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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this legislation will happen.

As part of the technocratic agenda, it is integral that all energy usage, water usage, etc is managed. For this to work, there needs to be 'kill switches'. Like the one's Biden has required new cars to have by 2025.

Technocrats want to (micro) manage everyone's usage of everything. The green agenda is the main sales pitch given for this, but also look out for needing to log on to go online because of ... terrorists, Russian internet attacks, child abuse, etc.

We are coding ourselves into dystopia.

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Everyone is so gung ho about all the companies that are throwing kill switches to Russia, and I'm just waiting for those same companies to start doing the same thing to anyone they want, for any reason. It's already happening.

Happened in Canada not even that long ago, and many people cheered about that too.

I’m curious about the specifics here. Could you provide a link or summarize? Thank you kindly :)

They froze the accounts of people at the protests without due process, and passed legislation to let them to it to anyone who supported them "directly or indirectly". i.e. carte blanche to send anyone into digital/financial exile with no recourse.

they repealed it soon after (I think), but the door is open for them or any other government to do it again.

Seizing funds suspected to be linked to criminal activity during investigations (before any charges) is nothing new. Those who are being targeted today had no complaints 20 years ago when similar clauses where written into anti-terror/anti-terror-funding laws

The problem isn't seizing donations, it's freezing the entire bank accounts of people connected to donations.

The only time I've heard investigators seizing specific amounts is when the money is cash. To my knowledge, access to all bank accounts belonging to a suspect is frozen as a matter of routine: feds don't wire out the $92,464.27 suspected to be related to fraud and leave the suspect with the balance.

To be clear, I'm not saying ots not a problem - it absolutely is[1]. However, it is not new.

1. It gives undue leverage for plea deals, and leaves suspect unable to pay for legal representation.

Providing material support can be a crime.

It might not be obviously illegal, but those bank accounts are frozen because the owners of the bank accounts are being investigated just as if they had been sending money to Al-Qaeda.

At least legally it all boils down to how the groups that received these donations are classified. Of course politically things are more complicated, but applying the same rules in different situations is why people where so concerned about this type of legislation in the first place.

> Providing material support can be a crime.

Yes, and? That's not a reason to freeze the account.

Of course that is reason to freeze the account, much like you would seize a gun from a gun owner who is suspected to have committed a crime with that gun.

It's more like seizing every other gun they own too. But also the average person needs their guns to get groceries and pay the electric bill. And they need guns to get a lawyer...

We also throw people in jail before trial which can make it quite difficult to pay the electric bill.

Yes, multiple things are bad.

We shouldn't do that for people that aren't much of a flight risk.

As a matter of procedure, people are detained while determining if they are a flight risk.

Many frozen accounts may similarly be unfrozen before trial, but determining if that’s reasonable takes time.

There was due process. My understanding was because of the 1 week state of emergency they were explicitly allowed to do this. There were court orders ahead of time.

Declaring a state of emergency is a way of saying "due process has been suspended", calling that itself due process is a bit too charitable imo

If there were court orders (i.e. the judicial system was given the opportunity to say no), what else would you call this?

The power of the state is large. It is reined in by some of its own components, but it is foolish to imagine that in a society that is not explicitly anarchist that it would somehow be limited in the way you seem to imagine.

What company wants to "throw kill switches to Russia" ?

They are being told to do it (or heavily implied that they will be told to do it very soon if they don't do it beforehand).

It's not that I don't see the risk of companies "doing the same thing to anyone they want", it's just that this is not the same as is happening w.r.t the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Even the most reasonable people can't make the argument when the direction is so wildly independent of reality. For example, water usage limits on dishwashers that make people run the cycle twice and end up using more water and more electricity than the old ones.

I find dryers are particularly bad at this. Mine has 5 levels of dry-ness. Even on "ultra dry" the clothes usually come out damp. So I run "ultra dry" twice. Lol.

Have the exhaust vents for your building been cleaned recently? That's exactly the behaviour you'd expect if the exhaust system is clogged by lint.

My less than one year old brand new LG washer dryer has a perfectly functional set of buttons to configure it, but it will not allow me to do so without connecting to their app on my phone over Bluetooth and giving them permission to read my web browsing history.

These machines were over $1000 and they changed the terms on the app a week after we bought it. Not that we'd ever connect it to our phones anyway.

I, for instance, cannot tell it to dry on low heat for a long time until it's actually dry. It is impossible to configure it manually, it beggars belief.

And of course they know full well how much of a nightmare it is to return appliances that heavy and expensive, so it's always a surprise. Why would I even think to look for such a ridiculous anti-feature? I'm not creative enough to think of these regressions since the 90s, what's next, I can't turn it on at all without a face id? The features have barely even changed in that time...

Same with my new television that wanted me to agree to terms and conditions after spending over an hour mounting it on a wall. They seriously weaponize the inconvenience of returning these things... thankfully I had an extra computer to connect to it instead but most people don't.

I think a regulation on appliances saying they must have all features that are standard or advertised available with no extra steps is a good start. Yeah, this person has an issue with builder kickbacks too, but the core issue is hardly limited to new construction or contractors.

We have an LG wall oven that had a binding arbitration sticker on it. Anyone that uses it enters into a binding arbitration agreement with LG according to the sticker.

Of course, there's no notice at time of sale, and by the time you see the sticker, you're looking at redoing brand new kitchen cabinetry if you return the stove.

I suspect it is not a legal contract (post sale, well after returns become infeasible). If it is somehow binding, when companies pull crap like that, I think the "I reject" path should involve them reimbursing you for your time and any sunk cost you incurred before being informed of the contract.

> it will not allow me to do so without connecting to their app on my phone over Bluetooth and giving them permission to read my web browsing history.

In your words, it beggars belief. So if you don't connect your phones to it, how do you operate it? Do you have some dedicated throwaway device?

It has a variety of default options I can select from. Some I can make limited changes to.

For the case I mentioned I have to run it on delicates, change the dry level to maximum, and then run it three times.

I just bought a clothes rack for the wet clothes. The clothes last longer anyway. Don't use the dryer anymore unless I need the clothes right away.

Steve Baer (Zomes, Nightwall, and many other inventions) noted in his book "Sunspots" that:

   * if a person replaces a solar powered drying technology like a clothes line or rack with a fuel-powered dryer, the GDP and/or other similar measures of economic health improve

   * if a person replaces a fuel-powered dryer with a solar powered dryer like a clothes line or rack, the same measures apparently get worse

His conclusion (in the 1970s/early 1980s) was these measures are clearly fucked.

In the UK a fatal road traffic accident increases GDP by more than a million pounds.

Living in the Deep South…that’s not an option lol

I live in drizzly Seattle. It takes about 24 hrs for the clothes to dry, but there's no mildew problem if your house is dry.

In the summer I sometimes put the rack out on the deck. The fresh smell of sun-dried clothes can't be beat.

I grew up in Phoenix. Drying the clothes consisted of:

1. taking them out of the washer

2. putting them on the line

3. going back to to the beginning of the line, and taking them off, as they are now dry

I'm not joking.

> The fresh smell of sun-dried clothes can't be beat.

I see your sun dried clothes and raise you one fresh cut lawn.

Haha, mowing the lawn ignites my hay fever. No thanks!

With a wife and 2 kids waiting 24hrs for strategic placed massive loads of clothes to dry just isn’t an option either lol Phoenix with that dry heat I bet was effective as a high end dryer!

Seattle houses are heated near continiously outside some summer hours, so the house interiors are relatively dry. In a place where you don't have heaters or ACs on a lot and the climate is humid, stuff stays humid.

I have the heat on maybe 6 months a year.

I had a roommate who used to do this (thus sending our utility bill up along with some other power wasting habits), and I once asked them the question I'm about to ask now:

other than for moments when you plan on wearing something as soon as it comes out of the dryer, what prevents one from using the normal dry cycle, and then letting whatever garments that don't get completely 100% dried-air dry in the closet or up on hangers on a shower pole or something?

Mold will grow on damp cotton clothes -- not enough to see with the naked eye, but some people are more sensitive.

Also important: some people live in areas with higher ambient humidity than other areas. If you live in an area where swamp coolers are a viable option in the summer, then of course you'll have trouble understanding why some people don't see hanging up damp clothes to be a reasonable option.

When you put these in a drawer, they don't dry. They get moldy.

Right, so you hang them, briefly, until they do dry. Then you put them away as normal.

With the premium that house space demand, a cloth track, even a foldable one, can ruin your living space for hours a week. And since there's a strong correlation by laundry and weekends, you'd get your living space stalled the days you need it the most.

Or, do the simpler thing and make sure they come out dry from the dryer.

This may be by design: A certain dampness helps during ironing.

Just something my mom taught me. In typical tech nerd fashion, I don't iron.

@dvtm if you're just going to hang your clothes up to dry, then what's the point of having a dryer in the first place?

Hanging clothes on a rack inside is easy, but hanging sheets inside is not. I use my dryer for sheets when weather or time of day makes the outside line not a solution. I also use the dryer occasionally if I need some particular clothes in a hurry.

I never put things through the dryer and then hang them though; my dryer works, and I don't even use the highest setting.

In some locations, it’s illegal to dry your clothes on an outside line.

This is not true. In fact, in the context of this discussion, the opposite is true, that is to say, there are many HOAs (i.e. corporations) that prohibit hanging clothes outside, but there are actually several state laws which ban such prohibitions, so this is actually a case where regulations are protecting people's freedoms, not restricting them, like your comment implies.

The county next to where I live has banned vinyl siding for the entire county. It's not an HOA rule, it's a countywide government rule. Wouldn't be surprised to find out there are counties or towns that have their own clothesline ban.

Maine, Arizona and Vermont all prohibit hanging clothes outside to dry.

19 states prohibit prohibitions by municipalities, but most states leave it up to the municipality to decide.

> Maine, Arizona and Vermont all prohibit hanging clothes outside to dry.

Are you sure you don't have that backwards? From what I can find these are "right to dry" states which have banned clothesline bans (eg your HOA can try to ban it, and the state overrides it)

You have this half-backwards: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin - these states all have "right to dry" laws.

> Now, amidst growing concern about wasteful energy use, clothesline proponents argue that the traditional method of drying laundry is not only cheaper but better for the environment. Lawmakers in some 19 states have agreed, enacting “right to dry” laws that prohibit clothesline bans,

> The exact nature of “right to dry” laws varies from state to state—while some prohibit clothesline bans directly, others recognize a right to use solar power that implicitly may preclude those in authority from preventing a homeowner from drying laundry in the sun.

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/20_right_to_dry_stat...

Not all people who own driers live in the US.

Which is absolutely infuriating from both a climate and a freedom point of view.

You see this with appliances in general. Appliances are tools. They need to be maintained to some minimal degree and used properly.

I've rescued Dyson hand held vacuums where the only problem is that the previous owner forgot to give the removable filter a rinse. I see people shove plates in a dishwasher with food solids that end up caking on, or placing bowls upright so they rerun the cycle.

For example, water usage limits on dishwashers that make people run the cycle twice and end up using more water and more electricity than the old ones.

It's a similar phenomenon to "low flush" toilets that clog and/or have to be flushed multiple times, using roughly the same or even more water than what they replaced.

Get a Niagara. 0.8 gallons per flush. Best flushing toilet I have ever used in my life, at any gallon per flush level. Sustainable/conserving doesn't have to suck.

Can confirm.

However, their quality control is kind of terrible (2/2 had defects in the porcelain causing them to run indefinitely out of the box). I patched both up, and now they're OK.

In fairness, Niagara offered to ship replacements for both free of charge.

Also, they cost a tiny fraction of the other (worse specced) water conserving options, and, thanks to covid we bought them from sketchyplumbingoutlet.com or some such site (they could have been returns for all I know).

Anyway, they flush better than any other residential toilet I've encountered (including high flow and low flow ones), and use 0.8 gallons per flush.

Where in the bill does it mention kill switches for cars?

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr3684/text

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684...

That's probably intended to refer to 24220.c, but overlooks that the "advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology" prescribed for new cars 2025 and later is described in terms that are functionally identical to the driver awareness monitoring safety systems that already exist in high-end new cars right now.

Thank you.

>Technocrats want to (micro) manage everyone's usage of everything.

From Collins English dictionary: "A technocrat is a scientist, engineer, or other expert who is one of a group of similar people who have political power as well as technical knowledge."

I think you're conflating 'technocrats' with 'greedy people'.

I'm not saying people with technical knowledge and political power cannot be evil. What I'm saying is it doesn't require any special skill to be really greedy.

Technocrat has a common usage beyond what that particular dictionary has written. For politicians, it often means one who has a strong belief in the benefit of ruling by data (regardless of the accuracy of that data) and making use of technology to achieve their goals. The politician does not need to be an expert in the data nor the technology used to rule in a technocratic manner. They are often advised by those who do meet the dictionary definition, though it is worth pointing out that technocrats are humans and subject to the same biases and ethical and moral failings as everyone else.

I tend to see technocracy as rule by the scientifically trained, by technologists, by career civil servants, by industry, and by institutions. Technocrats gain their credibility as legitimate leaders from the approval of institutions like academia and industry in contrast to leaders whose legitimacy is directly based off of popular approval. Technocrats are often leading from behind the scenes and driving actual government policy despite being unelected.

I don't see technocrats as having the same biases, ethical and moral failings as everybody else, I think they're rather unique on all those points, and this is at the very core of what is good and bad about technocracy. When I think of a classic technocratic decision, I think of Margaret Thatcher closing down coal mines while crushing any union resistance, a technocrat-approved decision, and it significantly aided the economic success of Britain under Thatcher. Yet it exacerbated inequality and divisions within Britain that persist to this day. The severity of this fallout was blindingly obvious to the average northerner but it caught the average technocrat off-guard (decades of political ill-will tends not to be part of models), whom still lack effective solutions to resolve the issue, and the issue will drag down Britain for quite some time.

> When I think of a classic technocratic decision, I think of Margaret Thatcher closing down coal mines while crushing any union resistance, a technocrat-approved decision, and it significantly aided the economic success of Britain under Thatcher.

It is absolutely not a resolved matter that Thatcher's assault on the NUM significantly aided "the economic success of Britain".

Britain under Thatcher was a dismal and glum place. I left in 1989 and it only by revisiting various documentaries that I have come to realize what a shithole she helped make many parts of the country during her tenure. The fact that the City of London (the UK's Wall St.) did very well during this time in no way lets her off the hook for what her leadership did to most of the UK.

Do... they? I follow a lot of people who I think you'd consider supporters of technocracy, and I've never seen anyone argue that it's good or important to have central monitoring of people's oven usage.

They want to monitor everything. Smart electricity meters provide this functionality.

Smart = spy. Eg, 'spy phones'.

But you skipped right past the main part of my question. Who are "they"? Do you have a particular person or group in mind who thinks smart ovens are good because it's important to spy on everyone's oven usage? I ask because I'm worried you've fallen into a common rhetorical trap, conflating everything you don't like into a singular conspiracy and presuming that there must be some group somewhere who's dedicated to promoting it.

You can read all about 'their' plans in many places. I would start at the WEF's web site.

The only thing I would suggest, is that you consider that when they are talking about stakeholders etc, you need to realise that they are not talking about the people - they are talking from the perspective of companies. (You are the steak, they are the steakholders, lol.)

The same companies that pay lobbyists to write legislation etc, for the governments that purport to serve the people.

These companies are owned by someone - who they are, we can't know. Unfortunately for us, a lot of the ownership details are hidden by offshore tax-exempt vehicles, etc.

Smart electricity meters seems very different to smart ovens. The state has a valid reason to be interested in your enter because they run the grid and need to manage load. They have no valid interest in what your running with that electricity.

Wasn't one of the first things they used this data for was to find people with grow-ops in their basements?

> Wasn't one of the first things they used this data for was to find people with grow-ops in their basements?

And in some cases instead of pot they found crypto mining rigs.

Please read all of Neil Postman's work immediately. It's much bigger than the oven. Thank you.

And did you know that Elon Musk's grandfather was a top technocrat in Canada?

https://www.technocracy.news/shock-elon-musks-grandfather-wa...

Let me be the one to challenge your claim of the enforced "Kill Switch" [0].

[0]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/infrastructure-bill-track-...

Especially stating that this is an eco-agenda is imho either misinformation or willfully partisan.

These seems to just confirm there point while using a lot of weasel words to say it's not a "kill switch"....?

Seriously I've not read such a round about stretch of a justification in a long time.

It's needlessly wordy, that I agree on, but here's the important part: the actual text of the bill is "equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology"

I guess one way you could implement that is a remote kill switch, but at least when I first read the text I thought it would just be something like a built-in breathalyzer you had to pass before the car would let you drive.

People claiming this is evidence of a kill switch are hard extrapolating with (as far as I've seen) no evidence that gets you from the bill's text to a kill switch.

There is no such thing as a switch that can only work from some arbitrary cause. The switch is either capable of disabling the car or not.

"equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology"

Is indistinguishable from

"equipped with driving prevention technology"

"equipped with a mechanism that prevents driving without the key"

is distinguishable from

"equipped with a mechanism that prevents driving".

Doesn't the reason you can't drive actually matter?

The ignition lock doesn't know or care what the reason is that you don't have the key.

On the books, the lock is there to allow only the owner to operate the car.

Yet here you are, without the key, but still the owner, and yet you still can't operate the car.

The ignition is not preventing you from operating the car because you are not the owner.

Tools get misused constantly and there's no end to mission creep when "think of the children", "you're helping the terrorists win", "the cartels were involved", etc. cards are played. Also we are in an era of incredibly flexible definitions of words. What you consider to be 'impaired driving' today might not be what the government considers it to be when they don't like you.

By this logic I can stretch any law to any meaning.

The original claim was a bill mandating a remote kill switch and we've now backpedalled to "words might have a different meaning tomorrow".

So all laws bad, or just this one?

I almost agree with you.

The way Snopes presents it sounds like there is enough wiggle room in the requirements for it to be a kill switch:

> Passively monitor the performance of a driver to accurately identify whether they are impaired.

> Prevent or limit operation if impairment is detected.

> “Passively” detect whether the BAC of a driver is equal to or higher than the legal limit. In such cases, the system could “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected.”

What????

Cars already have this! The base model Corolla has had this for half a decade! Hyundai, MB, Nissan, all have this across the board.

If you're impaired for any reason (but mainly assured to be drowsiness), it detects your behavior and gives you a warning:

https://www.autoguide.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ti...

https://di-uploads-pod5.s3.amazonaws.com/sorgnissan/uploads/...

https://www.autotrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/RT_Dri...

All the bill does is say now those systems should escalate beyond a warning and be able to stop the vehicle.

These cars already have all the info they need, if you "accidentally" drive like an intoxicated person, it's going to be for a reason you need to be stopped over!

Like a medical episode, dangerous lack of sleep, texting and driving.

It has literally nothing to do with being a remote kill switch.

Saying it's a remote kill switch is like saying the mandatory backup camera system is as a mandatory surveillance tool...

It's such a huge leap you can't possibly make it in good faith...

What if you have to drive like a maniac to get your friend to the ER before he bleeds out?

(Yes, a friend of mine told me how he had to do just that. His friend died anyway, but it wasn't because the car quit.)

There are lots of cases where I might need to get the most out of the car.

Or maybe I just want to practice parallel parking. Erratic back and forth driving and turning.

So the car according to some algorithm decides to shut down the car and strand me. The worst part is, I have no idea what criteria that algorithm is using, so I have no idea what line to not cross.

None of this and I mean _none_ would trigger it.

Not recommending this or proud/bragging/endorsing this, but I drive fast. Too fast. 100 MPH for me is what most people feel doing 5 over.

I have *never* triggered these alerts unless I was genuinely tired.

You're talking about a system you don't have the faintest clue about, instead of whipping out irrelevant fantasy situations, ask how it works???

It will *not* react to intentional aggressive movement, it reacts to clearly unintentionally movement that are consistently late and low steering torque.

This is not stuff you can replicate "practicing parallel parking", or driving like you're re-enacting fast and furious!

I expect better of HN, you're jumping from a misleading interpretation to FUD without taking a moment to learn.

> a system you don't have the faintest clue about

Which I explicitly stated:

"The worst part is, I have no idea what criteria that algorithm is using"

> clearly unintentionally movement

How does a machine know I didn't intend it?

You know... when most people have no idea what they're talking about they seek clarity instead of writing 4 paragraphs of fantasy.

But you do you.

These systems don't trigger for "potentially bad" behavior like speeding, they trigger when you drive like an intoxicated or impaired driver.

Intentionally acting like an impaired drive is like intentionally walking like you're drunk... gravity doesn't care if you were pretending to stumble, you're still coming down.

So it doesn't matter if you intended to veer in and out if your in your lane with barely any steering torque being applied... that's how you cause an accident.

If you were dodging obstacles you'd be applying sharper input than a drunk person. You can't "fake" drunk without being a danger to yourself and others.

How does it know you're wandering in and out of your lane?

You can keep trying to go for gotchas... but it's not worth your time or mine.

What do you think is going to happen, ADAS is going to have a tracking error that makes you look like an impaired driver?

These systems are even starting to take in eyesight and

You're like a person going in front of a judge trying to argue:

"Well the officer heard gunshots and watched me, the only person in the room, run away with a smoking gun as the guy fell..."

"But maybe I didn't shoot him!! Maybe I was shooting out the window and felt like going for a run!!"

You're not really going to fool anyone... if it drives like it's impaired, it's impaired. Doesn't matter if it's alcohol, sleep, texting, etc.

Yeah, well, I've been in software for 45 years. Magical algorithms like that always have both bugs and unintended consequences.

"if it drives like it's impaired, it's impaired"

It's just magic I'm supposed to trust.

No thanks.

P.S. I worked on the 757 stabilizer trim design. While I didn't work on the avionics boxes that fitted to it, I know was designed to never allow the software to have the last word. Because software has bugs in it. It always does.

Yes, I know about the 737MAX. There's a switch to turn physically off the stab trim. All the electronics that drive the trim, including MCAS, are upstream of that switch, and that switch rules. Another switch that overrides all the software is the column trim switch. The 3rd crew that experienced MCAS failure that you never hear about used these switches to override MCAS and land safely.

P.P.S. I let my car drift out of the lane if there's no oncoming traffic to give a crazy cyclist / kid on a skateboard more room, or to give that mom with kids more room, or to avoid an icy patch, or to avoid a pothole, or to get my wheels on a drier stretch of pavement to avoid hydroplaning. Heck, if it's safe to do so, I'll move over a full lane to avoid kids.

I've a very soft driving style, because I'm used to cars with very direct steering, and when I get into rentals these systems trigger like crazy with me, they're super annoying.

"Driving like a maniac" to save one person is essentially one possible answer to the trolley problem.

I'm not saying that I condone that particular answer being applied to this particular case, but it's well without the bounds of moral philosophy to say "you should not be able to make this choice".

If the remote kill switch exists, it's going to be hijacked into government having the power to disable your car. It starts innocuously, something that everyone will agree with, like drunk drivers. Next will be drug dealers, who could disagree with that? Then deadbeat parents who owe child support. Then tax-owing deadbeats. Then who knows what other classes of "undesirables".

Proof? It already happened: driver licenses already went through every one of those steps, getting hijacked way beyond the original purpose of denoting that you had the training to drive a car, into government-imposed threats against all sorts of "bad" behavior.

I don't trust any expansion of government power in good faith.

Again, this is just like saying that a camera existing enables the government to hack it, so rear view cameras are part of forming a surveillance state.

There is literally no reason for automakers to do this, and yes I know now the FUD comes in "well they will cuz reasons! cuz gubbmint!"

But just like the rear view camera... you're imagining that they'll spend significant time and money to do something with no use other than incriminating themselves...

So sure maybe your rear view camera can be rigged to stream to their servers 24/7, some already record and upload incidents anyways right?

But it's a massive jump from the happy path.

This is 100000x easier to do on the car without looping in a remote server and opens them up to 100000000000x more liability if the interface is hacked.

They wouldn't do it.

> Again, this is just like saying that a camera existing enables the government to hack it, so rear view cameras are part of forming a surveillance state.

That might be the best example of a straw-man that I've ever seen.

>> Again, this is just like saying that a camera existing enables the government to hack it, so rear view cameras are part of forming a surveillance state.

>That might be the best example of a straw-man that I've ever seen.

I think that was the point.

Replace "rear view cameras" with "onboard tools to detect and deter/prevent impaired driving" and you have the same straw man.

This right here, that was an ironic comment to read on their part...

Why do you assume these systems are static? It's not a given that the systems available in 2025 will have any resemblance to the ones available today. And in fact they may have mandatory upgrade abilities, so the car you buy may not be the same as the car you have 5 years later.

Its a control agenda.

The eco-agenda is the provided pretext that will mean we willingly accept what is offered, in the name of saving the planet.

"a control agenda" is one (landmine) label meant to represent a set of complex interactions; this kind of drastic oversimplification is daily fodder for politics, but literally destructive to actual fact-based inquiry leading to effective policy. Similar arguments have been made regarding product safety and hygiene requirements by "government" !

Except that such all-or-nothing logic is completely appropriate when talking about security of computational domains. Taking a device that is supposedly mine and configuring it to work against my interests repudiates the idea that I am the owner of it. Rather than representing my interests, it is now an agent of someone else's top-down policy. And if enough people modify "their" devices to remove such restrictions, then there's a good chance that even more systems of control get deployed to prevent them from doing so.

I was under the impression people are buying Teslas voluntarily, not because it’s mandated by the government.

I don't see how that's relevant. Both government and corporations are independently capable of pushing top-down controls onto society.

>Except that such all-or-nothing logic is completely appropriate when talking about security of computational domains. Taking a device that is supposedly mine and configuring it to work against my interests repudiates the idea that I am the owner of it.

You mean like smartphones, proprietary operating systems, streaming devices, many (most?) IOT devices, digital books/music/movies and a host of other things?

Sorry, until there's some law/regulation (e.g., broadly confirming the First Sale doctrine[0] and/or similar stuff) that ship has sailed, my friend.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Mass adoption of centrally controlled devices doesn't change the paradigm of reasoning about computing freedom, though. This trend just means that the majority of computing devices aren't under the control of their owners, not that the idea of computational freedom is irrelevant.

In fact I would say barring some very strong laws that make de facto locked down devices outright illegal, there will always be more proprietary devices than libre ones. One of the chief goals of locking down computers is decommodification, meaning taking what could be a general purpose device and restricting it to one specific purpose. Even caring heavily about software freedom - I've got two librebooted desktops, two me_cleaned laptops, one microG phone, but still countless purpose-tailored devices that perform some proprietary function. If those proprietary functions (eg Google Voice SIP integration) could be straightforwardly done with libre software, then I could just consolidate those functions into the libre infrastructure.

> Taking a device that is supposedly mine and configuring it to work against my interests repudiates the idea that I am the owner of it

strongly agree here!

Save the planet for the children!

That link doesn't even challenge the claim, it just fails to completely verify it.

You're not wrong, but that's still what needs to happen.

> Technocrats want to (micro) manage everyone's usage of everything.

You've spelt "Totalitarians" wrong. This is totalitarianism.

This isn't just micromanagement. This is about total control. There's signs of totalitarianism all over the place, including US-culture itself. How kids are being raised. What they're being taught in school. How people behave towards each other.

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