The real problem here is the fact that the car has GPS and the owners can't even control it. Welcome to the 21st century!
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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Welcome to the 21st century!
Where the gps in your car isn't yours and the car isn't either
2000: I bought myself a car!
2023: I bought an limited licen$e to drive a car!
I'm very over this subscription/licensing culture corpos are forcing us into.
I think there's a gap in the market for a Microsoft office alternative you can just buy. And the next Windows is rumoured to be subscription based too.
2025 might finally be the year of linux
2025 might finally be the year of linux
The year of the Linux desktop is right now, if you want it to be. For me it was 2007 - and watching the evolution of Windows since then has been a continuous validation of my choice.
If you want to use Linux, use it! It's ready, and IMO has been for some time.
(And just to be clear - choosing otherwise is OK too! I don't intend my enthusiasm as zealotry. Folks making an educated decision to stay is totally valid.)
I just don't have the time to learn something new at the moment, I'm working full time and studying ontop of that, not to mention I'm almost 30 and to old haha
But in all seriousness the next pc i build will probably be linux
Installing it on a virtual machine can be a good way to try it out to begin with. No need to restart whenever you'd like to use it, and you've still got access to everything you normally use.
I remember using VirtualBox years ago to do this.
Don't overestimate the learning curve, your mainline distros like Ubuntu aren't really much different anymore for most of your average consumer use cases.
A whole new meaning for "driving license"
They dropped off the kid in a park further down and then left the truck a few miles after. Kid was OK.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here: how is the guy on the phone supposed to know it really is the police on the other side and not just some guy trying to scam his way into a freebie?
You could say that companies should err on the side of caution, but then every potential customer could pull the same, and then how do you weed out the real ones from the fake ones?
You could argue the service should be free anyway, but then we'd be arguing a different point.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here: how is the guy on the phone supposed to know it really is the police on the other side and not just some guy trying to scam his way into a freebie?
At the individual level this is actually pretty simple. I work in IT and when I used to do security training the way we’d validate is with a known contact.
In this situation you get the contacting officers name and department, disconnect the call, call the non-emergency listed number for that department and ask for that officer by name.
There’s a lot of other failure point potential in this scenario but validating the person calling is actually law enforcement shouldn’t be one of them.
That is good life advice.
I hammered into my elderly parents that if they ever get a call/text from their "bank", "tax department", "insurance", or literally anything - ask for a case number and hang up. Then call the number listed on the official website.
Now they're telling everyone they know about it. Good on them.
In a normal business that is not a mega corporation you would just do it. You can just activate it for a limited period if you really feel suspicious, after two or three tries you will quickly spot the people trying to abuse the system.
Even if people could abuse the system for free aubsceiptions, I don't agree with the fact that preventing people from getting free subscription is a higher priority than helping a mother getting her 2 years old back.
Ask for name and department of calling officer. Disconnect call. Call department’s non-emergency number, ask to be connected to said officer.
Boom, verified. Standard operating procedure for any sane company that might get a request like this.
It's not like they don't know who owns the car. They should be able to check afterwards if it was a real emergency, and if it was faked, send the bill and maybe report them for impersonating a police officer.
Lol wut? There's no way a manufacturer knows who owns the car unless it was registered
I was thinking that if they can remotely unlock features based on a subscription I assume there's an account involved at some point.
Won’t someone think of the billion-dollar megacorps‽ They may lose a few bucks saving kidnapped children on the off-chance some fakers pretend to be cops! GASP!
You’re acting as if this is some sort of widespread form of criminal activity and that it’s not already a crime to impersonate a cop or to commit wire fraud while committing a kidnapping. Because who gives a shit about any of that when a few bucks could be made?
how is the guy on the phone supposed to know it really is the police on the other side and not just some guy trying to scam his way into a freebie?
Cop only number or internal group to transfer to? Fax number to send a warrant with contact info so VW can call back and investigate if need be? Get the police department number, google to confirm they're legit, and call back? Thats just off the top of my head.
If VW doesn't have an option like that its poor design. If the guy didn't know, poor training. One or both are gonna be resolved now that the spotlight is on them.
If only there was some system in place where police could verify their authority somehow.
You don't have to go that far. The rep could just be soft-blocked to enable the feature unless a card was processed first.
Erring on the side of caution is to say no to the random that calls you asking for GPS coordinates
As a programmer, I will very mildly defend VW here. Not at all defending the payment structure (that's shit and has no excuse other than rent seeking), but the person who had to tell the police they needed to pay likely didn't have an override button. Something like this just isn't an edge case that you often think of in development, so not having the option of getting that data out for free is reasonable if this is the first incident.
No one thought that theft deterrence might be a use case for a fucking remotely-accessible car GPS?
Management doesn’t have an override button (which tracks their actions) to activate someone’s unit without payment?
I call 1000% bullshit.
I don't think they're saying that no one thought of it, but he's right as a programmer those edge cases are always pushed out, kicking the can down the road. That doesn't mean VW isn't liable - it's their fault still - they should have been able to help. But we can understand how it happened.
They probably called some guy on the 24/7 help line making minimum wage who will get fired if he ever gave out a free service and probably gets dinged if a call gets escalated. Those processes probably don't exist. They sure as hell will now.
Then a fat settlement / fine will do well to reshape VW's Priorities.
Since VW has no sense of social obligation it'll need to be enough to sting. Say half of the net earnings of 2022.
That won't happen, of course, but then the edge case of unlocking GPS in an emergency won't be fixed either.