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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Conveniently I work in this space, but note the following is primarily my own personal opinion.

    Primarily there’s a few reasons I prefer Android Auto over native Android on the car:

    1. Ever had a phone that’s a few years old slow down in you? Now imagine you buy a car for $60k, and three years down the line the (already sluggish to begin with) Android interface is bogged down by updates and is barely usable. Imagine Spotify drops support for that version of Android Automotive. Android Auto puts all the infotainment into something the customer controls, and something external to the car so you are not dependent upon the OEM to do their own due diligence to ensure functionality and compatibility. If my phone slows down from age/wear/increased software demands, I go buy a new $400 phone. If my car’s infotainment slows down I…buy a new car? (Looking at you GM)

    2. Like I said it moves the infotainment to something in the customer’s (and Google/Apple’s) hand. OEMs do not want this. Auto makers want you locked into their proprietary Android skins for two reasons. First, making it more difficult to leave their specific company’s ecosystem. They (will) build in their own apps that you’ll start putting all your settings and private info on. Things like remembering a driver’s preferred seating and mirror arrangement and auto-adjusting, so when your spouse buys a car you go “Oh well if we both have brand X, it’ll be easier to drive each other’s cars.” Etc. Second, they want all of your data. Legitimately the industry is on fire right now figuring out how much consumer data we can scrape and use/sell with these systems. The Android Automotive stack in a car is 300% sending data back to the OEM of literally anything they are legally allowed to collect. Probably more, too. Plug in Android Auto from my phone and yeah they’re still spying on me, but they don’t have my Spotify login info or my specific apps used, they just have what the vehicle can directly measure (still a terrifying amount).

    In your specific case with a third party head unit…go ham and use the stock interface if you want. Personally I’d still use Android Auto, to top off my phone and to access my local music library (I don’t stream music), but a third party has a lot less interest in spying on you or locking you in the same way an OEM does.

    Also out of curiosity, what head unit did you get? I’ve got a 2012 Cruze I’ve considered installing one of those on but I can almost never find anything that seems actually trustworthy.






  • I mean, I don’t like my car updating but I’d rather things get fixed than not. Software recalls are a huge headache in the auto industry, and being able to just download an update that fixes something is way easier than going to a dealership and having them use very specific tools and software to update the car/modules.

    It’s also used for anti-theft features for a lot of newer cars, if your car is stolen it can be remotely disabled entirely. That’s really what’s more scary in my opinion.




  • It was a bug in that version of the distro IIRC, trying to install Steam would instead try to install the SteamOS desktop environment (or something along those lines). It has since been fixed to actually install the Steam client.

    Obviously it was a bit silly he typed “Yes, do as I say” after seeing the message, but he was also literally following exactly what all the online guides said to do (other than the “Yes do as I say” part). Luckily it’s fixed now but I do think it was a really good demonstration of what the video wanted to see: “What might the average non-techie gamer face using Linux?”





  • I found what really helps Jellyfin on my Chromecast is setting the player manually. There’s a setting to make it ask which player to use when starting a show and if one doesn’t work, 99% of the time the other one works fine.

    Sometimes switching players doesn’t fix subtitles for me, in those situations I usually have to toggle subs a few times or restart the stream and they actually work.

    In my opinion it’s a minor enough inconvenience given Jellyfin is 100% free and open source, whereas Plex is tracking you and charging you. But of course maybe your media is in some more difficult format than mine.