NXP will manufacture its i.MX 8M processors till Jan. 2033

Speaking of cars, in just a few years, you won’t own your car anymore than you own your Apple or Android device now. Already, Tesla pushes software and firmware updates out to their cars routinely. You can’t stop those updates nor keep your Tesla deprived of an internet connection for too long without problems developing. I am not sure but I think that interfering with your Tesla update patches might void your warranty. But the ultimate affront to your ownership is this; Tesla can disable your Tesla car any time they want to. You can’t hide your car from them. They know where it is at all times. Imagine a world where there is no mode of transportation available that isn’t tracked and that location information archived. You’ll have to walk if you want your travel to be truly free of location tracking. Tesla cars are pretty much just an Android or I-Phone with wheels. How long until the rest of the automotive market follows this trend? As it is, the trend is to go all electric anyway.

Get ready Purism. I might want to purchase my next automobile from you. What a campaign that would be.

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Not all countries are headed towards electric vehicles. There are still countries where people use scooters and bicycles over cars.

Also, walking does not guarantee freedom to be tracked by location. Mass surveillance has already taken hold of society by storm, by video cameras being installed in store outlets, shopping malls, outside of buildings, inside and outside schools, traffic lights, transit stations, and so on. Perhaps the biggest challenge of all are satellites orbiting the Earth, looking at the general populace below.

You also cannot technically hide your car from society, as it requires a license plate. It is therefore tied to an identity, regardless of whether or not it is from Tesla. You cannot drive it without one, unless laws are not enforced around your parts.

I have effectively switched to a Librem 5 from a smartphone from 2009 - does that count? :wink:

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Privacy has a lot to do with how the data that is collected on you gets used. Controlling these issues is such a new area of concern that it hasn’t even been adequately addressed through legislation yet. I wouldn’t mind all of the cameras in public places as long as the data is not analyzed and the resulting information indexed.

Let’s say that there are cameras rolling at all times inside and outside of a given bank. Someone goes in wearing a ski-mask and robs the bank at gunpoint. The camera recordings are analyzed afterward which leads to other camera footage or more clues. Eventually the bank robber is identified and caught. That use of the technology is good.

But what if the cameras are all hooked up to facial recognition software? Let’s say the facial recognition software coordinates with GPS data on all cell phone users to map everywhere everyone goes every day of their lives, and stores your daily path through the world every day in a database. In such a case, the guy with bad intentions, a ski-mask, and no cell phone is the only person that can’t be tracked using automated means. So the unwarranted surveilance on everyone else should be illegal. That doesn’t mean they can’t collect data. But it should be illegal to index the data in certain ways. Let the data be analyzed after the fact if there is a good reason, like if a crime is committed.

In the case of a license plate, no one and certainly no government should use automated license plate readers to record every license plate that passes by except at the National ports of entry in to the country. Anyone in traffic can read my license plate and no one cares what it says as long as I act lawfully and with civil good behavior. That’s where it should end. If they put facial cameras and plate readers on all on-ramps and off-ramps and archive that data digitally, they violate the people’s privacy rights.

I really want to buy a Tesla. If I do it’ll be a deal with the devil like the one I have with my Android phone. We somewhat prostitute ourselves in exchange for convenience. Sure, if someone steals my car, it would be nice that Tesla can find my car and disable it remotely. But it’s still wrong that if you want to own that kind if car, that you have to give up your privacy and allow someone else to control the car (if they so choose) in exchange.

Without a fundamental breakthrough of physics and sub-atomic memory configurations. 128-bit is likely never to be needed. There are only about 10^50 atoms on earth, it’d be quite hard to actually exceed the given memory space.

But to the point, the extended support of IMX.8 doesn’t really have much to do with slowing of moores law. It may have more to do with delays in securing wafers for IMX.9

Industrial design partners don’t like to redesign products every three months. They’d rather have the R+D last forever. Chips simply look more attractive early int he lifecycle exactly for that reason, by extending pledged support further of an existing chip to 12 years, they can compete with a better chip only pledging 8 or 10 years.

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What exactly are your reasons for justifying purchasing a Tesla vehicle? How about the Android device you mentioned?

Convenience of what?

It’s all about getting more convenience. With a Tesla, I could plug the car in when I get home. Let it charge at night, and never go to the gas station for my daily driver car. For long trips, I could still take my truck. The Android phones are also convenient. But I am looking forward to ditching the Android after my Librem 5 arrives. I use my phone for just about everything except when I actually need a real desktop PC. Once again, because using the phone is more convenient. It is always active (don’t need to boot up every time). It’s always on my belt-clip or headboard. It’s everything in one device. That’s convenient.

Do you want a Tesla or do you actually need a generic electric car? They come with different deals with the devil.

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I want a car that is not tracking me. (Garage electronic diagnostics is OK)
Main car qualifications:

  1. within budget with standard safety features (as in VW Golf)
  2. not tracking me
  3. I have to fit in the drivers seat (all 2.07 meters!)
  4. minimum obtainable distance on 1 refill < 400km at average 110 km/hr

De rest, like electronic back drive mirror, self parking, etc. are nice to have but not needed.
If Purism can provide an electric car with those spec’s I consider buying.

More realistic: I would be happy to have my L5 and use this for 5 years ( hope to get my hands on a Fir at that date).

I opened a new thread. Maybe some posts here should be considered to be moved there, so we keep some degree of order.

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in my part of the world most people don’t even have a clue that modern cars have networked-CPUs (they are essentially more powerful IOTs on wheels) let alone what proprietary means in this context … i guess we’re lucky we still have ONE auto-factory LEFT …

I think you’re looking for something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CPBHj0UQk
(a garage that converts cars to electricity). Also:
https://www.treehugger.com/electric-vehicle-ev-conversion-companies-85249
https://www.goingelectric.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4667

Thanks for the info

Are you still using a computer from 2006, (if not why not?)

Well, until last year my main computers were all based on Core 2 Duo, so yes pretty much. My current (covid) computer is a Librem mini, tho, because the Core 2 Duo (at least those early ones I’m using) has trouble keeping up with Jitsi (it mostly works, but with some caveats especially when it’s warmer, so it was problematic when teaching via Jitsi).

But I do hope to return to my beloved Thinkpad T61 as soon as cafés open again. And I can’t see any good technical reason why Jitsi can’t be made to work reliably on a Core 2 Duo (at the cost of reduced video refresh rates or resolution), tho it currently does not seem to be a priority for the development team.

BTW, the 2006/2007 period is key here, since the single-threaded performance of CPUs (as well as the memory needs for “normal” use) started to plateau around that time (both Dennard scaling and Moore’s “law” grinding to a halt, more or less). E.g. I still use a 2003 computer as well, but it’s not really usable for “normal use” (like browsing the web), whereas my 2006/2007 computers don’t feel terribly slow compared to my brand new Librem mini.

How do you deal with the Spectre and Meltdown? AFAIK those CPUs will never get the security patches. Now you should not run any untrusted code on your machine, including Javascript.

Good question: just like the rest of the world (w.r.t Spectre V1), I close my eyes and hope for the best.

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Why is that?
Is it that the 11 year old device was really showing its age as the things you want to do with it keep getting more complex but the attributes of the processor remained static? :wink:

Exactly! However, I see a huge difference between what 10 year old device is capable of today and what 20 year old device was capable of 10 years ago… :wink:

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