My favorite one is this.

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I think there was only one that suggests pressing the lock door button. But apparently that’s not a universal feature because most of the suggestions tell him to press a button on the touch screen console

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    I am reminded of the tech joke about how actual sysadmins have no technology in their home more recent than a mimeograph machine and they carry a loaded gun in case the mimeograph starts behaving in an unexpected manner.

    • RedWizard [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      It's true. I've been telling people recently that I'm not looking forward to whenever I end up buying a new car. My car has a key that unlocks the doors, and sticks into the steering column to turn the car on. I can pull that key out and kill the car in the process, and that process is all mechanical (to my knowledge, anyway). It doesn't even have that "OnStar" shit in it. So no GPS connections, no satellite link-ups. The most advanced thing it has is a tiny backup camera and BT in the radio.

      The next car I buy might as well come with fedposting as the copilot.

      Every modern car is just this, but for real:

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      edit: and one more thing! The amount of lawsuits Tesla has been subject to where they pull out the data logs for the victim's car and weaponize it against them is fucking insane. The fact that we know that it was shown that Teslas deactivate Autopilot seconds before a crash, and as far as I know nothing was done about it, doesn't make me interested in a fucking 7 ton computer that drives at highway speeds. They have used that "data" to say that people killed while using FSD had "Disabled Autopilot" which means their software wasn't at fault. Or they'll just say that the logs were lost but it definitely wasn't FSD that was at fault.

      Edit again! I'm fired up here!

      THIS WILL BE MY NEXT CAR, COME HELL OR HIGH WATER!

      Show

      • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
        ·
        3 months ago

        are the logs not available on the car itself??? At this point there should be a law mandating something about the integrity and authenticity of the logs.

        • charlie
          ·
          3 months ago

          We can’t even get cops to keep their body cameras on despite laws about it, joke country.

      • bleepbloopbop [they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        your car most likely has a black box of sorts if it's new enough to have OEM backup camera and bluetooth. https://rislone.com/blog/general/does-my-car-have-a-black-box/

        However it's not remotely operated and not going to kill you, but it could rat on you to the police/your insurance. Its just as likely to exonerate you though I guess. Far less scummy overall

      • bleepbloopbop [they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        My solution to this was to stop driving lol. Newest car I ever owned was a 2003, now I have an ebike that's about as dumb as a box of rocks. Most sophisticated thing in it is the motor controller.

        The nearby carshare system is even worse though when I do have to get a car, they have a lot of the new whiz bang tracking features, in addition to literally being lojacked and having cameras with video and audio facing front and back.

          • bleepbloopbop [they/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            mixed bag but it probably hasn't been a great idea for ages. I haven't actually seen cameras in regular rental cars yet but I'm certain they gps track them at least. Same with rental trucks from the hardware store. Seems like fleet vehicles were the first to get the cameras (and attendant machine learning monitoring your driving), but it's spreading. And its all 4G streaming video too (probably with some significant limits for bandwidth purposes, maybe it only streams a low res by default or slow stream of thumbnails)

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        I know where the cellular transceiver is in my car. I had to really root around to find where it was. I haven't removed it because you have to take the whole console apart and even then disabling it involves some iffy wiring fuckery, and I've just never had the gumption to actually do it (depression sucks for opsec).

        But it's there. I figured out that it was there when I got e-mails containing information that could only have come from someone with remote access to the car. I have no idea what other capabilities are hidden in the software but at the very least it can tattle on me to unknown third parties. I hate it so much.

        predictably, when I was asking around on forums to find out how to disable it, everyone on the forums though I was a quack. : p

    • bleepbloopbop [they/them]
      ·
      3 months ago

      This is a FACT. I have computers (running linux and usually powered off when not in use), and a TV that I never connect to the internet and disable anything smart on it (if it ever breaks I'll either not replace it or go for one that's fully dumb since literally all it offers me are security vulnerabilities). What little use the TV gets is via a raspberry pi using mostly software that I wrote myself or is FOSS. Besides that the smartest thing in here is a damn toaster.

      I like technology, sometimes anyhow, but corpo shit is simply not trustworthy nor well designed. If I can't rewire it or put my own software on it I'm not interested. A modded espresso machine with FOSS firmware and sensors and stuff? cool, sure, love it. A smart soldering iron with USB PD and temperature control? dope. But once you start getting into wifi and bluetooth and locked down software territory, it's a no from me. I begrudgingly tolerate my printer and my TV, but the printer predates the web and has a hard on/off switch, and the TV is on a switched outlet

      • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        I keep my old dumb TV because (a) it doesn't gossip about me, and (b) has every legacy connection under the sun, a godsend for my ancient consoles.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          3 months ago

          I'll likely never buy a TV again, and I'm starting to feel like I should stockpile some monitors with all this "AI" bs getting stuffed in to them. You will own nothing but all your stuff will spy on you and you will be happy or else.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        I know a guy who gets upset when anyone calls him by name or posts his picture on the internet, but has a ring camera on his front door and an echo in his house. I don't understand it at all.

        I would like to have a super-locked down home network but I don't have the technical skill or mental wherewithal (depression is bad for opsec) for it. Even then, I've done a huge amount of customization to my windows PC, gutted as much of the bloatware and spyware as I can, run firefox with a bunch of privacy features, I do what I can within the scope of my limited abilities and my friends tend to think I'm a nut for caring so much about it.

        It's very frustrating. The amount of invasive surveillance is truly incredible, but even people who do see the danger aren't nearly as upset about it as they need to be.

        • bleepbloopbop [they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          that's what being an incredibly privileged member of society gets you I guess, a disgusting comfort with invasive surveillance as long as it's the correct powers that be running it

          honestly I don't think a crazy in depth locked down home network is that necessary, as long as you mostly trust devices on your network. The browser stuff is probably way more impactful. I'd say run linux personally, but I don't know your needs.

    • ZWQbpkzl [none/use name]
      ·
      3 months ago

      If I can't flash the firmware, it doesnt connect to my wifi. Once, I was seduced into connecting a smart tv to my WiFi by its really cool remote that acted as a mouse pointer. I really wanted to control jellyfin with it instead of a wireless mouse and keyboard. Bad idea. After constant updates it eventually rejected my computer's HDMI connection to it. Must've been some stupid DRM anti feature. If I had a gun I would've shot the tv for such insolence. Luckily I dont and I calmly did a factory reset and learned my lesson.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Finding out that HDMI cables have built in IP censorship systems was a bad day for me. : | What the fuck kind of data cable evaluates and locks out "unacceptable" data?!

          • ZWQbpkzl [none/use name]
            ·
            3 months ago

            The spec is designed to allow enforcement of DRM but i think its up to the devices on either end to enforce that not the cable itself.

            Its to prevent people from ripping movies by playing it to a computer thats recording the input instead of a display. But it can also be used by TVs to say "fuck your laptop".

    • Gucci_Minh [he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      This is extremely true, I had to get an IoT device for a niche task and I have wireshark set up to make sure its not doing anything sus. I keep it unplugged at all times I'm not using it just in case. I hate these things, all they do is let people turn them into botnets.

    • SSJ2Marx
      ·
      3 months ago

      I'm on this bandwagon myself. The only smart devices I'm interested in owning are my PC, phone, and work laptop - everything else needs to be dumb enough for me to fix on my own if it breaks, or I'm not buying it.