Unpatchable AMD Chip Flaw Unlocks Paid Tesla Feature Upgrades

There is a kink where guys get off on sending women money, often without having any contact with her. It's called FinDom.

You didn't pay for it.

Tesla includes it at loss because it's cheaper than making you a special version without it, and it opens up new sales by reducing the price (e.g the originally locked batteries let them sell a substantially cheaper car than they could have otherwise)

Subscriptions for that should be banned, but including heated seats and making you pay once to access them is fair game.

Manufacturers dont owe you anything for free.

Edit: also, short of something like FSD which depends on future work from Tesla, I don't think they have a right to prevent you from bypassing a lock and accessing those heated seats if you can

Then make heated seats part of the base model. In the 1950s a heater was an optional accessory, but became standard sometime in the 1960s. (I don't know exact years, if someone fact checks me I'm probably wrong, but close enough for discussion) radio went from not an option to am was an option, to FM mono, FM stereo, cassettes, CD, mp3. At one point you could get a record player as well (I think only about 200 were sold in total). AC used to be an option, became standard in the 1990s.

We will keep running this game as manufactures decide to make more and more things standard to make assembly easier.

You can get any color you want as long as it’s black.

But also fuck Tesla if I own the computer and the seats so I can do whatever I want with them

It’s quite uncommon to have line splits for specific features. The only thing in a Tesla that might require a split is dual vs single motor. Heated seats would just be a station skip, where the worker or robot ignores cars without the feature. (Source: I used to write assembly line control software for this exact sort of thing)

It doesn’t save Tesla any money, except in marshaling. If they build a mix of lots of options then they have to track them all. With their simplified option list, cars are more interchangeable.

It also makes upselling possible, even after delivery, which is 98% of why they do it.

It’s a very old practice. IBM mainframes back in the 1970s/80s would come in various configurations. ‘Upgrading’ the machine to the improved performance spec was achieved by cutting an internal wire

Then just include it. My Acura had one option, with or without navigation.

Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think the base cars pay for heated seats. It was more of an early Model 3 thing. I could go into the economics of why, but I doubt that would be a productive conversation

but that wouldnt stop you from buying the switch and putting it in your own. and mitsubishi wasnt removing your service apointments or cancling your subscriptions when you complained.... or modified your car... and i will bet you could order the parts missing direct from mitz as well as having them install them or...gasp a third party garage.

Well it's probably even cheaper to not invest in locking systems.

Nah, they only need to split production lines when things are radically different. Excluding parts is usually easy, because the production line simply doesn’t install the missing part. The car still moves through the same line at the same rate regardless, so it saves them parts to not install.

The real reason they include them is so they can have their salespeople upsell you at the store. You weren’t originally planning on getting heated seats, but it’s only a few hundred more to do it and you’re already applying for the loan. A few hundred won’t make a huge difference. Also, we have this other feature that’s also only a few hundred more, and this other feature, and… Before you know it, they’ve upsold you into paying $5k more than you intended, simply by activating things that the car already had installed.

I got an OBDeleven for my 2015 GTI so I could unlock stuff and customize. Enabled rolling down the windows with the key fob, being able to display the engine oil temp in the dash and also setting the accelerator pedal curve to linear.

Subscribe to enable your BMW seat heater! They definitely require periodic software updates and is absolutely NOT a blatant money grab

Audi had been doing this for years and they even disable stuff if you sell your car to another private person. One of my friends bought a used Audi and everything was disabled so he installed a cracked version of the infotainment software and now the only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint unlock.

There are some manufacturers that do not do this garbage, or at least not often. I've heard good things about Hyundai specifically.

More like, until the Chinese weasel their way into the US market with cheaper-than-used cars to undercut the legacy auto makers. 10 years or so, it'll happen. And the big 3 will be begging for bailouts again. That is unless they smarten up and remember what made Ford what it is today.

Yeah. GM's subscription nonsense is for their ice cars too. BMW's aborted seat heater thing was too.

Cory Doctorow has written a great article about this phenomenon a few days ago: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Basically we move back to a feudalism world where you don't own anything anymore and you have to pay recurring rents. And as you don't own it they can fuck you over by increasing rents or disable features when you can't pay.

This is why I keep an oldish diesel car with no extra electronic features in my garage. No weird features, and can still run even without a battery.

Although, I think the reason I kept the car is because of my paranoia of an EMP event frying electronics.

Yeah that's true. I wonder if the market for older cars has been going up yet.

Everything is being ruined. It feels like hyperbole but I'm not sure it is.

Yes, I know it's industry wide. What I'm saying is that with EV being the future of cars I don't want them all to be subscription based.

I'm okay with being charged a monthly subscription for something that has an ongoing cost, like mobile data. So long as I can still hotspot my phone and access 'premium connectivity' features over wifi, that is.

All the more reason to support public transportation.

Sure there will, always. Fix it yourself jalopies aren't going away. Get yourself a cheap-o used junker and mod it to be electric, if you can't or won't use ICE. DIY isn't just 3d printers and FOSS. Or get a bicycle and mod it into an e-bike.

Fuck'em rich

What about it?

This isn’t sound - “software” is being used here as a physical description but in reality it’s still just a “face” for actual hardware which often do actually have on going costs

Because it's abusive and blatant rent seeking.

Look, if there's an actual service feature that continually costs money to provide (eg.: a cell connection for distant remote start, GPS nav map updates, etc), charging a reasonable subscription fee for that is totally acceptable. But charging ongoing fees for fixed features like heated seats is 100% bullshit unless you're going to include some sort of service benefits like free repairs (which I doubt they're doing).

He’s a guy, he can’t have kids (at least today).

Even if it is in the contract, it's not enforceable (depending on country). In a fair few, the manufacturer has to prove that the modifications caused the defect to invalidate the warranty.

It's unclear what would happen if they simply refused to service the car, or bricked it instead.

It's probably because there are both Intel and amd Tesla cars. Newer models use AMD

The vulnerability is much more of an issue for Tesla('s profits) than the owners. It's not a simple exploit and not the worst concern for average users of those chips. You have to have physical access to it in order to exploit it, as well as a system worth hacking (think, national security trying to prevent compromised personnel from physically using the exploit on their systems). I'm not worried about someone breaking into my house to physically hack my computer, just to find some memes and bullshit

It still has to be addressed by both Intel and AMD, because that's their whole industry. But recalls and such aren't needed, because bugs can be exploited all over the place and this one isn't a high level risk for the average end-user. It's more of a concern for Intel/AMD reputation and the large industry users of their chips

Good bot

Good bot!