I’ll start: printers.
I bought an HP in March 2020 when my job went remote and HP bricked it remotely after only 100 pages because I wouldn’t sign up for their subscription program. Ended up trashing a perfectly good printer.
Luckily my library’s close by and I can print there remotely.
Televisions.
I will not have any “smart TV” that has access to the Internet, spewing ads and harvesting data in my house. I currently have two older dumb models and when they ultimately fail, I will switch to projectors. Chromecast and a Raspberry Pi server can handle everything I want, without ads
I hadn’t thought about projectors!
I have a dumb TV and two smart TV’s, which never get connected to the web. One of those smart TVs is a second computer monitor.
I may need to get a projector though. That’s a great idea.
Projectors put out a lot of heat depending on what you’re looking for.
Microsoft products or any suscription that doesn’t have to be a suscription.
Avoid Google as much a possible, may be next phone will be graphene.
No social networks
Using GrapheneOS for a few years now, its great. Banking apps also work. Only thing that doesnt work is NFC payment via google pay.
Company apps.
Every business you deal with has an app these days. Grocery stores, restaurants, etc… Just install and scan to get your discounts and track your points. Yeah… No thanks.
ditto. fuck that app shit.
Running Calyx and don’t have the play store installed so guess I won’t be using your app.
I mean, you bought an HP printer. What did you expect?
deadpigeon.jpg
Cars.
Most any vehicle made after 2006 will have one or more of these three issues:
- Lack of repairability. Not just computerization, but auth to the point where changing your brake pads and rotors can make your vehicle refuse to move until those brakes and rotors are authorized over the Internet by the vehicle manufacturer. And the software to do so costs $1M to buy, needs a $6k/mo subscription, and can only be bought by authorized dealers, locking out independent repair shops.
- Privacy. Almost all vehicles after 2006 and any before that with OnStar records everything the vehicle does and sends that up to the mothership to be repackaged and sold to data brokers. Then your insurance gets a copy and jacks up what you pay because you braked hard and sped slightly over the limit a few times. Modern cars will also record everything that happens inside and around the vehicle, to the point where when you buy the car you have to sign a waiver that states they have permission to record anyone doing anything inside the vehicle, up to and including having sex in the back seat.
- DRM. When you buy a vehicle with all the bells and whistles, but many of those bells and whistles are shut down until you pay $$$/mo to have them turned back on. Sorry, but if the vehicle came with it, I will gleefully crack that software until I can use that feature. I paid for it when I bought the vehicle, so I have every right to use it without paying a cent extra.
Ive got a 2017 car and a 2018 car, one of them is even electric and basically none of what you say is true until ~2020 model year. That’s about the time th subscription model came out for extras on some european cars.
Pretty much nothing that you just said is true. What car can’t you change the brake pads on without going to that brands official repair shop?
As for the data one, how exactly is all this data being transmitted?
The “DRM” one is true to a small extent though, and that’s crap when they do that.
Later model cars with internet connections or telematics antennas are likely sending info about whatever they can, whenever they can, but such things can be disabled easily enough.
I had the same shit with an hp printer. I returned mine though.
I’m really picky about where I buy gas. There ar two places that don’t play ads at the pump and i go there. I worry they’ll change.
There’s a mute button. Of the 8 or 10 soft keys, it’s been right side, second from the bottom for me. No penalty for hitting wrong. Not saying it makes ads justifiable, just an FYI if you don’t have a choice in stations that day and get stuck with ads.
Some stations disable the mute button. Maybe they like replacing screens.
I’ve seen some that have a mute icon printed on the button. guess they got tired of people just smashing the screens instead.
New anything. Analogue or bust, if it wants to talk to the internet and isn’t a game console or computer then it can absolutely go and fuck itself dead.
I’m not looking forward to my next car having everything on a touch screen and few tactile buttons/knobs. Then it will pass my data back to the manufacturer.
Acoustic guitars. Lately, they’ve been making these acoustic guitars with some sort of a box inside that gives it some reverb/delay, to make it sound a little richer. I hate it, it sounds shitty, and it makes the guitar unnaturally heavy.
It’s an acoustic guitar, a pinnacle of woodworking artistry. Technology being involved is morally offensive.
Pretty sure this is not most acoustic guitars.
Jesus. I do a lot of woodworking. I tell people I can make a guitar-shaped object, but I can’t make a guitar. Musical instruments require a ton of specialized knowledge, precision, and care to make something that sounds right. Sounds to me what they’re doing with these boxes is to lower the quality so they’re actually building guitar-shaped objects, and then trying to compensate with some electronic bullshit.
as far as I can tell. everything. its like any time there is a new purchase I have to scrounge around to see if there is a dumb option.
There’s little I buy regularly that would have intrusive tech put in it. I hope they don’t start making SmartBread. Go to make a sandwich but I have to wait for a security update so my sourdough can’t be hacked (except it opens up 3 more security holes that weren’t present before the update and now a Russian hacker is using my bread to make a jellied meat sandwich remotely).
If I see an ad playing at a gas station pump, I get back in my car and keep driving.
They hide. I swear I’m going break one of the screens from getting pissed and pushing every button as hard as I can till it shuts up.
I stopped at a station a few years back, it started blaring an ad at me so I immediately stopped pumping, gave the cameras the finger, and left. left a shitty review.
almost exactly a year later, drive by and it’s convenient time to get gas, sure let’s stop. exact same situation plays out, except when I went to leave a review, I found I had already done that.
I had remembered that there was a reason I didn’t go to that gas station, just not what that reason was, and so I had pulled in anyways because it was on my way.
I absolutely support that. Also FYI all of them should have an unlabeled mute button. I just start pressing buttons until the audio turns off when I have to use one, and it helps with my sanity.
Until you find that station and disabled the mute button.
I’ve only discovered one local station where I can’t mute the ads, so naturally I won’t shop there anymore.
If you spill some petrol because you were distracted by the advert, they have to clean it up.
Microsoft products
Newer cars. They come with cameras pointed at my face!
I haven’t owned a home printer in a good 16 years. For the ultra rare thing I do print, work doesn’t have a problem with personal print jobs.
I often wonder when this comes up, who the fuck is printing stuff at home?
If you are into photography then sure, but wouldn’t you be buying a better printer in that case?
People with school aged kids maybe?
I was a school aged kid once. What do they need printers for? Surely they have even less use now too.
