Ford patents in-car system that eavesdrops so it can play you ads
motortrend.com
motortrend.com
This must be a quote from Ford right? Here's a hint Ford, you don't need voice recognition for that because the ad preference of everyone in the car is always that you don't push ads at us.
I guess we’ve come full circle, and the next iteration will see people pirating stuff again. It’s going to be interesting to see what we can do against ads on devices like cars though…
Including our own. Ads are designed to pull our attention to them and away from what we want to be focused on. The goal is to forcibly embed something in our thoughts and/or feelings. Maybe it's a lie, or a false association, or an impression, or a fear. One way or another ads seek to manipulate us and like it or not we are all changed by them. We'll have a cure for cancer long before we get a cure for advertising.
If you can find a way to get by with minimal car use, it’s amazing. Not possible for many/most, but wow is Ford trying to push people away.
> the next iteration will see people pirating stuff again
With automation the world has become amazing. The first rule of fight club applies.
They charge us more for a dumb tv because they know we hate ads enough to pay more to lose them.
Ad companies have become actual Mafia.
They should be paying us for our attention. Period.
You wouldn't download a car?
your speakers are connected with only two wires.
Eagerly waiting for the potty bowl to start playing ads depending on the chemical composition of the particular waste… it would go: “Your zinc ratio is low, have you tried blah blah? After my doctor prescribed blah blah I can focus on my life more and is more productive and …”
This doesn't really apply in the Ford case, but the real question is why we let companies burn money to get market share, killing existing sustanable businesses in the process? Once no competition is left, they raise prices and decrease quality, ending up with a worse product than we had before.
That's the goal of literally every company. They all want to charge you as much as they can possibly get away with, while giving you as little as possible in return because it lowers their costs. Our society has decided that greed is the greatest virtue and the most important consideration in every facet of life. That inevitably results in a race to the bottom.
It's all propped up on future potential gains, Amazon wasn't profitable for a decade, Uber just turner (barely) profitable last year.
As long as there is hope there will be money, the problem is that the hope river is starting to run dry
Making maximum profits for their shareholders should not be the highest goal of corporations nowadays, if they're persons they've become sociopaths.
* for a certain value of "free"
Especially on mobile, endless ads for regular apps I already have installed but mostly for shitty ripoff trash games.
I am always 0% interested in downloading it, so why the FUCK has it become de rigeur to force the ad to be shown for 30-60 seconds.
I've read into it a little and apparently even negative reaction to an ad still has a positive effect on brand recognition, but how does this apply to shitty mobile games.
Our governments are failing us by not regulating this utter bs, it's so incensing. But then again that's all smiling politicians ever do, take money under the table while the grinning general population votes for em again and again.
Reference: https://seekingalpha.com/news/3735026-fast-growth-for-fast-m...
Case in point, when I was a kid my dad (of "Boomer" age, but from a country where the generational name does not apply) really, really, really insisted on muting advertisements on TV whenever they came on. He made an effort to instill in me the idea that advertisements were lies trying to sell rubbish, and even though I do not have such an emotionally charged reaction to the concept of ads as he does, I still radically block them by all means necessary.
This is unrelated to the aforementioned topic though.
But that will likely never happen. For it to work you would need to track behavior based on other sources than that site. And it does not make people buy something that they actually don't need.
The motivation is to avoid visual noise/pollution and “We didn’t recognize any public interest in having billboards”.
https://www.msn.com/en-ph/money/markets/a-swiss-town-banned-...
One of easy examples of corruption in plain sight, yes mostly nobody cares.
Who are they kidding seriously ?
In my country they sell Dacia car, that's the cheapest and 'shitiest' car you can buy that is made in Europe. It has very few electronic so few bullshit, even the windows doesn't have electrical motor for the passenger
At least you don't get Ford creeping on you.
I guess this may depend on the specific trim you purchase? I personally have a 2022 Jogger something or other and all of my windows are push-button electric.
There was a “clever” CSS trick a coworker did to take a simple task and make it into a daredevil stunt. Just baffling that someone would want to do it that way. I guess someone thought it was novel because they talked about patenting it. My response was, “by all means please do. I never want to see this again in the next 19 years.”
They interpreted that as criticism and decided not to pursue it. I’m not sure how they saw through my subterfuge. It’s a mystery.
Had a decision earlier this year to buy a Tesla vs a dumber car. 2019 Silverado I think has the best middle ground on terms of "smart" tech that is still easy to repair and doesn't sell my info to insurance companies.
By the time you get to 2019 and the GM T1XX platform the entire drivetrain is as complex as any modern vehicle: AFM/DFM, VVT, E85, Active Thermal Management, Start/Stop, 10L80/90, dynamic stability, etc. In other words, once it starts breaking down out of warranty, repair is uneconomic: non-dealer shops and owners don't have the tools, can't get affordable parts and aren't qualified to do the work, just like all other modern vehicles.
The last years that GM trucks were actually easy and cost effective to repair, but still relatively "modern" (decent PCM, effective air bags, standard anti-lock, etc.,) were 1999-2006 (GMT800) and 2007-2014 (GMT900), the former more so than the latter. Any professional mechanic can successfully repair almost anything on the vehicle and parts are readily available at reasonable cost.
The notion of a "sweet spot" is valid. All the classic safety and reliability problems were solved, yet the vehicles (again, truck platforms) are tractable in terms of service.
All of this has produced amazing ICE engineering. GM's base model gas truck engine, the L3B, is making 325hp from 166ci under 27psi of boost. Such ratios tell you everything you need to know about the long term fate of that drivetrain: there is zero margin for error, because everything is operating very near the limit of materials science and the capabilities of advanced manufacturing. When it fails, shortly after the warranty expires, fixing it will not be economic.
I mean, I don’t watch Louis and blocked him due to my non-interest and him being populist-ish with auditory, but talking this way about him is too much, imo.
I used to live near Cupertino, and the Valero station on De Anza and Prospect always played the local classical radio station. Driving a car is pretty tiring, and to take a break and have loud ads projected at you only adds to the stress. To instead step out of your car to modestly amplified classical music is really much better. I always made a point to stop at that specific station for gas. We really need to be more mindful of the world we create for one another.
We can be far away from vigilantes killing them. I’d sponsor the odd hit.
https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997214/preferred-radio-co...
Anyway, they should
1. Play the least annoying music, not the most popular.
2. Use decent speakers.
x x
x here
x x
x x
Is it immoral to, for instance, design a "planned city" to be as boring as possible in order to not attract thrill-seekers?
Now, mind you, I'm asking solely about design. There would be no enforcement of any kind. No "we don't want your kind here". Nothing like in the opening to First Blood.
Just boring AF. Everything closes at 8pm excluding a few bars and restaurants. Lots of playgrounds, good schools, and walking paths to attract a population of young families with children.
Architects can just move those people somewhere else.
FWIW, it's not hypothetical. I'm more-or-less describing Columbia, MD which is wedged midway between Washington DC and Baltimore.
They all stopped working at about the same time (different brands and locations). I imagine there's a common vendor for at-pump entertainment systems, and that vendor decided to scrape the last fractional percent of ad revenue.
"Would you like an Economy Exit or a Business Class Exit?
For a Business Class Exit, the vehicle will come to a complete stop before opening the door."
Where does the line get drawn?
Cup holders allow you to have a good place to put your drink without being distracted. They help you keep attention on the road by not spilling your coffee on your lap.
Ads don't help anybody with staying alert or doing any other tasks in the car. They're meant to capture your attention for selling you something.
If driver alertness is the key factor, cars should have inward facing cameras that can detect the drivers eyes so it can play a horrible noise when the driver starts micro-napping. Or ads for nearby hotels. I think Teslas already have such a camera. New revenue stream!
This exists already [1] and is in pretty much every new car in the EU at least.
> Where does the line get drawn?
Ideally by the person who knows most intimately how badly you're being distracted, i.e. you. (Until they get the ability to scan your brain.)
Before phone, we still saw men shaving and women putting on their makeup.
I have 0 faith in people to self regulate and avoid distractions while driving. At least at a population level.
At eavesdropping.
It's so absurd.. I think anything goes at this point, so long as the line gets pushed back a bit.
Cupholder ? You decide if when you want. Radio ? Yes there are ads but you expect them when the music ends.
> there’s a recognition that an occupant’s “natural inclination to seek minimal or no ads” should be balanced with “maximum opportunity for ad-based monetization.”
Or, you know, you just don't try to monetize every fucking second your users interact with your (expensive, paid-for) product.
Every day we get just a little closer to the future Philip K Dick promised us in Ubik: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
(Sorry, article is in german, it’s about laser-engraved fruits and vegetables. I’ve seen a few in the stores around here… (Switzerland))
This is a published application for a patent. It has not been granted.
The success rate for patent applications is surprisingly low.
This will likely never be granted, or granted after many limitations* have been added by Ford.
Last, just because Ford is trying to patent something does not mean they will ever actually implement that IRL.
* "Limitation" has a specific meaning in patent law.
And every company that even thinks like this should be publicly lambasted, raked over the coals, and shunned!
However by discussing how the patent may not be approved, in the same post where you say ford may not use it, you give the impression you think there is a moral or ethical difference for Ford between the patent being approved or not.
There isn't.
> Yeah, you read the headline right. Ford has patented a system...
The fact is that it is not protected by a patent. That said, the fact that they are _trying_ to and investing in their attempts is indeed worth attention, as it indicates they think it's a good idea. Just without the sloppy reporting.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160918065210/http://www.nhtsa....
Just like Microsoft's various patents on Linux haven't stopped companies from making Android phones, just resulted in some of them paying Microsoft money for patent licensing.
Imagine the ads an Uber driver will be receiving, after chatting with hundreds of random passengers a month.
Would this be legal?