Car showed pop-up while driving
glitterkitten.co.uk
glitterkitten.co.uk
Just as the drone starts to drift towards me, several notifications pop up within the app/iOS preventing control and sending me into a panic.
Drone hits the house shredding a few blades, starts to careen and then before it hits me, a brave family member grabs the landing strut and keeps it in a death grip until I can dismiss the warnings and "land".
What annoys me are the "Legitimate Consent" option on all 9000 cookie vendors. There never seems to be a "No to all" button on those.
Those legitimate interests, however, are bullshit. Just because they claim it, doesn't mean it's true.
For instance, a DPA just claimed that Facebook can't claim a legitimate interest for behavioral advertising, so they'll have to ask for consent. Which will be interesting, because they won't be able to refuse service to those that decline.
I really hope to see a few big cases where the EU fines companies for that, so that everyone else gets the picture and stops hiding behind legitimate fucking interest. But I don't know why that hasn't happened yet, hopefully it's just slow moving rather than a case of the laws implementing GDPR being fuzzy enough that countries are worried they wouldn't win the case in courts. (But if that were the case, hurry up and update the law!)
/side note: apologies on behalf of my profession, since it's largely marketing people who've led to these shitty practises. We're not all assholes, some of us do respect people's data, rights, and (lack of-)consent.
Meta also broke the record for the biggest fine this year (1.2 billion). The fines are coming, and if they go after the biggest players first (e.g., Meta, Google), it will send shockwaves through the entire industry.
When GDPR came into effect, being close to the advertising business then, I know some companies that closed shop in EU. But enforcement has been very moderate, at least in the beginning. There's also the issue that some DPAs are more active than others. On the other hand, it doesn't take a lot to set precedents, and EU countries may find that these fines are a nice way to add to the public budget.
The only reason to forget that a user said no is because it's a hostile interface designed to get users to give in and give their "consent".
Fact of the matter is, when you see a cookie banner, that's always for spyware shit that the service doesn't really need to serve the user (e.g., analytics, tracking).
No that is not the case, though it's easy (and common) to mistakenly think that - in part due to the confusing nature of the various regulations and in part due to how frequently companies and websites purposefully misinterpret them for their benefit.
Firstly, there are legitimate reasons to ask for consent to store user data that relate to providing a service (eg if the service is storing a user's personal medical records, or many many possible functions within many services).
Secondly, even without personal information being used or stored, and therefore no GDPR to worry about nor consent needing to be sought, cookies are a separate matter. A different EU law (the 2009 update of the "ePrivacy Directive") requires EU users be notified of any cookie use - even something as obviously reasonable as providing the functionality of a "keep me logged in" checkbox, if you're doing it with a cookie (edit: or even something equivalent like using fingerprinting on the server side to remember people) you need to notify the user.
See, for example, the UK ICO's (the relevant department for dealing with UK's implementation of GDPR, ePrivacy Directive, etc) guidance on it:
> This means that if you use cookies you must:
> - say what cookies will be set;
> - explain what the cookies will do; and
> - obtain consent to store cookies on devices.
> PECR also applies to ‘similar technologies’ like fingerprinting techniques. Therefore, unless an exemption applies, any use of device fingerprinting requires the provision of clear and comprehensive information as well as the consent of the user or subscriber.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/direct-marketing-and-pr...
A cookie being necessary for actual core functionality does allow skipping over requiring consent, but not skipping the notification part. Which is why 14 years ago, years before GDPR arrived, EU sites all started putting "cookie banners" up, most of which didn't ask for consent and just appeared on the first site visit for each user even if they didn't actively dismiss it, since showing it once was widely considered to count as having notified.
Sorry for such a long comment, but the fact that these topics are so widely misunderstood means I think it's important not to make things worse by accidentally spreading misinformation like that in your comment.
Go to any Mastodon website right now. Why aren't they providing a cookie banner for notifying that session cookies are used?
Go to GitHub for that matter. Why aren't they providing a cookie banner? We know why: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/
GDPR isn't concerned with cookies. What the GDPR cares about is personal data and having a legal basis for processing. And “consent” is only one of those legal bases.
You don't need consent, for example, for using a home address for delivering pizza, since pizza delivery can't work without that home address. That's what's called a “legitimate” interest. You also don't need consent for keeping logs for security purposes, if the retention rate is reasonable (e.g., 3 months). You also don't need consent if the law demands that you keep certain records for fraud detection by law enforcement (e.g., banking).
--->
A vast majority of websites needing cookie banners or GDPR consent dialogs are doing spyware shit, which includes Google Analytics (85% of all websites), or behavioral advertising via RTB platforms. And the few websites that don't probably haven't spoken with lawyers yet.
Also, saying "I'm going to repeat..." to someone who had (rightly or wrongly) corrected something you said, is not really helpful, it's not adding to the argument and is more likely to push people away than to get them to reconsider your belief (almost made me just ignore your whole reply, to be honest). I'd suggest saving that phrase for when somebody had forgotten something you said, not when they think that what you said is wrong.
Also, I don't know what the posters above are talking about, but more and more dialogs these days have a working Reject All button. Including that of Meta or Google. Bad actors are still left, but still.
Not in my experience. I click deny almost everywhere, even if it takes more clicks, but rarely do I see the banners come up again in a second visit. Tracking my choice is a functional cookie after all.
I do, however, simply close the tab when the banner occupies half the window (or I use reader mode to bypass it altogether). That's just obnoxious.
I'll tell you what is a one time deal: the explicit do not track preference that my browser automatically sends to every site I visit. They already know they don't need to bother asking me about these things every time. They just choose to overlook it.
The industry collectively decided to play "they can't catch us all" because the alternative was giving up the ad-driven business model and they didn't want to do that. Unfortunately, it looks like they are getting away with it.
What kind of team of engineers thought that this kind of stupidity was a good idea.
I used to work with a software engineer who said to me he would never trust medical equipment that was computerized. It's hard to escape it these days but 20 years ago he was well aware of how many bugs even the most experienced software engineer would leave behind, and was rightly concerned that like if he needed medical support from a machine, that it could very well kill him.
My Grandma lives in a small town in Eastern Europe and I bought her a Samsung Tablet to use with Skype so we can talk to her without paying ridiculous international rates(her house had 100mbps internet but no landline for phone, only GSM which was expensive to call).
Anyway, at some point Skype and later Samsung decided that we can't call grandma without her accepting the terms and conditions. The problem is that she has all kind of illnesses and she can't see the screen well and can't manage a touchscreen well. Also can't get it fixed by someone else because pretty much everyone is very old in the town.
During the height of the pandemic I had to do an international travel because she wanted to see us. I Gave her my old iPhone 7 and use FaceTime now, with auto answer setting turned on in the accessibility. Works like a charm since then, as good and simple as a traditional dumb phone.
People making these UX really should think better.
I didn't know this feature existed. Quite thoughtful!
It's astonishing how they keep adding extremely useful things update over update buried in the accessibility settings. I guess they know they have a stronghold when it comes to serving disabled people so they do their best to keep that market sector extremely happy.
I keep an old iPhone around for if I misplace mine. Turn it on, log in, everything is just there - no ads, no update loops, nada. Works perfectly. My Androids have NEVER done that.
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/xbox-adap...
https://www.belsee.com/android-car-radio/hyundai-radio.html
This way - your data gets abused by the Chinese government instead of Hyundai!
(I kid, sort of, but these head units let you exert more control over your car, as they often ship rooted, or can be rooted)
If you DIY install the head unit, you can often completely pay for the head unit and have cash left over by selling your old head unit to someone who needs one. (Lots of people need a stock head unit, because theirs got stolen, or they bought a salvage title without a head unit, or whatever).
Maps? When I drive I look at... the road. If I need directions, google maps can tell me to turn left etc by voice commands.
In my car, this all comes in via the head unit. Critical driving stuff isn't allowed to be in the head unit (wisely), parking display doesn't come up as critical although the sensors are technically available even if the head unit is fried, which I found out when my head unit failed (car was still drivable, but many nice things gone).
You take your eyes off the road all the time doing head checks (blind spot checks), so long as you're not staring at the map I think the benefit of being sure about where you're going is safer
Yeah, some stuff makes you go through the head unit on some machines. Any replacement head unit would have to implement the same controls somehow.
Wealthy will be the person who makes a generic 2 DIN head unit, where you have physical buttons which you can map to various CANBus messages.
Does the factory display/controls use the canbus to do their work? How much stuff can you reasonably do through that? Do you know if it varies between manufacturers?
Of course this isn't a problem per se, it's good design -- but it has the side effect of making it harder to hack your own car through a single point of entry other than the main OBD2 port, which is connected to the top-level gateway.
Thanks! Do you know by chance if the OBD2 port can talk to/control everything? Would that be a good entrypoint?
I have a only half-joking business idea to build high-quality physical controls for all of the crap touchscreen shit being forced upon us. High-end ovens for example rarely now include physical controls so (I'm looking at you Miele) so I would like an aftermarket thing that sticks on to the outside of it. Maybe even directly over the touch screen. Actually, hmm, that's a good idea. Maybe we need a device that is the size of various standard touch screens that can read the contents of the screen, interpret them, and then have some sort of way to do capacitance touch on the screen. All of this of course hidden from the user who just wants a damned analog knob.
This is one of those rare 'holy shit do this right now' kind of things.
For some vehicles, some of the above have options to tie in with a 3rd party setup, others don't.
Backup camera, steering wheel buttons, MPG, fuel level, low tire warnings...
It's actually really impressive for for $190 I spent on it.
The only thing which it disabled when I replaced the head unit was the built-in handsfree bluetooth stuff. It all goes through the stereo now (and doesn't work that great). YMMV on these aftermarket head units.
A lot of the stock head units look like weird sizes, but it's really just trim on the front of it looking highly custom. Aftermarket units sometimes (often?) come with matching trim pieces to make it look OEM.
And, yes, some cars can fit a head unit even though the opening looks odd. Others can't, at all. Volvo has several cars in that category.
And you don't need to worry about the chinese government if you just never connect the things to the internet, which I never do. They are a conveyance for CarPlay access and nothing more.
I'm a paying customer, so I send them an email complaining and they ask me to send them a screenshot of the exact notice. I'm currently looking for alternatives.
Companies should be shamed for this and the reputational damage should far outweigh whatever little gain figuratively spitting in the user's face would have.
The first time I got it a month ago I just left it on screen till I reached my destination and went through the terms. I got another update yesterday, i just dismissed it, will see it again tomorrow for sure.
I wish I could laugh at the idiocy, but it's too personal and enfuriating to me to be funny. The enraging thing for me is that it makes my car unusable for the passenger even though that person isn't even driving!!! A human is so much better at making that decision at drive-time than the dumb software. At least use the damn airbag sensor in the seat, and if there's a passenger, let them use the controls!!!
And what if you disagree with it?
I hope (and if I thought there was any point in praying, would do that too) that a car company like Toyota will go against this trend and empower the owner to own things. I bought a new Toyota this year and I worry that they're in the process of making the Toyota smartphone app mandatory, though it isn't yet.
Unfortunately, this feels a bit like female clothing with "Don't Look Here!" emblazoned right across the front.
I sort of can’t believe that there haven’t been more court cases on clickwrap licenses. They seem pretty obviously to be procedurally unconscionable, but I guess there’s generally no money in challenging them. I wish at least Congress would make arbitration provisions illegal in consumer contracts (or at a minimum require a meaningful opportunity to opt out).
> $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.
Disregarding the massive waste of resources for building so many new cars, that actually sounds like a great deal compared to today.
There's probably a less-dangerous way to deliver the message that doesn't involve engaging in the activity cited in the message itself.
That'd be like handing out free cigarettes to non-smokers that have "cigarettes are bad for you" printed on them.
Not even Apple can get it correct it seems, as in CarPlay, if there is a incoming call, it covers the entire screen with the person/info who is calling, so if you're using navigation, until you either reject the call or pick up, it hides the maps behind the notification...
There is 0 reason my car needs a cloud connection. It's job is to convey person from A -> B. That is it.
Ask me to do firmware updates when I try to shut a device down, not when I turn it on. Ask me to update some software when I close a document, not when I launch it to do some work. All that happens is I skip the intrusion to carry on with what I intended to do and then forget about the request. (Windows is a good exception to this and it'll remind me to do its updates on shut down.)
Just yesterday, I was at the grocery store and needed to check my shopping list on my phone. When I unlocked my phone, I found that it had (entirely on its own) connected to the insecure store wifi, and was downloading a 1GB+ update package. I was unable to stop this download, and it warned me that if I left wifi range it would continue the download over mobile data. Immediately upon finishing the download, the phone displayed a full-screen countdown stating that it was rebooting to install the system update.
Reluctantly, I gave up on checking my shopping list, placed my phone back into my pocket, purchased the items I could remember adding to the list, and went home. I have no idea how long the installation took, but the next time I checked my phone, it had successfully installed the update.
This is exactly the type of thing that makes me despise technology.
This has also soft-bricked my device more than once. I use a custom launcher, and Samsung apparently doesn't like that, so the system updates can get me stuck in a loop where the launcher repeatedly crashes.
There is no way at all to disable auto updates or stop the process once an update has been acquired. I've even tried blocking IPs in my router, but it seems to change addresses now and then. My only option is to just always keep WiFi off. It thankfully won't download over the cell network.
I'm never buying another Samsung product. I hate this phone more than I have any other piece of technology.
The idea that some company can at any moment force my device to download gigabytes of unknown data and run anything they want on my device without my knowledge or consent is just reprehensible. I paid over a thousand dollars for this piece of crap and I don't even own it. It's utterly ridiculous.
Every few weeks I get a new notification that the Samsung EULA has updated. I just dismiss them. It's not like it matters if I agree or not.
What are you going to get instead? I've been pleased with the Pixel line and have delayed updates for many weeks. It will just nag me with a popup every week or so but never forces. OnePlus I've also been very pleased with and have never even gotten a nag from them.
I can't decide what phone to replace it with. I love the idea of the pinephone but it's way too cheap. The other open source options are way too expensive.
The best option seems to be a Pixel device with a custom OS, but I'm loath to give google money.
Under no circumstances will I buy another phone that I can't run a custom OS on.
I've heard a lot of references to "miles" in British culture, but I assumed that was habits of older people. I thought the UK was all metric by now?
We use a mix of imperial and metric, so you'll see "300m to next service station" and also "30 mph" speed limits :).
People typically weigh themselves in stone and lbs, yet the food we buy is weighed in grams
Europe's last stronghold against the French Revolution's dictate of the metric system.
I jest but that isn't as mad as our pre-decimalization currency. We were still spending coins that called themselves a shilling and calling them five pence (and 2s as 10p) for quite a few years afterwards.
- 12 inches to the foot
- 3 feet to the yard
- 22 yards to the chain
- 10 chains to the furlong
- 8 furlongs to the mile
Using even more archaic units we can simplify further:
- 8 inches to the link
- 100 links to the chain
- 10 chains to the furlong
- 8 furlongs to the mile
And 1 acre is 1 chain by 1 furlong, or 10 square chains.
A rod, pole or perch. A rod was 12 feet and it was the width of the land ploughed in a day. A furlough was the length. Roughly.
Having your fuel economy measured in MPG but having your fuel tank size & fillups measured in L is always a fun game.
My previous car didn't have an economy reading anyway, so my only frame of reference before was calculating pence per mile rather than MPG. L/100km seems logical and I had got used to it in a matter of weeks. Mine is generally around 5-6L/100km on long, mostly petrol journeys, so this is now my new mental benchmark, and it's also trivial to go from this to pence per litre, and not much more to get to the pence per mile that I thought in before. I guess my brain has got good at multiplying by 1.6 as I use km for running and cycling too.
Road signs and limits all still in miles exclusively.
People still refer to each other in feet and inches although official stuff often wants cms. TVs still in inches.
It's not as bad as America, because Brits have a very solid understand of metric and tend to use it whenever we can, but still needs work :(
As an American, I was taught metric in elementary school 30 years ago. It's used throughout education for science classes. I can't imagine there's many Americans who don't understand the metric system.
We just don't use it for anything outside the sciences, for whatever reason.
Or like a recipe calls for 1 pint of something that you've got 500mL containers of. Do you bother opening another 500mL container for that last 68mL?
British distance is measured in miles unless it’s a short distance under half a mile in which it’s metres or unless it’s someone old in which case it will be yards or feet. Of a horse race, in which case it’s yards and furlongs.
Land is measured in acres but industrial land in hectares.
Rooms are measured in feet and inches unless it’s for official purposes in which case it’s metres.
Liquid is measured in ml and litres unless it’s beer - which is measured in pints - or petrol which is measured in litres but talked about in gallons.
If you buy a fish you will weight it in grams and kilos. If you catch a fish you’ll measure it in pounds and ounces.
Buy suits and shirts and you measure in inches. Buy the cloth to make it yourself and it’s measured in linear metres.
How are cups even more insane than pints?
I do not understand cups!
A cup is a defined measure equal to 1/2 pint. (Or, equivalently, 8 fluid ounces.)
Or, since you can pour by eye to within 1ml, more useful to you might be ~236.6ml
Which is an example of how I'd rather things just be consistent instead of mixing units. If things are sold in pints, I'd prefer everything else I work with to be in tablespoons/cups/pints. If things are sold in liters and kilograms, I'll want things sold in reasonable divisions of those as well for the given application. When you just know half a cup is one stick or you need two tablespoons aka two ticks on the wrapper, its easy. When cream comes in pint bottles and you need a cup, you know its just half the bottle.
I do agree though, things start falling apart when recipes ask for like 2/3 a cup and you've got a pint, but if you're the kind of person who can figure out pouring something to +-1mL one could also learn how to pour just about 2/3 a cup every time.
This is great work, you’re a creature after my own heart!
This thing about cups is that 50g of flour = 50g of butter but 1 cup of flour does not equal 1 cup of butter. For me cups make sense for liquids but not for solids.
This is confusing because there are fluid ounces (usually labeled as FL OZ) which are a measurement of volume and are subdivisions of cups (a tablespoon being 1/2 FL OZ, 8 FL OZ in a cup) while there are also just ounces (OZ) which are a subdivision of pounds which is a measurement of weight. Which, weight and mass aren't necessarily the same things.
Because cups are a volume measurement, 1 cup of brand X flour might be a different amount of grams than 1 cup of brand Z flour. Still though, 1 cup brand X == 1 cup brand Z == 1 cup butter == 1 cup maple syrup, when measuring in cups. Different amounts of mass, same amount of volume. Loads of people cooking at home don't really care that much, or they'll just standardize on one brand of flour so its pretty close every time. Or for the majority of the dry goods for baking they'll end up buying some form of mix to use that's already measured they just need to add butter/oil/eggs/water/whatever. Professional bakers and those who really care will use scales and go by mass/weight for their measurements and not by "cups" for things like flour.
Here's an example photo of a pretty typical stick of butter:
https://sweetsandthankyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Mea...
They'll pretty much always have marks for tablespoons. Some of these other markings on the wrapper will vary from brand to brand. Each stick is 8 tablespoons, which is 1/2 a cup. They are then sold in a box of 2-4 sticks, which is either 1 cup or 1 pint (a pint being 2 cups). Like this:
https://images.heb.com/is/image/HEBGrocery/000113910-1
I greatly prefer this pre-graduated way of selling a product like this which is pretty much the standard of normal butter sold. There are other butters and margarines which are sold in tubs or odd sized blocks, but those are usually marketed as "spreadable" butters or have things like honey or other stuff mixed in and really more like spreads rather than stuff you'd normally cook with. Not that you need imperial units to have pre-graduated packaging though, just saying its nice having it.
Its bad when a recipe calls for like 1 cup of peanut butter which is sold in jars by weight. Absolute mess trying to measure it by volume.
Also… butter with honey mixed in?? Is this also American?
https://www.landolakes.com/products/butter-spreads/
Cinnamon sugar is very tasty on toast. I just picked up their Maple Me Crazy, it's nice to just quickly spread on a waffle when in a hurry to get out the door. Butters with herbs is pretty common, it's nice in a dinner roll or something like that. This isn't the only brand that makes products like this.
Next thing you'll be telling me is peanut butter and jelly come in separate jars!
https://www.smuckers.com/peanut-butter/goober
True innovation happens on this side of the pond.
Seriously, one thing that I've realized living in a country where metric went over like a loud fart in church is that metric only works when units are arbitrary; but many times we need to measure things that are not arbitrary.
I don't know why we "regressed," other than to say that when you live with both units, you realize that some metric units are silly, and some metric units make a lot more sense. More specifically, requiring that all units be merely powers of 10 of each other makes it very hard to use the most appropriate unit for the scale you need. (Don't believe me? Why do we have 24 hours in a day? 7 days in a week? 356.25 days in a year?)
IE, it's a lot easier to estimate short distances using feet or millimeters; but kilometers makes a lot of sense for long distances. Understanding "the weather" makes more sense in Fahrenheit, but general science makes more sense in Celsius.
Apparently legislation still contains imperial units too.
This is part of the reason why you'll still see separate warning lights or really weird/ugly overlays for some warnings on modern digital dashboards - in many situations, the safety critical / regulated information is actually being blitted to the screen by a _separate safety processor!_ running an RTOS, while the whiz-bang main display is powered by some commodity SoC running Linux or QNX.
We've seen multiple secure enclave exploits. It's too bad some of this security functionality isn't baked into the display chipset. Yes, it's probably ugly (even if the chipset allows some forms of theming the TOTP code display), but it's better than having your brokerage account, your work login, etc. all exploited due to some 0day. It's also better than carrying around a handful of RSA physical tokens on your keychain (modulo phone breaking/being stolen/running out of battery).
My parents owned a Renault that would tell you at every single start to obey the traffic regulations. I wish I could slap that car and it would feel it.
That said, considering that most repairs are done to transmissions, fuel systems, and body panels (interior and exterior), cutting out everything but the body panels also cuts into the profits of dealership service centers. That's beginning to drive up the costs even more because the dealerships are padding the lot sales price with their markups to cover the loss that happens in the service department with EVs. People are starting to want a direct sales model like Tesla does, but that causes even more problems because direct sales cannot account for local market conditions or quick economic downturns the way dealerships can. Plus you get the problem of "When the hell am I getting my car back?" when it needs repairs or service because you have to ship your car off somewhere far away where they'll get to it as the backlog allows. A la Rivian and Tesla. Neither the customers or the manufacturers want a Rivian/Tesla repair center situation.
Automotive gross margins don't seem to reflect those numbers. Tesla's are around 25%.
Especially since basically 99% of drives are under 50 miles.
If you don't keep your car you'll sell it. You won't be moving the needle on how long it'll take to amortize that initial manufacturing cost, it'll just happen with someone else driving it.
Likewise if you don't buy a new car someone else will, you're not going to move the needle on the overall supply.
I don't recommend buying new cars, but if you consider the above it's pretty much pollution-neutral.
All you're really doing is paying a premium in order to be the first in a long line of owners to drive that vehicle.
If an owner decides to keep and maintain their car longer than they would have in the past, that car will stay out of the junkyard longer and therefore reduce the need to produce new cars. They will use some of the money they would have spent on a new car to keep the old one going longer, and still pocket the rest of it as savings.
It's no more likely on average that the current owner is an enthusiast that's extending the usable lifetime of the vehicle than the next owner.
My aftermarket exhaust is louder by design.
The embedded world in general is nuts. Unless absolutely necessary, nothing gets upgraded once a system works.
Or, say, some industrial machine - you might wish to allow network connectivity so that the vendor/service teams can get notified once a sensor detects signs of upcoming failure such as vibrations. But you can't connect it to your network, or have to take it off your network once the vendor's security support has passed, because otherwise you're just asking hackers to establish persistence on the system.
And it is not just signaling, it is rail car and engine systeks as well, down to the last mechanical and electronic component.
It tend to be actually a false.
It's something I've been grappling with lately, with a potential car purchase coming up. I really don't need much more than a mid-late 00s sub-compact Toyota or Honda of some kind but not going with something made in the past ~5 years feels a bit like a gamble.
Edit: Oh, the reversing camera - I guess that’s pretty useful.
If you need to inform the user about something, put a banner at the top of the screen. Or show an icon with a badge on it. Anything that doesn't require immediate attention and a context switch. Trust me, none of your stuff is so critical that the user needs to be interrupted.
Apparently, it's a faulty sensor on the gear lever, but it seems crazy it seems to have one sensor to detect P/N for this message and another one to actually disengage the gears for parking / neutral.
A few years ago I rode with a friend and he'd have to turn ignition off and on again to restart the headunit. That's rather annoying while cruising on the highway. The madman still did it - a bit dangerous because you lose power steering and the brake booster without the engine running.
This is quite a disingenuous take on the screens in a car though. They usually only allow limited interactions while the vehicle is in motion, so that example of sketching out an idea with a coworker already isn't supposed to be happening with the current systems while the vehicle is in motion.
My passenger can't type something while the vehicle is moving, and if they scroll through lists too fast it'll go into a timeout mode for a few seconds because it assumes the driver is paying too much attention to the screen. Coupled with driver attention tracking systems on current Euro cars (and it sounds like future US cars as well) it can really enforce that a driver doesn't pay too much attention directly to the screen or other things in the car.
We seem hard-pressed to consolidate all of a car's functionality into a touch screen, but the UX is often much worse than a physical input whose position never changes and can be felt with your fingers in the dark or in situations where you cannot look at it. This consolidation also seems like it creates a single point of failure: what happens if your screen breaks?
It all seems like tech for tech's sake, things to justify charging more and more for new vehicles while providing manufacturers with a means of pushing updates, displaying ads, and selling services to extract more incremental value from consumers.
I'd like to see a car w/ a screen for a map. That's it. You input your destination on your phone, it shows the map on the screen. The screen is for display only and it's decoupled from all other controls in the car.
If we're talking about modifying and buying 3rd party changes then the car not even having a screen from the factory is within the same world of people making changes are bad with excessive touchscreen interaction while moving. We're no longer talking about whatever the OEMs are shipping.
If people are going to abuse it, they're going to abuse it. The car shipping with no screen might be even easier to abuse than one with everything in the car being routed through it.
On my old 2000 Accord replacing the headunit with one with a screen running regular Android was <$500, and it didn't have to mess with the AC system. Replacing the system on my Mach E? It'll be a custom job, probably incredibly expensive, and will most definitely hurt the resale value. There's no shops out there advertising "$500 to flash Android on your Mach E!" despite being on the market for a few years. I'd sooner have your example of swiping around on a presentation on my 2000 Accord than I would on my Mach E, despite the Mach E coming with a big screen.
And this isn't limited to just EVs. My >5yr old Hyundai ICE also has a touch screen. Even though it has a lot of buttons, its hard to know what those buttons are doing without the screen and stock OS on it. Sure there's buttons to turn the temp up and down, but you don't actually know what you set it to except for the screen. There's no notification to what air vents are open except on the screen despite there being a button to change modes. Then there's a number of other settings and features to the car that are largely only configurable on the screen (while stopped). All of that goes away if you swap out the head unit on the car or end up flashing a custom Android build on it instead of whatever highly modified version Hyundai put on it.
Once again, if you're opening it up to people doing whatever modifications to it to be these distraction boxes with a budget of $500, then I guess a 1984 MR2 Spyder or a 1993 Ford Ranger or a 2000 Honda Accord also come into the fray as cars which could be modified to allow for distractions like your example.
Your point about being unable to use the features of your car if you replace the factory unit makes sense, but is that type of lock-in a good thing? Again, what if your screen breaks and now you don't know what your AC is set to? What else can't you operate in your car without the screen?
The existence of a screen conditions people to expect and depend on a screen. The manufacturer increasingly requires you to use it to operate the vehicle. There may not be shops advertising flashes yet, but I expect they'll come; that or legislation that prevents anyone from tampering with them.
You could make laws to discourage people from attaching devices to their dashboards and interacting with them, but it gets murky when all the cars come from the factory with a device already in the dashboard that you have no choice but to interact with.
It's been over a decade since the first car that I bought new which had a touchscreen, and it wasn't a pricey high end car. When is this market going to come?
I do think it's not necessarily a good thing for all the stuff to be routed through the screen. I do agree there should be some amount of things operated by physical buttons and switches like gear selectors and turn signals and wipers and what not. But between my car with a ton of buttons and a tiny screen and my car with few buttons and a large screen, I'll take the one with the large screen every time.
The one with lots of buttons has a small screen, making it harder to put in an address or using it while stopped. It's harder to fully understand the navigation at a quick glance on the smaller screen. The vast majority of buttons are practically worthless wastes of space 90% of the time and really shouldn't be used while driving anyways.
> wouldn't have installed it if my car didn't already have a space for it in the dash
Well, there's not a spot to install one in either of my cars with screens in them, but all the cars which didn't have them were easily upgraded to have them. So once again it's easier today to play videogames while driving in my 2000 Accord than my Mach E on something "built-in" to the dash.
This is why I say your point is disingenuous. In a 1993 Ranger, today, I can spend $500 and do your distraction filled example. It would cost me many thousands to do it on either of my touchscreen cars, requiring massive, invasive modifications. This is true of every car I've owned which didn't have a touchscreen from the factory and every car with a touchscreen from the factory, for well over a decade.
Maybe once enough people get stuck with a head unit they don't like, but can't change without a lot of cost because it's vital to the operation of the car. I do expect this to be a relatively small market, but who knows? I have an ECU and a TCU flash, they're performance modifications, but they do also modify the output on the small stock screen in the middle of my gauge cluster. I think the average consumer is more likely to buy a mod for their head unit than their engine, but whether enough people care for someone to make the mods is yet to be seen.
> In a 1993 Ranger, today, I can spend $500 and do your distraction filled example. It would cost me many thousands to do it on either of my touchscreen cars, requiring massive, invasive modifications.
The way I see it you could spend $500 and add a screen to any car, but if your car already contains screens then now you have n + 1 screens (where at least some of those n are necessary).
It's not really about whether you choose to integrate the screen into the dash (or anywhere else) or not, it's that the manufacturer already decided to do it for you. They started you off with n screens, they made you use them. If anything becomes possible, easier, faster, etc. to do on another device then you arrive at n + 1 screens. You can't control what people do, but you can start them with 0 necessary screens.
> The one with lots of buttons has a small screen, making it harder to put in an address or using it while stopped. It's harder to fully understand the navigation at a quick glance on the smaller screen.
Totally agree, gimme big map. That's why I changed my head unit; so I could stop using my phone for navigation. I'm not against big-ish "dedicated" map monitors, but I don't want them to become necessary for operating anything outside of the map and playing audio. I genuinely don't think they're better suited to driving related tasks than conventional gauges and controls.
That's kind of the whole point of Android Auto/Carplay. New software feature out there? It's there. Things too slow for the features you want? New phone, faster CPU/GPU, new network connectivity, etc.
Even though my Hyundai is >5 years old it's running apps that were last updated yesterday. It's had a few UI changes, mostly for the better. It didn't take a new screen.
This poster owns a recent model Hyundai car that popped up a notice about changes to their terms and conditions in the privacy policy. The car presents this pop up while the car is in drive and moving at speed, not when it is stopped/parked.
If anyone does see this and wants to report their own vehicle’s safety issue, I expect they’d listen and be interested, even if non-US: https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem