- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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If all electric cars are just going to be subscription bullshit, I’m sorry, I won’t be driving electric.
Even ICE manufacturers have been including hardware that software disabled for a while
I got an OBDeleven for my 2015 GTI so I could unlock stuff and customize. Enabled rolling down the windows with the key fob, being able to display the engine oil temp in the dash and also setting the accelerator pedal curve to linear.
What I didn’t even know that was stuff you could even do
The accelerator curve is really cool. A lot of modern cars just have a sensor that detects your pedal position and a simple algorithm decides how much power to translate that into. It’s like adjusting the mouse speed on a computer. Feels like you’re driving a different car.
Having said that, the default curve is often the best curve. They put a lot more effort into getting it right than you would.
Kinda depends on the car. Volkswagen cars are pretty “hackable” with OBDeleven which is a wireless interface for the hilariously named “VAGCOM” protocol.
OBDeleven
Hang on, have I being saying this wrong for years? I thought it was OBDII or OBD2 ?
It is OBD2, OBDeleven is a Bluetooth dongle you plug into it
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Almost every car company does something similar and has as long as they’ve had on board computers.
VW/Audi/Porche are all the same company and generally share the same electronics. A lot of gauges and features are considered “premium” so they just disable them for VW branded vehicles. There’s also regional feature lockouts; IIRC North American VW’s can’t have their fog-lights and headlights on at the same time but you can enable it through VAGCOM.
Subscribe to enable your BMW seat heater! They definitely require periodic software updates and is absolutely NOT a blatant money grab
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A fingerprint unlock on a car? I’ve never heard of that, is it to unlock the doors?
Probably used for user profiles for the seats and stuff and Aircon. Mercedes does it too
I recently read about 2 or 3 cars doing the whole user your fingerprint to unlock doors and start the car thing. This is one of the reviews I read
https://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/41690/how-the-2022-genesis-gv70-removes-all-need-for-a-car-key
It uses your fingerprint to start.
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There are some manufacturers that do not do this garbage, or at least not often. I’ve heard good things about Hyundai specifically.
For now they have customer goodwill to win back after nearly a decade of building cars that practically fell apart in a year or 2 in the late 00s and early 10s.
They’ll catch up to the others in anti-consumer practices soon, but for now they’re a good choice if you don’t particularly care for performance or ride quality.
Tesla got rid of the heater subscription bullshit in 2021. Now, the only thing locked behind a paywall is internet related stuff (sentry over mobile, streaming media access, etc.), the performance boost, and FSD.
only lol
But if the car is completely capable of habe that performance, why should people pay for it.
Oh I’m just correcting the article. Facts are better than fiction for conversations about reality.
It won’t just be electric cars, it’ll be all new model cars from manufacturing companies. At least until ICE is phased out.
More like, until the Chinese weasel their way into the US market with cheaper-than-used cars to undercut the legacy auto makers. 10 years or so, it’ll happen. And the big 3 will be begging for bailouts again. That is unless they smarten up and remember what made Ford what it is today.
remember what made Ford what it is today.
American can-do spirit, worker’s rights, and throbbing fuckloads of antisemitism.
FORD
For
Old
Racist
Dudes
I don’t see that happening. The US puts large tariffs on imported cars to stifle competition. That’s why if you look at Japanese cars in Japan or German cars in Germany they’re often much cheaper and more powerful than their American counterparts.
German cars in Germany
German cars in Europe also seems to last pretty decently where as American-made German cars apparently keep falling apart after 5 years lol
They’re already doing that in some parts of the world. Then when they get sizeable market share, they emulated what the previous car makers do. It’s just not an improvement. It’s more of the same, only the manufacturer is different.
You know what Ford stands for, don’t ya? It stands for ‘Fix it again, Tony’ hehehe.
Yeah. GM’s subscription nonsense is for their ice cars too. BMW’s aborted seat heater thing was too.
Cory Doctorow has written a great article about this phenomenon a few days ago: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon
Basically we move back to a feudalism world where you don’t own anything anymore and you have to pay recurring rents. And as you don’t own it they can fuck you over by increasing rents or disable features when you can’t pay.
This is why I keep an oldish diesel car with no extra electronic features in my garage. No weird features, and can still run even without a battery.
Although, I think the reason I kept the car is because of my paranoia of an EMP event frying electronics.
Yeah that’s true. I wonder if the market for older cars has been going up yet.
Have you seen the automotive industry as of late? This isn’t a EV issue nor is it really new. We’ve had things like OnStar for years and the entire industry has started to chase the gaming industry’s microtransaction BS for a while now.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature
https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-remote-start-into-a-subscription-service
The future looks like a potential live service hell scape for the auto industry EV or otherwise.
Everything is being ruined. It feels like hyperbole but I’m not sure it is.
Yes, I know it’s industry wide. What I’m saying is that with EV being the future of cars I don’t want them all to be subscription based.
I have a Rivian and it works great with no subscription. The only thing you can add via Sub is a hotspot, which seems reasonable to me.
I’m okay with being charged a monthly subscription for something that has an ongoing cost, like mobile data. So long as I can still hotspot my phone and access ‘premium connectivity’ features over wifi, that is.
Yeah about those ‘premium connectivity features’… one of them is warning you that the road you’re about to drive on has a traffic jam. And no, you can’t have it use your phone’s internet connection and you also can’t do CarPlay or Android Auto.
For me real time traffic isn’t a premium feature or an ad on. It’s table stakes. And it should be free. Worse, not having it already almost makes your car hard to sell secondhand. Imagine what it’ll be like several years ago when people start selling Rivians?
I agree, I do think they should allow both aa/cp, and wifi while driving so you can tether to your phones wifi. I’m not as doom about secondhand sales as you seem to be though.
It’s not just the mobile data that’s spendy, it’s the API calls to the vendor(s) they’re getting that data from.
Android Auto/Car Play would be nice, but having used both, the native Tesla nav is better.
At some point, there will be practically nothing else to drive…
All the more reason to support public transportation.
The average lemming:
- concerned about online privacy
- strongly against digital surveillance
- rides exclusively public transit where there is surveillance everywhere
There are fundamental differences between physical and digital surveillance, namely when you are in a public space there is no expectation of privacy because there are other people there looking at you. When there are other people there that can actually see you, a camera also watching doesn’t make much of a difference.
it does
people usually doesn’t remember you unless you do some weird shit but once recorded, it will stay for the rest of eternity
If you’re talking about standard security cameras usually the footage will get completely overwritten after afeew days unless there was an incident to prompt review of the footage-- and even then it usually gets deleted at some point. Its not like with social media data gathering where they’re collecting all that information in order to build a personal profile of everyone-- security cameras just exist to review incidents that happen in the public realm and there’s no real incentive for a public transit agency to track every single person that appears on their cameras.
There’s cameras everywhere watching the road too if you really care that much and you better believe your car model and license plate is a much more reliable form of identifying information than a blurry face on a bus security camera.
There is surveillance everywhere outside, even having your own car doesn’t protect you from having your privacy encroached. That’s why I never go outside.
By ‘surveillance,’ do you mean a bus security camera to make sure no one is stabbing the driver? Because I’m pretty sure most of us don’t have much of a problem with that. It’s comprehensive government surveillance that is the problem.
Unfortunately, “camera to make sure no one stabs the driver” is the exact tool used by “comprehensive government surveillance”. It’s something we’re forced to accept.
I would like evidence that security cameras on buses are used by the government for comprehensive surveillance. I don’t even know how they would accomplish such a thing with a stationary camera in a bus.
I hope you don’t go outside at all, with that mentality.
When does “you should minimize your physical footprint so that you are harder to profile by bad people” suddenly become “just stay inside at all times and never go out”?
Even with digital privacy, nothing is 100% effective.
When you decided to make an ignorant comment about public transportation.
Obviously nothing is 100%. That’s a given and doesn’t need to be said.
Sure there will, always. Fix it yourself jalopies aren’t going away. Get yourself a cheap-o used junker and mod it to be electric, if you can’t or won’t use ICE. DIY isn’t just 3d printers and FOSS. Or get a bicycle and mod it into an e-bike.
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All these upgrades are one time payments for an upgrade, much like sales point dealer add-ons for conventional cars. However recently they did allow you to buy a monthly subscription to FSD. But the option to buy it outright was always there, and still remains.
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I saw a documentary about Renault doing this in Israel I think. With a network of stations looking like auto wash: it takes your car, opens a door under the car, swaps the battery with a full one and off you go.
Apparently it went bankrupt after a year (2012-2013): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company)
Tesla had this exact functionality with their original Model S’ … but like that company it wasn’t profitable (or it was just regular ol Tesla mismanagement) so they also stopped doing it.
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How about a tow-behind battery for extra capacity?
It makes sense, but I already don’t trust anyone to tow anything safely.
Not all EVs use the same pack type and there are advantages and disadvantages to the different types that will continue to change as we progress the technology. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to have universal batteries as it would also limit the designs of the car if it were legislated.
Universal batteries would be bad, but standardized batteries would be great. If a battery has certain dimensions and gives a certain output, and can regulate itself as to charge and discharge, it doesn’t matter what chemistry it uses or internal cells it has. We have had D, C, B, A, AA, AAA, etc., for years and manufacturers got along just fine within those specs. Removable batteries are already a thing with Gogoro scooters in Taiwan and I think at least one car brand in China.
I don’t know if the industry is mature enough for that. There are different voltages, max power outputs and sizes. A set a size and voltage defines nearly everything.
Standard specs are great for something that is replaced frequently (alkaline batteries). It’s less needed for things that are replaced rarely.
Those are cells not packs. A cell based pack uses cells in a module that then are combined to create a pack. Standardizing is not as easy as people make it out to be.
I know a guy who started a company to do exactly this (in Europe only for now).
So the battery swap idea is out there, and being acted upon.
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Common AMD W
Cool! Now work on exploits for those paywalled features of BMW cars and Ford cars.
If you pay for something it’s yours by right. You should be able to use the entire thing, because you physically have it now.
When I need a new car it’s going to br older not newer…
What’s pay walled in a Ford besides bluecruise, which is a service that’s constantly updated to add more roads and expand it’s usability?
Fuck’em rich
Unpatchable
Good to hear
Good. There should be no such thing as unserviced features that are physically present in a product and locked out against its owner. Not in cars or anything.
Software?
What about it?
This isn’t sound - “software” is being used here as a physical description but in reality it’s still just a “face” for actual hardware which often do actually have on going costs
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Why not?
Because it’s abusive and blatant rent seeking.
Look, if there’s an actual service feature that continually costs money to provide (eg.: a cell connection for distant remote start, GPS nav map updates, etc), charging a reasonable subscription fee for that is totally acceptable. But charging ongoing fees for fixed features like heated seats is 100% bullshit unless you’re going to include some sort of service benefits like free repairs (which I doubt they’re doing).
Good. Fuck Elon.
No, don’t! He has enough kids.
He’s a guy, he can’t have kids (at least today).
I have nipples, can you milk me?
Well, we can try.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
he can’t milk a guy. (Atleast today)
Next we will see tesla bricking cars were users have done this
More E-waste!
Unlikely, but expect to see more language in sales contracts that “if absolutely any of the software is fucked with in absolutely any way that wasnt done by us the vehicles warranty is absolutely null and void. We also reserve the right to refuse to provide any and all parts and services to any vehicle found to have had its software modified outside of factory parameters.” And you best believe they will keep a list of vins and wont care if it was the previous owner.
Even if it is in the contract, it’s not enforceable (depending on country). In a fair few, the manufacturer has to prove that the modifications caused the defect to invalidate the warranty.
It’s unclear what would happen if they simply refused to service the car, or bricked it instead.
Bricking it would be a legal minefield for them, they wouldnt dare. But making literally anything to do with servicing, updates and repairs such a colossal ball ache that its easier and cheaper to just pay for the heated seats…
I did speak a little broadly, they couldnt deny you the warranty on the wheel bearings or purely mechanical parts but they dont need to prove that the jailbreaking is the cause of literally anything electrical going to shit, they just need to say “That item is controlled by software that has been modified outside of manufacturers specifications, we are refusing to honor the warranty on this item”
Same with servicing “As this vehicle has been modified outside of our recommended parameters we cannot guarantee our repairs and as such we recommend the customer seek an alternative mechanical workshop for servicing and repairs”
Oh sure, you could fight it and win, you might join a class action and get $8 in 3 years time. Or… just dont jailbreak their product and make your life hell. I absolutely disagree with this subscription and paywall bullshit, but I do not underestimate the tomfuckery that big companies will pull to fuck customers.
A subscription for hardware is such bullshit, I hope this trend dies.
We can all do our part by not buying anything from those who do this.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Utilizing multiple connections to the power supply, BIOS SPI chip, and SVI2 bus, the researchers performed a voltage fault injection attack on the MCU-Z’s Platform Security Processor.
“They allow an attacker to decrypt the encrypted NVMe storage and access private user data such as the phonebook, calendar entries, etc.”
“Hacking the embedded car computer could allow users to unlock these features without paying,” the TU Berlin researchers add.
In an email to Tom’s Hardware, one of the researchers clarified that not all Tesla software upgrades are accessible, so it remains to be seen if those premium options will also be ripe for picking.
Another consequence is that the exploit can “extract an otherwise vehicle-unique hardware-bound RSA key used to authenticate and authorize a car in Tesla’s internal service network.”
The TU Berlin team (consisting of PhD students Christian Werling, Niclas Kühnapfel, and Hans Niklas Jacob, along with security researcher Oleg Drokin) will present their findings next week (August 9) at the Blackhat conference in Las Vegas, where we hope to hear more about all the feature upgrades that are accessible.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good Bot
Nice anti-AMD framing so shortly after that latest Zen2 vulnerability.
Right? Probably for attention grabbing, cause they do say the same flaw exists in zen2 and zen3, and the article is by no means slamming AMD for it. But the title does come off that way
It’s probably because there are both Intel and amd Tesla cars. Newer models use AMD
Idk unpatcheable vulnerability for the core component of the system seems pretty negligent but what do I know
Not like they make boat loads of profit and are definitely just cutting corners on aspects of staffing to save extra money up for when the planet inevitably burns down (due to the very same people)
The vulnerability is much more of an issue for Tesla('s profits) than the owners. It’s not a simple exploit and not the worst concern for average users of those chips. You have to have physical access to it in order to exploit it, as well as a system worth hacking (think, national security trying to prevent compromised personnel from physically using the exploit on their systems). I’m not worried about someone breaking into my house to physically hack my computer, just to find some memes and bullshit
It still has to be addressed by both Intel and AMD, because that’s their whole industry. But recalls and such aren’t needed, because bugs can be exploited all over the place and this one isn’t a high level risk for the average end-user. It’s more of a concern for Intel/AMD reputation and the large industry users of their chips
Id like to imagine that the coder did this on person as a fuck u.
The coder’s name was Galen Erso
Literally stealing the food from the plates of those hard-working millionaires/billionaires (if you ask them). How will they ever continue to float to the top of the net worth leaderboard now?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=PWQL_XORalY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Good bot
Don’t think that’s a thing here
That was fun. Thank you.
The title seems much more interesting than it is. I doubt most people have the ability to perform this type of exploit. It would be more interesting if a group would charge X to unlock it for you.
I hope that becomes more common as these types of features become more prevalent across multiple OEMs. I’d pay a tech-savvy mechanic or a car-savvy hacker quite a bit for features that are already installed but locked behind some arbitrary paywall.
I also just hope regulators put a stop to such behavior first, but I kind of doubt that will happen.
