[joeblau]

I was talking to a few people in a slack channel the other day about the potential market for a whole set of "dumb" appliances. At the end of the day, we came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be a able to reach mass market because the mass consumers seem to care more about price than security.

[ellius]

I'm not sure this is a counterargument, but if a company did this in an open way I could trust, I would buy EVERYTHING from them. Fridge, washer, dryer, dishwasher, televisions, small electronics, cars, whatever. You name it I'd buy it. I don't have enough information to determine how many people are like me, but the profit you could make on me as a customer would be ridiculous. You'd get the kind of platform loyalty that Amazon and Google dream of. I'd probably even be happy to share some personal information with you in a way that I controlled that you could turn around and sell. The sense of autonomy, privacy, and control is that valuable to me.

[TeMPOraL]

100% this. I would be another loyal customer buying everything from such a company.

I place high value on not fucking over fellow human beings, and I'd happily put the money where my mouth is, but the market seems essentially devoid of ethical companies these days. I'm sure there is many more people like us - perhaps enough to sustain a company.

(FWIW, if you extend this past issues of ads and privacy, and into making good products and just selling them for money - I'm not sure how long such a company would last these days. Being ethical means no planned obsolescence, or otherwise churning out new variants of the same thing to keep sales up. It could have a problem with a continued revenue stream - but then again, I'd probably happily pay an extra subscription to an ethical company that cut away all this bullshit, just for the privilege of being able to then buy products from them.)

[monoideism]

Have you purchased one of Purism’s products (phone, laptop, etc)? That’s their entire shtick. I could see them developing into the kind of company you describe with a wide range of privacy respecting products.

[amelius]

> Being ethical means no planned obsolescence, or otherwise churning out new variants of the same thing to keep sales up.

If you buy "TV as a service" instead of as a product, the effect is basically that the company providing the service will do the opposite of planning for obsolescence.

Perhaps this is the kind of company you are looking for?

[TeMPOraL]

That's a fair point, and arguably a good side of products-as-serivces. I'm still generally against them, though, for two reasons.

One: in practice, -as-a-Service businesses tend to quickly devolve their business models to include user-hostile, unethical aspects. Requiring Internet access, telemetry, ads, remote bricking, etc.

Two - and this is more of a gut feeling than a properly thought-through objection: I don't like the risk curve. Services require a steady cash flow. Have a financial hick-up, and you have to start sacrificing some of your services. Whereas with ownership, you can keep using the goods you own regardless of how much money you have - and with proper care and maintenance, you can get a lot of mileage out of the things you buy. Poorer people tend to be good at it by necessity. The same poorer people would end up trapped if they depended on everything as services.

I also like the fact that, if for some reason you prefer monthly installments to lump-sum purchase, you can turn almost any product into service by getting a bank involved. It has a nice, Unixy feel to it.

But, as I said, I haven't really made up my mind about this just yet.

[tksb]

This is my only argument for "subscription culture" in much better words.

[lonelappde]

There are dozens of people like you, maybe even thousands or tens of thousands. In other words, not do worth paying attention to.

Also, you're probably not telling the truth to yourself, since you get your news from HN instead of paying for journalism.

[signal11]

As of now, in the UK, LG’s TVs are fairly up front about automatic content recognition, and it’s off by default.

But I agree, we need a consumer-electronics company that uses privacy as a competitive advantage the way Apple does for phones.

[Kaibeezy]

Make cars too, please.

Manual transmission (actual stick and clutch, not silly paddles), minimal ECUs, disableable seatbelt chime, cigar lighter, and so forth. You know, less cyber.

[archi42]

The seat belt chime might be a requirement, depending on where you live. Also, the complicated ECU helps with fuel efficiency (and thus lessens environmental impact). How about ESP and similar safety tech? Matrix light (forbidden in the US?) is nice when driving through forests since the high beam can stay up, but involves a lot of high tech as well. I can live without, but a rear camera is damn handy.

Most important: This is completely detached from the manufacturer spying on you, or preventing cheap repairs by not selling you necessary parts or withholding information.

[radarthreat]

Somebody should buy the tooling for early 90's Camry's/ES300's and sell them indefinitely. You could get a reliable, brand new car for a couple grand.

Sort of like the original VW Beetle sales model.

[kube-system]

They wouldn't be legal to sell in the US for a variety of reasons. Vehicle safety laws are updated pretty regularly.

Off the top of my head, they probably wouldn't meet:

FMVSS 126 (ESC), FMVSS 111 (rear camera), FMVSS 138 (TMPS), FMVSS 226 (occupant ejection mitigation)

Although, like the beetle, you could sell them in countries with lower safety standards. I'm pretty some joint ventures in China are/were actually done with old tooling from western automakers.

[Spooky23]

You’d still have a better car if you took modern drivetrain with 90s knobs.

The touchscreen revolution in cars is a dumpster fire. Literally every aspect of the controls on my last couple of cars has been a regression.

[andrewksl]

Wouldn’t that make it almost impossible to meet emission regulations? I’m not a fan of how opaque cars have gotten, but I’ll accept some loss of control for cleaner air.

[Scoundreller]

Automatics are still too dumb to keep the clutch engaged while braking.

Officially automatics and manuals are a wash for mileage, but I think driving style can make manuals the winner.

All that kinetic energy getting dissipated by brakes instead of turning the engine and all of its accessories in autos.

I’m quite surprised auto manufacturers haven’t implemented engine braking for émissions, reducing brake wear, and quicker « free » cabin heat in cold conditions.

[Phillipharryt]

Automatics disengage the driveshaft to save wear on engine parts. It's an active decision, not being "too dumb". Wearing out brakes is cheaper to fix than wearing out your brakes, and people like longer lasting, cheaper to fix, cars.

[Phillipharryt]

Replying to myself here because I can't edit it after someone has responded?

I meant wearing our brakes is cheaper to fix that engine parts.

[Scoundreller]

I figured they disengaged because they can’t know if you’re wanting to coast or wanting to brake when you step off the accelerator.

If they always assumed you wanted to brake, that would really hurt mileage.

And it would have to disengage anyway at some point to avoid stalling.

Engine braking is more RPMs in aggregate, but nothing particularly bad for an engine.

[Phillipharryt]

Automatics don't use a traditional clutch for transmissions, so it wouldn't actually stall, but your other points could be true.

[henrikschroder]

> but I think driving style can make manuals the winner.

Everything you can do, a machine can do better.

[Scoundreller]

In theory. But I don’t have a much faith in auto transmissions (effectively a mechanical computer that has to handle many scenarios, probably none perfectly).

[archi42]

My hybrid's auto actually does a pretty good job (2013 V60 D6; diesel front, electric rear axle). And it's a simple 6 gear box, not a fancy 8 or 11 gear twin clutch. Picks a good gear, no hysteresis and the overall control intelligence seems to properly decide when to enter neutral and recuperate (on wildly shifting loads [steep uphill slopes] that "overall intelligence" sometimes tends to be too aggressive with shutting down the diesel altogether, but that's not the transmissions fault).

[baot]

If that was true, you wouldn't be behind the wheel at all.

The transmission can't see the road ahead and prepare in advance.

[henrikschroder]

Whenever there's an article here on Hacker News about self-driving cars, do you just... skip over them? Your eyes glaze over, and you're not seeing that part of the technological landscape? What do you think all the computer vision tech is doing in self-driving cars?

[userbinator]

Put an automatic in "low gear" (I still remember when it used to be called "grade retard" on some cars, which was to be used for braking only and not acceleration) and you'll get engine braking.

and quicker « free » cabin heat in cold conditions.

Engine braking won't heat the engine much over just idling, in fact it may even cool it off more because the governor will cut off fuel completely.

[Scoundreller]

It’s a good question re:heat that seems to be unanswered. While it is compression and decompression, it’s not 100% efficient. And in a gas car, it’s releasing hot compressed air throughout the system, including the cat converter. I figured enough heat during compression would radiate to the engine. Plus more RPMs = more stuff warming up.

I mean, the energy has to go somewhere, and the engine itself makes the most sense.

We’re doing the opposite of acceleration (sometimes faster), so that’s gotta be a lot more energy turned into heat than necessary to keep an engine idle.

If brake pads get to several hundred degrees while braking...

[userbinator]

Normal engine braking (and even the compression-release "Jake brakes" on diesels, while more effective) doesn't develop anywhere near as much force as the wheel brakes. You're right that it does generate heat, but it's not a lot --- instead of purely compressing and releasing the compressed air, the engine is just acting as an air pump; the air gets compressed (and hotter) during the compression stroke, but instead of igniting, what would be the power stroke merely expands the air again to the same volume it had before, and then the exhaust stroke pushes it out with little restriction. I would bet that even if it's just idling, the heat of combustion will be far greater than whatever friction losses contribute to engine braking.

[smolder]

Reciprocating mass (pistons, rods, and valves constantly changing direction) is where a great deal of the energy is sunk when engine braking. It doesn't all go to heat. Accessories are also doing useful work like the alternator charging the battery and the water pump circulating coolant. Friction is significant and increases with rpm and oil pressure, but you aren't heating it nearly as much as when it's burning fuel.

[ReactiveJelly]

I think they do keep it engaged, at least while coasting.

I know you said braking but I've seen it in both my 2002 and 2015 automatics when coasting.

If I'm coasting up to a red light I'm pretty sure I can brake lightly and still be coasting with no fuel consumption, and then it will only turn the fuel back on when it needs to creep.

I'll check it on the live MPG display next time I'm driving.

[dmurray]

Typical automatics have comfortably passed out manuals for mileage on average, some time in the 2010s. Driving style "can" theoretically still make a given manual more efficient, but it requires an unusual attention to mileage by the manual driver and/or an unusually aggressive driver on the automatic.

[nitrogen]

My 2005 car will use engine braking to control hill descent speed automatically, and will downshift in some cases to assist braking.

[lsaferite]

> Automatics are still too dumb to keep the clutch engaged while braking.

Automatics don't have a clutch though. They have a torque converter, which is not the same thing.

[opencl]

There are still plenty of brand new cars using old school 4 speed autos which are significantly worse for efficiency than a manual.

[boring_twenties]

I'll just settle for any car without a screen in the dash.

Oh wait, they made that illegal starting MY2015 (in the US, at least).

OK, how about just without a touchscreen, then?

[izacus]

Well, Mazda deliberately avoided using touchscreens in their 2019 line of 3s and CX-30s.

Apparently they're not selling well in US.

[drusepth]

If you could get the price down to a comparable point, you might be able to market against the price-vs-security crowd, but I think you'd find yourself up against another large percentage of consumers that care more about features than security, which seems a lot harder to compete with when you're pitting dumb devices against smart devices.

[joeblau]

Yeah, this is pretty much what a few people brought up. Consumers seem to actively want to give their data away for "features" which usually aren't worth the data they are giving up.

[drusepth]

1) I'm one of the consumers that often actively want to give my data away for "features" that I think are worth the data I'm giving up.

2) I've seen enough comments on HN with the opposite (valid) mindset to think there's a nonzero audience of people that are also willing to pay for privacy over features.

Both groups of people seem to feel the other group is wrong and seem biased to think the world would be a better place if everyone in the other group converted to their own, but if you promote privacy over features there's definitely a market out there for you. :)

[fennecfoxen]

Be aware that there are existing markets for a whole set of appliances which are very, very "dumb" indeed. Take a look at Lehman's, based out of Ohio Amish country: https://www.lehmans.com/

It's hard to install spyware on something that doesn't run off electricity.

[zzo38computer]

Well, I would be interested. Also, I don't like HDMI, and I don't need such a big TV set. For TV and VCR and some stuff like that, if it uses computer system (many kind of appliances should not need any kind of computer code), having the rights provided by GPL3, and also wired IMIDI (and perhaps also IMIDI-over-IR, with a switch to disable IR entirely). And, the software should be simpler and not so slow, not so much fancy animation or otherwise bad UI (e.g. requiring you to push the arrows to select an option, even if just one button (such as a number) should do) either!

[RandomBacon]

Would it be possible to build an adapter that could filter out Ethernet-over-HDMI?

[crooked-v]

There are basically zero consumer devices right now that actually support that functionality. It's not useful as a selling feature when TVs all have wifi now anyway.

[rolph]

perhaps a pihole of some sort can be built

my major concern is that the digital parts may be connection dependent for function