I saw this article earlier:

Tesla ‘going bankrupt’ is endpoint of protests, says local organizer

In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:

  • What are some considerations?
  • Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?

An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.

What I’ve found so far:

  • FreedomEV, a project that was presented at FOSSDEM 2019 but doesn’t have recent activity
  • TeslaMate, which is a popular and active selfhosted data logger for Teslas, but not necessarily a replacement for the software
  • OptimusPrimeDownfall@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 days ago

    That mentality is how we got here in the first place. A person should have a right to understand and repair/modify everything happening in devices they own. Because they don’t, we get stuck in the shitty situation where Elon Musk can unlock any Tesla he pleases and I can’t refuse to send my data to him. Or any other car manufacturer. Or tractor manufacturer. Or IoT manufacturer.

    • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Mixed feelings on this. Yeah, you buy it you should own it. But if your ability to fuck with a two-ton rolling death machine puts my ass at risk, we’ve got a fucking problem.

      • OptimusPrimeDownfall@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 day ago

        People fuck with two ton rolling death machines every day. What are mechanics? What are car enthusiasts? You just have accepted that you can’t touch the computer because they told you you can’t. That’s stupid.

      • poweruser@lemmy.sdf.org
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        2 days ago

        I have some bad news for you - any random idiot with a driver’s license and a two-ton death machine already puts your ass at risk, all the time. We call it “traffic” because we’ve just gotten used to it

        • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I’m talking ‘I disabled the awareness requirement of autopilot’ or ‘I fucked with the object detection and here goes my beta test yolo’ or ‘I added a button to disable all the lights so I can covertly street race’ or…

          • nBodyProblem@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Have you never heard of tunes?

            Any idiot can make substantial software changes to almost any modern car with easily available inexpensive hardware. Look up Cobb, ECUtek, openflashtablet, Hondata, etc

            You literally just plug it into a port and flash the software

            • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              There’s a difference between ‘physical work required’ and ‘plug in this dongle and run the exe’ though

          • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
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            2 days ago

            Imagine thinking Tesla has all-that-much in place to prevent those things in a stock configuration. Full-stop, any self-driving is one of the first features anyone trying to disconnect their cars from Tesla servers would lose outright.

            • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Ehh doubt, but I don’t have a tesla to verify. If I can sever the connection to the home base, I can fuck with it however I want, and their kill switch is useless. Maybe they implemented the kill switch in the modem or something, but again I can’t test. I highly doubt that when you’re road-tripping in bumfuck nowhere the ap disables itself…

              Anybody want to give me $40k? We can be besties.

        • thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          It is not comparable, not even by far.

          Assuming your are not a psycho, to safely drive a car is orders of magnitude (in plural) easier than modifying the Sw in a safe and deterministic way.

          It is not only that bad people exists, it is about that making a small mistake can kill you

    • thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Then don’t buy tesla, or force legislation about introducing such feature.

      But make yourself a favor and don’t play Russian roulette with something that you can not understandbecause there are not data available.

      And for final tip, if you really cares about that then enforce the fsf (fsf.org)

      • OptimusPrimeDownfall@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 day ago

        I agree we should legislate it! But in the US, that isn’t going to happen, and the EU also doesn’t seem to quite have enough teeth yet to do it.

        And buddy, we play Russian roulette all the goddamn time. The people that modify their cars start off not knowing shit. Why would the computer in said car be any diferent?

        • thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Because the modification of that computer is order of magnitudes more difficult than a mechanical modification of a moving part. The humanity / regular human is able to understand much better the interactions of the mechanical parts that usually are always local and well defined.

          This does not exist in the Sw, FW and digital hw, the interactions are not local and are millions timesmore complex to understand and properly modify.

          It would be an utterly irresponsability to modify (blindly) the Sw of an xray machine that could make it unsafe and ultimately it could kill humans, and it is the same concept with the car. It is irresponsable to make a modification that can make the system unsafe.

          For the rest? Regulations, free software foundation and good selfhosting Cheers