Ashelyn

Mine shows ads but doesn't play audio. Plus the ads are just for like their Citi credit card, relatively unobtrusive.

Tangentially, I recently came to the unfortunate conclusion that it's just not worth my time to get gas at Costco if there's a line, especially if I'm out and about on a lunch break. The gas is good and it's much cheaper, but if it's like 6 cars back and a 15-20 minute wait, I actually save money by filling up elsewhere and just getting back to work sooner.

Key word is access. Not everything on your phone is available to the vehicle, but if, for instance, you allow your car to access your contacts, it downloads all of them with all the metadata which the company can then sell. Or internally run through algorithms to profile you and everyone who uses your vehicle. If you use Android Auto or CarPlay, or just connect to the entertainment systems, they'll skim whatever metadata they can and phone it home. Even worse if you use a car's official app, it will use your own phone as the transmission point.

No, it doesn't immediately transmit an entire backup of your phone over a personal Bluetooth connection, but I was very precise in how I worded my sentence.

The cars themselves have connectivity that can be transmitted over cellular networks (same as/similar to whatever OnStar uses). Plus if you ever connect your phone via Bluetooth to listen to music or plug it directly into the car with a cable that can transfer data, standard protocol on a lot of cars is to just download everything off the phone that it can access.

Just because the US has more space, that doesn't mean it has to be filled with unsustainably sparse development.

And you're correct—you're not biking across your state, but the average resident of Amsterdam isn't bicycling across the entire Netherlands, just to all of the amenities which are in reasonable walking/biking distance with the infrastructure to safely facilitate it.