this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
668 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
84110 readers
3543 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They prevented that from working years ago. Now it's usually on a critical circuit that you can't just disable.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
Every technical hurdle they put up, is defeatable.
Every time they make the wall higher, we make the ladder longer.
There will come a time where there will be a privacy-conscious choice and that might require flashing the infotainment system.
We're getting closer to one of Cory Doctrows stories. I can't find a direct link, but its on this page under the name "Plausible Deniability"
Funny, that is the opposite take that Cory has had recently. His argument has basically morphed to the opinion that, while individual action is cool, this stuff pretty much can only be defeated by collective action. You can't shop (or hack) your way out of living in the surveillance state. If everyone else is being surveiled, you get pulled in by association.
I don't quite agree, and think we will always have to exercise some individual choice to protect ourselves. I am not sure that disabling a radio is enough though, if every other car on the road is covered in cameras and streaming data constantly.
You can do both? Push for collective action and defeat the devices that are being put in front of you.
The difference is, there are now tariffs: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115819402267996681
There's also a recording of his talk, it's quite good IMO.
Thanks for sharing this, the fiction is astoundingly horrifying yet vital in timeliness.
To be perfectly blunt, no not every hurdle is defeatable. To even consider that to be true is fucking retarded. There is a point where your option is to deal with it or use something else.
Modifications can be made illegal, hardware can be made unobtainable legally outside of vendor contracts, real time motion data to insurance can be mandated, etc.
Even if you go out of your way to bypass everything you can The simple fact is, at some point you WILL be pulled over or get into an accident. And at that point if the powers that be decide what you did breaks a law then your still fucked. Or that you broke your insurance contract with your modifications.
Just because you can do something doesnt mean you can get away with it if caught. And everyone's caught at some point. You either end up in jail or uninsurable and monetarily fucked.
You should read the short story.
That's the whole point of the story.
But yes, it will always be possible to remove this sludge. You may have to fight for your rights to do so. That fighting might involve setting things on fire.
I work peripheral to data science. I am starting to think the defense is never to be a hole in the data. AI is incredible at filling in missing data.
What you want to do is poison the data about you. AI is absolutely terrible at weeding out bad or especially intentionally misleading data. You can even protect others if you do it right.
My bolt euv doesn't transmit after I pulled the fuse.
Happy for you, but onstar shares the infotainment circuit on my vehicle. The only way to disable it is to dismantle the dash, remove the whole infotainment unit, and remove the circuit board for onstar. Which likely has some warranty implications, as well.
Hope to get to it soon, but what a hassle.
If there's enough demand, I imagine that there will be shops that will do it without individuals having to research it.
If the manufacturer designs it so that I have to disassemble the entire engine just to replace the spark plugs, I'm still going to be irritated even if I can just pay some people a ton of money to replace them for me.
I mean, yeah, just saying that if lots of people want it done, it's probably gonna be more-efficient to take that route. Like tinting windows or other popular aftermarket modifications.