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Comment by GenerWork

5 hours ago

You'd think that on a website that has the word "hacker" in its title, more people would be supportive of someone "hacking" their car, but I guess there's not a lot of car people here.

I am a car person. I have a fun-to-drive car that I have modified. This guy is getting all the hate he deserves.

You don't get to be an assh*le and subject everyone to loud exhaust (I looked up his exhaust, it's 105 dB!), and be upset if people call you an assh*le.

Anyone who defends him is essentially saying "it's ok to be an assh*le to everyone around you, as long as you get yours."

  • >This guy is getting all the hate he deserves.

    Most of these comments are like the car equivalent of Karen the 3x Brady Campaign donor and some Fox News Fudd complaining about someone's gun. The broken clocks might be right this minute but they're still broken.

The only socially appropriate ways to inconvenience other people are to build dark patterns into your app to juice subscriptions, dump VC-funded detritus on the street and call it a startup, or take their life’s work and create an algorithm to regurgitate it back to them without paying them for it. Making your car louder? That’s just rude and inconsiderate.

  • Someone putting performance exhaust on their cool car isn't likely to disturb me in my home.

    You know what is? The doings of obnoxious adtech people.

    • > Someone putting performance exhaust on their cool car isn't likely to disturb me in my home.

      We are not all so lucky. I live one door down from an avenue that does sometimes get these kinds of vehicles and it 100% disturbs me in my home.

      I understand that living in a society means that sometimes people will do things that inconvenience me. I am much more understanding of that when the inconvenience provides some clear benefit to the other person in return.

      But in this case, annoying strangers is the point. When you're in the car, you aren't hearing the 100+dB exhaust. It's not a necessary path to optimizing the car's performance. It's just being an asshole to demonstrate to the world that they are powerless to stop you from being an asshole.

    • I live in an area with mostly a grid road pattern. It's very quiet, mostly the sounds of nature. But about a mile away from my house there's a very nice road with great curves and few intersections. Every weekend the guys with the exhausts come out and it sounds like I'm at a racetrack. They certainly don't care that there are hundreds of people nearby that have to listen to this.

No hacking involved. The tech equivalent is buying an Alienware PC from Best Buy and then taking it to the local computer shop to have them put in RGB fans and a liquid cooling system, while not overclocking we’re doing anything more than playing Minecraft sometimes

The modifications the author describes are considered in the car community to be incredibly immature, poorly researched, and basic. "Borla ATAK" is a four-letter-word because they're bought and sold exclusively by the "louder = better" crowd and their near-ubiquity on late-model Ford Mustangs is the bane of people with functional eardrums everywhere. People can modify their cars and be happy with it, but if someone customized their house by installing an outward facing loudspeaker system that played nothing but remixes of "barbie girl" on repeat, I'd probably express criticism.

But a lot of car "hacking" is like installing RGB fans back to back so they whine louder. Which is totally a made up strawman argument that nobody is making, but also not hacking.

Modern day tech is full of insufferable types that thoroughly enjoy pearl clutching and virtue signaling

  • Yes, and it inspires a reaction from a whole bunch of other insufferable types that decided the antidote was to be as big a prick as possible.

    • I don't see any reaction here - just a bunch of people reacting to a fun article with judgement and disparagement.

hacker vibes would be sharing how he learned to program the ecu with a laptop. or putting in a short throw. running linux on the headunit, etc. but no, all this guy did was put a louder, annoying exhaust on it and drives it like its a go kart. im just left wondering what stickers he will tastefully add to it? haha but its ok, its a mid life crisis after all.. if he is feeling happy and like a child again, thats totally great