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Comment by jl6 | Hacker News Reader

> And Kurt Opsahl, general counsel of digital civil liberties campaign group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tweeted: "A seat heater blocked by software is broken, and the car owner should have the right to repair their seats."

Spot on.

There should be absolutely no penalty for circumventing whatever DRM is causing these BMWs to be broken.

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I think there is none, except you loose some warranty and access to BMW digital services, like updates.

As I see this, you are buying two pieces of stuff - the physical car and a software subscription service. Maybe we need to split the two out? Like on PCs you can install any OS you want.

> Maybe we need to split the two out? Like on PCs you can install any OS you want.

Only on some hardware and only some of the time depending on whether you consider Macs and arm based devices PC's.

That we can even do that is a historical accident.

I want the software in cars to be locked down. I don't want to be on the road with a car that's running some hacked together software. That's what makes this so infuriating - the risks involved in switching to an open source version of the software are too severe.

Your in-car software's architecture should by no means put "the part that is critical to driving the car safely" and "the part that runs the entertainment system and heated seats" anywhere near each other.

If they are, your design is braindead and unsafe.

If they are properly separated, modifying heated seats is a non-issue.

If the software that's deciding whether or not you're allowed to heat your seats can connect in any way whatsoever to safety-critical systems in your car, you have bigger problems than running "hacked together software".

You know people are allowed to work on their own cars right? Including wheels and brakes? And there are a lot of states that don't even require an inspection. You share the road with so many shoddy death traps as is

I want cars to be disconnected from the internet in the first place, since there is much higher risk being hacked in the middle of highway.

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