> And the best defense is to not let the attacker know you exist as a target.
Not always possible, but completely agreed in-so-far as you can achieve that as much as possible!
I consider this to be one of the most important goals, assuming you are not a famous person already.
But even then, over the years there have been literally dozens of people who have become familiar with the riskiest part of my situation due to things that are completely outside my control, like different types of legislation which actually force me to disclose the most critical parts of my personal information to dozens of strangers for different (although usually similar) reasons.
Several databases also contain this critical information.
These strangers I mentioned are unlikely to lead to problems themselves, but information can travel easily or be leaked, and it's still an increase in risk.
> And all in all I have to say, that you do sound quite paranoid.
Yes, I'm 100% aware of that :) Don't think I haven't been told this by many people who are not entirely familiar with my situation.
That said, all of the people who have been aware of the details of my situation have shared exactly the same worries as me, and this includes people who have motivation to tell me the harsh truth rather than simply humoring me.
But of course, I try to share all of my details with as few people as possible, for obvious reasons.
In these kind of high-risk stakes, I make sure to really seek honest feedback rather than confirming my biases, because I just want to get the most useful information to make the best decisions I can, accepting that I can be very ignorant about things which I knew almost nothing about (like physical/personal security). The professionals who have assessed my situation have been really clear about all the stupid, unrealistic worries that I had, as well as all the things that I should be really worried about. They have also provided me with a numerical estimate of my personal risk (hopefully much less biased than my perceptions), along with justifications.
Yeah, I know I may be unreasonably paranoid, but on the other hand, are you really paranoid if they are really out to get you? lol!
> And I cannot think of too many professions, where that paranoia in europe is warranted and where you do not have professional security assigned to you, or where you do in fact get permission to carry a weapon.
Indeed, but there are many drawbacks to the solutions you are proposing and not many benefits in my particular situation, although I admit my situation is unusual. But really, I am already sharing more than I am comfortable with.
> If the walls you build around you are too tight, you eventually just build your own prison.
Indeed! That's why you need a good balance and accept some risk, because it's simply not possible to completely avoid it. But since I could afford to, I couldn't help but to take the most reasonable and "lowest hanging fruit" steps I could take to protect my family, under the circumstances.
Imagine not caring very much and then something really bad happens to your child or spouse, how would you feel?
Now, I can at least say that I did put a lot of effort into it, so even if something bad happens, it will be much, much easier for me to accept that the circumstances were simply outside my control.
This actually touches on something I was told by the security professionals I mentioned: some (although very few) of the security measures we've decided to take don't actually provide a meaningful amount of security, but even a tiny incremental improvement disproportionately contributed to us becoming more worry-free / experiencing greater piece of mind and being happier (but of course, this only works if it doesn't continuously affect your quality of life).
And the other thing to mention is that no matter what you do, some things are simply outside your control, so there's no point in obsessing over them, it's just something you have to accept. I think we have been extremely good in this area.
So I am happy to report that after the initial effort was finished (which lasted a few months), we have been able to live with a lot less worries and almost no decrease in quality of life for quite a few years already :)
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"gun restrictions, and strict self-defense laws in Europe are huge limitations that all contribute to vastly decreased personal security for me and my family" Even in germany it is quite easy to legally own a gun. All you have to do is be a member of a Schützenverein ("shooting club") for some time. What is indeed very hard, is get permission to carry a gun with you. But your main point seems to have been about home…
> But your main point seems to have been about home security and having a gun in your home is very possible. Unless you live somewhere with tighter gun laws than germany? No, you are completely right, I had forgotten about that possibility! Indeed, my main worry with gun laws in Europe is about home security, where the advantages can outweigh the drawbacks if you have a high risk profile, not about carrying them in p…
Indeed, but even ignoring that (and the cost which is usually not a problem in these circumstances) there can also be quite a few more drawbacks that you didn't mention, but again, I don't really want to get into it."
I actually worked a bit in security and so I can tell that some of the other disadvantages are, that most security guys are treated badly, get very lowly paid and their morals are low - so their motivation to potentially sell you out (or not wake up when you need them) is actually quite high. Some high profile companies might be different, but I know I would not trust a common security company with anything (And the company that I worked for had a good reputation and was involved with securing government buildings, but I was a bit shocked to look behind the facade, it all only works, because most criminals are unprofessional as well)
Otherwise you do sound reasonable that you take the appropriate steps, but like you said, it is all about the right balance and yes, you have to accept some risk in life.
But of course, now I am really curious about your risk profile. Seems to be quite an unusual one.. but I can understand, that you don't want to share details. Because unlike often cited here, Security through obscurity is a real thing.
edit: but I have to relativate about the security guys I worked with: some of them were quite bad, but probably none of them would have actually ignored when a child was in danger, or activly helped an attacker for money. They just didn't give a shit in general, so maybe would miss the alarm. And miss doing maintainance in alarm systems etc. And not follow safety protocols (in theory there were actually too many of them, but even the simple and useful ones got ignored)
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you're joking, but there's a whole genre of "adversarial fashion"[0][1] dedicated to making clothing that spams these sort of public data recognition services. Hoodies with license plates, face masks with weird facial features, etc. Often optimized against actual neural networks too [0] https://adversarialfashion.com/ [1] https://www.capable.design/
I wonder how effective that is considering storage costs are very cheap and an AI can easily filter out images that are either “car” or “not car”
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Just like we used to have cable box guys willing to sell you an unlocked box for premium channels, we are eventually going to have feature unlock guys that you go do and for a small fee perform some slightly more technical hack to enable features that are already there.
Let me tell you what's wrong with this: Nothing.
For this particular instance I don't feel too bad for a number of reasons:
1. Tesla is a luxury product so people on a tight budget will likely find a better value solution elsewhere.
2. The way these locks are implemented greatly restricts user freedom on the whole car so they see somewhat unethical to me.
But in general I believe that making one model and artificially locking it can be ethical. It is just taking advantage of economy of scale (by only making one model) without removing your base price point.
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Still, there are only 2 options: 1. This scenario makes the car cheaper for the poorer customers, so they benefit from it. Or at least, it doesn't increase the price, so they get the added benefits of being able to upgrade their car more easily and cheaply than going to back to the shop to install the extra hardware. 2. Or, this situation makes the car more expensive for the poorer customers, but since they are much…
>1. This scenario makes the car cheaper for the poorer customers, so they benefit from it. Pardon my ignorance, but if the cost of the hardware is already baked into the cost of the cheapest options, which means they are paying for all of the hardware they have in their cars, including the hardware they can't use, how do they benefit? Cost, in that situation, is determined simply by the need to assemble efficiently.…
The way to think about it is that the people paying for these extra features / buying the premium model with software-unlocked features are paying to add these features (locked) to every car sold. Because this is cheaper than making a different physical model.
For example imagine that 1/5 people want heated seats. Assume that adding these seats costs $100 to the manufacturing costs of a single car. There are two options here:
1. Create a new model. This makes the base model cost more (because you are making 1/5 less units so the overhead of design, validation and setting up the production line is spread across less cars) and makes the premium model cost much more (because you are only making 1/5 of the units). So maybe now you add $10 to the cost of the base model and $1000 to the cost of the premium model.
2. Add the seats to all models. This raises the cost of the car by $100.
Let's imagine that the base model price shouldn't be affected by the addition of the premium model. So we want all of this extra cost to be passed to the premium model. In scenario 1 this is effectively $1040 extra per car ($1k for premium + $10x4 base models). In scenario 2 this is effectively $500 per car ($100 x 5).
So option 1 doesn't make sense. It costs more for no real benefit.
> I can't see how the consumer benefits in that scenario by paying for something they can't use.
This is the thing. In theory the base model doesn't need to pay extra. Yes, their car was more expensive to make, but this cost was paid for by those who bought the premium model.
I don't know if I would argue that the consumer of the base model "benefits". Their model could be subsidized, or it could cost more, money is fungible in that way. But there is no reason why having this hardware installed but locked should increase the price that they pay. Without further evidence one would hope that the price of the car is unaffected by the premium model. Or maybe even cheaper because of benefits of the economy of scale (especially if the ratio of people buying the expensive model is higher).
I wrote a post about this a while ago with very simple examples of how the math works out https://kevincox.ca/2023/05/14/ethics-of-locked-hardware/
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The European perspective is broadly to have the "freedom from ", whereas the American one is the "freedom to ". You've got the freedom to aquire an arsenal, I don't, but I prefer the freedom from other people gunning down my kids, which by extension limits the narrow personal freedoms of myself and others. Likewise, the American perspective is to draw a hard line on "in public", the European one is more nuanced. Yes,…
A useful way to think about it is to shift your view from "can I do X?" to "will I bother anyone else by doing X?". I don't think that's particularly useful, because the answer to the second is trivially Yes, regardless of the value of X.
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> It's pretty shocking to me that people in our society build things and then deliberately break them so they can make more money. Is this really the best system we can come up with? All part of cost tradeoffs. Previously, they'd build the car with the ability to support all those add-ons even if the customer isn't getting them. Turns out it's cheaper not to do that.
I wish the solution was to just give everyone those features. Maybe it can’t work like that but this feels very wasteful
The core idea is that if some amount of people want heated seats the most cost effective way to do that may be to add the seats to every car, then those who want it pay that cost. (So if 1/5 cars want the heated seats each car have effective cost of 5x the per car cost because for each person paying they also have to cover the cost to install the hardware into 4 cars that wont pay for it) However that cost is still likely much cheaper than setting up a completely new physical model (especially if you consider feature combinations). But if you enable this feature for everyone then no one is paying the "premium" price so the cost needs to be spread out across all sales.
There's a lot of missing the point in these threads about software locks. Building a car in a uniform way for economy of scale savings, fine. Having a software unlock for hardware you already have (but didn't pay for in the price). Fine. Using software to rent-seek on one time costs like heated seats. Not fine. Less fine too if the seat subscription can't carry to secondary market. This can he used to cripple seconda…
The third is exactly why the second is NOT fine. The second naturally leads to the third. Until legislation is passed, you will only pry my dumbcar from my cold dead hands.
If the feature is implemented by locking down the whole infotainment system or I need a new passphrase every month and its going to break when Tesla servers are down then I am less fine with that.
I think if you can accurately lock off a feature without affecting the rest of the user's freedom than that is pretty fair. (Sort of like CPU manufactures burning fuses to disable cores or features) But if the lock depends on locking down the entire system and restricting how I use the bits that I did pay for then I start to have a problem with it.