Ok. I was hoping to talk to them about contributing some specific features to help fight against bots and include some privacy tech, but I don’t have the mental bandwidth for drama.

Where in the article did it say that? Did you read the article?

Welcome 🙂 this feels similar to old reddit, but a bit less nerdy and a bit more political than reddit in 2014 or so, but the times have also changed.

All my personal devices are named “AHE”+n. So the abbreviation for “at heart engineer”+ a letter signifying the device. So my phone is “AHEM”, my laptop is “AHEL”, my desktop is “aheo” (O for office), my server is “ahes”.

We need to turn this into a cancellation party

I cancelled mine recently and will actively try to avoid using it. They also need competition.

The main things that bother me are maps, remote start (which can be done from the keys but it’s a pain in the ass). When you start the vehicle a screen comes up that asks you to subscribe for maps, and then Android auto connects like 50% of the time and randomly disconnects when you are driving.

There’s a bunch of other little features that are mostly convenience things, but I bought the vehicle, and I understand they have to run some infrastructure but it’s not much and I could just connect through wifi or Bluetooth and they wouldn’t have to run any infra.

https://support.toyota.com/s/article/Subscription-Plans?language=en_US

Also, it’s $15 a month which is a rip off. If it was $20 a year, thats annoying, but it’s more tolerable. $15 a month to be able to use the maps that are built in is a crime.

The big ass screen is worthless unless I’m using Android auto.

Modern cars, I think because of safety laws and “trade secrets”, can be quite a pain the reverse engineer. It’s notoriously difficult to even interface with any of the chips in any of the onboard computers in the first place, let alone reverse engineer what’s going on and modify it. On top of that some car companies, like Toyota, are starting to add HMACs to all the messages they send on the CAN bus, so even if you did figure out everything, unless you get the signing keys every message will be ignored. On top of that, it’ll void your warrant, which I know some people don’t care about, but for a new car that you are having to depend on, its another hurdle.

I just bought a Toyota and they locked a lot of features behind an app with a monthly fee, absolute fucking pricks. The whole auto industry is going to shit.