Comment by slg
5 days ago
>you're buying a vehicle that already has the capabilities, but are disabled, then paying rent (or a fee) to turn them on.
This is very much not what "software-defined vehicle" means which itself is very much not the same thing as EVs. It's possible to criticize the explotative business practices you mentioned (or bad UI practices like moving everything to a touchscreen instead of physical buttons) without linking them to other issues that have no real relation beyond falling under the general category of "technology".
At a societal level, EVs are generally better than ICE cars. At a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced. These two things can be true without endorsing automakers who charge and extra fee to activate the seat warmers that already exist in the vehicle.
That's all motherhood and apple pie, but I'm sorry: the reality that we live in and incentives at play are such that if a capability can be exploited, then it will be exploited to the detriment of the consumer. Full stop.
It's interesting how many complaints I see on HN that are framed as if they're complaints about a specific piece of technology when they are really complaints about capitalism. I'm all ears if you want to criticize our entire economic system, but I think it's silly to have that conversation specifically in the context of car software rather than at a societal level.
> when they are really complaints about capitalism
it's not a complaint about capitalism. It's a complaint about asymmetric bargaining power in the seller/buyer relationship.
That's not inherent in capitalism. It's inherent in an anti-competitive market. The failure is in gov't making sure there's sufficient regulation to prevent monopolistic practises.
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I'll raise the flag of "Don't nickel and dime me" in every battlefield.
The world we live in is capitalistic. We can imagine another world that isn't, but when we're considering specific pieces of technology, it's worthwhile to judge it by how it will perform or be exploited in the world we live in.
Because we don't care about capitalism, we don't want over the air updates to our cars.
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If it's silly and it works, it's not silly.
Criticising our entire economic system tends to have very little effect. Criticising specific poor business practices and/or technologies that enable them has a much better chance of improving people's lives.
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Do personal computers even really emerge under communism? it is yet to be seen. But this specific technology seems to only evolve under capitalism to suit the needs of a certain type of buisness against the consumer.
If it emerged under communism, it probably would be equally as bad. I imagine if it emerged under communism or socialism it would be designed to solve a similar problems: securing the needs of the state against the citizen.
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Those against capitalism are going to speak out against what capitalism will lead to be exploited. I don't consider it "silly" to be against something that will lead to disaster, even if the disaster is systemic. Like, so what? Honestly. You can be against giving bad actors new tools without the tools having to be bad themselves. That's the premise of gun control for example.
It is fair to discuss new inroads of the capitalist devil such as this one
As another poster already said, the complaints are not about capitalism, even if sometimes they are worded in such a way, but they are about monopolistic capitalism.
For "capitalism" without other qualifications, there are no alternatives. The so-called socialist or communist economies have always lied by pretending that they are not capitalist. In fact all such economies were the extreme form of monopolistic capitalism.
Towards the end of the nineties of the previous century, a huge wave of acquisitions and mergers has started and it has never stopped since then.
Because of this, to my dismay, because I have grown in a country occupied by communists so I know first hand how such an economy works, the economies of USA and of all the other western countries have begun to resemble more and more every year with the socialist/communist economies that were criticized and ridiculed here in the past.
While the lack of competition and its consequences are very similar, in some respect the current US and western economies are even worse than the former socialist/communist economies. At least those had long-term plans. While those plans were frequently not as successful as claimed, they at least realized from time to time useful big infrastructure projects.
The main role of the laws and of the state must be the protection of the weak from the powerful, for various definitions of weakness and power, to prevent the alternative of attempting to solve such inequalities by violent means, when everybody loses.
Therefore there must be a balance between the economic freedom of the private companies and the regulation of their activities.
It is obvious that in USA such a balance has stopped existing long ago and the power of the big companies is unchecked, to the detriment of individuals and small/medium companies.
The US legislators spend most of their time fighting for the introduction of more and more ridiculous laws, which are harmful for the majority of the citizens, while nobody makes the slightest attempt to conceive laws that would really protect the consumers against the abusive practices that have now spread to all big companies.
This is a classic example of slippery slope fallacy, and not in the spirit of intellectual curiosity for which this forum exists
But it's true? How does an automaker that doesn't engage in those tactics compete when the rest of the market does?
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cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment
Haed disagree. You've been bamboozled, too.
Recalls of any kind are a signal to me the vehicle shipped half-baked. I'd rather have the car with slightly older features that took a little longer to release, but got it right before leaving the factory floor. Or at least the one with sufficient isolation between safety-critical and convenience features that recalls like those you describe are low priority enough to not be urgent.
The reality is, and this is just a fact that all cars have recalls. And currently there are already lots of recalls that require software. Now you just have to go to the dealship.
At best you could argue, maybe the software is better because a bug is more expensive to fix. But that can also lead to low risk bugs not being fixed.
Either way, the solution is not to prevent update, but make the cost higher for companies if their software or their update causes anything safety critical to be wrong.
Regulation around having a separate update for security critical things might be reasonable on government level. But usually the update is not forced in if its mostly features.
> I'd rather have the car with slightly older features that took a little longer to release, but got it right before leaving the factory floor.
Yes, I too have only ever shipped perfect code without any bugs, especially with incredibly large and complex software systems involving dozens of teams. You just need to spend another week or two and you'll get it perfect every time!
Cars have had recalls since the Model T.
Why is this as downvoted as it is?
Man. HN. This goddamn platform
Imagine having a car that pulls packages from npm or Docker hub whenever it gets a network connection. If there were cosmic justice that's what many HN users would get.
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> "At a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update..."
If an over-the-air patch can have that kind of impact, then what happens if security is compromised and that power is used for ill?
When was the last time you worried about someone cutting your brakes? A lot of times these hypothetical fears are disconnected from reality. Security is important, but people generally don't engage in destruction for destruction's sake so improving default safety levels has been a clear net positive for society so far. Maybe I'm being shortshighted and a future security exploit will change that, but it's not something I currently fear as someone whose car gets occasional OTA updates.
Cutting someones breaks requires physical access to the hardware.
Changing: if (brakeDepressed()){ engageBrake(); } To: if (brakeDepressed() && currentTime < '5/6/26 4pm EST'){ engageBrake(); } Can be deployed to thousands of vehicles, and would stop brakes from working during peak commute time on the East Coast.
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> A lot of times these hypothetical fears are disconnected from reality.
Conversely, a lot of times people don't fear real dangers of reality until it bites them. "Hackers wouldn't care about me, and the single password I use on every website is super good and complicated."
> but people generally don't engage in destruction for destruction's sake
Generally true, but they do engage in destruction when there's profit to be made or when it becomes in their geopolitical interests, and sometimes that destruction is quite notable: Remember when it was safe to assume that passengers could passively wait out airplane hijackings?
Your average script-kiddie might not seriously consider cutting everyone's brakes simultaneously, Al Queda would have been giddy.
I can imagine a nation state behaving badly in 2026 ...
Software has an atrocious track record for security. Doubly so for hardware manufacturers. It only takes one smart cow to disable millions of vehicles vs a local knave cutting brake lines.
I yearn for the days of wrapped software where developers had to make a gold pressed release. Not, “we can patch it later”.
If you want to talk about society, then this is about systematic security not individual security. If someone somewhere can push a button and flash your car with OTA firmware to drive you off a bridge, political assasinations become a lot easier.
In fact, with all this data they are collecting, you wouldn't even need to be the next edward snowden to get this treatment. You could set the firmware to target, say, every left-wing voter in america.
You don't even need the own the car with such behavior. Everyone becomes a pedestrian eventually.
> At a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced.
Experience with boxed versus updatable software, particularly video games, says otherwise. When it costs a lot for the manufacturer to fix defects, they put more emphasis on not having them in the first place. Otherwise we just just a parade of defects all the time. Even if it's minor things and never fixed, the user can adapt; that's not possible in the face of continuous updates.
in addition to partially complete on delivery, and "oh that feature is actually really popular, lets paywall it in the next release" and other nerfs.
> At a societal level, EVs are generally better than ICE cars.
Cite your sources, please
> cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced.
If a "recall" can be fixed via software, doesn't that mean just shitty software to begin with? And that usually happens only when a car is infested with tons of software - proving the exact opposite of why we need less software inside cars?
>Cite your sources, please
we need sources for the fact an electric motor, all other things being equal, is better than a combustion engine? If you agree that people in general value the health of their lungs that alone is sufficient reason.
It's also becoming quickly a question of geopolitical resilience, running your transport system on dinosaur juice coming from regions where people blow each other up is bad in particular if you happen to be Japanese automaker Honda
> an electric motor, all other things being equal, is better than a combustion engine?
This is not the core argument. Motors maybe superior - we can agree on that. The power source (batteries) and the environmental impact they have - that has always been the core argument. [1]
Again, without sources, these are just opinions.
Sources:
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30046087/
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[flagged]
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The dev that has never shipped a bug must file the first cve
Cite your own sources that they're not. And maybe try to avoid the ten year old nonsense that's frequently floated as "evidence".
On recalls -- like the one that said that individual icons have to be slightly bigger? Yeah, shitty software.
Or the one that made Tesla annoy drivers with a smaller timeout? That was actually a safety issue --- people would turn off FSD to adjust something and then turn it back on again. Much, much less safe.
> Cite your own sources that they're not.
Cite my sources for what exactly?
> that they're not.
You made an assumption about something I never said and used that as the base of your argument to make a point.
I didn't say anything, I simply asked them to cite a source for that kind of a grandiose claim. If you make a claim like that without citation(s), the onus to prove it lies on the person making the said claim, not on me to disprove it.
>a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced
Maybe? At least in my experience, once the cost of patching buggy software goes down, it typically means that the people become more willing to ship software with more bugs with a fix it later attitude.
I'd go with "please download this file onto a usb key and run the update when you have a minute" over the car doing anything "automatically".
> At a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced.
This doesn't have anything to do with EV vs ICE, but whether it has a over the air updates and whether the problem can be fixed with a software update or not. I expect car recalls are pretty well into the noise in terms of "societal level" problems too aren't they? Even if they were not I expect whole "software defined car" thing, whatever that really means, has not resulted in mechanical defects plummeting, but rather just more software defects. Although it is quite possible EVs have less defects in general than ICE cars I suppose.
How many software recalls did something other than fix a bug or derate something?
What happens if they screw up the update or a net error occurs? Will this wedge the entertainment system, motor logic or what?
I’ve never had a software-based danger on my hardware-based vehicles. As such, there is a whole class of recalls that I never needed: all the ones you tell me I’m missing out on.
I'm impressed that you're daily driving what must be a 30+ year old vehicle. What model? Most enthusiasts have another vehicle to keep the miles down and use when the antique needs maintenance.
1990 AU Ford Falcon family here - still in near showroom condition (well, looks good but has a scratch and a minor ding) with ~ 600,000 km on the clock.
> when the antique needs maintenance.
You're talking about all the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, et al cars, tracks and tractors that litter our district? Yeah - there are a lot of them in this part of the world.
All the farmers love the bleeding edge gear and are getting into AgBot boom sprayers, etc - but they still can't shake a love of keeping the really old stuff going - pimped up rat-trucks abound and we rebuilt an old Alice Chambers tractor ourselves two years back.
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