@LottieVixen Looking at the wiki page I did about this, I'm reminded that it's worse than CarMax not knowing the number. They actually gave me a card claiming to have the relevant numbers -- and they are all completely wrong. I hypothesize that someone else also bought an Odyssey from them, and received the card with our PINs on it...

@gekitsu I'm picturing a scenario where some executive gave underlings a requirement that "features must be protected by PIN", so they could make it a selling-point on a brochure or something, and the underlings were like "this is stupid, but boss says..." and did the absolute minimum to meet that directive.

I would find this even more believable if it turns out that the dashboard systems were designed by a 3rd party, and not Honda; I'd like to think better than that of Honda.

@LottieVixen To be clear, if you don't enter the PINs you can still use the car just fine -- including the HVAC.

@LottieVixen Well, CarMax sold it to me just fine without knowing the PINs, so... :blobcatupsidedown:

(And if I can figure them out, so can a thief. If they were settable that would at least make a little more sense, but they are absolutely immutable.)

So, our 2010 Honda Odyssey has this weird feature(?) wherein anytime the battery gets disconnected, you have to enter a PIN for the nav system and another one for the radio.

CarMax didn't know what the numbers were when I bought it.

I took it to our local Honda dealer, and they reset them for me but wouldn't tell me what they are.

I figured out on my own that they're based on serial numbers -- I found the numbers and was able to derive the correct PINs, and we now have them both stuck on the dashboard for easy reference.

(Once you enter them, they're both unlocked until the next time the battery gets disconnected or discharged. You don't have to enter them whenever you start the car, even many days later.)

What I really want to know, though, is this: WHO EVEN THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA???

#firmwareGripe

@JoBlakely Ahh yes! An old favorite. Glad they're still online. :plusone:

@JoBlakely Yeah, I'm mainly looking for more material evidence at this point; the major motives were pretty obvious even by 2006 or so.

@Gizmo @juliepagano

@Harena and I used to eat at Fuddrucker's regularly -- but one day we walked in and saw they had replaced "french fries" with "freedom fries"...

🔥

Immediately turned around and walked out.

Will happily tell any "freedom fries" fan that they were obviously being manipulated and should have known better.

Finding terms with more appropriate emotional loading is perhaps the first thing to tackle; here's what I've been able to come up with over the past couple of days.

• People Apparently Still Listen to Trump's Gold-Dust Promises, Even as He Destroys US & Other Countries, Undermines Global Survival
• Trump Junta Abuses Abductees, Airline Employees, Custodial Officials (via)
• Coup Leaders Continue War on Human RIghts: Marriage Under Attack Yet Again (via)
• Megacorps' Weaponized Weather Likely to Cause Unprecedented Damage in US
• 2/3-Corrupted US Supreme Court Unexpectedly Takes a Reasonable Position in Minor Case

#USPol #massMedia

25 years ago today, I was driving up I-85 from Athens, GA to here (Durham, NC) with @Harena. She was using palm.net to check up on relatives in the NYC area (everyone was fine).

We kept hearing (on the radio? later? not sure) about how people couldn't get through to their friends and relatives because the phone exchanges were jammed, but email was working fine on our Palm VIIx PDAs.

So that was... cool?

#NineEleven

@thomasfuchs After two decades of observation, I've come to the conclusion that they consider lying to be part of how the game* is played.

...and that game is about who can get the most power. "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

*Also, they see politics as a game. Trying to make the world better has absolutely nothing to do with it. The only sin in lying is if it costs you power instead of gaining more. Power is its own virtue because that's how you win.

Well that brought up a bad memory...

#lowQualityPost

#DurhamNC (in the parking-lot island near durham.coop)

@JoBlakely I did come across those, and recognized that a bad argument does not invalidate a conclusion arrived at by other means... but of course many did look away, for understandable reasons.

I've been working on better tools for hashing these things out and getting to the truth, but it's been like trying to lay a brick foundation with one hand tied to a tree or something. -.-

@JoBlakely

This is a subject I avoid talking about, because the field has been flooded with so many varieties of BS that it's hard to avoid sounding like a tinfoil-hat advocate if you say anything that doesn't echo the accepted narratives.

@MaryAustinBooks

@scanlime We've had a cellphone repair place nearby for at least 6 years now -- I've always been impressed by them. They have, like, workbenches and equipment and stuff.

@sargoth I dunno about Jill, but the exploits of Jennifer of the Jungle are pretty well documented, it would appear.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@In_Otter_News/117241778530997601

post describes video content, but does not adequately convey adorbness

are otters really just watercats?

@researchbuzz I never even knew Vimeo was a paid service until now... :D