Kagi is the best few bucks I spend each month.

I am sure of that too. Best I can do is try to avoid linking it to my name.

I am not, but no one seems to give a shit.

My solution so far is a bike rack that blocks my plate from view. Easy enough to feign ignorance and “correct it” in the moment. Flocks database no doubt has an entry for [color][make][model], but at least it’s not associated with me directly through motor vehicle bureau records.

Those are separate, but equally concerning, things. Connected features are what this article is about, but telemetry is a different issue. On a new vehicle, you might disable the modem but lose several “features,” perhaps ones that you effectively have to have.

On somewhat older vehicles that don’t rely on connectivity to the same degree, disabling the modem only prevents telemetry data being sent to wherever-it-is that that data goes. That seems to be the sweet spot for me.

I have my eye on a new (to me) vehicle in the next couple of years. I’d gone from planning on buying new but have now settled on the lowest mileage 2019 I can find. New enough to be nice and safe and have physical buttons, old enough not to have all these objectionable “features.”

I refer the newest style of vehicles as “spaceships.” Call me old fashioned and old guy yelling at clouds, but I want my next vehicle to be, you know, a vehicle.

It’s an electric truck. You don’t need remote start.

I presume you mean remote climate control.

I actually appreciate the flash back. I do a quick flash to cars whose headlights are blinding me probably 2-3 times each time I drive at night, and probably 95% of the time I get nothing back. So I’m left wondering if those people just have a 2024 Santa Fe (or the like, with crazy bright standards) or if their brights are on and are simply unaware.

The flash back is good because at least I know.

You get my boy Edsel Ford’s name out yo mouth. Edsel Ford was one of my favorite historical figures from the 20th century.

But ya, the car the Edsel was a dud.

Have you met people? They don’t.

Auto headlights and auto-dimming headlights sound great on paper, but in my opinion have created a class of drivers who don’t use their headlights appropriately.

Well, it fixes it for you because you are a responsible adult who can drive.

For many other people, it means headlights is something they never think about, and that is part of the problem. The other part is that auto-dimming headlights don’t dim your headlights for pedestrians, and on behalf of pedestrians everywhere ‘fuck you!’ (Not you specifically, just in general)

Cool that they themed it to a Borg ship.

In my experience, while Tesla is a prime offender, it isn’t only Teslas headlight that are too bright. Honda Prologues are another specific model that blinds me all the time.

While we’re at it, I’m convinced auto-headlights and the general dumbing down of drivers mean a lot of people are simply driving around with their brights on all the time. Don’t know how to fix that one though.

You’re not suggesting the automated mailing of speeding tickets based on average speed is reasonable, are you?

There’s a law against driving with your phone in your lap? That’s crazy.

Not even a little justified. What are you on about?

Phone is on her lap specifically because she’s not using it.

I think you may be underestimating the size of cities. Even San Francisco, famously small for a major city, is 15 times (at approx. 30k acres) the size of the physically largest data center in the US (Switch Reno Tahoe) at 2,000 acres. That’s still just 1/7th the size of Manhattan.

I won’t argue that 2,000 acres isn’t huge for a data center, but just trying to put numbers to the argument.

It’s like when Twitter went downhill, everyone moved to [next corporate owned thing, yet to be enshittified. Anything but the fediverse.]

The thing that keeps me from mounting my phone to my bike is, I’ve read, that the vibration from the bike can damage the camera in the phone.

Also, how do you get hit with a kayak on a bike?

I can only speak for myself, but any such service can only be looked at as a temporary solution. How long before that goes away? With your own media (be it ripped from disks you own or obtained elsewhere), it’s not temporary.