We need a central clearinghouse on how to disable telemetry on every make of vehicle that transmits such data.

Most cars these days come with their own cellular modem, and we as consumers need to know how to disable them, whether physically by removing the antenna or unplugging the hardware, or via software configuration, or worst case scenario 'opt-out' which as the article indicates doesn't actually always stop them from using and storing your data. With newer vehicles this could possibly disable various features such as remote start, and in heavily connected vehicles such as the Tesla, you may not be able to receive over the air updates (if you want them) unless it can do that through your phone when desired. The question is, how much data are you willing to surrender for these conveniences?

The other issue I have questions about is how much cars without their own modem are able to communicate via a smartphone linked with bluetooth or android auto or apple car play. If it is only connected via bluetooth for audio output and phone calls, can it also use that for general connectivity, or is it pretty firewalled?

As soon as I realized with my wife's last car that you did not have to be within wifi or bluetooth distance to communicate with the car via its app, I knew then that it had its own connectivity and was reporting data back to the mothership.

I have two older cars that have no such connectivity (neither has OnStar, one was built in 2000 and the other in 2015, just before all of this started really gaining traction) but we recently changed my wife's car to a Tesla with the idea of saving money on gas for her long commute. The Tesla is an amazing car but at the same time the ultimate connected nightmare. I can't stomach it but she doesn't care about things like that, so I let it go.

Is it possible to stop Tesla from sharing your data? Or to prevent them from receiving it in the first place? They have their own insurance offering which uses that data, and there is nothing you need to do to start using that feature, as it's already there. We know they use it as they've used it to try to fight negative reviews from journalists who have driven the car. This was very early on in Tesla's history as well.

There is an alternate universe where electric vehicles are simple; they have a simple motor controller with regen braking, like a fancier verison of an industrial motor controller, and internal management systems for battery maintenance and charging. Nothing talks to the world. Instead, Tesla has led the way into a connectivity nightmare that everyone else is following. It's the Chrome and Tailfins creep from the 1950s all over again - lots of stuff you don't need. Wouldn't it be nice if Tesla left off all the useless software features and games and instead lowered the price of the car?

Another thing that would be nice to set in law is a requirement that insurance companies state plainly and in large print if they used that data as a factor in determining your insurance rates. No hiding it in fine print.

In the early 1990s I took a brief excursion from my Commodore loyalty to acquire a IIgs, at the behest of a friend who was an apple fan boy. It was for the most part a big Giant turd, and also locked up with apple's typical walled garden approach to hardware. I went back to Amigas after that, until PCs caught up in the graphics and pre-emptive multitasking department (Windows NT) and the Amiga slowly faded away by the mid-90s. Heady times to be a computing enthusiast.

You could use Publisher to do some pretty good work, but most people authoring books and not just making basic internal communications are likely using Adobe InDesign, which is descended from PageMaker.

I've used all of the above over the years and since I have an Adobe Cloud subscription (the only software 'subscription' I am willing to have) InDesign is my go-to for that sort of thing these days.

I disabled automatic updates via the policy editor. If anything important comes up I can grab it manually. in the mean time I don't get bothered with any of this stuff. My usage is very conservative and the likelihood of being exposed to a vulnerability that I haven't gotten around to patching is quite low. Updating one's browser and running ad/malware blockers is far more important as a vector to entry.

"If it ain't broke..."

Heh, I forgot that some people tried to take advantage of color bleed. Probably the only time when the low definition color side band glommed on to B&W for NTSC actually had an advantage.

You made the right decision. I had a 400 before moving to commodore, and the keyboard was garbage.

I second Brian Bagnall's commodore book. It's excellent.

It doesn't matter that the 6502 was dated - it was still a great processor and Commodore put it to excellent use making great computers that were able to compete primarily on price. Growing up in the mid-80s I was also never impressed with my friend's Apple IIe graphics capability and lack of native sound other than a few clicks. My C=64 ran circles around it in certain respects, and the Amiga's pre-emptive multitasking and dedicated graphics and sound chips completely blew away anything that was being done at the time in the Mac or PC realms. The PC market didn't catch up till the early 90s and did not have a good consumer facing true multitasking OS until the advent of Windows NT. Apple finally started getting with the program with OS X. Commodore was far, far ahead of anyone else in a number of arenas, both with the C=64/128 and the Amiga.

My memory is that it's an NTSC composite RCA connector into the RF modulator, like most other devices at the time, so you can go into an NTSC -> HDMI converter box. BUt you still have to buy that box in addition.

I do have one NTSC broadcast monitor left but I'm planning on getting rid of it as soon as I finished converting some old VHS tapes. It's nice to watch them back on a real 15KHZ interlaced screen though.

Well, I'm probably an edge case in that scenario. I grew up fully immersed in this stuff in a big way, especially when I switched to Commodore, but I have other hobbies as well now in addition to work and I don't have the time or the space to look back to my computing days of yor to that level of depth. But I do have a little money and space to buy one of these gadgets. We bought a mini-2600 that we have plugged into the TV in the living room and it's fun once in a while.

Another issue is 'been there, done that.'

I was a huge Amiga computing enthusiast and I owned just about every model they made for the US market at one time or another, and I made my living with them towards the end. I watch these kids on the Amiga facebook groups ressurect the old hardware, replace caps and internal batteries, carefully apply the anti-yellowing compound to the shells, install CF HD emulators and other tweakies that we never had and I commend them. But at the same time I'm thinking, "man, I already had to deal with all the hardware weirdness three decades ago. I have no desire to do that again. An emulator is fine."

Do you know how frustrating it was to find out that the slow speed of the C=64 C=1541 disk drive was due to a comedy of hardware and firmware errors? It was later fixed with some third party hardware and a followup drive (1571) that I had on the C=128, but man, if I could take back all those hours I spent waiting for Might and Magic to load.... (more info: https://www.lemon64.com/forum/... )

You still have them?!?! Wow. The oldest thing I have related to computing is image files of my Amiga drives from the early 90s after I switched to Windows. I recently got them working in Emulation again.

Did you have to replace any capacitors or are they still chugging along?

My first computer with a keyboard was an Atari 400. Previous to that it was an Atari 2600, though I had experience with a C= Vic20 not owned by us.

The Atari 400's membrane keyboard was terrible. It was a cheaped down version of the Atari 800. But at the time I did not make big use of it, as a young kid I mostly wanted to play Star Raiders and their other cartridge games. I only fiddled with BASIC a little bit. It wasn't until the next series of machines that I became a serious enthusiast.

I got the first in what would be a series of C=64s (two of them died eventually so I had three total over the years - they weren't super reliable) and a C=128.

After that it was Amigas until the early 90s, I actually used them for work (video production and animation) until PCs took over, and continued to use Lightwave 3D on Windows NT which had been ported by then. Was building my own machines at that point like everyone else, gleefully awaiting the latest fry's ad for components.

Lightwave led to a career in computer animation which I quit in 2001 and moved on to other things.

It was a great time and a terrible time to be a personal computing enthusiast. On the one hand the transaction was simple - you owned everything you bought, no one was trying 'monetize' you seven different ways at every turn. On the other hand, hardware capability was limited and could be finicky, operating systems glitchy and wait times for anything (loading, rendering, booting, de-fragging your hard drive...) sometimes very long.

But I have a lot of fun (and perhaps sometimes rose tinted) memories of the early days of personal computing. Would not want to go back to it now however! Although one of these little boxes would be handy for another round of Star Raiders...

This is a commercial product offering convenience and nostalgia. Finding an original unit and having to protentially replace a lot of caps is not on most people's radar. This is a good option for the casual retro gamer.

A few people here have mentioned high-bitrate MP3s being pretty much indistinguishable from potentially better formats. I have stuck with that as that is what I started ripping my CDs with, and it's nice to have a single, consistent format.

These days I collect mostly special release film scores from small labels like Intrada, who's only format is compact disc. When I receive the disc, I pop it into an older windows machine with a CD-Rom drive and rip it to 256K MP3 using CDex. For listening to in my car and at my computer with a generic stereo + sub logitech speaker setup, it sounds great. And I still have all the non-compressed CDs to re-rip from if I feel like stepping up the quality. I no longer have a big high end living room stereo setup so there's simply no advantage to having something higher quality at ready disposal. If I ever do something like that again I'll re-rip them to FLAC.

When OGG came along, I think I had a general feeling of "is this going to be another format that will die out and be unsupported?" and MP3 felt like no matter what happened, it was ubiquitous enough that it would always be playable, and the quality was fine for me, so I stuck with it. That was my reasoning at the time and still stands.

virtual cops aren't going to bust into a virtual house while they're on livecam.

Although they could do bad things to the offices of the company I guess. Internet douchebags know no bounds.

Until laws change, Amazon is still just a broker for the dealerships, and you'll still have to go to one to complete the sale. No thanks. Until dealerships are removed from the equation I'm done buying new cars.