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.
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 don’t house any apps from any companies, restaurants, shops… The people who have shit like McDonalds, Zara, whatever else installed on their phone by the dozens actually seem crazy to me. And not even for privacy reasons (although those are a part of it). Those people also seem to be always complaining about running out of space on their phone (and %50 of the time what they are running out on is actually their iCloud/Google Drive from auto backups but they dont know the difference…)… why dont you try deleting the 50 different fast food apps on your phone? What’s that? It gives you a coupon for a %20 discount or a 6 pack of nuggies/small fries every 2 months? Well then, everything is fine and dandy. Time to keep it in your phone 24/7.
I also never give my phone number out to stores when they ask. Its crazy how normalized it is for stores to ask you for name, address, phone number etc. to make an “account” for you without even explicitly saying that they are making an account for you at checkout. And people do it!!! It enrages me. I just want to give you my money in exchange for goods and services, no unnecessary fluff on top, HOW HARD CAN IT BE???
I hear you on the phone number thing. That’s another stupid thing I don’t really do. I have a separate VoIP number that I use for any business I need to deal with. No way are they getting my real number.
And speaking of friends and their apps and my phone number, I rarely give anybody my phone number too. I don’t need it being harvested by the load of apps they have installed. You’re only as strong as our weakest link, and most people don’t give this stuff any thought.
When I bought my current house, the previous elderly owner’s sons had outfitted it with Ring doorbell and security/monitoring including Alexa in a few rooms…even had a piece of paper stapled to the ceiling above his bed that said “ALEXA EMERGENCY”. It was Probably good idea to keep an eye on their dying parent.
The day I closed on it…I ripped out the panels, unplugged anything Alexa, and disconnected the ring doorbell. The only things ring-related still here are a motion sensor and 1 or 2 door sensors…but all the wiring has been disconnected.
Fuck Ring.
I ended up putting in Eufy with a Home Base, zero subscription.
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
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.
I’ve read that a lot of stuff is outright blocked graphene based phones
I haven’t found anything apart from Google Pay’s NFC payment that doesnt work (Google Pay for online payment does work).
My list of working apps includes banking apps for two different banks, national government communication app, audi app, two apps for charging electric vehicles, two apps for public transport tickets, …
You’ve read that the Volkswagen app did this , you’ve conflated it to “a lot of stuff” and you probably don’t own a Volkswagen FWIW
No social networks
You’re on one right now.
Pretty much anything that doesn’t run on foss. Game consoles in particular. When they all started requiring a subscription for basic online functionality, I moved all my gaming to PC and now also those retro bootleg handhelds. Love my Retroid Pocket 5.
Newer cars. They come with cameras pointed at my face!
If I see an ad playing at a gas station pump, I get back in my car and keep driving.
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.
If you spill some petrol because you were distracted by the advert, they have to clean it up.
I fantasize about keeping a power drill in my car and when the ad starts playing I’d just drill straight into the speaker and waggle the drill bit around until the noise stops.
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 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.
I’ve only discovered one local station where I can’t mute the ads, so naturally I won’t shop there anymore.
Most of the gas stations removed the mute functionality where I am when moved to touch screen only. I now get most of my gas at a place that is consistently more expensive, but has no ads. I am just trying to drive less and less and avoid the entire process.
Until you find that station and disabled the mute button.
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.
Several years ago, I bought a color laser printer/scanner. It cost about twice what an inkjet one costs. It has now lasted twice as long as the average inkjet, and no sign of that changing. And it doesn’t have any of the subscription bullshit. Money well spent.
My old Brother color laser is still going strong!
I have one I bought in 2007. It’s about to get it’s second toner cartridge. No sign of dying.
Mine has a few plastic bits fail but I was able to 3D print replacements
Print out the diagnostic page, you might be shocked at the silly things it keeps track of, fuser unit, drum unit, etc, change at 10000 pages!
Take good care of it and it might outlive you.
One of the printers I was responsible for at a print shop was from the early 90s was working fine still in the 2020s when I left.
almost everything.
They are sneaking creepnology into all kinds of things it has no business being.
I’d go back to a Bakelite phone on a fucking land line if I could. As it stands I mostly try to buy older shit, cause not only is it typically better made, its just simple and basic with no extra pointless points of failure.
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.
I’ve seen some that have a mute icon printed on the button. guess they got tired of people just smashing the screens instead.
Some stations disable the mute button. Maybe they like replacing screens.
It always warms my heart to see a smashed screen or ballpoint pen jammed into the speaker on those ad-playing pumps
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.
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.
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.
Eh, if you have decent woodworking experience and a book on guitar making you can make something passable. There’s a reason master luthiers are a thing but only a small fraction of instruments are intended for professional performance.
Pretty sure this is not most acoustic guitars.
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/subscriptions. 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.
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?
Hyundai. In terms of the major/historical brands, it has started with Hyundai, and other brands are also getting in on the act.
Plus, Tesla has been doing it for years, now. A Tesla will go into “limp home mode” with almost any kind of unauthorized repair you do to it.
As for the data one, how exactly is all this data being transmitted?
Since OnStar was first released, in the late 80s, it has gone over cellular modems. It’s how anyone with OnStar in their vehicle could have it remotely disabled from the very first OnStar vehicle onward. And pretty much every vehicle manufactured after 2006 has a cell phone SIM or eSIM installed so as to provide real-time data stream to the mothership, and by 2014 this even included consumer access to the Internet via 4G LTE services.
Ignorance is how you’ve gotten egg on your face. You might want to do some fundamental research next time.
They exagurate, but I expect all these features come to pass eventually. Between the EUs driver monitoring mandate and BMWs subscription to use your heated seat coils. Its only a matter of time before the new bug is actually a bug.
2006 is the era when cars became complicated enough you needed more than basic wiring to repair them, for a car guy, that around where Ive seen them talk of the latest they would buy.
I would also say 2017 is also around a good time for non-car people who are good with tech. This is around the time when the cars computer would manage the radio, inputs and a backup camera. If you wanted GPS on the screen, your phone would have to handle it, the car would have no sim card.
Anything made after the plague, they are not far off for the level of tech and privacy concerns, just not all of these fratures are in a vehicle fresh from the dealers lot yet.
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.
Which manufacturers offer free Internet connections in their cars?
Its free for them when its sending your info to them.
Microsoft products
