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Class action for unilaterally modifying the agreement about feature access after the fact and to the detriment of the consumer.
There’s about 1000 companies to sue for this already
OK…?
Sue ‘em all!
BORN TO SUE
CONSUMER RIGHTS IS A FUCK
鬼神 Sue Em All 1989
I am trash man
410,757,864,530 DEAD CEOS
Hopefully this doesn’t affect me
It does, unfortunately, affect you. Your van does not support GrapheneOS.
Awesome!
That’s a wonderful creature.
I love it!
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Nice!
10/10, Would ride to the 1990 World Cup with.
T3 crew checking in
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Because the greed of corporations knows no limit. They sold you the (expensive) hardware, now they want to sell you the (specific, usually compatible but not really, and slightly buggy implementation) software. Can’t do that with open specifications.
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Because many customers expect a seamless experience with zero tinkering
No, the lock in is not needed for seamless behavior. The lock-in is to secure various revenue opportunities.
For example, if I connect a displayport cable to a displayport connection, poof, display happens. There’s no ‘tinkering’, there’s no “trying to match vendors”, it just works.
Similarly, here folks sorted out the protocols in use, and none of the ‘seamless’ users were impacted. VW went out of their way to break them not to ensure a seamless experience, but because they wanted to paywall capability in a reliable way.
One could easily imagine schemes that didn’t require the lock-in, but would not assure an enduring revenue opportunity.
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And you can’t have this with open standards…?
How are all these governments and companies managing to enshitify everything? Yet, when it comes to real problems like world hunger, child poverty, and exploitation, no one even blinks an eye.
They can make safety, fuel efficiency, usability, and comfort improvements AND enshittify things too! These are complicated machines.
It’s all about spying now infact by 2027 all vehicles mandated to have facial and body scanners that watch you at all times.
Tech bros are taking over and they are building Bunkers because they know this isn’t sustainable and once it hits a certain point people will be out for blood.
The thing nobody is willing to admit is if free food and shelter for everyone becomes a thing, the population would explode. Every system in nature needs a balance. Any organism, animal, living thing, humans included, will increase in population until the limit of resources is hit. We have no natural predators so our population is limited solely by the resources we have access to. Feeding everyone would actually increase the problem of trying to feed everyone.
Time is a resource, and in the modern world where near-full time parental involvement is assumed, it would effectively limit reproduction.
Matter of fact, it is entirely possible that is a significant part of why birthrates keep declining.
so what gives you the right to get all the food instead of the starving people?
I make things that people want, they pay me and I use the money to buy the food from people who are selling it.
Just another shitty company.
Holy crap I miss old times 2013 when nobody was even bothering and all bootloaders was unlocked by default no play integrity just do what u wanna do with ur own device
Well, a lot of apps didn’t work very well back then either. As in this case.
The apps that didn’t work well were not due to lack of lock-in.
The apps didn’t work well due to lack of maturity in the platform. This app is not failing because the OS is somehow ‘2013-like’, it is failing because Android app developers are going all-in on lock-in.
In this case it doesn’t seem to be related to lockin either.
What kind of apps were you using that didn’t work very well?
What? Shitloads.
This is highly misleading. Hopefully there’s a link in the article to the original report on the GrapheneOS forums, where they talk about the app update breaking it on multiple platforms, not just GrapheneOS. It does not appear to be a block.
It’s probably just using googles play integrity, that tends to break apps in pretty much in everything that isn’t stock manufacturer android.
It is
All in all, it’s just another brick in the VibeCoded Wall…
when it is only affecting unofficial android systems, and stock roms are unaffected, then it indeed is a block.
Cars didn’t need apps in the 1900’s and they sure as hell don’t need them now.
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You don’t need a computer to make a car. But you might need most of one to meet fuel economy and safety standards.
Yeah, good people had good ideas and created the computer link that allows your catalytic converter to function properly. As with all good things, some shithead ruined it and put Subaru’s remote start behind a paid app. Shit people ruining good things, tale as old as time.
Note it is very nice for me to be able to start the air conditioning in my electric car when it’s 38C out before I leave my desk.
Other things are mildly convenient, like checking progress of charging, locking/unlocking doors remotely. It happens to be convenient to check problems, but that’s only because the in-car system isn’t very good, and I would happily take the in-car system being better.
Change it from they block GOS to they spy on you. Get it in front of as many people as possible. If they get huge negative press they’re more likely to change.
They literally murdered millions and were in the press about it. I think they don’t care about headlines anymore.
Why they do this:
After the first three years, Volkswagen is charging ev customers €150/year to see the charge level on the app, remotely start the air conditioning, schedule charge and so on.
Any tinkerer is thinking “well, if I am paying this extortion just to see the charge level on the app, then I want to exfiltrate my data in home assistant or similar, getting better stats and so on”
So they blocked the API with Google play integrity signatures
Now, instead of spending money on engineering ways to block uncertified devices, they could have simply introduced an official API with rate limits and stuff.
The fact that they noticed all those “unauthorized accesses” it’s prove that people just want to pay for a lightweight API access, not a 250mb app that takes 4 minutes to remotely start the air conditioning
After all, we’re talking for €150/year for accessing the data of a €1 iot sim card using 0.0001€ of compute time. There should be enough margin for that.
Too bad the people in charge and developers of sensible mind are not the same people
Sorry if I ask, what does it mean to remotely start air conditioning?
Do you mean you can start it while you are not in the car? What’s the purpose of such a feature?
On a hot day, cool the car down before you get in. Same for the inverse of wanting to heat the car up before you get in when it’s super cold.
It’s a nice quality of life feature, you enter a fresh vehicle instead of scorching hot After being parked for hours in the summer sun. But I would never pay a €150/yr subscription for that, fuck them
It’s for when it’s hot outside, you’re leaving a store and you want it to be cool when you get to your car.
What’s gonna happen to me if I don’t use that feature?
The feds are gonna come and whack you
Nothing at all. You’re just going to enter a hot car.
Ok, don’t buy Volkswagen. Got it.
Also, don’t buy “connected” cars. FFS, if your car features rely on an internet service provided by the manufacturer, you are just begging for these sorts of shenanigans.
When XavDub contacted the German car maker, the company responded that GrapheneOS “is not an official Volkswagen offering” and advised them to contact their OS provider instead.
This is the only official word from Volkswagen in the whole article. To me, this reads less as “We are blocking GrapheneOS users” and instead “GrapheneOS is not something we give any official support” which I think is a key distinction.
It’s not clear what’s different in the update that doesn’t work with GrapheneOS, whether it’s an API call that doesn’t work or if they’ve implemented the Play Integrity API - but I think this article is a bit sensationalist and everyone’s reacted only to the headline.
privacy-conscious drivers
company’s mobile app
Hmmm.
Is there Lemmy r/sipsTea ?
My car is staying dumb as long as possible it seems, I despise these tricks leeching into every new car these days.
Wonder if we can get that Faraday Cage color as an undercoat paint…
But why?
Their intent was to block third party app, not GOS specifically. GOS not working is a side effect.
Why blocking third party? As said below: to force the use of privacy invasive apps, and collect more data.
Now they will change course only if they suffer from a sufficient backlash. And that needs to be painful enough to deter other car makers from doing the same.
Because they want your data :)
The title makes it sound intentional. The reality is because they added a security feature that verifies the integrity of the OS. Only to make it work on other OS they have to manually add it, but the number of users is so small that they don’t even think about it. This was Google’s intention when adding it.
Why does my car needs to verify the integrity of my phone OS? Why does my car cares? It is not like my car is using my phone to make money transfer between banks or managing third party medical information no? Why do you need a safe OS to start the AC on my car?
Why does my car needs to verify the integrity of my phone OS?
Because the app on your phone has the ability to unlock, start, open, etc. the vehicle.
So? What is the problem? It is not unsafe to start a car. Could you blame VW if the car started because of unsafe software on your phone? Is there really a risk of malicious actors targeting car apps to start random cars?
The problem is theft…?
It’s a question of security risk profiles.
Security ultimately often times comes with a tradeoff for user experience or privacy.
How does device integrity checks materially affect the security posture for theft when considering this system? Presumably the security checks for remotely unlocking a car is based around credentials and authN/authZ for the unlock service call?
Enforcing client side security has entered the picture recently, but a lot of it comes from security checklists from people saying did you add this check? Sure adding a device integrity check may stop at least one malicious actor, but is it worth the cost? To most companies, they’re going to say they don’t understand or care about the impact.
They could just go back to key fobs since those can’t run arbitrary code.
No one cares about privacy.
So you have hackers mass compromising rooted android os around the world hoping for an overlap with Volkswagen users with the app, so that they can hack the app to unlock a car hopefully located near them instead of just opening the first car you find with a suction cup on the glass.
Ok, got it
you have hackers mass compromising rooted android os around the world
Not necessary. You only need to compromise one. Any one without some sort of integrity service. And it ain’t that hard. Pick one of many with poor security practices.
instead of just opening the first car you find with a suction cup on the glass
You cannot start a car with a suction cup.
Because fuck GrapheneOS users, apparently 🤷♂️
i want a car with zero touchscreen. Heck, even no reverse camera - older folks have been driving just fine for years with just the side and rear mirrors. 3 pedals.
and no airbag, my granddad crashed 6 times and never needed one
Also these newfangled seatbelts, they always ruffle my tie
I’ve never needed one, therefore they are a waste of money.
I’ve also never needed anti-cancer drugs, wtf are we doing there
It helps if you’re drunk, keeps you from tensing up during the crash.
Sounds like the upcoming Slate. But it’s more of a pick-up platfom. I hope they keep going and extend their product line.
At least it’s supposed to be a smaller truck, about the size of an SUV, if I remember right.
I get the touchscreen thing, though I really don’t mind a touchscreen so long as I have real hard controls for volume and heating/cooling. GPS without touchscreen is painful.
But the backup cameras, absolutely those need to be a thing. They have saved lives. People have arguably never been driving ‘just fine’, just getting closer to just fine. Backup cameras reduced child death from being backed over by 80%.
