This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
there are 100 computers hiding in your car right now
Wow! I have a car?
I am as surprised as you are.
You’re riding a data center on wheels
Oh yeah? Where’s my tax break then? And my subsidized water usage?
Sure, if you consider every tiny microcontroller to be a computer, it's probably more than 100.
Right? This article is kinda a ridiculous take. A musical greeting card has a computer in it.
Cars are going to have tons of computers in them, from engine to battery management systems to driver displays to the audio system.
The computers that should be of concern are the “black box” and telemetry, one can brick your car with an OTA update and the other is uploaded to data aggregators, bought by your insurance company, and used to raise your rates if they see driving their metrics say make you a risk.
but I'm a safe driver so that won't effect me
-average consumer ...
Your computer has dozens of computers in it!
All I need is a baseline open hardware EV. Fat chance, of course. So I guess I have to buy something used, today older than 8 years and counting.
Not quite open hardware, but it's minimal compute - https://www.slate.auto/
I have my prrorder but without a price still I am still unsure if I will get one.
SUV and US only, hard pass.
Interesting, thanks.
I tried so hard to hold on for the chance to purchase one but my old car began to reek of moist unwashed towels thanks to all the rain. Ended up getting a sweet deal on a '22 Bolt with 13k miles for $15k. There's a way to reversibly terminate the data line with $15 worth of equipment and 10 minutes.
this civic ev swap kit looks promising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VFNb139Nlc
aftermarket ecu should give pretty good control of all the data.
My daily driver is a bicycle, checkmate.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go pair my bike with my phone so I can upgrade the derailleur’s firmware…
shrugs in mechanical
My bosses gears ran out of battery once so he couldn't get up the hill. Wires are sometimes better than wireless.
I mean, strictly speaking yes, but that's like saying your quartz watch is a computer.
Cars have been like this for three decades. The problem is that some of those computers do data collection & upload.
2012 here. Nothing being collected or transmitted.
It's fucking wild how quickly the media work to water down the impact of things that make Western governments a lot of quick money. Like overusing 'genocide' to stop people talking about the annihilation of Palestine, they're using articles worded like this to distract from the actual data centres.
Desensitization
Not mine. My car was built in 1999. Going to drive it until they stopped offering fuel at gas stations and then just transplant a electric drivetrain.
My car has a cassette tape and no Bluetooth.
Well there's still like 2 or 3 computers on it most likely if you go by the definition of computer automotive journalists like to use.
PCM for sure, but could also have TCM if auto, ABS if equipped might have a computer, potentially some kind of BCM...
When they say a modern car has 100 computers, most of those are actually fairly simple controllers and the reason there are so many is that you can just route canbus and power to them and then run the necessary wires to the sensors and actuators from the modules instead of running a bunch of wires from one single controller to everything. Keeps the harness simpler and lighter.
My own 20 year old car has 26 "computers". 4 of them are door controllers that just actuate windows, locks and mirrors.
Thats right. The word "computer" in this article can mean anything with a microcontroller in it. Any car built after 1996 legally must have an OBD port, so it has a diagnostic computer at least. All cars with fuel injectors have an engine computer. All cars with air bags will have a computer that controls when they go off. Even some cars with cruise control in the 90s had a cruise computer that monitors and controls the speed.
I don't know what my point is, just that I agree, having lots of microcontrollers in your car is not necessarily bad thing, they provide many facets of basic functionality and don't collect your data. And journalists like sensational headlines and fear mongering.
The high tech in vehicles that I wanted:
The "high tech" we got:
Elite dangerous reference, i upvote
O7
* data gathering center
Given the fact that my wipers slow down whenever I indicate, I don't think I'm being surveilled by my car. It's one big electrical short circuit on wheels that somehow still operates.
It's like a rather dysfunctional tank. Absolutely nothing that happens to it phases it or damages it in any way but it's baseline functionality is pre-compromised. When I got rear-ended by an inattentive driver the front of his car was all smashed in, my bumper was a little loose and I gave it a tap and it snapped back into place.
There is definitely something to be said for mid-2010s manufacturing. They've gotten really good at building cars but haven't quite got as far as putting chips in them yet. The dirt cheap on the second hand market and they just keep going forever.
Tbf it's only been ten years since the mid 2010s so a bit early to know if they'll keep going longer term
Pretty sure that my 2004 rav4 that just lost a muffler on the highway does not house a data center, it still has a tape deck....
04 Tundra with a tape deck. And a 6 CD changer! Although I think that has some stripped out gears, bad motor, or something 'cause it stopped working years ago. I took it apart once to get the discs out but didn't bother making a diagnosis since I rock a cassette adapter anyway.
The more I see about the mid 90s through 00s Toyotas, the more I really don't want anything newer. Unfortunately everyone else seems to have the same opinion. There's not a single gen 1 Tundra at any pick'n'pull junkyard within 20 miles of me, and running ones are selling for more than I paid for mine used 14 years ago. Blows my mind my little 22 year old pickup has somehow maintained or increased in value in this ridiculous market.
Not this ship, sister.
No it doesn't. The only computer in there is the aftermarket head unit, and even that is over a decade old.
I didn't read the article but these days a turn signa,for instance, doesn't just connect to a flasher and a bulb. It connects to the network in the car and requests that the computer initiate the turn signal. This means the turn signal switch itself has to have a chip in it to communicate with the network that I believe they are calling a sort of computer. Virtually every component in the car operates like this. It really isn't the same thing as 100 computers..
Headlines are clearly not written for lemmy users lmao.
We have a 1999 model car. I know it inside and out and there are nowhere near 100 computers in it.
Can my mobile data center extract income for me somehow? How about a class action lawsuit from all vehicle owners to get a cut of that lucrative "selling your information to other predatory companies" gig?
So then, beyond safety standards, what's stopping someone from developing an open source hardware vehicle at this point?
Time, money. The usual.
There Are 100 Computers Hiding in Your Car Right Now (You’re Riding a ~~Data Center~~ mobile surveillance and anti-privacy device on Wheels)
My motorcycle, Harley Davidson Pan America, is a computer on two wheels. If I fire it up before the computer completes the start phase (~10 seconds), it will eventually throw error codes.
If you want an automobile that will survive an EMP blast, find an old manual transmission Mercedes-Benz W123 240D.
Wow, 10 whole ass seconds? Peak HD design.
My CB300R just starts as soon as the fuel pump is done priming.
This is promising career news for data center techs like me.
Idk bud. 2008 I might have like 10.
