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Why is Google allowed to remove purchases from our Play Store accounts without telling us?
(www.androidpolice.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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This is rage inducing.
Imagine if your car dealer was allowed to confiscate your car on a dubious claim such as "it doesn't meet the latest emissions standards," but not even telling you that.
Google needs to be fined twice the value of the apps that it stole from it's paying customers.
"Tesla has a new feature that will disable your seat controls if you keep messing with them"
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/31/22911072/tesla-seat-controls-disable-lock-out-brose
This is so stupid. Why would a company put this much effort to lock down the seat controls, as if they didn't already exist without limits on every other car? Not even with a toggle? These companies are really trying to destroy the "cars = freedom" association.
They get disabled for 5 minutes, probably to give the motors time to cool down.
If the motors need to cool down, they need to rethink their motors.
Motors get hot and it's quite reasonable to not include tons of cooling just so that you can adjust your seat for hours on end.
That said the implementation is still stupid as time isn't the right measure to judge motor temperature, motor temperature is. Thermocouples cost fractions of a cent, the motors probably already include one or two as they already have smarts (being hooked up to the CAN bus and not straight voltage). Which would also take care of differing environmental temperatures as obviously the motors are worse at shedding heat when it's scorching hot in the car.
You don't add cooling, you size the motors to have enough thermal mass and mount them to metal chassis.
Potatoe Potatoh. Point is you size the overall system for quick adjustments, not continuous use. If you can get by with less weight and cost then you do as continuous use does not even begin to appear in the requirements sheet.
How much weight and cost do you think that's going to add?
Do you think that being able to fiddle with your seat position for minutes on end is any way insufficient? Will you ever come close to actually using that feature?
If you answered those with "no", then any extra weight and cost is too much. If you answered with "yes" then get a massage chair and leave the poor car be a car. Feature set follows function.
Adding this functionality will:
Require more IO, add complexity to any wiring harnesses, make repair or replacement more difficult. This all increases cost, probably more than a mass-produced seat motor used by other manufacturers.
For weight and cost, a proper design would have been negligible. Why do you think every other car isn't made this way if it comes down to cost?
None of those: In modern cars you just plug those things into the CAN bus. One connector.
Most cars don't have seat adjustment motors. And as to others that have that functionality being able to operate it continuously: [citation needed]. Remember these are off the shelf German car supply parts, you'll find the exact same hardware in, say, a BMW.
Rethink a motor designed to be used for 5 mins initially then occasionally in future? It's fine for the design purpose. It's even fine for the mode where it operates every time you get in the car (where it waits in fully back position, and moves forward when you operate a control)
Why should they think it to let it be used as a fidget toy?
Phew, that makes a lot more sense. I thought it permanently locked them
So revolutionary
One of the most important parts of purchasing a car is the title being signed over and that transfer being registered with the state. You never own the title to an app.
You don't transfer title and register a hammer when you buy it. Are you saying you fan't own one?
Do you remember the early GE EV1 electric car? Turns out they were all sold under a license with fine print. GE took them back and owners fought hard to keep them. They offered to buy the products outright but nope.
Why did they want them back so much, and why does this wonderful electric powertrain technology so often come paired with invasive Terms and Conditions?
I remember that was always a big question mark back then; was there somesort of safety issue or budget problem? Also, technology has greatly improved since the days of lead acid and NiMh. I think later models dabbled in lithium, but they got less than 100 miles in range.
Leasing a car is quite common even today and benefits a certain demographic and those who like the latest. That hasn't changed much since then. The difference in this example was that leasing was the only option, you couldn't buy outright.
Still, I commend GM for what they got out the door. It was major headway in the field.