Yeah, the Internet really went paranoid with it, which doesn’t help that it is still evil, but in a different way. Also, never feel safe by something called “local-only” as it can process on device and still fire a yes/no bit to the cloud. At its core, SafetyCore is pretty innocuous. It’s a tiny ML model interface that other applications can query to search for targeted images. Its primary purpose is to look for things like CSAM and NSFW images, apps can query the interface to check if an image is naughty and send back basically a boolean yes/no. One of their selling points is “no more dick pics in your SMS!” There’s also an ML library in the camera software that, for years, has known about looking at all sorts of things and identifying what they are, cat, dog, brown person, truck, sign.

Google can push software onto Android phones whenever they want, this is widely know, and SafetyCore was actually pushed in that fashion. Apple can too, to be fair. On some level, there’s pretty much no reason to have any trust of your mobile device anymore when the vendor can change it whenever they want without consent, but I digress.

Now, tying it all together: the phone contains a “safety” ML model (SafetyCore) that can detect types of image and relay a yes/no, and a camera ML model that knows what most of our known universe looks like for the purpose of running the camera. The latter is likely not even needed, given the former was pushed without consent and could be updated by the same consentless mechanism.

The tl;dr boils down to: Google can push a query to phones to respond if they have a type of image. That type of image could be heavily illegal or terrible activity. It could also be anything the government in control wants to find. Picture of Tiananmen Square, sure. Protest signs, sure. How many phones have recent pictures of certain skin-colored people in a given square mile? Sure.

Unfortunately not direct evidence in this closed-source future, only extrapolation potential based on available evidence and how software works, and how companies like money.

There are some things our machines should just not do. The biggest weakness in this part of history. 25 years ago, tech evolution was limited by what computers could do. Tech evolution doesn’t have that safety baked in anymore, your phone could run for weeks “turned off” recording everything you say and transpose it to a text file in the bootloader or a secondary controller chip and you’d never know. Your phone’s battery life could be limited because every camera and microphone periodically fires to store data for later upload. The dead-reckoning sensors in the health tracking portion (the M-series coprocessors in iPhones, for example) could track your movement in a cave for miles (airplanes used to use this same tech for navigation across the planet.) Your camera’s wide-angle lens could identify everyone at your dinner table when you set it face down on the table because cell service is never good enough to leave a phone in your pocket anymore but you don’t want to disturb the meal with your entire screen turning on every 5 seconds.

We now have to consciously choose what our machines do because they can do anything they want, but we haven’t chosen. The blind trust has run on for too long.

Secondary tl;dr: the software is there, just assume evil intent possibility. Google, in specific, chose this time to push an image identification application to phones without consent in a time where the planet’s freedom is collectively dying. Hopefully it’s just a marketing faux pas…

You have to enable viewing system apps. I also noticed an older phone running Android 10-era Android didn’t receive it.

including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, Diageo, and La Crema, which is owned by Jackson Family Wines.

Media has to just name names going forward, all of them. This planet needs to know what evil to avoid. Good this article did, although I wonder who they might have omitted.

Among other terrible things, this is exactly why Google shoving Android “SafetyCore” onto all Android phones is absolutely evil. Illegal phone searches become a casual click on a cloud interface to target millions with whatever they want to find.

Not really surprising given how all the social information delivery services are designed for a constant wall of short dopamine hits, and the platforms used to access the information are designed so no actual skill is needed to be able to access the information delivery services.

You give a rat a button that’s tied into their brain’s pleasure center, the rat will push the button until they die.

All computer-tech needs to be made more open. Not just from an observational standpoint, but the act of making disparate systems work together requires learning and knowledge beyond push button, receive good feels. Megacorp one-stop-shop software/hardware platforms need to be broken up. Both from a walled garden echo chamber perspective, and from a user-use perspective. When a company controls the entire experience, it is too easy to ensure their user is always engaging with their products and spending money/time. Making that company’s life harder, makes the technology better for humanity.

Algorithms optimized for dopamine hits must be banned. As soon as our machines became revenue generators tuned for consumption, it was game over. Older systems, one used to have to learn at least basic things to accomplish a goal, which promoted the act of learning in general.

Basic hardware/software interaction and learning were useful side-effects of personal compute from the 1970s-early aughts. One was forced to occasionally open or fix hardware, one was forced to understand how the software worked. One ended up with basic understanding and approachability of the machines one used. Devices today are just expensive consumption toys with zero knowledge needed to consume. When they malfunction, the user has no reason or encouragement to attempt to fix them, as they can’t see why the device ceased to work.

Big Tech has run amok too long. Governments are barely regulating them. We humans just gotta start saying no.

It’s a weird thing in apps when you accept permissions. The app is allowed to ostensibly tether over the Bluetooth link enabled in the app.

Isn’t it just hilarious how somehow, being rich just gets one a free pass to also “be smart”?

I bet, if they were to analyze the car’s logs, they’ll also find that nasty behavior in the software, where it disables all the autodrive stuff before impact, including ceasing to brake, so it can’t be “blamed” for causing a wreck. (Whether or not they were using it at the time.)

So, here’s a solution that will likely work but I’m just extrapolating based on auto industry stuffs. If the ads are driven by SiriusXM, they’re likely coming over the satellite radio. The shark fin on top has several antennae in it, including the XM antenna, which is on a specific frequency band and antenna type. Find the wiring harness for the shark fin, trace the SiriusXM cable, unplug or snip it. You’ll lose XM, but, honestly, based on the garbage I hear on a lifetime subscription radio these days, I don’t understand why anyone pays for it, except for living in or traveling through remote areas with frequency and wanting live background noise.

Chances are it’s possible they’d also try and load the ads via a paired Bluetooth phone for Internet, (maybe) if that’s the case it’s a little more difficult. Probably impossible on iPhone, but on Android may allow one to disable the act of shuttling data to the car stereo via Bluetooth. If Stellantis uses an app to proxy data to the car stereo, deleting the app on the phone would break it.

“I have a problem, you need to add a feature flag to my account that wasn’t properly provisoned.”

“OK, let’s check, are you on wifi? Have cellular signal?”

“Yes, irrelevant, I need this feature code added to the account. You’ll be off this call in 30 seconds and your KPMs will look amazing.”

“OK, first, let’s try resetting your network settings.”

“You realize doing that erases all saved wifi networks, VPNs, Bluetooth pairings, and a bunch of other stuff that will take me hours to fix, and has nothing to do with my problem?”

“OK, continuing on… let me send a network refresh.”

“Just look up the feature code to provision this.”

“OK, we will, generate a new eSIM.”

Most tech support calls here. Just give me admin access and I’ll fix it myself. (I try to never be rude, I know they gotta follow a script but I’m hand-feeding the answer here!)

like cars haven’t been like that for YEARS now

Worse, Teslas are designed like computer software rather than cars, which is why they are so dangerous and terrible, as software development processes are absolutely horrible for things that actually matter, especially when compared to existing vehicle engineering principles.

I feel dirty cross-linking to that other place but check out how/where they locate the brake lines. A nice convenient rust-prone place, only accessible by removing the battery. Apparently the design has become even shittier since.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/1j8sh8c/thx_for_making_me_take_down_the_battery_for_some/

Deorbit or seize the whole thing.

Keep it coming people! Stay the course!

That character could use employee diagnostic access into the cars as they are always on the Internet. SSH into them, get into the battery controller and do myriad things. Set the thermal management into permanent heat mode. Disable thermal management 100% for the next time the car is driven so it can’t cool the batteries (good for getting rid of pesky rodents like muskrats that try to live in them.) Mess with the charge controller in general so it overcharges, undercharges. You name it. All sorts of fun things one could add to that book depending on your plot.

Make sure while your character is hacking the battery controller though, that they set the car stereo to play Dragula by Rob Zombie at full volume. For effect.

These idiots were dumb enough to design Teslas like computers rather than cars, so a whole lot of stuff was designed like a crappy cell phone rather than the proven design principles of automotive engineering.

Remember he came in after they already existed, was just an investor that demanded he be retroactively called a founder. All their tech up to the CyberCuck were iterations on the original, (sans his corner-cutting you mentioned, which was also terrible).

He rigged up the Twitter purchase so the debt would fall on Twitter if it fails, not him.

Hah, yeah, wasn’t trying to compare smathering junk in an open wound versus modern medicine by any means. Just that the concept has been around for a very long time.

Michigan helped doom us. F them.

The only difference here, is cats serve a purpose.

Molotov CockTesla.