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Comment by jackmott42 | Hacker News Reader

There is a sense in which this can make sense, in that unlocking the power increases the chance of failure during warranty. So you pay to hedge against that. But we can be certain car makers will not be giving you the option to unlock this for free post warranty. The fact that you aren't given control of your car when you own it is pretty awful and a terrible trend.

I expect the trend will continue, I've not yet in my life seen a user hostile corporate power grab actually stop. oh well. eat arbys.

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Lead power electronics engineer: "for the projected lifetime failure rate of x as targeted the maximum power should be y"

Lead battery engineer: "for the projected lifetime cycles the maximum current drawn from the battery should be z"

Lead marketing dude: "so we market it as 2 * y, 2 * lifetime cycles and try to upsell on power" mumbling to themself: "I get my bonus on sales, the recall or warranty claims are not my problem anymore, I'll be partying with the bransons"

At one point, the BMW M3 had a "launch" mode, which enabled a couple of bits to get the bragged about 0-60 time. The car computer also kept track of how many times it was used, and your warranty expired after 10 launches.

I've seen references to 30, 50 and 100 launches (now 10), and what seems like a lot of FUD in the BMW forums. Does anyone have a current/verified resource of this policy? It's gotta be buried in the fine print somewhere...

Twenty years on, I've yet to see a shred of evidence. A lot of punters playing BMW employees, though, who never seem to be able to find that document they're saying would prove it.

I read it Road and Track magazine or some such when I was a child. If it turns out to be apocryphal, I wouldn't be surprised.

Aren't max speeds limited all the time on vehicles, with state mandated governors? I know some countries require them on all automobiles. Even the US requires them on ebikes.

Speed? yes. Acceleration? Not so much.

Not on cars in the US, no.

Modern cars usually have their engine max speed limited so they don't exceed your average all-season tire's speed rating, but arguably that's more equivalent to a redline limiter preventing your pistons from self-destructing than an type of anti-freedom measure

It's not a legal requirement but most cars AFAIU are electronically limited to about 115 mph

What region are you speaking of? AFAIK, any car marketed in the US to do over 115mph (of which there are many), will do over 115mph.

Huh? In the UK at least they seem to have set upon 155 mph as the limit

I don't think this is legislated anywhere (legal limit is 70mph anyway...) - some have higher limits for example.

The communist / capitalist symmetry is quite something.

In communism, the individual doesn't really own anything; the state just lets the individual use things as they see fit.

In our late-stage capitalism, the individual doesn't really own anything; the corporation just lets the individual use things as they see fit.

I would not extrapolate a trend into a permanent change. Trends have a way of being fads or reversed

Are you calling streaming media like Spotify a trend? What was the last time you bought an album?

Some time well before torrents were a thing? Music became essentially free long before it become a thing people rent.

That is different from a car.

With Spotify, I get access to all the music and don't lose it when the cd gets scratched.

What the auto companies are doing is gating the existing functionality behind subscriptions. These companies are largely commodities at this point and are trying out rent seeking. I don't think many consumers will accept this long term. The proverbial camel's back will break because it is user hostile

I keep trying to tell the socialists and communists out there that they can totally implement the way they want to live within any democratic capitalist system.

Just make a corporation which all of your people are members of, give voting powers to all members to decide what stuff the corporation buys as well as how members get to use the things. Can even go as far as setting up an HOA or a town where the company is the landlord for everyone or has right of first refusal in every property in that area. Once you have enough people to make some stuff on your own, the company call sell that stuff and that's the only touch point you all have to have with the capitalist economy. With time the members you have, the more stuff you can make yourselves, and the less stuff you company has to sell or buy. Eventually you're totally self-sufficient, don't make transactions, and therefore don't really pay taxes either.

They usually don't go for it because they are not really bothered that they can't live the way they want to so much as they are bothered that other people might still live under capitalism.

Yes, communes are a thing. Shrug.

I've seen and read up on how some of the communes have gone, but I haven't seen any that made a serious attempt to run a company that way. By using the existing structures as a buffer, as I am proposing, a group could actually make the commune thing work without giving up any modern conveniences.

It's somewhat similar to what Amish people do, and they do quite well at it in terms of sustainably living as they wish even though no one else around them does. They pull that off by trading the things they do want to make for the things the surrounding society has that they actually want.

It's totally possible to do a socialist version of that where everyone lives in modern houses with modern conveniences, share whatever stuff you all actually want to be building yourselves, but when you have to buy or vote on something, do so through the company and as a block. Mormons have largely gotten away with block voting over the decades, and still do, so we also have existing evidence that that works too.

The details are, of course, up to whoever is trying this out, but the overall thing I'm pointing to, that I don't think anyone has given a real go at, is that using a company as a buffer against capitalism. No one has to live without, but individuals in the community also don't have to go play the capitalist game every day just to get what they want or need.

My read: you have an ambitious vision for a specific type of commune. Might work, who knows? If you believe in it, do it. Let us know how it goes.

More like a different kind of sharing app/company as the potential starting point to people figuring out how to live the way they want to. I am indeed wondering out loud about whether anyone would participate in such a system.

To me, it could look like a bunch of people join a company through an app or something and receive voting shares they keep as long as they are participating.

Members would contribute various kinds of property and only members can vote on who gets to use what, for how long, and what, if anything gets sold to fund the company. At least initially, it would probably also have to be funded by members working regular jobs and contributing cash to the company but pretty shortly afterwards the idea would be to have the business making money on it's own by selling things the members make and want to sell.

The cash would then be used to buy anything the members vote to buy. Which then becomes part of the property pool people can vote on using.

As long as the members are geographically distributed, the company would also need to pay for shipping stuff around when it's time to change who is using what.

If it is profitable enough, then it might be able to provide most or all of what the members need to live their best lives. Short of that, it may at least be able to create a micro version of UBI or something.

There are a lot more details to work out than those of course. I do actually want to see if this approach can do something to help people live they way they want to. However, it's hard to imagine any communists or socialists wanting to join such a company if it is run by someone with a capitalist mindset. Even if that person's motives are pure and clear. Naturally, even if I was administrating such a system, I wouldn't allow myself voting powers in it but I suspect still that wouldn't be enough.

Coincidentally, https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/we-should-start...

Right, all you have to do is totally opt out of any modern society - no email, no phones, no internet, no media, no healthcare. It's easy!

Not totally opt out. That's a stupidly dismissive take on this idea. The point is that you would never get a wholesale light-switch style shift in any civilization anyway.

So just start now, incrementally, and see how far you can get before anyone stops you. You would ultimately be exiting the existing economy, but that's what you presumably wanted; to build a different kind of economy that you think will be more fair and equitable. And every single step you can take in that direction proves out whether your way is actually better.

All along the way, you have your collective company acting as a buffer against the capitalist system around you. You can't really exit totally without giving up modern life, so don't try to do that, as you point out, such a move wouldn't really be a desirable or viable way to get this job done. The next best move seems to me to be to just exit incrementally, as much as you like, one step at a time.

Why not do that?

> the socialists and communists out there

How many do you know? As far as I can tell, in the US you could fit all of these folks in a single medium size stadium. And it probably wouldn't be full.

That sounds about right, I try to engage with people on this topic as much as I can without annoying any of them too much. That basically looks like asking them why they don't group up and prove their point instead of individually raging against the machine all the time.

IRL I know two or three people who like to lean this direction from time to time, but even those people seem to be just ranting against the remaining issues present under the version of capitalism we have now rather than truly wanting a completely different system.

It's not just warranty but also legal liability and this extends beyond the warranty period

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