Every time I see ads in a new place, I think of this quote.
> Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
> Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
One day we'll engineer a way for humans to survive without sleep in order to boost productivity, unless the dream ad lobby is strong enough to kill the anti-sleeper bills and R&D
I think it'll be more of an inception type affair.
Where the individual can go into their own world. With time dilation to engage in whatever they wanted.
Imagine spending 5 years working on a startup, where in reality 8 hours passed by.
Even better, if you had something like neural lace, where you could have a simulated reality and interact with other dreamers and even save your progress to the real world.
Sounds absolutely awful, but I bet you could pitch this Magic-leap "big vision" "10-20 years out" style and get SoftBank to throw a few hundred $M your way
But is it that bad? I have the impression I see much less ads nowadays, between watching more Youtube (Premium) than TV, better ad blocking technology, better legislation against cold calling and door to door advertising (in Western Europe), and a reduction of obnoxious billboards through various dynamics. I don't even see Herbalife-style stickers on lamp posts any more.
At least personally i feel that Im just ignoring and filtering it better. But everything is an ad: the plastic bag with the store brand, the bus stops, the buses, the taxis, building, construction sites, etc.
Speaking as a full-time automotive mechanic, this has been a regular fact of life for longer than most customers know.
most parts search systems and recall bulletin systems do backflips to get you to report your customers. Popups requesting the make/model of the vehicle eventually expanded to just asking for a partial vin, then full vin. Now its not uncommon for Ford/GM parts search systems or recall databases to ask for the subscriber code for the vehicles OnStar system. Enter that code and it triggers a server somewhere at GM to pull vehicle data for the car. Ive called up a warranty claim or parts hotline to find the person on the other end asked for my customer by name. Pretty invasive for a wheel bearing.
The good news is, you can permanently disable OnStar and remote data collection fairly simply:
1. Theres usually an onstar control box near the radio inside the dash (not hard to get to.) this is NOT your ECM...look for a box with MAC address data on it.
2. Disconnect the box and open it. triple check to make sure its NOT the ECM. youll find a daughter board with a GPS antenna, and a cellular antenna.
3. Theres a male/male header bridge between the master board and that daughter board. pull that bridge, or remove the daughter board, and youve disabled onstar.
Caveats:
-Most vehicles dont check for the modem. youll not get a service code on the dash.
-This should not affect bluetooth pairing.
- Onstar calls, both automated and regular, will fail with "call completed."
-Be perfectly certain you want to disable onstar because the box comes with crash detection software that tries to dial onstar and report your crash.
Having recently owned an Onstar equipped vehicle I had my ire raised early in the year when they revamped their terms of service and such. They were basically telling their customers how they would expand usage of their driving habits and more and then charge us even more for the privilege.
Starting at $25 a month just for crash reporting and stolen vehicle assistance. I am of the opinion that if ANY manufacturer can detect a crash that they legally be required to render assistance. This assistance can simply be calling local authorities and up to informing the occupants through the in car system that that has occurred. Even if you don't pay they know it happened.
Onstar isn't the only plan but it certainly is the most expensive I have encountered. Then again BMW will charge you not only for map updates but to use Apple's Carplay.
Manufacturers have realized that if people buy cars and keep them longer then they need to find means to turn that into a continuous stream of income and too many are willing to exploit the safety side to do it.
In self driving cars (up to level 3) it will be a traffic violation to use any devices other than the onboard entertainment system. The reason is that the car needs a reliable way to tell the driver to take over. If the only entertainment is through the onboard system the car can reliably get the drivers attention when necessary.
Coincidentally this is also the perfect way to cut out any other advertising channels and have complete control of the users attention.
I don't know if this will happen, but I'd bet that there are people in any major car company and beyond who are thinking how they can bring this scenario into reality.
Much earlier than that, of course, the idea was already in Orwell's 1984:
As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped.
Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue.
'You can turn it off!' he said.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'
When I wrote my comment I remembered that episode too. I even did a quick search for the exact quote, but couldn't find it quickly and gave up. Funny thing that it induced the same remembrance in you. Thanks for digging up the quote.
Reading the article I see all the ways data on my listening habits is valuable to GM and the radio industry and advertisers. How is the consumer rewarded for helping these industries make more money? Why would I ever want to help them? So I can get more targeted ads? There is nothing good about this for driver.
I don't want any part in this. I couldn't give a rat's ass what happens to the terrestrial radio industry or its advertisers.
The radio industry is going to be a shell of itself (if it isn't already) in the coming years as driverless capabilities reach the point at which people no longer need to watch the road. Then they'll be on their phones and tablets while the car takes them to their destination.
Which makes sense why this would be appealing to them. Totally reasonable. I imagine the TV industry is going through a similar crisis as competitive forms of media are not only playing their game, but able to access richer data about viewers. We've heard previously about "smart" TVs that spy on your viewing habits. However, like many things, it ain't my problem.
That is, until they make it my problem by surveilling me for their sole benefit.
The TV industry has pretty rich data about you as well. If you have cable and use a cable box, there's a considerable chance that not only are your viewing habits being data mined, advertisers are able to dynamically target specific commercials at you. The term is "addressable TV" if you want to look into it more.
And your cable provider has likely pulled your credit report as part of signing up (to avoid requiring a deposit), as well as confirmed your identity, physical address, and phone ynumber. All very valuable information and making it much easier to stitch your data into third party data sources if they want. And if they're also your internet provider, theoretically have some potentially lucrative access to your overall interests, usage patterns, devices in your household, etc. All of which could be leveraged at just the metadata level to derive secondary information such as your daily routines, household size, major life events, whether you have an affinity for Apple vs Android, whether you're an "early adopter" of tech, etc.
Cable providers can be just as if not more capable of creating and monetizing incredibly rich data about viewers as their non-cable counterparts. If they're in the mood to risk any PR fallout from it.
I was a Nielsen viewer years ago (private TV viewing monitor for advertiser demographics). They paid you to participate and covered all diagnoses and repair. Now, your TV provider, Netflix, etc. sell your data in far more detail without most people even realizing it.
iHeartRadio (formerly known as ClearChannel) already bought up a ton of radio stations. On the other hand, they also have a popular music streaming app, so they might survive the transition away from actual FM signals.
I never got what drew people to the I heart radio app. Once im no longer listening to radio, and am using my phone's mobile data, it feels like either spotify or pandora would be much more preferable.
Do people actually listen to the Scooter crew morning zoo or w/e the local station's morning show is on their app?
That would make sense as they would not only have a bidirectional pipe to end users, they own the data. I can only imagine that cable TV providers are more than willing to sell viewership data (likely because many are also ISPs) and are likely using it for their own benefit as they get into content creation themselves.
iHeartRadio did file for bankruptcy, but I believe that was due to debt.
The radio is impossible to listen to now unless it's a specific live talk show I'm interested in. Otherwise there are better radio stations online to listen to better playlists of music than Top 40 on repeat.
My partner and I are the proud owners of a Toyota Corolla CE 2003. We often joke about how it has to be the most nondescript car ever made. It has no extra features (with the exception of the CD/radio stereo perhaps), it just drives, really well, it's very efficient, nobody would ever think to steal or break into it as long as there's pretty much any other car in sight, it requires very little maintenance, and when it does we can go pretty much anywhere and it's very cheap.
There'll come a day when we have to replace it, and I'm dreading having to pay more for something that most likely won't be as reliable, but will attempt to squeeze yet more "value" out of me. The corporatization of everyday goods and services at the expense of consumers absolutely sickens me. I can't go to the movies without having to watch 15 minutes of ads, even though I already paid for my seat (and tickets are more expensive than ever). I fear giving my email/phone number/etc. to anybody because I have no idea how they'll be used. I have to regularly remind my ISP/phone provider to stop trying to push more crap and use me as some sort of advertizing platform for my friends. And so on.
People complain about Facebook, Google, etc. all the time for their underhanded tactics, but at the very least I haven't already paid for the product before being amalgamated into it... For all the people on HN who work for these companies and help them implement these things, I do have to ask, how do you sleep at night?
I've come to the conclusion that ads will, if not countered, invade every space that has any potential of human attention. It's not hard to see the trajectory for one who's been around since the 1950's.
This is probably going to demand a new type of GMO human, one that can concentrate on main content while at the same time processing ad content.
Or, we can stand up as the humans we are and demand that ads be banned from being shoved down our throats at every juncture. In lieu of legislation (don't have much hope there): some sort of manifesto that specifies how ads be displayed (i.e. exclusively behind a 'show ads'-button), coupled with shaming of the corporations that violate such an advertising 'code of conduct'.
We actually had a pretty decent truce with ads in the pre-commercial-web days of the 80s and early 90s. Newspapers had some black and white ads next to the articles, which didn't flash or move around. They also sometimes had a pure-ads color insert, which you could take out and throw away with hardly a glance. Magazines sold their subscriber lists to junk-mailers, but sorting junk mail was similarly painless, and delivering it helped fund the postal service. TV had commercials, but we had VCRs with a fast-forward button that couldn't be disabled.
In other words, the ads were easy to ignore if you weren't interested, everyone understood that, and they were priced accordingly. There was money in advertising, but not enough that the CEOs of ad companies were competing to see who could be the first to shoot some poor human sucker at Mars on a branded rocket. Then advertising turned toward all-out war, first with annoyances like animated GIFs and pop-ups, then with surveillance-based ads that started with DoubleClick (a.k.a. Google, a.k.a. Alphabet). Advertisers became some of the richest men on the planet, somehow convincing people that tracking every single mouse movement on every webpage made advertising unimaginably valuable.
What really scares me is what the surveillance companies turn to when slinging micro-targeted ads doesn't make enough money. Google+23andme health insurance, anyone?
Advertisers became some of the richest men on the planet, somehow convincing people that tracking every single mouse movement on every webpage made advertising unimaginably valuable.
Ad-men have been some of the richest men on the planet long before the word 'mouse' referred to something other than a small furry critter.
Really? Honest question. The 19th century Robber Barons were bankers and industrialists -- Morgans, Carnegies, Stanfords, and Rockefellers. Before that it was slave-owners and more bankers and industrialists -- Rothschilds and what-have-you. Back in the Middle Ages it was extortionist thugs, a.k.a. the nobility -- Louis the nth, Henry the kth, etc. I guess the clergy were always fairly well-to-do, but most people wouldn't consider them ad-men.
EDIT: I see where you may be coming from. Newspaper barons like William Randolph Hearst? Sort of, but his papers offered both "creative" and "editorial."
Please look up agency salaries before making that sort of statement. There's decent executive comp at the top, but there's a reason for the industry stereotype of being underpaid and overworked. It is also why so many from the agency side flee to the brand side.
I attended a sports event (SkateAmerica) recently. I was shocked that they played commercials. At the arena. Not just before things started, but in between competitors while they totaled scores.
And they weren't even topical commercials. Just...commercials. I'm a cord-cutter so I've been fairly isolated and I found the whole thing jarring. It did not encourage me to spend more time or money to give people more chances to advertise to me. (Though the event itself was otherwise great)
Fellow cord cutter. Commercials are very strange. Like seriously bizarre. Once you've stepped away for awhile you can't re-acclimatize.
Talking cars, dancing animations, crazy graphics...it's all just absurd nonsense.
It's like the the worst of a Salvador Dali painting.
My daughter grew up with Netflix (no commercials) and Hulu (no commercials specifically on kids programming, at least as of a year ago). She went to a sleepover when she was 6 and got incredibly confused when they were watching cable and the show stopped and a bunch of random toy videos showed up. She played it off in front of her friends, but asked me what was up with those videos first thing when she got home. She just couldn't understand why her movie would be interrupted like that.
... She also started pestering me for about a dozen different, explicitly named toys. Something she had never done before.
People who are either older than me (TV and radio era) or younger than me (mobile apps) look at me like I'm crazy when I seriously suggest ending all advertising. It's a terrible blight on society and you don't really recognize it until you haven't seen an ad for a month or two. (I use Firefox on my phone with an adblocker, and I don't use apps that show ads. I don't watch cable. I really have not seen an ad in I don't know how long.)
I can relate. YouTube has increased their ads lately, and I really can't imagine watching ads any more. I currently turn down the sound and avert my gaze for the duration of the ad. I guess it's a push towards the paid service.
The problem with that is, as other people said last time it was up for discussion, that if you are willing to pay to avoid ads, you are the demographic that is even more attractive to advertisers, meaning they will pay you even more to reach you.
The thing I don't get is, there has to be products out there that are actually useful, but I don't see advertising for those*
*exception: some sleeping headphones I saw in an app on Twitter, but they fail to meet my requirement: I want to put them on, go to sleep, and not hear a noise after that. I will pay 1k+ for this, iff they really work.
Idiocracy foretold the coming of this. Frankly, it was inevitable. As wages have stagnated and the gap between haves and have nots has grown, people are more willing to give up privacy in exchange for goods and services.
"it's very efficient, nobody would ever think to steal or break into it as long as there's pretty much any other car in sight"
My impression is that the most stolen cars usually fit that description, surprisingly enough. Old, reliable, nondescript cars are exactly the ones that have a thriving market for parts and are relatively easy to steal. I remember for instance, late 90s Honda Accords being on the list of top most stolen models at one time.
The other reason I see not to keep an old car forever is that I don't trust old airbags, especially since the Takata fiasco. Nothing lasts forever, and originally I read that airbags were supposed to last 10 years, so how do you trust a 15 year old explosive device aimed at your face?
It might just be because those models sell the most, so there are more around to be stolen, or maybe there is more demand for stolen parts because they sell more.
> It might just be because those models sell the most, so there are more around to be stolen, or maybe there is more demand for stolen parts because they sell more.
Well, it’s both. They’re two sides of the same coin.
Hard to have a thriving car theft business if there isn’t good enough demand for the parts you need to sell.
Can’t have a high demand for parts unless a large amount of those cars are on the streets (or if the cars are absolute junk and need constant parts repair)
The cars that you see in the junk yard in large quantities are probably the ones that will be stolen from the streets.
I just can't fathom a huge market in stolen car parts. I do a lot of my own work and always just go to NAPA or maybe rockauto.com and buy any new parts I need.
Maybe there is a sizable black market of major parts (engines, transmissions, body panels) etc. to unscrupulous repair shops?
I've always owned 10-20year old cars, and frequently replacement parts aren't available; I have to find them on ebay or craigslist and I've no way to know weather these were scavenged legally or stolen.
I've also used Craigslist because new parts can be 5 times more expensive than used parts. You may buy all your items new, but most of the working class people on my block, who are constantly upgrading their cars, probably can't afford it. So, I have no problem imagining a large black market.
I suspect most stolen parts would either be sold through Craigslist of junkyards. The old timers still rely heavily on junkyards for parts. I've been to quite a few, they tend to be shady.
Honda Accords being on the list of top most stolen models at one time.
Yes, there is demand for those car parts, but most importantly, late-90’s Honda are incredibly easy to steal. They didn’t fix that until the 2000 model.
It’s so well known that you need something like a club to stop those cars from disappearing.
Exactly, those things were ridiculously easy to snatch up. My friend in high school used to be able to start his 90s era Honda with a flathead screw driver.
I've got a Toyota Camry 2006. It's such a functional car. mid-early 2000s was such a beautiful time for car user interfaces. No crazy screens, no touch UI to control radio volume with millions of menus, no painfully slow third party navigation systems that became deprecated by the time cell phones came out.
The only modification it has is a bluetooth receiver instead of the CD part of the radio. It's so wonderfully low-tech that the key fob doesn't even work anymore, only manual keys for me.
I bought it when I could have purchased a new vehicle for a similar price using a GM employee discount. Never regretted the decision, and now seeing all this coming out, I feel even better about my camry. I'll drive it until it dies and then hopefully never own another vehicle.
I'm with you. I hate being monetized, and there's increasingly no escape.
A suggestion. When it comes time to replace your Corolla, buy an older used car and use the price differential between your "new" oldie and the newer car you might have bought to return your oldie to zero time. New engine, trannie, new hoses & tubing, wheel bearings, retrofit LED lighting...etc. Or you could do this with the Corolla you have now.
You'll sacrifice newer bells & whistles and some safety features, to be sure. But you won't have to listen to ads unless you voluntarily tune them in on that FM/AM radio.
Edit to add: And your car won't be reporting on you to whoever put up a few pennies for your life data.
In Canada, Nissan sells a car called the Micra. The 2018 base model comes with manual transmission, rollup windows and no AC. But next year they have to add a backup camera. To me this car seems like the last vestige of a bygone era in North America.
I actually own the SV model of this with the backup camera already.
It's an incredibly simple point A to B type car, but I love that about it. I can change the oil and filter without even having to jack it up, it's fuel efficient, and no touch screens. It kinda blew my mind when I was perusing new cars and there is nothing even remotely close to the Micra in terms of cost/value.
As I read the article I thought smugly about the three motorcycles in my garage with no more sophisticated electronics that the ignition modules - all run carburettors, one doesn't even have a tachometer... They aren't collecting _any_ marketable data on me (well, I guess the odo readings from the yearly inspections...)
But then I ride them around with a smartphone in my pocket snitching me out to the cell providers (and any nearby stingrays), slurping up gps signals and wallowing in wifi and bluetooth bands... (And with a license plate being snapped and OCRed probably hundreds of times a week...)
I feel the same way. I have an '01 Subaru Legacy. One day it will die, and it will be because of rust, not because of poor craftsmanship or engineering. And when I have to replace it, I don't know what I will do. I'm tempted to buy another one while they still exist and garaging it until needed. Because I don't want to own a car that is doing things I don't know about, or talking to someone else about me.
Wow, dramatic much? They probably sleep at night by realizing that the car they are selling you is far less likely to be its driver’s place of death than the 2003 car you’re driving.
You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a regular old car accident than you are as a result of your car being hacked.
I'm as concerned about insecure computers in cars as the next tinfoil-wearing conspiracy theorist (that is to say- very, very much), but let's not overstate the actual numbers. A modern car getting hacked is a real risk that needs to be handled, but the actual occurrence of it in the wild is extremely low, and likely to remain that way for at least the next few decades.
Being targeted for hacking only adds to the risk of being involved in a regular old accident, not replaces it; and no matter who you are, your odds of eventually being involved in a non-hacking related crash are pretty high. The difference in severity of injuries and risk of death in a car accident between a 2018 model and a 2003 model is considerable.
So unless you're Snowden and someone is actively trying to kill you, citing the risk of hacking as a rational safety-based reason to drive a 15 year-old car just doesn't hold water.
And if you are Snowden, physically tampering with a car or just forcing you off the road is so easy, hacking probably doesn't increase the risk profile much either. Granted, it's slightly more convenient for your would-be murderers.
They want to increase the "feature" surface area as that increases sales.
Eventually this will become a big enough problem that cars will come with a security rating just like the safety ratings they come with today. Most people will be happy with their 4/5 security stars, but as everyone in the infosec industry knows you can never be truly secure, only secure enough relative to your threat model.
> They want to increase the "feature" surface area as that increases sales.
That's GM in a nutshell, in my experience. I've rented 10 or so over the years (because for some reason that's what car rental places I've been to overwhelmingly have) and their cars tick lots of feature boxes but I would probably never buy one.
Why do our cars actually need to be connected to the internet at all? Do our televisions really need cameras? Are we really in that small of a minority that sees harm in these things?
I am entirely dumbfounded and afraid by modern society.
Features before security. It's the exact same problem with all technology. Security doesn't sell. People don't care about security until it affects them. Follow the market, right off a cliff.
It will come full circle. The possibility is there but widespread abuse hasn't happened yet. When it does, security will be the #1 selling point.
If GM doesn't make this data collection very explicitly opt-in (and backs it up with some kind of audit guarantee) then my '18 Camaro will be my first and last GM vehicle. Same with ads -- show me one, just one, and you lose me for good.
Other than that, I don't see why people are in here bragging about their awesome 15-20 year old cars. My brand new car has a manual transmission, a knob for the volume control, no built-in navigation, etc. The only real difference between this car and the one I owned in 2004 is that this is better in all ways. All.
>Other than that, I don't see why people are in here bragging about their awesome 15-20 year old cars
Presumably because all those things you mentioned are difficult to find in new cars? I don’t think anyone is really of the opinion that newer cars have been degrading in mechanical quality; rather they’ve become much more unpleasant to use and own. Where you could trivially open up the car, theres specialized parts with manufacturer-specific tooling required (Even my car’s tire rim has a fucking key). Where the dashboard was mostly simple and operatable without looking, now you cant use any of it while in motion. And of course it’ll be slow, unreliable and somehow decide you need voice assistance and want to make a call.
And my own pet peeve: the incessant fucking beeping. Everything fucking beeps at you. I drove a prius recently: it beeps if you’re parked near the curb, beeps because you’re in reverse, beeps because of your seatbelt, beeps with the gps; stop by the gas station for a cacaphony: beeping and tvs and music just quiet enough that you can’t really make it out but youre aware its there. Expect the 2020 prius to beep while accelerating
Oh, and of course, now you can enjoy ads too, which’ll probably beep for your attention as well.
Obviously you can rip these things out, and obviously you can find cars without these things (especially if you’re paying the premium to customize), but these UX “improvements” are the norm, and you can reliably run from all of this horrible hell by turning back to 1996.
And if that car runs well, it’s probably much more pleasant to use than the same model in 2018. Mechanically worse, but far fewer “features” that enter the human areas.
I never understood this attitude. You should always "gaf" because taking care of your tools is a good thing to do, not treat them like crap and then complain when they break or don't function correctly.
Well, to be fair, I doubt very much someone in a 2003 anything, much less a Toyota, is having the same driving experience I'm having in a brand new Camaro SS ;-)
Honestly, I've owned my share of old cars. Everything has a cost, sometimes it's money, sometimes it's hassle, etc. The marginal extra cost of a new vehicle is a rounding error financially at this point, so the biggest value is not having to worry about anything.
If it proves a lucrative business model, you may not get a choice. Making "smart" TVs was lucrative, and now almost all TVs are smart. No matter whether you buy a Samsung,a Sony, or an LG. If advertising in cars becomes successful, no matter what brand you buy, expect it to come with ads.
Yep. I've got a 10 year old Plasma that still works and looks great. I will never own a car that advertises to me and sells my data. Hell, I'll never own a car that dings at me until I fasten a seatbelt if I can help it either.
> Hell, I'll never own a car that dings at me until I fasten a seatbelt if I can help it either.
Serious question: Why? I've never found it particularly helpful myself, but what's the big deal about a sound that reminds you to put on a critical safety device that you should already be using anyway? Do you really find yourself hearing those dings for long enough that it becomes a serious annoyance? If so, don't you think the ding isn't the actual problem there?
They could iterate on image and sound quality, and keep charging for that. A larger screen, a thinner screen, less bevel, etc. Plenty to do to have an excuse for making a new model.
Also, the promise of market economy is that, under competitive pressure, in time product's price drops to near the actual costs of making it. Some products are simply done, and there should be a point at which the profit from sales is enough to just keep making it indefinitely, and the company could be free to pursue other products in other areas while still making the old one.
What wasn't the advertised part of the bargain is the ratchet effect - a company will add user-hostile feature, briefly get a better deal, then all other competitors will follow suit and suddenly the user-friendly product is no longer being made. We need to develop a way to prevent this.
The car is last place I want targeted advertisements and distractions. I live and breathe tech, but I drive a manual car with no GPS, no Bluetooth and no remote connectivity. I turn on local NPR or connect phone using aux cable to listen to podcasts. I never found any use of tech in my car.
I think people writing those articles apply shallow pattern matching and don't understand economics of ads.
Have you ever wondered why not every possible business goes for the easy, incremental revenue of advertising?
Why doesn't Netflix just show some pre-roll video add? It's easy money.
When you buy expensive shoes, why don't they pitch you also buying an expensive jacket in nearby store and get an ad commission?
The reason is that ad income is extremely low, ads are not exactly welcomed and degrade user experience.
Netflix makes $120/yr from you. They could make maybe $10/yr more if they were aggressive with ads. But if you cancel Netflix because you're sick of ads, then one year of you not paying for Netflix costs them more than 10 years of ad revenue.
That why ads thrive in a very specific environment: the cost of ad impression must be extremely low and there is no better way of getting money from the user.
Robo taxis, the supposed future ad hell, are the opposite. They'll make lots of money per user ($100+/month) and the cost of ad impression is very high.
If any robo taxi provider will be stupid enough to annoy passenger with ads then they'll loose big time to another provider who isn't.
I don't know. I pay $200 a season for NBA League pass, so I can watch my favorite out of market team.
My normal watch process is to watch the game after the family goes to bed, and fast forward through a good chunk of the filler (commercial breaks, halftime, free throws, etc)
When watching on my computer, they insert un-skippable ad breaks during stoppages, even when watching a replay. That means if I am too slow to skip the timeout break, or happen to slide the slider to a section of the game that is an ad break, I get stuck watching 2 minutes of commercials. Since I am constantly fast forwarding during the game, I end up spending more of my time watching ads than the game.
It is awful. If I can't figure out a workaround, this is probably my last year subscribing. My only current solution is to record the game on my DVR (using the same league pass subscription), because then I can fast forward. However, not all the games on TV are HD.... it is pretty awful overall.
> When watching on my computer, they insert un-skippable ad breaks during stoppages, even when watching a replay.
That is completely absurd. They literally broke fast forward. I would definitely not sign up next year. I bet the commercials are louder than the game too.
This is the flip side of "software eating the world". To quote from "Lean Startup", "what can be built out of software can be modified much faster than a physical or mechanical device can". Well, it's true. They couldn't break the hardware fast-forward on your VCR. But they can break the software fast-forward on the web player (especially because they're providing it).
Netflix does have ads! And quite a lot of them too. They are just in the form of product placement. Sometimes entire scenes will be for pitching a product. Because of that I refuse to watch any of their original programming.
Saw ads when I was in New York, but I've never seen a cab with ads (inside) in Australia. You're lucky if there's functioning interior lights, the first time the ad screen broke it'd never be repaired.
I'll add my experience from Shenzhen, China. Cabs have screens on the back of passenger seats, so when you sit in the back, you get to "enjoy" them. The future is coming.
I've seen prerolls on Amazon, and heard about Netflix testing them. Today it's only house ads, but it's easy to see that expanding one day if financials start going the wrong direction.
I'm very skeptical of your "$10/year" figure for how much they could make. I can't think of any mixed-model services like Spotify or Hulu that are that low in price delta between ad-supported and ad-free.
I also just saw a commercial for a Lincoln...something about the "connected" car of the future. All I can say is that is about 5 years when I am in the market for a new car, I will specifically be looking for a non connected car.
Don't plug in the Ethernet or give it your wifi password and even the smartest TV gets dumb really fast. I'm actually going to be plugging mine in soon (only for a little while) just to see who/where it's sending data.
Same with a car: don't let it connect via wifi. If it has a cell modem, cancel the service plan. In the unlikely event that there's no plan to cancel, 'mod' it with wire cutters and/or a dremel. (of course this assumes that you own the vehicle rather than lease it)
SoC devices with built-in LTS/etc cellular support have been available for several years. The only thing stopping a TV from bypassing your LAN is negotiating some sort of cheap bulk-rate, off-peak with the carriers.
Sure, but even with a bulk rate is it economically worth it for them to do so? My understanding is that the current trend in massive data collection has been viable because they've externalized significant costs (i.e. consumers paying for devices and data.) If the company collecting it has to start footing the bill for the data plan, does it still work for most of them? I don't doubt this will change over the long term but am skeptical that it will be in the next 10 years at least... would love to hear if I'm wrong on this. If it does, then I suppose the way to go would be the hardware hack: snip off/ground/shield the antenna or otherwise disrupt/jam it...
It's only a matter of time before "smart" TV manufacturers work out a deal with Comcast to use their wifi hotspots, or install 4G connectivity and have their televisions automatically connect with no option for the "owner" to disable it.
I sincerely hate everything the "tech" industry has done to society over the past 10 years or so.
Depending on who you ask, my 2016-ish Sony is slower or faster depending on if you don't or do connect it to the Internet. A lot of the video processing seems to be done by Mediatek APIs. I'm not sure I'd retain HDR if I was able to disable the "smart" component completely.
$1000 TV, $5 SoC from 3 years ago. The last Android update they did was to add more advertising to it!
blihp, what I would say if you have an Android TV is see if you can install your own SSL certificates before you connect it. Lots of services are using SSL so you may only be able to pull netflow-style data from it. Also worth seeing if adb is listening on the network or on one of the USB ports.
Yeah, they're getting sneaky about adding 'features' that don't work if they're not connected yet have no actual need to be connected in order to implement them.
Mine isn't Android TV (though I suppose it's possible it's running some Android variant rather than just a custom Linux build behind the scenes... I'll check that out)... it's a Roku/Netflix TV. So my plan is to put it behind an OpenWRT router and at the very least isolate and monitor the traffic if I'm not easily able to MITM it. If I find anything interesting I'll probably throw up a YouTube video so Google can further build up its profile about me while I attempt to figure out how someone else is attempting to build up a profile about me. The game of cat and mouse continues... (not sure which I am most days)
> I hope you'll be able to find one. Finding a decent TV that isn't "smart" is pretty difficult.
If you don't want a smart TV you should by a "professional display" (I don't remember the exact term). They're almost exactly like a normal flat-screen, except their designed for always-on operation an lack all the "smart" crap.
Just buy a used one - in 10 years today's 4g networks will be turned off and 5g on the way out. In theory your Lincoln is still connected, but in practice there is nothing for it to connect to.
I'm exaggerating of course, but think about how hard it is to get a decent dumb phone nowadays. Yes there are options, but nothing like in the Nokia 3210 days.
Tangentially, I wonder if anyone here knows of communities that have cropped up around car hacking. If my next car will basically be a big computer on wheels, I'll be just as interested in the hackability of it as any other electronics I purchase.
Car hacking village at DefCon grows every year. Go check it out next year. I'm using some of what I learned and bought from last time to enable my car's steering wheel buttons to control volume and seek on my phone via bluetooth.
Also check out these guys: https://comma.ai/ if you buy the right car the entire thing is drive by wire and entirely computer controllable.
The last time I found anything half decent, they'd built it into an app that used IAPs and a "credit" system (just like the decent carrier unlocking for phones).
I'm in the market for a car and will be visiting some dealerships soon. I can already imagine their confusion when all the connected features make it a harder sell for me.
My GM truck has onstar data. I can remote start it with an app. Through Amazon I can have packages delivered to my truck when parked at work, they unlock it, put my package inside the truck, and lock it. I wish it had an API so I could write a script to start the truck without using their terrible app. That being said I won't be surprised if Amazon or GM uses this data and sells it.
I was able to reverse engineer the Android app and pull out the API key, the api itself is documented if you make an account on the developer site, but you can't get an API key without a business agreement
It took talking to a head of development at OnStar over LinkedIn to even get a response explaining how to get an API key so I wouldn't bother there, getting the API key from the app is pretty straight forward (just don't share what you're doing with it I guess)
It's also cool to note you can write apps for your headunit, just HTML+Js+CSS
They do have an API Developer Platform (https://developer.gm.com/) but you have to apply. For some other car companies, you can use www.smartcar.com.
There are some ISO compliance rules that prevent the remote start function on ICE vehicles (for example: if your car is in an enclosed space, this could be dangerous).
The real risk is CO (carbon monoxide) where CO2 makes you breathless and you notice a problem, CO is odorless and inhibits cognitive functions and you really don’t notice anything before death.
Wow, I've never heard of amazon packages being delivered to your truck. That's really cool! I'd be a little worried about someone breaking into the truck, but in lots of places I'm sure it's perfectly safe.
Yeah I've got tinted windows and privacy screens on the rear windows. They'd have to either see the box get delivered or go around looking inside the truck with a flash light in the day time to see it. Helps that my parking lot at work is right out front of the building. I wouldn't do it if it was in a sketchy location.
I drive a 16yo car w/a 5-speed H-pattern manual which still runs great (100mph is just seconds away anytime, 7500Lb towing capacity), and am considering whether to go forward or retro, or just fully refurbish this SAV. I love driving, have held racing licenses & won races & championships, but also look forward to self-driving cars with the current state of traffic.
In a traffic jam today, I thought it'd be really nice to have Tesla's automatic lane-keeping & follow tech.
Yet this kind of intrusive tracking and trying to force yet more targeted advertising at us is just sickening.
There's nothing new with the kind of specs that I have in my garage right now, and the only downside is requiring 91octane petrol and getting only 21-25mpg.
It is clear that we cannot trust the major manufacturers to not engage in this tracking&targeting nonsense. Tesla does track very extensively, but I don't think they're interested in advertising to us or selling our data -- but how long will that last?
On the one hand, I really want self-driving cars with the current congested traffic that is no fun. But on the other hand, I feel like I might be one of the last holdout curmudgeons with a standard shift and round steering wheel as human driving becomes illegal.
>That could prove useful to the terrestrial radio industry, which continues to lose territory and ad dollars to digital streaming services like YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music.
You know what would be benefical to the radio industry? To stop playing the top 4 songs (of any genre) over and over and use some real music innovation and variety.
That's only an American phenomenon due to severe market consolidation. The model works when there's competition. In Europe, even the for-profit radio stations are far more diverse and play a wide variety of songs and genres. Plus the public radio stations blow anything stateside out of the water. They bring lots of innovation/musical diversity and aren't afraid to push boundaries, unlike the pure news/talk/tepidness that defines most NPR stations.
I tune in - to whatever I was listening to on my phone the last time. I do that using my big noise canceling phones and it works great. My question therefore is: what could radio offer me, at all?
Has any car company yet tried using the car to take you to ads?
For instance, suppose they know that you like BBQ, and they have a new BBQ restaurant advertising client having a grand opening. They know from the data from the in-car navigation service that you have probably not been to a BBQ restaurant recently so might be particularly receptive to trying the new place.
They could have the navigation system choose a route that takes you past that new restaurant. Heck, combine this with in-car advertising. Have the entertainment system play an ad for the restaurant right as you drive by it.
When we have hands-free attention-free self-driving cars, this could be taken farther, and the whole route could be optimized around driving you by advertising businesses.
The future of self driving cars makes me think of city tours I’ve taken while abroad.
For example while in Delhi I hired a car and driver for a day to take me round all the sights. These sights also happened to include shops run by either family members of the driver, or ones he’d arranged a kickback with.
Imagine entire journeys optimised like the confectionery rack by the checkout in a supermarket or the floor plan of IKEA. Individually tailored to match your shopping interests.
The new bidding war won’t be for the top spot on the google homepage but for companies to take you past their premises. For example it’s late, Google knows you like a beer in the evening but don’t have any in the house, so the grocery store willing to pay the most gets you going past. Maybe with a voucher delivered to the in-cab screen.
I just picked up a 6-speed manual 2015 Tacoma. It's the last of the 2nd generation that's been in production since the early 2000s, and it's wonderfully low-tech.
It'll be one of the final vehicles ever produced with the 90s-era focus on utility and driving experience. Combined with Toyota's inertia for producing quality vehicles and 11 years of safety refinement, it'll be the vehicle I drive for as long as it's possible and then hopefully be my last.
This is one of the reasons why I don't want a car with a wireless network interface. (The other reasons are related to safety and security, and not wanting anyone to have the capability of remotely disabling my car.)
I feel a very palpable rage when I envision a future where I buy a car and a few years later ads start popping up on its display.
They're going to make the overly expensive entertainment and GPS packages standard features and then fill them with ads. I just want a slot for a phone. Let me manage the car and the computer as separate pieces. Please for the love of God please.
> I just want a slot for a phone. Let me manage the car and the computer as separate pieces.
Amen. We've seen this play out before, back when built-in navigation systems were useful. Then most people got phones with some sort of mapping program, and could buy a plastic mount that would hold them on the dashboard. Cars are phenomenally expensive mechanical devices that can work for 20 years, while portable computers often become outdated in less than 5. Bundling the two is just cruel, even worse than selling hot dog buns in 8-packs and hot dogs in 10-packs...
True story, I actually worked on a proof of concept for something like this for a mapping application (think Waze-like). It would detect if you were stopped at a light and switch to an ad.
Most of those are the classic American V8s, but there's also a turbocharged 2L 4-cylinder there, which ironically costs more than twice the cheapest V8s but produces more power:
Calling this "data mining" is adding a neutral spin to a horrifying practice. "Harvesting personal information" is more accurate.
One annoying aspect of companies doing this is the term they steal becomes encumbered with the negative connotations of the practices behind it. The same thing happened with "metadata".
If this becomes endemic across all the manufacturers I'll be ripping out the GPS aerial or fuse as necessary and they'll data mine a null database. I'll find a way to fit a DIN stereo. No I don't buy cars new enough for this to cause warranty issues. If it starts becoming impossible to do, a classic car is going to be anything before 2005 or so, and I'll take one of those. :)
I don't even listen to commercial radio in the car, or anywhere, because the ads annoy too much, and there's plenty of BBC stations.
Cars have been sending data back to manufacturers (which include location, odometer, etc) for a while now and there's almost no way to disable it nicely (destroying the radios voids warranty):
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160809-your-car-is-not-your...
If I remember correctly, something like this likely won't void the warranty, except maybe the warranty for electronics in the car. There are pretty strong laws in the US regarding car warranties.
What about sitting your own baseband station atop the vehicle's cell device?
Is there a power at which you can broadcast such that nothing outside the car can detect it but the vehicle's cell device still registers it as the closest "tower" and therefore connects to it?
Then you could build your own little in-vehicle pihole and man-in-the-middle your way to an ad-free commute.
This is only for now. Once they have the data, they can explore other options. Ads on the heads-up display? Ads on your dashboard? Ads on your map display? Audio ads injected into the audio stream from your phone?
I can forsee terrible dark pattern abuse by wrapping a shinkwrap license around the app that disables ads by making you promise the company can collect the data anyway.
TheLadders.com forces you to login to their site to disable spam e-mails from them. When you click "unsubscribe" it drops you back into their "so what kind of jobs do you want" loop rather than saying "sorry to see you go." So there is at least one example in the wild of trying to collect more data about you when you may be (as I am) trying to sever my relationship with a site rather than deepen it.
> Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
> Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.