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Comment by balls187 | Hacker News Reader

> If my RTX3080 breaks, and Nvidia sends me a 3080Ti as a replacement(because maybe they don't have any 3080 in stock) then no, they can't lock it down to 3080 level 3 years later with a software update. And yes, I'm allowed to sell it on as a 3080Ti, because....that's what it is.

What if it's a 3080Ti PCB but inside a RTX3080 card? Is it ethical to sell it as a 3080Ti?

What about an RTX3080 Card that Nvidia drivers mistakenly identify as a 3080Ti and enable additional 3080Ti cores (ignore how technically innaccurate that may be)?

Reminds me of this video from LTT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbZ32mqmsrg

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I think the main issue as a consumer is, do I trust Tesla to try to provide me with the best experience? Or are they going to squeeze me and hit me with "aha, gotcha! you should have read the fine print!" every time there's an issue?

As a consumer, it's extremely expensive to remain well informed. I want to purchase from brands where I feel that the company wants me to be happy, ESPECIALLY with such a premium brand as Tesla. I certainly don't want to need a lawyer on hand to figure out if I'm going to buy a lemon or not.

If Tesla makes an error, it should be resolved in the Customer's favor, period. Why would anyone buy a Premium (read: highly expensive) product if they know the company is going to try to hit them with monkeys-paw customer service terms?

Then stick to buying Hondas and BMWs. There is a great ad about a farmer bringing in his 100 year-old Porsche tractor to a current Porsche car dealer for service. That is true to life. Those who want a multi-decade relationship with a manufacturer don't buy from the likes of Tesla. They have not yet earned access to that customer base. Ask Tesla to fix your classic Tesla from decades past and they would probably laugh in your face.

https://youtu.be/R8-9oIq1hxw

Note how the dealer shows the customer the new part before it is installed. Note how the customer doesn't hand over the keys until fully knowing what is going to be done. Note that this old customer then decided to double down by buying a new car from the company fixing his tractor. Tesla has no respect for such concepts.

> BMW

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32224378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32219870

> Then stick to buying Hondas and BMWs...

> Tesla has no respect for such concepts.

Agreed. But it doesn't help that consumers have accepted faux-trust (i.e., marketing) for real Trust.

The key to real Trust is simple: It's earn. It can't be ordered. Demanded. Come from nothing. Be bought. Etc.

The irony here is, trust for Tesla is based on trust for other like (read: premium) auto brands. But in the end, it hasn't been earned. And it shows.

Premium brand? Tesla build quality is right up there with a 1940s hand built one-off car from any of the manufacturers of the time (no down-voters, I'm not exaggerating).

Shit doesn't line up so they push on it real hard while the glue dries.

As a 2021 Model 3 owner who is mechanically inclined, this resonates :(

The proper analogy is that your Alienware breaks, and Alienware replaces your RTX3080 with a 3080Ti. When you resell it, you can and should identify it as an Alienware with a 3080Ti.

Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down. I'd argue the car in the sumtotal of all the parts in it.

So rather your analogy about Alienware is: You own a dell gaming pc. Under warranty repair, Dell replaces some of the parts with parts from an Alienware build.

Are you allowed to put on Alienware decals on your Dell desktop and re-sell it as an Alienware?

Well, I own a Dell gaming PC. It came with the "Alienware Command Center" installed.

I suspect it may be an Alienware PC. If so, why wouldn't we call it that?

> I suspect it may be an Alienware PC. If so, why wouldn't we call it that?

You could call it an Alienware PC.

My question: Would it be ethical for you to represent it as an Alienware PC, and sell it as an Alienware PC by purposefully attempt pass it off by changing the appearance to make it look like an Alienware PC?

To add to the gray area:

Say DELL XPS 1000 and Alienware 90210 are essentially the same machine, save for custom tuning, drivers, and cosmetics. Alienware gets a 25% markup.

You have the XPS 1000, apply the custom tuning and drivers to get the performance of the XPS to that of it's Alienware's counterpart.

Could you sell it for more than the market rate for a use XPS1000? Yes. I'd argue you have added value by custom tuning the PC. But I believe responsible to disclose that it was an XPS that had been modified.

Taking this back to cars. If an when I sell my Golf R, I will disclose it has received a Stage 1 Turbo upgrade (and hopefully use that to increase the resale value--though it typically does not except to other enthusiasts).

> Taking this back to cars. If an when I sell my Golf R, I will disclose it has received a Stage 1 Turbo upgrade (and hopefully use that to increase the resale value--though it typically does not except to other enthusiasts).

But you're only doing this because it benefits you. If the upgrade reduced your resale value, would you still disclose it? Did you disclose it to insurance companies when you had it done, since it could impact your rates?

When I traded in my GTI for my Tesla I didn't mention the aftermarket headlights I had installed nor the Stage 1. I don't lose sleep over my decision, not that it would have changed the number either way.

> If the upgrade reduced your resale value, would you still disclose it? Did you disclose it to insurance companies when you had it done, since it could impact your rates?

Yes and No.

Yes--simply because I'd rather cover my ass from a lawsuit down the line if the new owner discovered the aftermarket tune.

No, as to my knowledge the insurance company doesn't care about street legal aftermarket upgrades.

You are technically supposed to inform the insurance company of any and all upgrades you make, street legal or not. They are insuring the car as it came from the factory, and while most upgrades won't change things substantially, there could be increased wear and tear, for instance, depending on the tune.

You may not be legally required to, but the insurance company will pretend the upgrade doesn't exist at best, and actively claim it caused the damage, depending on the upgrade.

https://www.valuepenguin.com/special-auto-insurance-coverage...

https://www.askadamskutner.com/auto-accident/insurance-for-a...

Good idea. Tesla should make the badges out of little screens.

If it has Alienware parts, then: yes.

Do you think that Dell should remotely access you computer and artificially nobble it?

> Do you think that Dell should remotely access you computer and artificially nobble it?

No. Just like I disagreed when Sony disabled Linux support in the PS3 via Firmware update (they were hit with a Class-Action for that).

To my knowledge, on of the features of Tesla is that it supports upgrades via OTA software updates. As another commenter pointed it, by treating a Tesla vehicle as a software platform, it allows Tesla to engage in behavior which is quasi normal for say a smartphone, but causes cognitive dissonance when you think of it as a car.

E.g. Apple mistakenly allowing an unsupported feature on an iphone SE, then removing that ability in a future IOS update vs Toyota disabling AWD support on what should have been a FWD vehicle SKU.

Why use analogies at all?

Tesla replaced a 60 with a 90, the owner now has a 90.

They list it as a 90 when selling it.

The new owner gets hit with the update to turn it back into a 60.

New owner is pissed at old owner, when they should be pissed at tesla.

I think they could sue both, but any lawyer would go after the entity with the larger resources aka Tesla. (IANAL)

It is endlessly baffling to me that people love making analogies (and arguing about analogies!) when the situation is fairly simple to explain.

Like another comment suggested, this is a small error in the customer's favor, and companies who care about customer satisfaction should really just eat the minimal cost when stuff like this happens instead of getting bogged down in technicalities.

I understand it entirely (analogy is the core of cognition, after all) but I do find it very troublesome when simple concepts are mystified into religious debates because someone or a small group of people feel the need to flex how ULTIMATELY UNDERSTANDING they are.

Like, no, if you can't use simple words to explain things and you have to rely on extended metaphors to explain things, you probably don't have the holistic understanding you believe you have.

If you take your previous comment, you wrote:

> New owner is pissed at old owner, when they should be pissed at tesla.

The analogies are trying to explain why or why not the owner should be pissed at Tesla, which if I understand your argument is because it was Tesla who made the change.

Tesla replaces a 60 with a 90, HQ says 'set this to be 60', service center doesn't do it. Years later another center looks at the config and fixes the mistake, probably because there's a big warning and the technicians before them ignored it out of goodwill.

The OP is right in that Tesla should codify in the goodwill of free upgrades when logistics doesn't allow it, but they didn't, so the car being rebadged by the owner as a 90 is an issue.

This is the same argument as the Tesla heated seats microtransaction: Tesla actually loses money on cars without rear heated seats if they have to separate "heated rear seats" and "non-heated rear seats" into a new configuration, as it increases manufacturing complexity and logistics (ie. the ability to reassign same-spec cars to new owners if the existing owner backs out of their reservation at the last minute). It makes everything simpler to not make a M3 SR+ customer pay for the heated rear sets and allow them to opt for it later.

Except that 30kWh of batteries cost several thousand $ wholesale, whereas heated seats cost pennies.

But the costs are abstract. What if it costs more than $4500 per unit to pay people to catalog, build, and inventory these huge 60kw packs compared to 90kw packs? This is especially likely with how they're probably only making a few dozen of these a year (given the % of the existing packs that fail under warranty) compared to the hundreds of 90s that need replacement every year.

> Tesla actually loses money...

Tough shit? Why are we responsible for the success of Tesla's business model?

The bottom line here is that Tesla screwed up. If you accidentally give a customer a feature, you don't take it back years later (especially if, as in this case, the product has changed hands to a new customer). You eat your mistake, and consider it a goodwill expense.

I guarantee you this Twitter thread has cost Tesla more than the $4500 they charge for someone to click a couple times in a UI to turn a 60 into a 90.

> Tough shit? Why are we responsible for the success of Tesla's business model?

If you don't want Tesla to succeed, you shouldn't be purchasing the product. In the same vein, you shouldn't be purchasing Apple products if you think their business model of taking 30% of app-based iOS transactions is too much profit for your liking.

Ironically, most analogies that I've seen compare other things to cars. This is one of those cases where it's the other way around.

> Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down

so how about you just explain your position so that other people who don't know the difference between an RTX3080 and a 3080ti can also participate

> so how about you just explain your position so that other people who don't know the difference between an RTX3080 and a 3080ti can also participate

GP used RTX3080 and 8080Ti, my reply furthers that discussion.

The difference is irrelevant. It could be any part replaced under warranty. The point is they both fulfill the same function (graphics card), take the same slot on the motherboard and the 3080Ti is better.

> I'd argue the car in the sumtotal of all the parts in it.

It seems like you're agreeing with me and creating a less appropriate analogy at the same time.

    Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down.

I don't know if this has happened, but e.g. BMW will sell you different types of maps to load into your car navigation. What you paid for is centrally licensed through authorized dealers.

Let's say a technician loaded a more recent map of Europe than the one you bought by mistake. Now you your navigation computer breaks, and you have it replaced by another technician at another authorized service center.

They load the map they had on record for you into the new car nav computer, which to you is the "older" version, but the "newer" one was never one you had a license for.

I'm pretty sure things like this have been happening for at least a couple of decades with some manufacturers, it's just that the "features" have become more major as more things are software-driven, in this case the battery capacity.

There were some very powerful software upgrades you could preform on GPUs... https://verrytechnical.info/safely-unlocking-extra-shaders-i...

Would AMD have been in the right to force a bios downgrade in the next driver release?

Also that LTT and a related Gamers Nexus video convinced me to buy an obviously counterfeit "Nvidia GTX 970" from ebay, report the seller for the sale, I got to keep it, I got refunded, and then with the money I bought a bios writer and flashed the card back to a "Nvidia GTX 550 Ti".

My ASUS Zephyrus received a BIOS update from ASUS that downgraded the video card memory overclocking ability and mining hash rate of the 3070.

> Also that LTT and a related Gamers Nexus video convinced me to buy an obviously counterfeit "Nvidia GTX 970" from ebay, report the seller for the sale, I got to keep it, I got refunded, and then with the money I bought a bios writer and flashed the card back to a "Nvidia GTX 550 Ti".

So you defrauded someone and are proud of it? That they were themselves a fraudster does not make your actions right and you SHOULD return the card.

They defrauded me! I didn't know I was buying a Nvidia GTX 550 Ti 1GB with only 1 of 3 working outputs. The bios they flashed even caused crashes because it reported the card had 2 GB of VRAM which the OS would actually try to use.

While it doesn't apply to the Tesla case, this does bring up an interesting question: if both cards share the same PCB with differing QA standards, the card you got failed those standards but was accidentally given a TI bios anyway, and doesn't seem to crash in everyday workloads, is it ethical to still sell it on as a TI, not knowing how stable it is at extreme workloads?

This is not relevant, but this statement is all kinds of weird:

> What if it's a 3080Ti PCB but inside a RTX3080 card? Is it ethical to sell it as a 3080Ti?

The PCB (with the components on it) IS the card, what do you mean they would swap? The cooler? The plastic bit in front? Do you mean a 3080 card with a 3080TI Chip?

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