Comment by rektide | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rektide | Hacker News Reader

We're getting decent in home internet-of-things automation standards in the form of Matter (fingers crossed it's good enough)... what about out of home standards? I want to think of what a bring your own fob system would look like.

But there's so many layers. How is the car presentable? Can i being my own sim? What if i want to upgrade to 6g? 7g? Can i upgrade the modem?

Then the fob... kind of an interesting counter challenge. Anything with an internet connection, that can control the iot device? Does it work across public internet? Does it need to join a personal vpn? Does the car have it's own vpn it signs into? Can the fob be controlled? Maybe i want to geolocate the fob, or make it beep. Who iot controls the iot controller?

Imo i still really really though Webinos project had their heads best screwed on to handle all of this. It was a neat vpn ish system. I really want to get out of the days of all products being totalized experiences, that the product has tonhave all possible control options built in that you'd want. I want tech to be a start, to offer options. We've really walked back the great intertwingularizing, de-api'ed the world, after a very promising exciting ~2010 that failed to deliver every prpduct has gone on it's own. It sucks for this world, is evolutionarily so limited; we shouldnt make each piece of hardware have to produce each and any kind of software anyone might need for it, & we should not limit users to having to suffer what limited offerings the maker can muster.

I want to think of what a bring your own fob system would look like.

Remote start (and entry) was a relatively common aftermarket option long before most people had Internet access, and you can probably still get such systems today.

In Canada Toyota themselves offer Start+ which is long range starter add-on where you get an extra fob. I initially thought the subscription requirement was to give users a reason to keep buying it.

A few days ago, some Tesla owner on HN listed all the reasons it's awesome to have an internet-connected car.

Every item he listed existed before the internet, and in no way requires an internet connection. Except for one thing about using the car as some kind of surveillance camera.

My car's old enough & non-electrical enough that it would probably run even if we EMP'ed the area or dropped a neutron bomb nearby. It mostly sits and looks pretty. So I'm not super in tune with what all this connected car or in-car infotainment & control stuff is about. But it seems sensible enough to me. I'm un-tech/somewhat-un-car, but I think it's really weird what a cantankerous anti-tech 'bah car's were better before internet' / you-dont-need-that view there is that so quickly arises.

It makes sense to me to want to be able to pre-heat a car, even if it's slightly out of wifi range, maybe parked down the street a bit or around the block. I don't have the experience, but I'd like to see some more willingness to accept or consider without jumping to reject. I feel like we're being rash to judge. I don't know what else this is good for, why I'd want it, what it's for. But I believe very strongly in making means possible, in using connectivity to open doors of possibility, extending people's range of agency, giving them force multipliers.

Given the very very very tiny amounts of data it needs, this stuff should be easy, should be free; it's just embarrassing to me that 99.99% of cellular providers make this stuff incredibly difficult/complicated for consumers: it's something Google-Fi for example shamed these fools with, by giving away free data-only sims that use your existing plan. Anyone else doing anything else feels like an old world exploiter. There's nearly no real marginal cost to the network, it's all just profit-motive, and it's a stupid brake on possibility.

Let's take the brakes off. Let's try to leave the doors of perception & possibility open.

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