YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Car Is a Smartphone on Wheels. Here's Who's Listening

33 points rafaelc 45 minutes ago 20 comments

prasadvara 42 minutes ago | parent

The ongoing theme of all these responses was shifting the blame to the consumer.

As expected. I think consumers also need to push back on these practices, but the problem is, majority of consumers are tech savy but not privacy savy.

slowin 28 minutes ago | parent

I'd love to push back, I'm not sure what that looks like though. I can't even get an open source/open hardware phone that's decent, let alone a car.

ad_fontes 13 minutes ago | parent

You might want to check out Slate. It's about the closest thing to an open vehicle platform I can imagine.

slowin 8 minutes ago | parent

Interesting and thank you! Just like I'd like a "dumb" tv that I could just plug a Linux machine running Kodi into, I'd like a car that was 100% free from smart features, yet gave me the hooks to power any of the systems with my own software/hardware.

0c3ca83 7 minutes ago | parent

It looks like lobbying for increased consumer protection laws. Either you put on a suit and talk to politicians, or you work with and donate to groups that do.

AlexandrB 6 minutes ago | parent

DMCA needs to be repealed or at least radically changed. Currently it's used as a cudgel by manufacturers to prevent customers from modifying the software in the stuff they buy. Legislation that requires vendors to provide documentation and stuff like "right to repair" would also go a long way.

deepsun 23 minutes ago | parent

> As one notable exception, Honda improved its data collection practices to prevent sending precise geolocation to a third party associated with user tracking.

I know what my next car will be.

rdtsc 5 minutes ago | parent

I already like Honda and own models before they were connected to the manufacturer.

They are still not 100% there

> Amplitude received from HondaLink: VIN, Location. Cross-context tracking: Amplitude received the VIN plus Location from HondaLink — an unresettable identifier tied directly to other personal data.

They are so close they should say "fuck it, we're going to be different, we'll disable all the crap" and then market the heck out of it.

theowaway 15 minutes ago | parent

sucks to be a merkin

steelframe 13 minutes ago | parent

Still driving my GR Corolla with the data communications module fuse pulled.

iamronaldo 12 minutes ago | parent

Not to take away from the point but wow absolute ai slop of a website

newspaper1 11 minutes ago | parent

I don't trust any of my devices anymore (including/especially my car). At the very least I figure that they're spying on me. In the most extreme cases, such as Israel's terrorist pager attack, they may even kill you.

I wonder if this is going to create a market for older tech/vehicles that were made prior to ease-of-malware integration? I imagine some sort of cyberpunk future where people are scouring landfills for old 16-bit video game console chips that haven't been backdoored.

hattar 9 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

bnc319 8 minutes ago | parent

While the researchers noted Tesla as having privacy options that can be enabled in the car’s settings, they didn’t seem to test how this changes the # of ATA results. Would have been interesting to see how enabling privacy features changes things.

slowin 7 minutes ago | parent

I wouldn't trust anything Tesla says:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

gwbas1c 6 minutes ago | parent

This seems like something that needs legislation to address.