You will own nothing, and be happy about it. Welcome to capitalism.
Yarrr!
…any service which requires a mobile phone, really: i like to remain unencumbered and only carry my phone if i intend to use it…
Aren’t the blue checks part of a subscription model?
My most boomer complaint is when people don’t know what I mean when I say “let’s meet at the eastern entrance of the building”.
Especially when you live in a roughly compass oriented grid city, this is unacceptable.
Kids these days
(I’m not a boomer)
Especially when you live in a roughly compass oriented grid city
I would imagine most of us Europeans would have difficulties with that. “compass oriented grid city” hasn’t really been a thing here since Roman times.
Feel the love of Free Open Source Software.
Deadass. I’m so done with subscription services. They’re so annoying.
For real for real
No cap
finna rizz up some FOSS contributors
Not everything needs a goddamn app.
Also, no I’m not gonna scan the QR code to look at the menu. Luckily, I’ve never had a resturant decline a request for a physical menu.
QR codes are great. Make a website that pays money to your bank account when people enter their credit card details and leave the QR code on top of other QR codes like the ones to pay for parking.
Its a crazy simple scam. Sure you might not fall for it but someone will.
Oh wow I just replied that QR codes for stuff like menus is nice, but for paying ? That is a terrible idea lol. Never seen one in the wild though.
In the UK a lot of them take you to a site that you order the food from and that includes payment. Replacing it with your own QR code is very easy.
That is a terrible scam, you will be caught in days when people go to court because they were towed when they paid on that site, and banks might well track you down out of spite.
Also, web pages that keep trying to force you to use the app if you access them on a smartphone, but then the app only has half the functionality of the web page
Half the functionality that you see. Behind the scenes, it’s working like crazy tracking everything you do.
And the website runs like dogshit on a mobile for no discernible reason
Obviously you should be scanning the QR codes with your laptop, duh. /s
the app only has half the functionality of the web page
… and all the ads, that I can’t block outside the browser
PiHole
Can’t really run one outside of your home network.it also requires people to set up a bit of hardware and change the DNS records in their routers, not a everyone is up for that. Especially those who just use whatever their ISP gives them.
If you have a VPN, it’s trivial to point it at your pihole to get the benefits of both on the go, I agree it’s not for everyone but you really dislike ads and tracking, there’s little better out there to protect you and the barrier to entry is pretty low, though not zero.
that’s beyond my IT skills, but AdGuard fortunately works for most apps
With unbound
The app is usually just a PWA with extra side code to mine your phone.
I agree about the apps thing but QR code menus are fine imo. Beats having to decipher a sometimes outdated, damaged, dirty physical menu with a terrible print.
QR codes are a huge problem in contexts like this, because they are easy to overwrite and impossible for a human to verify the legitimacy of.
This means anyone with a sticker printer could slap a malicious QR code over the genuine one, and you won’t know until you’ve already scanned it. This could easily take you to a clone of the restaurant’s website for example, that instead steals your passwords or bank details.
Why is a paper menu the hill you choose?
It’s just easier and simpler. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Besides, I don’t want to dig my phone, open it, and have to turn off a 1900 ‘legitimate interest’ switches or get told to download an app and let them install a camera in my ass.
Certainly not a Boomer complain.
The most boomer thing is getting suckered into subscription services. This is like an upside down meme. I got no strings on me. And I’m a real boy. * Pinocchio
No subscriptions, thank you. I straight away turn down even free trial periods even if they are offered as a compensation for a CS ticket.
And when Strava automatically set a bunch of users to Premium for a while, hence showing a “paid user” icon for those users (nice marketing trick though), I removed my account.
No.Subsciptions.
“Of course you can use our software with a one time purchase!”
“We’ve been adding new features! To access our new features just subscribe to our premium subscription!”
“You’re still a premium member, and you have full access to our premium plan, but some of our options have changed, and to make the most of what we can offer you can subscribe to our premium gold+ plan! Try out a free 30 day trial!”
“Put your young in the payment grinder and your life and survival will not be put on the countdown timer! You need us to live, we need you to understand.”
The latest season of Black Mirror had an Episode just like this.
The beginning of the episode: “Rashida Jones AND Chris O’Dowd?! Two of my favorite comedy people! This seems like it might be a fun episode.”
The end of the episode: “Should I bother cleaning my gun before I put it in my mouth?”
deleted by creator
Fighting Oligopoly is not a “boomer complaint” they want you to say that because it legitimizes their hostile tactics and takeover.
They say fight the oligarchy because they want to maintain the oppressive capitalist system that got us in this position to begin with. Capitalism in crisis produces fascism. We go through these cycles and it’s always the liberals that paved the way. Remember, they tell you what you want to hear and be careful what you wish for. I think they call it pacification. They are the masters at the sofist Uno card. Unfortunately, the likes of Bernie and AOC are really just sheep dogs.
And we all know a Boomer would complain for the oligopoly.
Falling into the boomer and whole generational strife fallacy is basically falling for oligarchic propaganda. Intergenerational strife makes people forget that the actual enemy is the oligarchy.
The only Boomers I talk these days are old hippies and they would disagree.
Don’t generalize old people. Its irritating and aggravates our sciatica.
I’m a Xoomer and my knees just clicked.
Use Open Source Alternatives. You don’t even need to install Linux if you prefer a different operating system, just use the OS programs like Libre Office, Krita, or Gimp.
Edit: AND THEN DONATE TO THE SOFTWARE THAT YOU USE SO THEY CAN CONTINUE THE WORK.
VLC is open source and I am always using that while watching unlicensed content.
This^
If a software is not important, why would I pay for it?
If a software is important, maybe I could pay for it.
If a software is REALLY IMPORTANT, then I have no choice but to keep using it, at which point I can’t possibly subject myself to the long term risk associated with a licensed piece of software. A free software is the only viable option.
Our country runs off the buying and selling of nonsense. If we truly want to make America great again, we’ve got to get back to work, doing things that make fucking sense, not that revolve around the billionaires’ cock. These rich idiots have cornered the market that anything that actually makes sense never makes it to the surface. All the ideas that make it to our plate are nothing but coke-induced delusional garbage from out of touch clowns. They always say it can never be done. But if you look back in the day like I say the Cold War era, we did make it to the moon, but now we can’t even tie our shoes. We’re running on fumes the billionaire leaning over to smell his own brand, wafting in his own essence of nonsense. Like I’m not a military boy, but if you look into the whole issue with the military and the right to repair I mean all these people that toot the horn of stupidity are gonna get fucked too Like we won’t be able to win a war because we can’t afford it because the private companies won’t let us repair our own equipment. I mean that’s some dumb fuckery cuckery. Things have gotten so absurd that you don’t even need to appeal to morals, but just use juxtaposition and point out contradiction. Like we’re so far gone.
This is a particularly useful way to phrase it / think about it, gonna hold onto this one, thanks!
Not even just software. Fucking everything. They are making car options a subscription.
This is my fear with dish and clothes washers manufacturers wanting to have wifi built into them. They’ve already gotten people used to using clothes and dish detergent in the form of little pods. I think appliance manufacturers look at printer companies and their ink prices and want a piece of that action. They want to play the same game. I’m sure Whirlpool would love it if you could only buy laundry detergent from them.
But in order to do that, they need to have their devices be internet-enabled. The printer companies figured this out. Third party ink manufacturers figure out ways to get past manufacturer lock-outs. So printers need to be internet enabled to allow patches that will disable new third party ink cartridges.
In my opinion, this is the real reason we see so many manufacturers trying to shove IoT and wifi connections into home appliances. Sure, selling your data to data brokers is a nice minor revenue stream. But the real prize is using that wifi to lock you in to buying obscenely expensive consumables for your dish washer, clothes washer, etc. Even fridges are at risk of this due to the water filters that many fridges have built in to them. Same with dryers.
The manufacturers of major appliances are pushing like crazy to connect these things to the net. Their official line is that they want this for consumer-friendly reasons. Most cynics say it’s just a way to sell your data. I however think the real goal is to turn every home appliance into a vendor-locked piece of garbage that requires consumables priced like printer ink.
If they make a washing machine that requires a subscription to their pods, I will switch to washing my clothes in a bucket using the cheapest detergent Aldi have.
Great point of view and yet another strong reason not to just allow internet connections on every damn thing. One other huge reason - being forced to accept brand new (legally binding!) licensing agreements, long after the device has been paid for and installed.
Roku was in the news somewhat recently for auto-installing an update that required users to accept a new license agreement to continue to use the device they’d paid for and had been using up until that point. And that license wasn’t a trivial change, it required the user to agree to forced arbitration!
In other words, in a very real sense, they came into the house and modified the TV (not just the cheap little streaming devices), then turned around and said “Want to keep using this thing you’ve made a part of your daily life? That you already paid us for? Well, fine you can, but - we don’t want any of you to ever sue us, so agree not to or fuck you. Don’t think too hard about it, it’s your TV, just say yes and get on with it”.
Wild stuff! And I guarantee it gets worse before it gets better. We need high quality FOSS hardware badly, I really hope we see that start to take off in a bigger way. I’m not super optimistic though, hardware being just a lot harder to iterate on.
If I ever end up in a situation where I can only get ‘smart’ appliances, I’ll just start washing my laundry at a lake or something.
Fuck it, if they do this I’ll go stinky as a protest. I’ll stink so bad that the politicians will be forced to regulate.
Go stand in front of a government building and spread your disgusting armpits. Use a fan to direct the smell there, or even better, go inside.
Reminds me of how British politicians were forced to act on pollution of the river Thames because the Parliament building got unbearably stinky.
Of course they’d act first when it inconveniences them. Ugh!
Here in Sweden there’s one thing all our parties agree on; drugs are bad and anyone who takes them are morally bankrupt. According to sewage water tests in parliament, plenty of our parliamentarians are coked up on the job.
Our drug policies are super strict, to the point that people are dying because of them. Our ministry of health has recommended that we relax them a little, and for some reason this is the hill all our parties are willing to die on.
You’re nearly there already! 🤢
Only nearly? Shit, I really gotta put my back into it, then!
Cory Doctorow wrote a fantastic story about this. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wandyezj/reference/master/unauthorized-bread.pdf
They are making car options a subscription.
They’re making money on this too, regardless of if you subscribe.
BMW announces that heated seats will be available in their cars with a subscription model. That’s to say, you buy your car “without” heated seats, and then for when you need it, you can just pay a subscription to “unlock” it for as long as you need. Once summer comes, you can stop.
Caveats:
- BMW saves money by streamlining their production process. By removing the option to select heated or unheated seats, they’re making production easier and subsequently cheaper.
- They’re still fucking charging you for those seats. It’s not like they’re going to give away heated seats for free and bank on people using that subscription to recoup the costs. You already pay the full prices for those heated seats, and then they charge you extra while trying to phrase it like you’re coming out on top on this deal.
And there are people who just pay for it, which blows my mind. Companies wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t money to be had. So now we get nickel and dimed so these corporations can get a steady stream of income rather than providing good quality products.
Apps are really notorious for it. What used to be a 10$ app now they expect subscriptions that amount to 60$ or more a year with no real noteworthy changes in service.
Calorie counting apps, for example, have been doing the same thing for over a decade now with little change besides cosmetic upgrades and “AI”.
Want to heat your car seats? That’s a suspension. Want to use your car’s radio? Another subscription. Get a higher mileage count to the gallon? Subscription.
This model should be straight-up illegal on environmental grounds alone. It’s particularly egregious for electric car batteries.
Some manufacturers will make models with nominally different batteries, but in reality the same batteries are used throughout. There might be a model with three different battery options; 400, 300, and 200 mile range options. But the 200 mile range one doesn’t actually have a battery half the size. It has a 400 mile battery with half of its capacity locked out by software controls. That means the 200 mile range option vehicles are hauling around hundreds of pounds of extra weight for literally no reason at all. Such cars are pointlessly burning energy every mile they drive, hauling around extra battery that serves them no purpose.
This stuff should be straight-up illegal. It should not be legal to sell a vehicle with software-locked equipment. Want to sell trim levels with different features? Fine. Quit being a cheap bastard and actually build vehicles with different equipment levels. Don’t build them all with the high-end options and then force those who buy the cheaper trims to burn money for the rest of that vehicle’s hauling around equipment they’ll never use.
If only we lived in a country that didn’t have exploitative plutocrats running the government.
I buy things that are a one-time purchase sometimes entirely because I was given the option.
