Bad Idea: GM To Replace Carply, Android Auto With Own Propriety System

This will not go well. GMs can already be a pain to use and figure out, and, it’s not like people think they are reliable, other than pickups

GM is eliminating Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from all vehicles — here’s the real reason why

General Motors is eliminating Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from all future vehicles – and it’s already maddening motorists.

The surprising announcement was made earlier this week by CEO Mary Barra, who claimed the company will completely phase out the popular systems from its entire fleet of electric and gas-powered cars over the next few years.

In their place will be GM’s own built-in interface, powered by Google’s Android Automotive OS, with Barra arguing in an interview with The Verge that it will allow for “a smoother, safer, and more unified user experience.”

GM has already begun rolling out its own system in some of their EVs, but currently continues to offer CarPlay and Android Auto in 34 of 40 models across its brands, per Newsweek.

According to AutoBlog, “GM’s long-term goal is to turn its vehicles into ‘software-defined platforms,’ unlocking revenue from subscriptions and in-car services.”

That doesn’t sound good

“Another really dumb decision by a US automaker (and I own GM products),” one fumed. “NO ONE wants a captive ‘GM’ system for apps and navigation. We know it will suck and they will upcharge it $2,000 on every car.”

“Here comes subscriptions to turn your car on,” another snarked.

“No longer can you get a vehicle without some sort of subscription being shoved down your throat,” a third X user raged. “Remote start is no longer on the fob. Next up, no more Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. If this trend continues, both apps will be discontinued completely.”

There are many manufacturers which make you pay for certain features that were already on the car, like seat heaters and remote start. You must subscribe, and, even use your phone with an app. Tell you what, if I had to pay to remote start my car, and use my phone instead of the key fob, I just wouldn’t. Heck, might look at a different manufacturer. I can subscribe to an app for $10 a month, but, I don’t. Not even having Alexa on the car is worth it (Samsung watches do not have the ability like my old Fitbit, have to pull out phone, usually turning on TV before I get home so can load up ESPN and watch my hockey game quickly).

Mercedes-Benz recently introduced its own operating system in its new CLA model, while Audi also has its own interface.

According to the Daily Mail, Ford, Toyota, and Volvo are also “developing their own [independent] software ecosystems.”

Not sure why. Carplay and AA work. And Apple customers are rabid about wanting to use Apple stuff. I suspect it’s all about finding a way to start hitting customers with “micro-transactions” and subscriptions.

Read: Bad Idea: GM To Replace Carply, Android Auto With Own Propriety System »

If All You See…

…is a cloudless sky from too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Cold Fury, with a post on being over the target.

Read: If All You See… »

Newsweek Wonders If Japan Can Go Hardcore On Booting Out Immigrants

What they can do is be way more judicious on who they allow into Japan, from visitors to workers

Can Japan’s New Leader Afford to Go Hard on Immigration?

Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has earned a reputation as a hardliner on immigration, an image that helped propel her to power amid rising nationalist sentiment and debate over Japan’s identity amid demographic decline.

Hailing from the conservative wing of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Takaichi won last month’s runoff election to become Japan’s 104th and first female prime minister. Her rise came amid an uptick in anti-foreigner sentiment, with some observers saying she tapped into that mood to secure the LDP leadership and the top political post in the country.

Have you noticed that the feminists aren’t celebrating her election, because she is engaged in Wrongthink?

Japan, one of the world’s most homogeneous nations, faces deepening labor shortages as its birth rate plummets and its population ages.

The number of foreign residents has risen sharply in recent years, reaching a record 3 percent of the population in 2024, as Tokyo cautiously loosened visa rules for workers in key industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, and caregiving. At the same time, the country has seen unprecedented levels of tourism—up 48 percent in 2024 from the year before, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.

But the post-pandemic influx has not been universally welcomed. Reports of unruly visitor behavior have sparked public complaints and a rise in anti-foreigner sentiment that right-wing politicians have been quick to capitalize on.

Watching social media, the top two issues are Japan letting in lots of Islamists, who do their hardcore Islamist stuff, like taking over streets to pray and declaring that Islam will take over Japan, and visitors who do their horribly annoying narcissistic “Influencer/creator” garbage, annoying Japanese. Doing stupid stunts on subways, messing with culture, etc. Seriously, these people do not seem to be visiting Japan to see the sites and enjoy the culture. And you get things like

Takaichi has pledged a crackdown on illegal immigration and visa overstays, restrictions on foreign purchases of land, particularly by Chinese nationals, and tighter border controls. She has appointed Kimi Onoda, known for her tough stance on immigration, as minister in charge of a “society of well-ordered and harmonious coexistence with foreign nationals.”

She has also repeated unsubstantiated claims about rising crime among foreigners, though official statistics show such offenses have been declining for over a decade. Last month, she voiced concern about tourist misconduct, alleging that foreign visitors had kicked sacred deer in Nara Park, one of Japan’s most famous cultural sites.

The people voted for her, so, obviously, they want this

Whether or not Takaichi’s administration is as tough on immigration issues as her campaign rhetoric suggests, some observers warn that failing to actively invest in and integrate foreign nationals into society will have lasting harm on Asia’s second-largest economy.

“Observers”. The same people who push unfettered immigration from areas incompatible with the 1st World, who refuse to assimilate and demand countries assimilate to their lives.

Read: Newsweek Wonders If Japan Can Go Hardcore On Booting Out Immigrants »

Oregon Gov Signs Order Ramping Up Climate (scam) Protections Or Something

Shot

Kotek signs executive order to ramp up climate change protections in Oregon

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek signed an executive order on Thursday, aiming to speed up climate protections for state land and water.

Executive Order 25-26 directs certain state agencies to increase the pace of climate resilient strategies in existing state programs.

“Oregon’s forests, grasslands, farms, and wetlands deliver critical benefits statewide and can sequester more carbon,” Kotek said in a statement. “We will unlock the incredible promise and power of our natural and working lands by implementing proactive policies that protect priority lands and waters and help landowners manage their landscapes to withstand and recover from the impacts of climate change.”

The executive order features several provisions including a “10 by 10” directive that sets a goal for state agencies to protect or restore 10% of Oregon’s land and waters within 10 years compared to 2025’s baseline conditions.

Chaser

Oregon to miss its 2035 greenhouse gas reduction benchmark by 2 years, report says

Oregon will miss its 2035 greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal by two years, due to a boom in data centers and the end of federal vehicle emissions standards, according to an analysis completed this month. But state officials pushing to drastically cut carbon emissions say it’s not too late to get back on track. (snip)

The Oregon Climate Action Commission, which released the report, is seeking public input until 5 p.m. Oct. 31. The commission is a 35-member advisory group, with 13 of its members appointed by the governor.

So, citizens in the People’s Republik Of Oregon won’t buy EVs without massive government subsidies? Or, at least, super gas efficient hybrids? They won’t take one for the team and practice what they preach? Weird. How about the state government? My public input would be that the state stop using fossil fuels completely, which could cause an issue for the Elected’s like Kotek who wouldn’t be able to hobnob around in a big fossil fueled SUV. Maybe the state could close all the airports and shipping ports? Anything helps, right?

Read: Oregon Gov Signs Order Ramping Up Climate (scam) Protections Or Something »

Weird: Obamacare Rates Set To Rise 30% On Average

If memory serves, the entire points of Ocare was to make sure those who didn’t have health insurance could get affordable health insurance (or the government would fine their asses) and “bend the curve down”, right? Remember this?

“We agree on reforms that will finally reduce the costs of health care,” Obama said. “Families will save on their premiums; businesses that will see their costs rise if we do nothing will save money now and in the future. This plan will strengthen Medicare and extend the life of that program. And because it gets rid of the waste and inefficiencies in our health care system, this will be the largest deficit reduction plan in over a decade.

“Now, I just want to repeat this because there’s so much misinformation about the cost issue here. You talk to every health care economist out there and they will tell you that whatever ideas are — whatever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce costs for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill.”

Yeah, uh huh, we told you this would happen

Average Obamacare premiums are set to rise 30 percent, documents show

Premiums for the most popular types of plans sold on the federal health insurance marketplace Healthcare.gov will spike on average by 30 percent next year, according to final rates approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and shown in documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

The price increases — affecting up to 17 million Americans who buy coverage on the federal marketplace — are by far the largest annual premium increases in recent years. The higher premiums, along with the likely expiration of pandemic-era subsidies, mean millions of people will see their health insurance payments double or even triple in 2026.

The premium spikes arrive during a protracted and bitter congressional battle over health insurance costs that prompted a government shutdown since Oct. 1. Democrats have urged an extension of enhanced subsidies for plans sold through the Affordable Care Act to soften the blow of rising insurance costs, while Republicans have said the additional assistance was never meant to be permanent.

Got that? Without those subsidies which hid the price increases the curve is bending way up. Isn’t that the complete opposite of what Obamacare was supposed to do? We were there during the debates, opinions, etc., and all the Democrats and their media mouth pieces said health insurance would bend the curve down

(American Action Forum) In 2009, the year prior to passage of the law, the net cost of health insurance was at a relative low point with a price tag of $138 billion, it has risen to $210 billion in 2015. The annual percent growth in the net cost of health insurance has also dramatically increased since 2009. Percent growth in the years after the individual markets were implemented were 12.4 percent in 2014 and 7.6 percent in 2015. Costs and growth in future years will not buck this trend. Insurance companies in the individual and employer markets are raising premiums substantially to cover costs. The ACA will not be able to live up to the President’s promise.

Those subsidies hid the constant premium increases the past few years, and now they are coming all at once. Let’s also not forget that the deductibles were high from the get go, making a lot of plans worthless because people couldn’t afford to pay the deductibles and out of pocket costs, and have only gotten worse.

Read: Weird: Obamacare Rates Set To Rise 30% On Average »

HotTake: Trump Wants Greenland Because He Knows Climate Doom Is Real

I remember a story way back during the Bush43 admin, where someone with Bush Derangement Syndrome woke up, grabbed a cigarette and non-alcoholic beer, and sat around thinking of what type of Hate Bush story she should write. That’s what this looks like, a climate cultist with TDS looking to RageWrite

Trump knows climate change is real — that’s why he wants to mine Greenland

Thawing permafrost in Greenland creates access to critical minerals that were previously difficult to extract or were otherwise inaccessible. Within the last month, rumblings about a major U.K. mining deal in Greenland were matched with chatter about an impending agreement between the U.S. government and Critical Minerals Corp., causing shares of that company to surge.

The latter partnership would provide the U.S. with a stake in a valuable, heavy rare-earth elements mining operation in Southern Greenland. These elements are essential in the energy transition including for clean energy battery storage and components for electric vehicles. They are also necessary for defense applications ranging from unmanned aerial systems to submarines. (snip)

“Greenland is often considered ‘ground zero’ for the climate crisis because even small shifts in temperature can have outsize impacts across the entire Arctic region,” writes the auditor of an independent technical assessment on Critical Minerals Corp.’s Tanbreez Rare Earth Project. “Scientists have estimated that if the Greenland ice sheet were to melt completely, it could raise global sea levels by more than seven metres. This will be a matter for infrastructure planning in the future as it is proposed to position the plant at the edge of the Fjord.” (snip)

When President Trump stated at the United Nations General Assembly that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” what he really meant is that he intends to propel fossil fuel extraction and use in the U.S. to benefit the industries that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get him and the 119th Congress elected. But he will also attempt to gain a stronger toehold in a region that has been destabilized because of climate change, even capitalizing on that destabilization. National security is at risk, and there is money to be made.

Not only does Trump know climate change is real, he’s banking on it.

The lengths the cultists will go to prop up their cult and hate on Trump is astounding.

Read: HotTake: Trump Wants Greenland Because He Knows Climate Doom Is Real »

If All You See…

…is wine which will soon be grown in Finland due to Extreme Warming, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Last Refuge, with a post on Trump terminating trade negotiations with Canada.

Read: If All You See… »

Pro-Hamas Demonstrators Force Restaurant To Close All Stores In D.C.

Remember, the protesters say they aren’t Jew haters, they just go after everything Jew

Israeli restaurant chain in DC hit by Gaza protests permanently closes

Cancel Culture Friendly FireShouk, a plant-based kosher street-food chain in Washington, D.C., permanently shut down its final locations this month in part due to protests and boycotts from anti-Israel activists.

Once featured by the Food Network and The Washington Post for its “Shouk Burger,” the chain had five stores in the region. The closures come after two years of protests and boycotts over the war in Gaza crippled the business.

Local activist group DC for Palestine led a boycott campaign that claimed the restaurant’s falafel and other menu items “appropriated” Palestinian cuisine and that the owners were “complicit in Israeli apartheid.”

Co-owner Dennis Friedman, a Jewish American who opened the first Shouk location over a decade ago with Israeli co-owner Ran Nussbacher, rejected those accusations. He said the mission of Shouk was to bring people together.

“I don’t agree with that because the intention of Shouk was pure, and good,” Friedman told Fox News Digital. “When my business partner came to me, it wasn’t ‘let’s make Israeli food.’ He wanted to make plant-based food that reminded him of his childhood and home. That was the core of where we started to build the recipes. For the most part, Shouk has been promoted as Mediterranean, plant-based, and Middle Eastern. Very rarely have we claimed anything else. That’s why Shouk is written in both Arabic and Hebrew in all the stores — because we are a place to bring everyone together.”

He called Shouk “a gathering place for people of all races, colors, and creeds to come together to enjoy food,” that was good for customers and the planet.

I’m suspecting that the owners of Shouk are good little Democrat voters, who just learned that Democrats and the Islamists Democrats brought in to the US hate them. Shouk doesn’t have a website I could find, but, their twitter feed has all sorts of left win stuff, like hating the Supreme Court decision on abortion.

While he said business was booming before Oct. 7, the protests quickly started tanking their income.

Friedman said they reached out to local business groups and representatives and hired security outside their stores, calling the experience of being harassed by protesters over the past two years “scary and unnerving.”

“We had everything from little children coming into the store during a busy lunch screaming ‘Free Palestine’ while their parents videoed for social media,” he said. He said the protests were part of a “very coordinated” and successful “effort by the BDS to hurt Shouk.”

These are your people. You vote with them. And their abject hatred of all Israel and Jews. I feel for the owners, and all the employees, but, if you support the people who hate you don’t be surprised when they turn on you

They’ve forgotten.

Read: Pro-Hamas Demonstrators Force Restaurant To Close All Stores In D.C. »

Has ‘Climate Change’ Brought Mosquitos To Iceland?

No.

End of story. Oh, right. Post

Has climate change brought mosquitoes to Iceland?

Mosquitoes were detected in Iceland for the first time this month, resulting in the country losing its status as one of the only places in the world without them. The findings were confirmed by the country’s national science institute on Monday.

This follows record-breaking heat this past summer, which has sped up the glacial melting in the country.

On October 16, insect enthusiast Bjorn Hjaltason posted on a Facebook group Skordýr og Nytjadýr Á Íslandi (Insects in Iceland) that he had spotted mosquitoes in Kidafell, Kjos at dusk that day.

He said he had caught some using a red wine ribbon, a trap using sweetened wine as bait to attract insects. Kjos is a glacial valley around 52km (32 miles) northeast of the Icelandic capital Reykjavik.

Hjaltason sent the mosquitoes to the Natural Science Institute of Iceland, where entomologist Matthias Alfredsson confirmed they were indeed mosquitoes.

Not to go conspiracy theory, but, how do we know that the mosquitos weren’t brought into Iceland by Warmists in order to scaremonger in cult?

Alfredsson identified the mosquitoes as belonging to the Culiseta annulata species. This cold-resistant species is native to the Palearctic, which refers to Europe, North Africa and most of Asia north of the Himalayas. The Cuilseta annulata are not known to carry disease, but are generally considered a nuisance.

Did ‘climate change’ magically transport the mosquitos to Iceland?

Before mosquitoes were spotted this month, the closest they had come to Iceland was in the 1980s, when biologist Gisli Mar Gislason spotted one inside his aeroplane that had arrived at Keflavík International Airport from Greenland. The mosquito is preserved at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History.

Huh

In a statement, the Natural Science Institute said it is unclear how these particular mosquitoes came to be in Iceland. However, it added: “It is likely that it was transported by freight. It is uncertain whether it has settled here permanently, but everything indicates that it can survive in Icelandic conditions.”

So, like so many other “invasive” species, global transportation brought them to Iceland (or, cultists did it). North Carolina has plenty of these. So do most, if not all countries.

A growing number of new insect species are being observed in Iceland due to a warming climate and increased transportation, the institute said.

They do not magically appear because of a 1.7F increase in global temperatures since 1850. Let me know when they start reproducing in the wild.

Read: Has ‘Climate Change’ Brought Mosquitos To Iceland? »

Bay Area Residents Melt Down Over Coming Immigration Enforcement

Me, I think Trump should ship more illegals to Sanctuary City San Francisco, let them deal with all that comes with it

Bay Area Protesters Try to Block Base Entrance Before Immigration Operation

More than 200 protesters demonstrated and tried to block the entrance to Coast Guard Island in Alameda, Calif., on Thursday morning.

Federal officials said on Wednesday that the base was being used as an operations center for federal immigration raids that were expected to start later this week in the San Francisco Bay Area.

But President Trump announced on Thursday morning that federal agents would not be deployed to San Francisco after tech leaders convinced him that Mayor Daniel Lurie, a Democrat, was making progress on public safety.

It was unclear whether federal agents still intended to conduct operations elsewhere in the Bay Area.

Maybe Trump could do the operation in California’s capital city?

As the Alameda protest grew on Thursday morning, the playful spirit that has animated recent anti-ICE protests in Portland, Ore., was also on display. While protesters circled the intersection singing peace songs, a woman in a clown outfit made balloon animals, a folk singer strummed a guitar and an artist set up an easel to paint the gathering.

Huh

Protesters violently clash with federal agents, riot police as immigration officers arrive in Bay Area

At least one person was arrested, another was taken to the hospital and a pastor was shot in the face with a less-lethal munition in a violent clash with federal agents and about 100 California Highway Patrol riot police in Alameda today.

Guess the NY Times missed that part. Meanwhile

ICE arrests and deportations rising sharply in North Carolina, with more expected

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, arrests of people accused of being in the country illegally have ramped up in North Carolina.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested about three times the number of people in the first half of this year in Mecklenburg County compared to the same time last year.

That’s a steeper increase than the rest of the state, where data shows at least 2.6 times the number of arrests compared to last year.

Excellent!

Read: Bay Area Residents Melt Down Over Coming Immigration Enforcement »

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