Toyota owners have to pay $8/mo to keep using their key fob for remote start

[CtrlAltDel]

We'll see. They'll probably just make it free for a year or so and then try again.

[Scott5114]

It's a lot harder to make customers swallow paying for something that was free before and then suddenly has a fee attached to it than it is to have it cost money from the very start. Once it's free, people see it as being valueless and are more reluctant to pay for it than if it had been originally priced at, say, $1.

Case in point, water at a fast food restaurant. Water is free, but soda costs over $1...even though the difference in cost to the seller is on the order of a few cents. But people are used to paying for soda and getting water for "free" out of the tap at home, so a restaurant is able to sell soda for a ridiculous markup, while not being able to charge anything for water.

[CtrlAltDel]

It's a lot harder to make customers swallow paying for something that was free before and then suddenly has a fee attached to it than it is to have it cost money from the very start. Once it's free, people see it as being valueless and are more reluctant to pay for it than if it had been originally priced at, say, $1.

Case in point, water at a fast food restaurant. Water is free, but soda costs over $1...even though the difference in cost to the seller is on the order of a few cents. But people are used to paying for soda and getting water for "free" out of the tap at home, so a restaurant is able to sell soda for a ridiculous markup, while not being able to charge anything for water.

No doubt. However, consumer preference is not necessarily determinative. Especially with the whole X as a service business model, which tends to eliminate all other options.

[kkt]

I hate this shit where you "buy" something but don't actually own it.  The future wasn't supposed to suck.

[kkt]

Radio Garden looks interesting, though it only has three of my presets in their system.  Also, they should probably remove CKOI from their system since the stream is geoblocked.

Regarding things that stop working, the digital clock in my 2004 Acura TL can no longer be adjusted. The software for the time and date worked up to 2021 and now no longer functions; Acura is unwilling to update it. So during DST the clock is about 57 minutes slow (at this time of year, it's off by a couple of minutes). If I want it to be accurate, I have to pull a certain fuse and reinsert it at the correct time of night, and that's too much trouble. So I just have to remind myself not to rely on the in-car clock for eight months a year.

Here's a solution, move to the CT time zone during those 8 months.  Problem solved. 

The Connecticut time zone?

[Max Rockatansky]

I hate this shit where you "buy" something but don't actually own it.  The future wasn't supposed to suck.

Has the future ever really been what we've all wanted? 

[formulanone]

I hate this shit where you "buy" something but don't actually own it.  The future wasn't supposed to suck.

Has the future ever really been what we've all wanted?

Even in the future, nothing works.

[Duke87]

Regarding things that stop working, the digital clock in my 2004 Acura TL can no longer be adjusted. The software for the time and date worked up to 2021 and now no longer functions; Acura is unwilling to update it. So during DST the clock is about 57 minutes slow (at this time of year, it's off by a couple of minutes). If I want it to be accurate, I have to pull a certain fuse and reinsert it at the correct time of night, and that's too much trouble. So I just have to remind myself not to rely on the in-car clock for eight months a year.

There's no manual hour and minute adjust? Who signed off on that?

This sounds like an echo Y2K issue. Some bit of code in that system stores the year as two digits, because rather than changing that the kludge fix way back when was to make values from 0-20 = 20XX while leaving 21-99 as 19XX. Then, some other bit of code which is necessary to update the time has an internal epoch for which 1921 is not a valid date, so it crashes when you try to launch it and the time cannot be updated.

Upshot is the clock may be able to be changed again come 2070, if the car lasts that long.

[vdeane]

Regarding things that stop working, the digital clock in my 2004 Acura TL can no longer be adjusted. The software for the time and date worked up to 2021 and now no longer functions; Acura is unwilling to update it. So during DST the clock is about 57 minutes slow (at this time of year, it's off by a couple of minutes). If I want it to be accurate, I have to pull a certain fuse and reinsert it at the correct time of night, and that's too much trouble. So I just have to remind myself not to rely on the in-car clock for eight months a year.

There's no manual hour and minute adjust? Who signed off on that?

This sounds like an echo Y2K issue. Some bit of code in that system stores the year as two digits, because rather than changing that the kludge fix way back when was to make values from 0-20 = 20XX while leaving 21-99 as 19XX. Then, some other bit of code which is necessary to update the time has an internal epoch for which 1921 is not a valid date, so it crashes when you try to launch it and the time cannot be updated.

Upshot is the clock may be able to be changed again come 2070, if the car lasts that long.

If a year between 1921-1969 would just crash the system, why not assign 21-69 to be 20xx instead of remaining 19xx?

[Duke87]

If a year between 1921-1969 would just crash the system, why not assign 21-69 to be 20xx instead of remaining 19xx?

That would require that the people programming the system have successfully foreseen this would be a problem once the cars they were building got to be 15+ years old. At least one of the conflicting bits of code (assuming I am correct about the nature of the problem) was probably written by others, so they likely did not.

It's not like this problem is unique to Acura either. You may recall how at midnight on January 1, 2020 all of NYC's parking meters suddenly ceased being able to accept credit cards, because the meters were timestamping transactions as being in 1920 and card issuers were thus rejecting them as invalid.

[kkt]

They were contracted to make a fix for the y2k problem, not to prevent it from happening again

[Scott5114]

The vast majority of modern computers internally store dates and times as the number of seconds since midnight on January 1, 1970. Times before then stored as negative numbers, of course. Thus if you have any sort of device that's having trouble with arbitrary dates and times, the device manufacturer decided to code time in an idiosyncratic way and should be whapped in the face with a rolled-up newspaper.

Of course, eventually the number of seconds since midnight on January 1, 1970 will be too big for computers to handle, unless you...get a bigger computer. For 32-bit computers, date overflow will happen in the early morning hours of January 19, 2038, at which point the date will reset to December 13, 1901. Of course, for 64-bit computers like the one you're probably reading this on, the overflow date is 292 billion years from now, so the problem is already solved, but there are some embedded systems that only have 32-bit processors that basically can't be updated without junking the device they're installed in.

[vdeane]

Meanwhile, my point and shoot digital camera can only store years between 2006 and 2025 for whatever reason.  Sometime in the next four years, I'm going to need to replace it unless I decide to do some post-processing to fix the year metadata on all photos.  Probably easier just to replace (especially as it probably is showing its age; I've had it since 2007), presuming point and shoot cameras are still made then.

[Scott5114]

Meanwhile, my point and shoot digital camera can only store years between 2006 and 2025 for whatever reason.  Sometime in the next four years, I'm going to need to replace it unless I decide to do some post-processing to fix the year metadata on all photos.  Probably easier just to replace (especially as it probably is showing its age; I've had it since 2007), presuming point and shoot cameras are still made then.

That doesn't even make sense as anything but an arbitrary restriction; 20 is 10100, so if you're dealing with a 5-bit restriction (and who uses five bits?!) you should still at least have a range of 31 years (11111 = 31).

Since you use Linux, I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to write a script of some kind (shell, Python, Perl, what have you) that adds 20 years to the EXIF date of any file given to it.

[bugo]

Another reason not to buy a Toyota. Most mediocre, milquetoast, anodyne cars in the world. The only thing they have going for them is the "reliable" stereotype, which is a moot point these days because virtually every modern car not built in Italy is reliable.

[JayhawkCO]

Another reason not to buy a Toyota. Most mediocre, milquetoast, anodyne cars in the world. The only thing they have going for them is the "reliable" stereotype, which is a moot point these days because virtually every modern car not built in Italy is reliable.

Land Rovers say hi.  The old joke that 90% of all Land Rovers made are still on the road; the other 10% actually made it home.

[SectorZ]

Another reason not to buy a Toyota. Most mediocre, milquetoast, anodyne cars in the world. The only thing they have going for them is the "reliable" stereotype, which is a moot point these days because virtually every modern car not built in Italy is reliable.

They and Honda have spent the past 20 years living off that reliability mantle without actually advancing like everyone else.

Companies like Mazda are going to start blowing them out of the water pretty soon.

[JayhawkCO]

Another reason not to buy a Toyota. Most mediocre, milquetoast, anodyne cars in the world. The only thing they have going for them is the "reliable" stereotype, which is a moot point these days because virtually every modern car not built in Italy is reliable.

They and Honda have spent the past 20 years living off that reliability mantle without actually advancing like everyone else.

Companies like Mazda are going to start blowing them out of the water pretty soon.

I feel like Kia is the one that has taken advantage the most.

[vdeane]

Another reason not to buy a Toyota. Most mediocre, milquetoast, anodyne cars in the world. The only thing they have going for them is the "reliable" stereotype, which is a moot point these days because virtually every modern car not built in Italy is reliable.

They and Honda have spent the past 20 years living off that reliability mantle without actually advancing like everyone else.

Companies like Mazda are going to start blowing them out of the water pretty soon.

Meanwhile, those of us who prefer to buy cars and not techno gizmos on wheels like that they're not "advancing" like everyone else.  Touchscreens aren't exactly safe to use while driving either, no idea why they're all the rage right now.

[kkt]

Another reason not to buy a Toyota. Most mediocre, milquetoast, anodyne cars in the world. The only thing they have going for them is the "reliable" stereotype, which is a moot point these days because virtually every modern car not built in Italy is reliable.

They and Honda have spent the past 20 years living off that reliability mantle without actually advancing like everyone else.

Companies like Mazda are going to start blowing them out of the water pretty soon.

Meanwhile, those of us who prefer to buy cars and not techno gizmos on wheels like that they're not "advancing" like everyone else.  Touchscreens aren't exactly safe to use while driving either, no idea why they're all the rage right now.

[kalvado]

Another reason not to buy a Toyota. Most mediocre, milquetoast, anodyne cars in the world. The only thing they have going for them is the "reliable" stereotype, which is a moot point these days because virtually every modern car not built in Italy is reliable.

They and Honda have spent the past 20 years living off that reliability mantle without actually advancing like everyone else.

Companies like Mazda are going to start blowing them out of the water pretty soon.

Meanwhile, those of us who prefer to buy cars and not techno gizmos on wheels like that they're not "advancing" like everyone else.  Touchscreens aren't exactly safe to use while driving either, no idea why they're all the rage right now.

Once rear view cameras became mandatory, so did larger screens.
And steering wheel buttons along with voice control allow to minimal touchscreen use while driving.

[Molandfreak]

Another reason not to buy a Toyota. Most mediocre, milquetoast, anodyne cars in the world. The only thing they have going for them is the "reliable" stereotype, which is a moot point these days because virtually every modern car not built in Italy is reliable.

They and Honda have spent the past 20 years living off that reliability mantle without actually advancing like everyone else.

Companies like Mazda are going to start blowing them out of the water pretty soon.

Meanwhile, those of us who prefer to buy cars and not techno gizmos on wheels like that they're not "advancing" like everyone else.  Touchscreens aren't exactly safe to use while driving either, no idea why they're all the rage right now.

Once rear view cameras became mandatory, so did larger screens.
And steering wheel buttons along with voice control allow to minimal touchscreen use while driving.

Modern touchscreens will also lock you out of doing much of anything while the car is driving, unless you confirm that you're a passenger.

I don't know, it seems like having calls, a GPS, and music integrated with a touchscreen and some basic controls in the wheel is a much safer option than the old ways of having these things while driving.

[Scott5114]

Modern touchscreens will also lock you out of doing much of anything while the car is driving, unless you confirm that you're a passenger.

A person would never lie to a computer, would they?

[Big John]

Modern touchscreens will also lock you out of doing much of anything while the car is driving, unless you confirm that you're a passenger.

A person would never lie to a computer, would they?

Or a weight sensor in the passenger seat, such it was for seat belt compliance.

[Scott5114]

Modern touchscreens will also lock you out of doing much of anything while the car is driving, unless you confirm that you're a passenger.

A person would never lie to a computer, would they?

Or a weight sensor in the passenger seat, such it was for seat belt compliance.

It would be pretty bogus if you weren't allowed to change the radio station or climate controls because your passenger seat weight sensor went out.