One of the less-considered side effects of car features moving from hardware to software is that important features and abilities of a car can now be removed without any actual contact with a given car. Where once de-contenting involved at least a screwdriver (or, if you were in a hurry, a hammer), now thousands of dollars of options can vanish with the click of a mouse somewhere. And that’s exactly what happened to one Tesla owner, and, it seems many others.
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The car was sold at auction as a result of a California Lemon Law buyback, as the car suffered from a well-known issue where the center-stack screen developed a noticeable yellow border.
When the dealer bought the car at auction from Tesla on November 15, it was optioned with both Enhanced Autopilot and Tesla’s confusingly-named Full Self Driving Capability; together, these options totaled $8,000.
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It’s also worth noting that those repairs on the disclosure were not actually made, which is why Alec took his car to a service center in January.
Let’s recap a little bit at this point: A Model S with Enhanced Autopilot (which includes the Summon feature) and FSD “capability” is sold at auction, a dealer buys it, after the sale to the dealer Tesla checks in on the car and decides that it shouldn’t have Autopilot or FSD “capability,” dealer sells car to customer based on the specifications they were aware the car had (and were shown on the window sticker, and confirmed via a screenshot from the car’s display showing the options), and later, when the customer upgrades the car’s software, Autopilot and FSD disappear.
Residents donning surgical face masks while venturing outside their homes or meeting strangers have found themselves in an unfamiliar conundrum. With their faces half-covered, some are unable to unlock their phones or use mobile payments with their faces.
People wearing protective masks to help stop the spread of a deadly virus, which began in Wuhan, at the Beijing railway station on January 27. (Picture: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP)
“Been wearing a mask everyday recently and I just want to throw away this phone with face unlock,” said one frustrated user who posted on Weibo using an iPhone.
“Under the current circumstances, for the past two days, I’ve been basically wearing a mask all the time except while sleeping. In times like this, the iPhone’s Face ID doesn’t really work that well,” another user wrote, adding that she hopes Apple will bring back fingerprint unlock.
It’s more than just handset troubles, though. In China, facial recognition is being deployed from train stations and airports to stores and hotels. Some people say they now have trouble entering gated communities protected by facial recognition systems.
“Just came in through the community gate. I was standing under the facial recognition [camera] but it didn’t recognize me,” one user said. “Around two minutes later, I realized I was wearing a mask.”
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For some people, though, facial recognition has become such an integral part of life that older technology now seems annoyingly inconvenient.
“I’ve gotten used to WeChat Pay’s facial recognition,” said one user. “I’ve been wearing masks these days. Not really used to changing to passcode payment.”
“Fingerprint payment is still better,” another wrote. “This facial recognition, I don’t even dare pull down my mask. And passcode comes so slow. All I want is to pay and quickly run.”
