#worst timeline

[pixlerelish]

Screaming forever and going to bed thanks.

[lans-rabbit-glade]

ok but seriously who do i need to duel to prevent this from happening

[mostlysignssomeportents]

VW wouldn't locate kidnapped child because his mother didn't pay for find-my-car subscription

The masked car-thieves who stole a Volkswagen SUV in Lake County, IL didn’t know that there was a two-year-old child in the back seat — but that’s no excuse. A violent car-theft has the potential to hurt or kill people, after all.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/28/kinderwagen/#worst-timeline

Likewise, the VW execs who decided to nonconsensually track the location of every driver and sell that data to shady brokers — but to deny car owners access to that data unless they paid for a “find my car” subscription — didn’t foresee that their cheap, bumbling subcontractors would refuse the local sheriff’s pleas to locate the car with the kidnapped toddler.

And yet, here we are. Like most (all?) major car makers, Volkswagen has filled its vehicles with surveillance gear, and has a hot side-hustle as a funnel for the data-brokerage industry.

After the masked man jumped out of a stolen BMW and leapt into the VW SUV to steal it, the child’s mother — who had been occupied bringing her other child inside her home — tried to save her two year old, who was still in the back seat. The thief “battered” her and drove off. She called 911.

The local sheriff called Volkswagen and begged them to track the car. VW refused, citing the fact that the mother had not paid for the $150 find-my-car subscription after the free trial period expired. Eventually, VW relented and called back with the location data — but not until after the stolen car had been found and the child had been retrieved.

Now that this idiotic story is in the news, VW is appropriately contrite. An anonymous company spokesman blamed the incident on “a serious breach” of company policy and threw their subcontractor under the (micro)bus, blaming it on them.

This is truly the worst of all worlds: Volkswagen is a company that has internal capacity to build innovative IT systems. Once upon a time, they had the in-house tech talent to build the “cheat device” behind Dieselgate, the means by which they turned millions of diesel vehicles into rolling gas-chambers, emitting lethal quantities of NOX.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

But on the other hand, VW doesn’t have the internal capacity to operate Car-Net, it’s unimaginatively-named, $150/year location surveillance system. That gets subbed out to a contractor who can’t be relied on to locate a literal kidnapped child.

The IT adventures that car companies get up to give farce a bad name. Ferraris have “anti-tampering” kill-switches that immobilize cars if they suspect a third-party mechanic is working on them. When one of these tripped during a child-seat installation in an underground parking garage, the $500k car locked its transmission and refused to unlock it — and the car was so far underground that its cellular modem couldn’t receive the unlock code, permanently stranding it:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/15/expect-the-unexpected/#drm

BMW, meanwhile, is eagerly building out “innovations” like subscription steering-wheel heaters:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Big Car has loaded our rides up with so much surveillance gear that they were able to run scare ads opposing Massachusetts’s Right to Repair ballot initiative, warning Bay Staters that if third parties could access the data in their cars, it would lead to their literal murders:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

In short: the automotive sector has filled our cars with surveillance gear, but that data is only reliably available to commercial data-brokers and hackers who breach Big Cars’ massive data repositories. Big Car has the IT capacity to fill our cars with cheat devices — but not the capacity to operate an efficient surveillance system to use in real emergencies. Big Car says that giving you control over your car will result in your murder — but when a child’s life is on the line, they can’t give you access to your own car’s location.

This Thu (Mar 2) I’ll be in Brussels for Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy, along with a who’s-who of European and US trustbusters. It’s livestreamed, and both in-person and virtual attendance are free. On Fri (Mar 3), I’ll be in Graz for the Elevate Festival.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

 — 

Upsilon Andromedae (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/upsand/212946929/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[Image ID: A blue vintage VW beetle speeds down a highway; a crying baby is pressed against the back driver's-side window. In the sky overhead is the red glaring eye of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, emblazoned with the VW logo. The eye is projecting a beam of red light that has enveloped the car.]

[residentmiddlechild]

i have just one thing to say. That is not the real Tom Bombadil. He does NOT look like a merry fellow, his jacket is NOT bright blue, and his boots are NOT yellow!

[violetsandshrikes]

If I had to see this with my own eyes, so do the rest of you!!!!!!!!!!!

(Let’s all thank @pierog for the Horrors being found)

[ghost-of-apollo]

Where the fuck did my double tap to like posts go. I don't even have it disabled. I'm going to perish

[odinsblog]

🙃

[harlanphobic]

i'm sorry he's calling it fucking DOGE???

[joseopher]

every day I thank the gods Callum isn't straight because he would 100% be one of those alpha podcaster guys 😬😬😬

[marzipanandminutiae]

I'm sorry I just saw this online and

what. the fuck.

apparently the Zoe doll line is sold at Five Below, a chain of US discount stores. I can't find this one on their website, but the appearance of the accessories and packaging checks out. so it seems to be real

now we're just straight-up encouraging the childhood-annihilating cancer that is letting (or making) kids be influencers, apparently. cool cool cool cool cool cool

[dionysus-complex]

oh my fucking god

[bpdnchill]

AI is a tool designed to normalise false information and increase distrust in experts.

It was created by *checks notes* tech companies who profit from reduction in critical thinking skills.The same people who brought us;

Crypto, the worlds first truely independent currency! Belovd by scam artists and criminals the world over. Zero practical use outside those areas.

Metaverse, an independent free market virtual world where you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a digital object that doesn't exist and has the graphical definition of a minecraft tree!

NFTS, a true revolution in art and art ownership where you can invest thousands in an ugly digital blob that has no real world value whatsoever, except you aren't actually paying for the picture you thought you just bought, you're paying for a data entry which may or may not direct to the picture you just thought you bought.

Dear gods, this is the worst timeline.

Here have some youtube links if you want more info.

Crypto scams

More crypto scams

Whatever the fuck is happening in the Metaverse

NFTS and why they probably aren't legal

A brief overview of the current tech fraud explosion.

[amyriadfthings]

Fucking hell. This sucks so much, I'm so sorry, US Americans.

[andromedda]

you know what I just remember randomly that has me all kinds of fucked up now? way, way, way back in the day, one of the last straws for me to leave bazzas discord was seeing someone say in meta chat “I hope bazza and custard don’t rp with whippy in 4.0.”

fucking sucks that person got what they wanted.

[neodoodles24]

traits that would be flanderized if Linked was a fandom:

Doodles: dumb

Neyma: "mom friend"

Sycamore: "tomboy"

Steno: too much of an edgy loner

Igneo: fandom hates her because fandom misogyny. Completely ignores her actual complexities

Unum: uwu smolbean

Ina: too much of an edgy loner

Dell: no longer actually cares for her underlings

Meka: gremlinized too much

Rask: they either make him too tough or too soft

[thee-horny-thicky]

Before this country burns to the ground ima need you to finish the Yua series bc that’s all we have to live for at this point

I'll happily escape this nightmare by continuing my favorite series. A new multi chapter fic will be up before AO3 is banned for encouraging degenerate culture 😔