Serious question: who would I hire for these kind of stuff?
In a couple of situations, I decided to give software away for free to avoid the hassle. If there's a simple solution to get advice, I'd really appreciate that.
The author writes "The best approach is to start as an “Einzelunternehmer” (sole proprietor). You can register this at your local town hall for a nominal fee, and you’ll typically receive confirmation within a few days."
When I did it the cost was 35 Euro, I think it depends on city. One can argue why this step can't be done online but until 2023 it wasn't possible to register a car online in Germany either.
Then a letter to the local tax office (in Germany they're by city or region, not central. Then as the author says ignore VAT until you're over the threshold.
The difference is that a GmbH projects your personal assets. The risk for a software engineere is small, much smaller than for a lot of other business but still it protects you.
It also makes you a better business partner (in theory) as you have crossed a certain amount of effort to create a GmbH
There's actually a new class of cars that doesn't go by the name: L7e. L7e is the EU's name for light electric cars. 90 km/h top speed, 200 km range. Cheap.
While small "cars" might disappear, I think the L7e class will see a lot of improvements.
Unfortunately, 90 km/h top speed is a hard sell here in Germany, since that means that you will get in other people's way when driving on federal roads or the Autobahn, provoking people into dangerous overtaking manoeuvres.
In addition to cars having become noticeably larger in the last years, people's driving styles has (imo) become more aggressive also.
This still leaved the gap for small cars you can cram 4 people inside + some luggage unfilled. Also, are manufacturers taking L7e vehicles seriously, or are they styling them like toys still? Early EVs suffered form car companies deliberately making them look non-serious.
I think the Renault Twizy is a great example where it was made too much of a toy - and I pretty much stopped following the developments in the L7e space with that. But now a lot of Chinese companies seem to sell vehicles that are actually useful - mostly in the last-mile delivery space.
Great note, didn't think of this limitation when using the dongle previously.
One question though, doesn't the sender transmit advertisements sequentially on all of the broadcast channels? So at least for BLE advertisements, they should all appear on the advertisement channel you're listening on - even if that's just one of them?
This is true, but the connection request only comes on one channel.
The sniffer can be set up to follow an advertiser though, which makes it jump to the next channel in the sequence as soon as the time window for sending a connection request after the advertisment is gone. It picks up connection requests virtually every time in this mode.
Both this and encrypted communication interpretation works a lot better than the commenter above you claims. They've either not tried this sniffer, and are only making claims based on assumptions, or they haven't learned how to use it properly.
It's definitely not as good as commercial sniffer hardware, but it's perfectly fine 90% of the time, and the price is two to three orders of magnitude lower.
Not sure what the point here is, since VanMoof does integrate with Apple FindMy.
Manufacturers can purchase AirTag-like chips to integrate with their electronics. Done. Price per unit probably orders of magnitude lower than the AirTag retail price.
Of course the whole "locking system" with companion app is a separate thing. But as far as FindMy goes, it should be fairly simple. Would be interesting to learn what kind of royalties Apple charges.
My insurer's app sometimes complains I drive too few to determine my driving style, hence, cannot grant a discount. However the system averages the whole year, taking months into account where this actually did work.
For 200km / Month it's working just fine. Below that sometimes fails.
My experience with telematics-enabled driving is quite positive. I'm saving 30% easily, simply by driving relaxed.
I don't think I'm giving away much personal data: The insurance set up a separate legal entity that performs the ranking, with a easy-to-read EULA that rules out selling data.
My insurance is using the Cambridge Mobile Telematics modules.
My network creepingly broke away over the past three years and I didn't bother to re-build it. Your post reminds me of the great discussions I've had at networking events. Time to start that again!
In a couple of situations, I decided to give software away for free to avoid the hassle. If there's a simple solution to get advice, I'd really appreciate that.