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Comment by dangrossman | Hacker News Reader

I use an app to turn on climate control in my car a few minutes before I'm ready to leave, so it's already warmed up in winter, or cooled down in summer, by the time I get in. My last few cars have been electric, so this doesn't involve starting up a noisy engine, and can safely be done if the car's parked in a garage too.

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There are many use cases like this that make it nice to remotely signal your car, but many of them shouldn't require a subscription or WAN communication.

Anything you want as an ecosystem involving software that is supposed to last a decade or more requires a subscription to be viable.

Funny how this suddenly became prevalent, when there was actually a time when you could buy software that would last for decades without the need for a subscription.

The only reason this would need a subscription is to pay for the sim.

That software wasn't running on servers 24/7.

I'd argue most modern software doesn't need to either but has hamfisted features that require it for the sole purpose of making you pay for a subscription.

Stuff like Adobe Creative Cloud has some cloud features that lock you into their ecosystem. Not taking them up on it and storing locally is still an option (for now anyway) but you can't choose not to pay for their cloud features if all you need is their editing software.

Back then software wasn’t capable of driving off with your car :)

CD-ROM/DVD-ROM -> digital delivery

That shift enabled this.

Remote start is present on my wife’s 2016 Chevy. Simple RFID built into the fob. No subscription required. I suspect that technology will last another 3 years and longer.

Not as full featured as grandparent comment’s use case (can’t start it in the garage) but it’s like 90% of the way there with a fraction of the complexity.

Ecosystems are stupid. I want open standards and devices that are robust and made to work locally without phoning home and needing a subscription.

Of course that's just a pipe dream, because such systems are not lucrative.

It's also why nobody makes a slick, reliable, modern NVR that supports ONVIF cameras.

Ecosystems are toxic dark pattern garbage.

My last car had a key fob that could do that up to about a half mile away; cell signal irrelevant. It's just a 2-way remote start system. I miss it. The fob even reported the cab temperature.

When I was in school, about 20 years ago, my friend’s dad loved that feature on his (non-electric, obviously) car. But it simply used the key via RF and didn’t require internet or an app.

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