• Temple Square@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A fool and his money are soon parted. From the same class of vehicles that tried to lock heated seats behind a monthly subscription.

    You know what’s nice? Those cars can F right off. I won’t buy one new. And never will buy one used.

    Always will be “budget” cars (Corolla, Civic, Versa, etc.) that won’t screw around with this crap because the buyers can’t afford to screw around with it.

    TRY to paywall a heated seat in a Civic. I dare Honda. It won’t be more than 10 minutes before someone has it badly wired up like an aftermarket subwoofer.

    • kurosawaa@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Even Toyota is doing this now. They locked features like the digital tire pressure gauge behind a paywall on their app.

      • ScoobyDoo27@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I can see the tire pressure of my truck though the app and I don’t pay for any Toyota subscriptions. The only thing I’m aware they lock behind a paywall in the app is remote start, but you can still do that from the key fob for free too.

        On the newer vehicles they do also lock the navigation behind a paywall but you can just use CarPlay or android auto for free.

      • 432hz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yup, remote start is only free for a limited time then you have to subscribe. They make great cars but they’re no angels.

    • BigNote@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Cars and trucks are one of the best examples of how effective things like marketing can be. It’s unreal what people are willing to pay for in order to have a vehicle that fits their self-image.

    • zea@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      You might not have a choice if they all decide to do it. Companies are actually kinda good at that kind of collective actions sometimes.

      • johnthedoe@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        When this becomes the norm. I look to the jailbreak community for hope.

        I WILL download a car!

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        In my area it would take a whole 5 seconds before people either jenk mod it or otherwise jailbreak it. Ive seen VW vans from the 50s with fucking V8 diesel engines around here, folks dont need the guts just the frame.

    • Chariotwheel@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      We said that when the Oblivion horse armor released. And look where we are now.

      At some point basically everyone will do it and marketing will fo the rest.

      • Col3814444@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Oblivion doesn’t cost $50k+ to buy. If these greedy fuckers think they can RENT me parts of a car I already own, they can go fuck themselves.

      • Baines@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        not playing AAA games

        sadly though micro transactions have dominated

        here’s to hoping we have non bullshit car options in the future

    • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Neither would I, but the majority of these cars are going into corporate fleets. I’ll have one at the end of the year. I assume corporate isn’t going to pay for the optionals so I’ll be stuck with a crippled car through no choice of my own.

        • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          IT in Flanders, Belgium. Company cars are almost a given for white collar jobs and even many blue collar ones here since regular income from work is taxed to high heavens. Companies look for other ways to compensate employees without actually having to raise their base salary. Just recently this shifted to electric-only, so most company fleets now are stopping leases on diesel & gas cars and replacing them with EV’s.

          • explodicle@local106.com
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            1 year ago

            The Nixon Shock was the end of the Bretton Woods system (kinda sorta a gold standard) and the beginning of unlimited inflation we see today. Everything absolutely went to shit after Nixon, especially inequality.

            • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Is gold actually worth something though? Most of it’s value is also just because it lasts a long time and we all think it is valuable. And I disagree that things have gotten worse only since Nixon

              • explodicle@local106.com
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                1 year ago

                Sorry if I implied the world in general has only gotten worse since then. I was referring to the money supply and its consequences.

                Why do you say “most”?

                • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Gold has some value from use in corrosion resistant cables, contacts, or telescopes, but it’s mostly just an agreed upon store of value like any other currency

    • marmo7ade@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The venn diagram of “people who will root a car” and “people who own a $150,000 benz” is 2 circles on opposite sides of the solar system.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        They won’t do it themselves, they’ll pay for it. People already do it with brand new ICE cars, they get a performance package from a third party.

        Also in 10 years, that $150000 Benz will be a $15000 Benz and owned by someone a fair bit younger than the original owner, probably. Much more likely to get the controller flashed for additional power at that point.

      • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I heard of a guy who tuned his already 500 hp Benz to get it over 600 (now he is under arrest in my country for street racing).

        They also do this a lot with BMWs, e.g. the 318i and 320i engine is the same, so if you just change/hack some software setting on the 318i, you can get more hp out of the same car.

        But these are of course the minority of people, and mostly targeting sport cars, not luxury sedans.

  • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Welcome to the world of digital subscriptions boys. It used to be a PC only thing… not any more.

    • somnuz@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Well… Plenty of cars are actually becoming a rideable PC where “ride” is just an option too. This is one of this things where I can’t decide, is it more sad, scary or stupid.

      • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It’s moneeeyy. That’s all there is to it, money. They finally have an easy way to control what you can or can’t do with the things that (at least on paper) you own.

        I just knew this was gonna happen… I warned about these things ever since music/movie subscriptions became a thing. You don’t own a copy of what you (allegidly) bought, thus, it’s not yours.

        Now, you do own the thing… at least on paper, but you can’t do much with it unless you pay extra cash to the one who sold it to you, so it can… you know, do the things it’s supposed to do. It’s basically extortion, no matter how you slice it. It’s malware, period.

      • grue@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        This is one of this things where I can’t decide, is it more sad, scary or stupid.

        It’s criminal. Locking up capabilities of hardware you already bought and trying to extract rents for them is literally no different than a mafia protection racket. These car company execs deserve to go go prison for racketeering.

      • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        We might be laughing about this now, but I bet someone already is working on something like this.

    • TeddE@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I like the enthusiasm, but I have no idea how a community driven project would interface with the appropriate regulatory boards to perform the safety tests to make such a vehicle street legal.

      Even if we got a prototype through that, the organization would then have to take on the burden of ensuring every build lived up to the prototype, and that would almost definitely go against the spirit of being community driven.

      • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        At that point it’ll just be a company that doesn’t pay their people lol.

      • RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch
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        1 year ago

        community driven

        I see what you did there.

        I’m getting a bicycle because I’m two tired of all these car puns.

    • GreaterDane@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      I mean, there are car builder kits.

      The DIY urban transportation community has settled on an even more portable solution called the “e-bike.” It can tow a trailer of cargo or small kids, and makes city parking much easier.

  • KingSnorky@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    We are getting closer to Mitch Hedberg’s vision of each car getting only 3 honks per month

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          1 year ago

          Virgin car ownership

          On the contrary: letting manufacturers extract rents for capabilities that the owner already paid for by virtue of having bought the physical device is the opposite of “ownership,” and that’s the problem here!

          Using mass transit is great, but it does nothing to stop this attack on our property rights.

      • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        Which is all of them. All of them need to be connected, it’s how they operate now. Most of them have decency to not do shit like that, but that might change at any point

        • StringTheory@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Time to pull up my big boy undies and start riding my bike. That sucker ain’t controlled by anyone but me. <middle finger to the car companies, wobbles down the road on a two-wheeler>

        • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          I doubt even all new cars require internet connection and there’s a shit ton of older models that don’t either. Definitely not “all of them”

          • grue@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            I still own only cars from the '90s and 2000s because of this issue (along with stuff like telemetry spying on you, etc.). However, even if just driving old cars forever works for me, it’s hardly a solution for society in general simply because there aren’t enough old cars for everybody to have one, let alone all the other problems with it.

            These companies are trying to destroy our property rights in order to engage in unethical and abusive rentiership. The correct solution is legislative, not just to ignore them and hope they’ll stop!

          • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, maybe not 100% of them, you are technically correct. For example, some Chinese companies are selling very cheep cars that are basically a reskin of the older cars from 1960th.

    • Rentlar@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I gotta put a Faraday cage around my next car if it’s going to try to connect to the internet.

  • Joe Cool@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Considering “faster engine” means different tune on the exact same engine nowadays: not much has changed.
    Fuck morons who pay this so the corps will continue to do this. They wouldn’t even consider it if people with more money than sense didn’t pay for it. Everything is enshittified until we live in Idiocracy.

    • Default_Defect@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What percentage of people do you suppose actually think they’re getting more by paying rather than getting less until they pay? I’m sure a large amount of it is people with enough money to not care, but surely some are just uninformed?

  • nayminlwin@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    IOTs are pushing us towards subscription hell-scape. We must demand dumb, non-connected machines and devices.

    • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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      1 year ago

      I’m a hobbyist mechanic and I absolutely love how simple older vehicles are. There’s one wire for each thing. The door doesn’t need it’s own computer module like modern vehicles…

      In my newest vehicle (a Ford truck), I pulled the fuse for the cellular modem, since I don’t need the manufacturer tracking my every move. Checking my tire pressure or fuel level from my phone is not a feature I care about. Remote start still works fine with the key fob.

      There’s getting to be fewer and fewer new vehicles I would even consider buying because of all this interconnected nonsense.

  • Fietsbel@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    way above my paycheck, the paywall it is, the car also, but who cares… time to stop buying cars, and use the public transport and bikes… better for the environment anyway.

    • Contend6248@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      It is the right decision for some mass transportation, but you can’t make cars obsolete with public transportation. Especially outside major cities.

    • JustAManOnAToilet@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Have people completely forgotten about the fucking plague we just had? I’ll take my own box to drive around in, please.

      • GreaterDane@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Cycling, riding scooters, and walking outdoors are still fine, though. And requiring masks while riding transit was fairly effective. We need much stronger enforcement of masking and not riding with symptoms, though, in future pandemics.

        Your personal multi-ton box degrades the environment, globally and on the streets it drives through, even if pollutes less by using electricity.

  • narnach@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    We’re getting closer to “you wouldn’t download a car” being outdated, if more cars start pushing most of their functionality from behind a paywall.

    It’s not something I’m happy to see.

  • gronjo45@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    To what extent could companies wreck my freedom in cars even more? I have heard of heated seats being pay walled, despite the technology to heat the seat being installed in the factory… Computer controlled locking systems where if my key fob breaks I can’t get into my car, or worse, the electronic control system fails and I’m up shit creek without a paddle.

    As to education, how can I even learn to repair something like that? My ignorance makes me think soldering may be useful, but how can an individual have greater control on the freedom to repair and own their automobile. The generality of my question lays in my ignorance to the inner workings of most cars.

    • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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      You have to buy special $3000 computer handhelds that plug into the car and let you interface with it completely. Often you can only buy those with a business account direct from the manufacturer.

      You cand do a little bit with OBD II using a $10 Bluetooth dongle and free app. But that’s basically limited to reading and clearing codes.

      • gronjo45@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I got an OBD-II device for reading and clearing codes and at least I can snatch them from my vehicle. I haven’t heard of the dongle before, does it connect to the infotainment system and then allow you access to the underlying file system? I don’t want to brick anything doing that lol

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Everything is paywalled. I’m leasing a less than 2 years old BMW, and now everything is included (e.g. phone app, carplay, guarantee), but after a while these run out, and you have to pay for even navigation.

      This is also why I think it’s not worth to buy these cars, lease/rent it at the most. If you want to own smg, buy a reliable Jap/Korean option - when looking at used cars I’ve seen Mazdas hold their value incredibly (unlike the fancy German cars).

      • gronjo45@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Oh man… I grew up poor and couldn’t imagine my car’s daily functions spontaneously malfunctioning due to a stupid code you can’t control (reliably) as an end user. Having never had money to throw at solutions , I can’t imagine how horrible equity will be as time progresses with knowledge and understanding of these things.

        I’ll check out Mazdas! I’m in the market for a new car, but really anything that just is a “dumb” car. I don’t want the infotainment crap and paywalled everything, just let me repair my vehicle so I can afford to live :D