Hacker News: ezfe

New comment by ezfe in "You can no longer Google the word 'disregard'"

ezfe — Fri, 22 May 2026 17:57:41 +0000

Clearly something's gone wrong here, it's not intentional for there to be so much whitespace. It's more than even queries with proper AI results.

New comment by ezfe in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"

ezfe — Fri, 15 May 2026 01:07:25 +0000

Okay so I read your comment to say you didn’t want their mapping service so assumed it was more broad. My bad.

That being said, on re-reading the Toyota app does not require location/Bluetooth/Contacts to set up.

New comment by ezfe in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"

ezfe — Thu, 14 May 2026 22:28:32 +0000

There's no app requirement to use the car, only the app features.

New comment by ezfe in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"

ezfe — Thu, 14 May 2026 22:27:11 +0000

Your phone voluntarily tags the hotspot data with specific TTL values which carriers use to segment the data. Not all carriers work the same though.

New comment by ezfe in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"

ezfe — Thu, 14 May 2026 20:44:51 +0000

That very much could be the case, in which case deleting the (now useless, because your car is not connected) app would resolve that - no bluetooth restriction needed.

New comment by ezfe in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"

ezfe — Thu, 14 May 2026 20:44:12 +0000

It does produce a local Wi-Fi network but there's no evidence that it supports internet communication. That would be considered a hotspot, which not all carriers even support.

New comment by ezfe in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"

ezfe — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:52:06 +0000

> One caveat, if you use bluetooth to connect your phone to the car DCM will use your phone to connect to the mother ship and presumably send your data. I only use my iPhone cable to connect to the car which does not have this effect.

A random post on a forum is not evidence that Toyota has found a magic way to exfiltrate data over a bluetooth connection without turning on hotspot/etc.

New comment by ezfe in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"

ezfe — Thu, 14 May 2026 18:34:00 +0000

Just a note about Toyota specifically - There are many blog posts and articles out there alleging that Toyota shares your data with insurance companies.

As I own two Toyota's I have read through these carefully and consistently the theme is that the owner was opted into this program without knowing it (likely by the sales person clicking through setup steps to enable every feature). If you are not opted in, I have seen no evidence they share driving data.

When I set up my Toyotas, the app clearly walks through the programs they have and you must click either "yes/opt in" or "no/opt out" for each program. It is not opted in by default.

New comment by ezfe in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"

ezfe — Thu, 14 May 2026 18:31:23 +0000

> Even after the modem is removed, if you connect your phone to the car via Bluetooth then the car will use your phone as an internet connection and send all the same telemetry data back to Toyota

What is the basis for this claim? I've never heard of this capability.

New comment by ezfe in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"

ezfe — Mon, 11 May 2026 02:31:23 +0000

> Bots on social media

... are not problems, no - but bots in general are

New comment by ezfe in "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent"

ezfe — Tue, 05 May 2026 20:29:06 +0000

A crypto miner needs consent because it burns your battery and CPU power with no benefit to you. This AI model would only be used when you invoke it so the only problem is disk space, which the comment you're replying to acknowledges as a point of issue.

New comment by ezfe in "When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?"

ezfe — Mon, 04 May 2026 13:51:24 +0000

I am very familiar with how they are trained. That doesn't change the fact that they are matrix math based on pre-trained weights. Something like RLHF makes those weights more effective but it doesn't change the fact it's autocomplete.

This is reinforced (pun not intended) by the continued issues with things like "should I walk or drive to the car wash"

New comment by ezfe in "Trademark violation: Fake Notepad++ for Mac"

ezfe — Mon, 04 May 2026 12:11:45 +0000

9to5mac writes clickbait headlines but MacRumors violates journalistic integrity. They always have been worse, there’s nothing new.

New comment by ezfe in "When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?"

ezfe — Sun, 03 May 2026 01:13:12 +0000

LLMs are just math run on your CPU. Autocomplete. Sometimes very useful autocomplete, but still just autocomplete.

To imply it could be conscious requires something else, here the comment uses the phrase magic to fill that gap - since we must agree that a CPU is not conscious on it's own (else everything our computer does would be conscious).

New comment by ezfe in "Inventions for battery reuse and recycling increase seven-fold in last decade"

ezfe — Sun, 03 May 2026 01:11:35 +0000

Is someone saying otherwise here?

New comment by ezfe in "Tesla owner won $10k in court for Tesla's FSD lies. Tesla is still fighting him"

ezfe — Sun, 03 May 2026 01:01:16 +0000

What do you mean by that?

New comment by ezfe in "Do_not_track"

ezfe — Sun, 03 May 2026 00:46:31 +0000

The assumption that telemetry is not allowed by GDPR is flawed

https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-26/

New comment by ezfe in "Ti-84 Evo"

ezfe — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:05:09 +0000

Absolutely is

New comment by ezfe in "Ti-84 Evo"

ezfe — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:05:01 +0000

Web based AI tools are remarkably helpful these days since they no longer try to do math themselves and instead write python to do it.

New comment by ezfe in "Ti-84 Evo"

ezfe — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:03:51 +0000

I used mine constantly in highschool (10 years ago).