That is the point of this community, you are correct, but unless the Manufacturers can come up with viable alternatives, it isn’t going to change.
Are there any proactive suggestions on how Manufacturers can accommodate third party repairers without compromising the security of their customers vehicles?
I’m pretty sure that no one wants a repeat of the US Kia and Hyundai fiasco of last year?
Car company’s have been doing it for decades. There are legitimate reasoning; theft relevant parts for instance; you don’t want to enable vehicle theft and the “security through obscurity” model did work for a long time. Unfortunately for the manufacturers, most factory security systems are being cracked by locksmiths and vehicle rebirthers.
Another reason is for warranty claims. The manufacturer builds the cars to be the right balance of price, reliability, efficiency and performance. If you modify your vehicles ECU software, the engine may not be as reliable or efficient. If an “unauthorised repairer” changed the programming of the ECU, it can compromise the efficiency and reliability of the vehicle.
There are been plenty of accusations of “planned obsolescence” because a vehicle has died just out of the warranty period, after someone has fucked with the vehicle tuning.
Finally, the other reason, especially for Volume Manufacturers is that their vehicles are sold as a Loss Leader so they can make up the shortfall through aftersales. Some vehicle importers make deals with governments to lower tariffs on new vehicles, but increase tariffs on genuine parts, like what the Japanese industry and the Australian Government made in the 1980s.
Whether you agree with this logic is irrelevant; this is the reasoning manufacturers use for restricting aftermarket parts and labour.
When a “free-market” Aftermarket Aftersales industry causes the Genuine Aftersales industry to fail, Manufacturers will try to make up any losses through other channels, like requesting government subsidies “for the good of the local industry” or selling telematics data (which just “happens” to have personal user data) to data brokers.
The problem is that they are not actively asking permission.
They are technically legally asking permission through the EULA, but nobody reads these.
Apple do this differently, they require the user to opt in for each of their services, and except for a pitiful amount of storage, the user has to pay for a useful amount of storage. This makes the user the customer, instead of the product. They could make it easier to roll-your-own “cloud” storage by NAS, but I assume that it isn’t worth their effort.
This is one of the things I love about the Lemmy community. No one wants to argue, every one can be passionate about their opinions, but still respect other people’s passion.
I used Linux back in the 90s as my primary OS. They were simpler times. Since then I have used BeOS, various versions of Windows and (primarily) MacOS.
I am seriously thinking of going over to Linux as my primary OS because of all the TechBro “AI” bullshit that Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and Google are trying to ram down our throats.
The bottom has dropped out of the OEM software licence market. Microsoft have to find a different way of making money. Their loss-leading hardware sales have not borne fruit so they are getting desperate.
All they have left is services, which means that the only way the can actually make money is selling out their customers private information.
I blame their mothers.
There is a difference between destroying looms, corrupting LLMs by feeding bad data and causing an uprising like the Butlerian Jihad of Dune or the Second Renaissance of The Matrix.
There are legitimate uses for vehicle telemetry being stored by the vehicle and uploaded to the manufacturer.
Identifying unexpected behaviour under certain driving conditions and being able to contact emergency services in an accident are two important examples. Remote diagnosis in the case of a breakdown is another.
None of these uses include selling the data to third parties or using the data to create a profile of the vehicle owner.
Mine had a 3-speed crash box with an unusual shift-pattern that basically made the theft-proof. It also ran on both LPG and Petrol so I could drive it everywhere without having to refill.
Petrol was reasonably priced back then and LPG was even cheaper.
That was what I was going to say.
That said, if someone detects some sort of data-mining plagiarism bot sucking down everything on an instance, it can be defederated very quickly.