What is freedom?
TLDR
- George Hotz argues real freedom is the ability of ordinary people to act on the physical world around them, not political participation.
Key Takeaways
- Hotz contrasts a 1960s car repair (cut fuel line, duct tape, done) against a 2026 repair spanning 8+ weeks, OBD-II scanners, ECU replacements, CAN encryption, rental dongles, and a Fujitsu-signed firmware push.
- The 2026 car failure was caused by a Gateway Module firmware bug; no individual in the US could fix it – the fix required Toyota USA, Toyota Japan, Denso, and a Fujitsu signature.
- Hotz dismisses political dissent and protest as paths to freedom: BLM, Occupy Wall Street, and DOGE produced no measurable structural change.
- “Right to repair” laws exist but are undermined in practice by proprietary dongles, cloud key servers, and multi-vendor signing chains.
Why It Matters
- As software and proprietary firmware mediate more physical systems, the ability to diagnose, repair, or modify those systems shifts from owner to a chain of vendors.
- Builders shipping products that add invisible cloud dependencies to previously mechanical or local systems are, on this argument, directly reducing user autonomy.
- The car example is a concrete test: if ordinary maintenance now requires AT&T hotspot fees, eBay ECUs, rental hardware, and overseas firmware signatures, the baseline of practical freedom has measurably shrunk.
the singularity is nearer · 2026-04-19 · Read the original
