What's something you no longer buy due to intrusive, insidious technology being added into it?
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.
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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
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.
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.
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.
Running Calyx and don't have the play store installed so guess I won't be using your app.
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
You're on one right now.
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
I got an Epson printer to replace the HP that stopped doing email/app service because HP seemed it too old. The Epson just takes ink from a bottle which is really cheap to refil. The Epson has a tiny screen (which makes sense when you realize Epson is just a sub brand of Seiko). I fully expect the app to stop working some day.
Cars. Basically every new model is always online, connected, and streaming who knows what data. Not to mention the awful UX of touchscreens.
Why should a car be connected to the internet? The infotainment is justified but should be controllable. And this includes EVs. Just because your wheels are moved by electric motors it doesn't automatically mean the entire car is "tech" and must be connected to everything and anything.
If I had to get a car I would by an old clunker and pay someone to convert it to electric.
Yes I would like a fully electric 1957 Bel-Air please.
Old cars sound like fun, until you experience the safety features (seatbelts and crumble zones optional), missing rear visibility with tiny mirrors and the hassle to find matching spare part replicas.
And you think there is not much electronics or fancy extras in them to break, but the older cars where expected to last for 100.000km and maybe 10 years tops before the rust would eat everything up, so a lot of parts where designed cheaper and would fail sooner than today's cars that are expected to last at least twice as long.
Sweet spot is Japanese cars from the '90s and '00s. They are more reliable, more fuel efficient, have safety features and spare parts are often still available. Rust remains a topic but not as much as with older cars.
Yeah. Find a Honda or Toyota from the latter half of the 00's with a reliable service history and they'll last another 10-20 years if you take them to a decent imports mechanic.
Rust is always a problem in some places hahaha
Visibility out of something like a '57 Bel Air is excellent. Back then visibility was something people cared about, and having the pillars be as thin as possible was highly desirable. In comparison, modern cars have horrible visibility with thick pillars, high belt lines, high hoods, and tiny rear windows. Of course, the whole thin pillar thing did come at the cost of a weaker roof, less crash protection, and basically no rollover protection so there does need to be some balance, but with modern cars I hate how I feel dependent on things like backup cameras and blind spot monitors because I can't effectively see out the car.
The 1970s fastbacks had terrible rear visibility because they don't have rear windows:
https://smclassiccars.com/uploads/postfotos/1972-dodge-charger-coupe-red-se-4.jpg
The driver is essentially blind in he 3-5 o'clock visibility range when you have to do a left turn, and the intersection is not at an 90 degrees angle, or you try to merge into the highway. All you can do is floor it and merge in behind some car in front of you that you can see.
Well in the 70's you also have the AMC Pacer which is like driving a fishbowl.
As a styling thing it does go in cycles. Late 30's-40's cars also had high beltlines and small windows. Then the big airy greenhouses in the late 50's-early 60's. Many 80's cars into the 90's tended to have good visibility, though part of that also just came from the squared off styling. The poor visibility of today's cars is partly from safety features, but a lot of is also just styling.
Yeah, if I had a choice for an electric conversion, I think my ideal pick would be a newish car that somehow had its engine ruined way before its time. Like, maybe it was owned by some idiot that never got the oil changed until it burned out completely.
And while newer cars have the annoying tracking crap, that's solvable. If you're paying a mechanic enough money to completely convert a vehicle to electric, it won't be much more work to rip out the tracking tech while they're retrofitting it. You might need to just completely throw out the existing infotainment system, but that would still be a rounding error on a project that large.
Ideally you just look for a Honda or Toyota from like 20 years ago, assuming you want gas powered. Look for only like 1-3 owners, regular service history. Those things will last into 600k+ miles if they received regular service and parts are dirt cheap.
If I did that I would just be another selfish, ignorant asshole complicit in the destruction and collapse of the natural systems that allow me to breath and eat. No, it would have to be electric. Even then I wouldn't really want it because of the tires and the raw materials needed to create it in the first place.
Alright well I'm going to continue surviving. You have fun doing whatever I guess.
good luck lol. ur gunna need it (literally like fkin miracle). o7
Touch grass, dude.
Open your fucking eyes, dude. Everything's dying. There won't be any grass to touch, in our lifetimes.
OK, convert a 20 year old Toyota or Honda. Way easier to find one than thinking you have to go pre-fuel injection era to avoid wireless connectivity. Either way, you're probably going to instantly trash a working engine apparently.
Yep, that's the plan. Maybe soon, more people will realize those engines are one of the main reasons millions of people have already died from catastrophic climate change. I doubt it though... most are too focused on themselves, their own comfort and "survival" to realize or even care how much of an impact their actions have and even then can easily blame some rich asshole so they can keep being just as selfish as said rich asshole.
That sounds sick as fuck. Makes me wonder if that will become a service in the future? Instead of everyone buying new electric cars, just replace the engine* with a bigger battery and electric motor. Any car-ologists able to chime in if this is viable?
There are services like this already.
https://ev-works.com/
https://www.fuel2electric.com/
https://amprevolt.com/
No idea if these companies are any good. They're just the top results that popped up. But it looks like there are a fair number of companies already doing this. It looks like the cost is from $10k to $90k.
Certainly is: there was a group of people doing just that at the University of Calgary(?), but it was years ago and they have almost certainly graduated by now. If others are still doing so, I am not certain.
afaicr the most difficult part was the infotainment system. Installing the motors and stuff was easy, to engineering students at least haha.
I kind of hate infotainment systems anyway. I just want a mounted screen to cast Apple Drive Mode or whatever it's called. The default GUI they put there is fucking awful. I tried to use the inbuilt GPS once and actually gave up and just went on a spiritual journey instead. Surely it can't be that complicated just to have essentially a mounted iPad?
Great to hear that cars can be saved though. I was worried I'd have to sell my perfectly good car because I want an electric motor… I was thinking like, the rest of the car is fine it doesn't need to be trashed at all
Same, they are always useless to me because I just use my phone anyway. All I would need is an audio jack and a usb port for charging. I imagine a simple sort of shelf with a 'seat belt' where the screen would be.
ijmuawn
Iirc is a thing, why not use that instead of making people spend time figuring out what afaicr means? I assume I figured it out, yes, but I've never seen that before.
It's been in fairly wide usage for a long time, and it's literally only two characters off from an extremely well known acronym that has also basically been around as long as the internet (afaik). IIRC was also just made up by somebody too, not that that's even what OP was doing.
Don't worry, I understood what you meant
:)Wait a minute… you're not OC! (Original Commenter)
I have seen iirc thousands of times, don't recall ever seeing this one before. Yeah they get made up, yet it's silly to make a new one up that means almost the exact same thing as an established one.
That would be gorgeous.
Convertible in Tropical Turquoise and India Ivory?
Most definitely.
I only saw it in tropical turquoise.
An acquaintance from NHTSA says the cars save audio from the interior of the vehicle in a type of black box that can be accessed by investigators after wrecks. They frequently analyze this audio, but it’s SUPPOSED TO BE A SECRET.
Infotainment ain't justified, at least not up front. Put all that shit in the back if you gotta have it, but the driver should have as few distractions as possible. A simple radio, climate control, and the instrument panel. That's it.
Utterly insane that we ever allowed glorified tablets to become standard equipment in dashboards.
My recent purchase was a Mazda specifically because the infotainment was not a touchscreen, but instead controlled by a rotating knob joystick.
Nothing quite like the twist of a good knob.
Honestly that seems a bit worse
It's really quite nice. I was just in a rental car with a touchscreen and hated how hard it was to hit buttons while driving because your finger is bouncing from the road. With the knob you stay leaned back in the seat and rotate the knob and slap it down to activate things. Don't have to worry about missing the target. The only thing it's not great for is scrolling a map.
At least it's a physical interface
How many cars were you buying
Like most people who drive, they probably would be buying a new car every 5-10 years. Is that far fetched? I've know several people who spend half their money on cars, buying/trading them every year or so. Most fediverse people would be saavier than that, but still.
Well there was period where I changed cars every 2 years. For a total of 3 cars, and then I didn't need one any more. Not the most egregious example but I did like changing them. It's like any other toy, it's easy to get hooked on upgrades and trying out new models.
Yeah, that's pretty normal I think. I tend to keep my cars a long time but I've still had 4 so far, which may surprise the OC here.
I drive them until the cost of fixing them significantly exceeds the cost of getting a new used car. Accounting for it being a pain in the ass to shop for cars etc.
But yeah every 3-5 years sounds about right for typical middle/upper class families. My parents did pretty well when I was little and I remember them doing 2 or 3 year leases.
I don't buy cars anymore. I didn't used to buy them either.
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.
Cars.
Most any vehicle made after 2006 will have one or more of these three issues:
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.
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.
Which manufacturers do this and in which models?
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.
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.
If you spill some petrol because you were distracted by the advert, they have to clean it 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.
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.
It always warms my heart to see a smashed screen or ballpoint pen jammed into the speaker on those ad-playing pumps
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.
Newer cars. They come with cameras pointed at my face!
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.
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.
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.
Any hardware associated with Facebook.
And software, while we're at it. Web plugins included. Basically just Facebook.
It could've stopped at "Lets people share things with friends and family" but they'll never be satisfied,
untileven if they have the entire world's money, attention, and data in their clutches.What they've done to VR pisses me off to the core.
There is some open source software that is associated with Facebook, like compression with Zstandard, a very common and useful compression format. Don't care that it's from them in that case.
I never understood why people think VR can be a mass market product. It’s literally single user. It cannot be looked at by two people at the same time. Such a silly concept. It’s good for gaming, some work, robotics, remote access, etc. But mass market? iPhone-killer? Price-accessible to all? I don’t get it.
Yeah I definitely think AR has a better opportunity for that... But then unfortunately we know what they do as soon as there's a camera attached to anything
I sat in an uber the other day and the driver had meta ray ban sunglasses on. It was a very uncomfortable ride.
Honestly, using them as an uber driver might be the singular applicable use case in my eyes. It would be less intrusive than a 360 dash cam which I would want to use to protect myself. Accidents, false claims, etc. There is a lot that can go wrong and a lot of shitty people and a "paper trail" of events is VERY useful in court.
“Less” intrusive? A 360 dash cam will store everything on a memory card. The meta glasses uploads video directly into Zuck’s brain.
False.
The Facebook Portal TV was, and still is, gorgeous. The voice control is dead, the streaming services removed, the Alexa link dead, but as a video conf device that uses your TV really well, it's a life-changer.
We chat with people on the other Coast weekly, and we get to see people in their living room from ours. We can't go visit, but we can stay in touch.
We paid like $100 each for 4 of these. I'd've paid 5 times that for one with upgradeable assistant access and vanilla open video chat so it's fb free. They're all still running but they tether us to Fb since the zoom was ass.
Edit: downvoting something as cool as the portal TV is bizarre. It really is a stand-out product and I'm sad that its connection to FB ruined its reception.
What's "false" here exactly?
Also at the end you're like you're like "but they force us to keep connected to fb" which sounds very disqualifying for many users here...
Maybe that’s the one tech we should try to bring back with FOSS next
What hardware is associated with Facebook? The Oculus?
Latest is the ray ban glasses, but also portal tv, oculus.
Oh yeah, i forgot about the doxx shades
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 mean, you bought an HP printer. What did you expect?
deadpigeon.jpg
Anything smart or iot, or that requires a subscription to use.
A windows license.
Games consoles. (I would consider a stream deck to be immune from this as it's just a handheld PC)
Android phones, Apple phones.
Wireless earphones.
A modern car.
Wait, why wireless earphones?
Hazarding a guess, but wireless earbuds means your Bluetooth has to be active, and your Bluetooth radio is something that can be used to track you
Ugh, yes, good point. Bluetooth is not the height of security.
bluetooth got real fucking creepy once you had to start having location enabled to use it.
What device? Never heard that before
Samsung Galaxy phone, admittedly years ago, cause it made me stop using bluetooth.
But a quick sanity check, to make sure i was remembering correctly, by doing a search for variations of bluetooth cant be used without location on do return results showing that I was not out of my gourd and that it does happen.
Thats absolutely insane. Have they ever bothered with an explanation?
For real? I just tried on my P10 Pro XL running GrapheneOS and I could pair, forget, re-pair with location turned off.
I replied to another user about this, but aside from Bluetooth being a privacy nightmare, there's also the limited lifespan, the bad quality dacs, the lithium batteries and increased e-waste. Not to mention the expense. For $500 you can get genuinely very good wired headphones that will last the rest of your life. For the same price you can get mediocre wireless headphones that will eventually fail to hold a charge and become useless in X years
idk, my $90 earbuds that I use for meetings in the office and occasional personal use are almost five years old and doing fine. can't say I've noticed an issue with the battery life because they live in the charging case and only get taken out for use periods that are max a couple hours. and the quality is more than good enough.
I've got some nice proper headphones. they're not the right tool for that use case, for me.
Track me with what? The pigeons don't actually have Bluetooth tracking readers on them
The pigeons don't, but phones do. They have access to bluetooth data from everyone who has it turned on in their phones, including yours. You're surrounded by "pigeons".
But there isn't anyone else nearby carrying a bunch of phones unless I am in public or at work, where I am tracked anyway.
Lol, we've known about Bluetooth tracking for YEARS. Apple released the iBeacon in 2013, so this isn't even remotely a controversial statement, unless you've been living under a rock. Add on the BT tracking we hear about for LPRs, and you can easily see why someone wouldn't want to keep the radio active
Also curious about wireless earphones, if it's an audio quality thing, I can understand that.
Please also reply to me so I can get a notification to see your answer
I got fed up after the battery died on my 4th pair of AirPods, and the 20+ year old Shure IEMs I have, still work good as the day I bought them.
I have 4 pairs of AirPods on my nightstand where only one ear works, and the other ear gets maybe minutes of usable time, or is crackly and awful sounding. To be fair, one pair went through the wash. But even then, I’d rather wash a pair of 25 dollar wired headphones, than another 250 dollar pair of AirPod pros.
I'm not OP, but here are the downsides I'm aware of:
Foggenbooty pretty much nailed it.
Poor repairability, but also, why would I use 2 cheap dacs (1 in each earbuds), when I would use wired earphones and have 1 good dac. And the fact lithium needs to be mined for 2 batteries is super problematic considering the conditions lithium miners face.
Of course then there's the issue that everything with a battery has a limited lifespan. Those batteries will die one day and render your wireless earphones useless. My headphones will last for the rest of my life, meaning less e-waste is generated.
BT being active is a privacy nightmare, and the ones that require apps is also a privacy nightmare.
But then also they are just inferior to wired headphones in every way. So yeah, I'm not gonna buy an objectively worse product for way more money than their wired counterparts, that also exploits lithium miners and our planet and is also a privacy nightmare.
Brother laser printers don't do that. The unfortunate thing is that the word is out, so the prices have skyrocketed. But for me, if I ever need to buy a laundry machine, I'm looking for a decades old, used one. One with a spin cycle and that lets you start and stop it in demand.
Smart.
Get a Brother washing machine. Got it!
And definitely don't get an inkjet washer, they cost you a fortune in detergent cartridges.
A good shower can wash you, your brother, your sister, and your parents! Usually only one at a time though.
Good idea on the washer. My washer and dryer are both 27 years old. Just basic Whirlpool models. I've repaired both myself a few times, it's not hard, and there are directions for every problem online.
New appliances are shit, now. I dread having to replace my fridge. It's about 25 years old and still works perfectly, but nothing lasts forever.
I'll definitely be looking at old used in appliances before buying new from now on. Same for cars.
I know it’s off topic, but just want to jump on here and brag about my microwave that is still operating everyday, despite dating back to about 1982.
Yep, I had a GE from 1984. It was a "Spacemaker". I stupidly gave it away after 30 years because I decided I wanted a bigger one. That's when I learned that new appliances suck. I'm on my third microwave since then. I have no doubt the one I gave away is still working.
Ooh, this is very similar to the one I have which is also GE. Mine is larger than this, so maybe the non-spacemaker version. Thanks for posting this.
Found this video that looks exactly like mine, except mine has a digital display and buttons. https://youtu.be/nGyYGiuv-2g?is=rQbmXoax64RvMuhY
I haven't bought one in probably like 12 years. Are the new ones all greebled up with "smart" shit? Even the store brand models?
Talk about it. My washing machine that was just 2½ years old, luckily within extended warranty period, had worn ballbearings. Those were luckily replaced, but it took repair shop and required paperwork 2+ weeks to even come and pick it up, they did offer replacement machine during the repairs.
That wasn't the worst part, i could still run the machine as the ball bearings were just starting to wear out.
It came back from the repair shop and 2 bloody weeks later another part failed, a fucking simple sensor and the machine no longer runs at all. I removed the side panel and i can see the sensor, 2 screws and a simple plug. I'm not going to contact the repair shop and insurance for that, it's going to take them longer to get back to me than it does me to find a supplier and order the part myself.
In the meanwhile I'm forced to wash my clothes by hand.
Though that made me realize i need to buy a spare washing machine and keep that in the basement for when main one breaks again.
How's the second hand brother market?
HP printers don’t do that, either. All sources I could find were random reports from people with zero evidence.
HP has terrible scummy business presences and sucks, but this post is straight up misinformation and everyone is just like “oh yeah that’s true they do that”
https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/hp-plus.html
When you activate the HP+, HP permanently disables the printer's ability to use 3rd party ink. Model numbers that end in "e" require HP+ to function. While other model numbers don't require HP+, someone who is not already aware of it could be prompted into signing up for it without understanding they're permanently disabling their ability to use third party ink.
Thank you for the source! Not a great look on HP’s part, and they’ve always been against third party ink which is shitty. I remember a friend of mine having a giant ink reservoir next to their 02 HP photo printer—ink was free forever basically. Amazing printers. That’s prolly why they stopped the 02s… way too easy to make them awesome by tank-feeding.
I still contest OP’s “they bricked my printer”, it’ll still print with HP ink. Moreover, printers have had chips for decades that allow them only to print with first party ink… you can circumvent the chips, but still. HP didn’t brick yer printer if you fell for their subscription ink grift (also who does that, sorry) they just make it so you need their own ink… like.. they have been doing since the 2000s.
Microsoft products
windows. and any software related (github) to windows.
I'm now 100% all linux all the time.
I stopped using a smart watch I used to use all the time because Samsung started requiring location services to be on to use it. Immediately made me drop it and I stopped buying anything Samsung after that. Not only would I never be okay with having that on all the time, it's fucking insane to start making that a requirement for a device that never required that out of the box.
As a bonus one, I'll never buy anything Playstation ever again for obvious reasons.
About 12 years ago I bought a Samsung tablet that had an IR blaster function so I could control my TV and audio equipment. It was a primary reason I chose that model. Less than a year after purchase Samsung discontinued their app and remotely disabled the tablet's IR blaster.
It was less than $5 for a replacement app that could be configured to get it working again, but the fact Samsung thought it was just fine to remotely remove a feature that was one of the primary reasons for my purchase is not something I've forgiven.
Since then I've bought lots of consumer electronic products but have not (and probably never will) consider another Samsung product.
What the fuck! That's egregious, that's so anti consumer it's basically malicious
This should be made illegal
What a disgusting practice... as if I needed more reasons to hate Shamsdung ugh I cant wait to ditch my phone
I never understood why they got rid of that. I always thought it was a cool feature that they could have really leaned into. I had a tablet with it and I never used it much because I don't watch TV, but it felt like something that could have been super useful to someone who did watch TV a lot (and I also had fun setting it up for my family TV and then casually sitting in the background adjusting the volume, changing the channel, and tweaking other settings and watching the chaos that ensued while I oh so innocently appeared to be oblivious and busy playing games on my tablet)
If I remember right it's because they outsourced that feature to a third party called peel
It started as a dumb remote (which was everyone wanted) but they had some monetization ideas like full TV schedules and "suggested" (aka: sponsored) content.
The same for Xiaomi. A simple ir remote app in the mi 5, but no, in the next updates they had to bloat it until it imploded and nobody used it anymore so they could say "see? Nobody uses it, we can save the $0.05 ir LED"
The Samsung IR app also was used for their streaming service. They could have easily updated the app to allow it to run without connecting to their servers once they killed the service, but it was easier to tell their customers to pound sand.
For some reason this user keeps telling people you can put graphene OS on Samsung devices, but that's not accurate, graphene only runs on pixels
You replied to my comment with this. Are you referring to me? If so you're mistaken.
Not a mistake, I am pointing out the other user to reply to your comment (saying you can put graphene on Samsung devices) is incorrect, in case you didn't know.
That sort of crap is why I specifically buy older Samsung hardware like that tablet. I love a Samsung Galaxy S10e for my phone, because I can flash Graphene onto it and not have to deal with their firmware. If that tablet had/has an IR blaster, it's old enough to do the same thing and rip all that Samsung software off of it, flash it with a FOSS ROM, and enjoy your hardware.
The PS5 is my last Sony device. I’ve even considered selling it because I don’t want to give them any revenue from future digital purchases.
They suck and they’re actively ruining physical media gaming.
Look into asteroid os or look for gadgetbride support
@Guitar That sucks. I use a PineTime. It has few features, but the battery life is pretty good.
Micro$oft. Everything from them. Windows, Office, etc.
Only yesterday I bought a piece of hardware, an old surface tablet, and immediately installed Linux on it to make it usable and safe.
Don't let your own stopping reading confuse you. I told the solution right there.
Windows is fine. But it's a lot harder to justify when "for brainless morons like me!" distros like Bazzite are so readily available and robust and SteamOS is right there too.
But like. It's fine. You can turn most of the annoying stupid shit like copilot off.
you can turn most of it off.. by hunting the internet for the right tools for that. Because built in settings certainly don't allow disabling the majority of it. until they turn them back on with an update.
and the rest you just can't turn off, or can't reasonably discover.
windows is not fine. that ended with windows 7.
I haven't needed a single tool to turn off the junk in w11 that's annoying, replace the dumb icon-based UI with the previous text, and so on.
W11 is fine. It's not good, but it's fine.
only thing that means is ypu don't know what else is it doing in the background. you are operating in "what I don't see doesn't exist" mode
I agree with both of you. Windows is not fine. But it can be made fine with an easy privacy modification.
I recommend ameliorated.io to everybody who needs to use windows. It makes it a viable OS, stripping out the junk, and setting better defaults for security and UI. I run it in VMs whenever I need it.
That seems like a pretty useful tool. Thanks!
But why is its website written like it's trying to sell me something?
I never thought of it as salesy before, but I can see that.
They are not selling anything. The tool is free to use. The playbooks are free too. Or you can make your own, but I've never done that.
I've used this since I learned about it on multiple machines, and never need to think about it again other than when recommending it.
Probably the only "bad" thing is you need a legitimate, activated instance of windows.
Hello, I run an easy privacy modification modified windows installation as a dual boot with Arch. Windows is still not fine. It still manages to enrage me every now and then.
It's definitely a lot more usable and acceptable than a vanilla install (god forbid using an out-of-box windows installation), but Arch is still so much more stable and sensible.
Also like every update just decides to go ahead and undo a "make windows usable" modification so its kind of a constant uphill battle if you dont completely turn updates off. I have completely turned updates off and now it always thinks there is an update available and bugs me to reboot to apply it, only to end up not applying any updates because updates are disabled.
I understand that switching to Linux (and especially Arch) requires a lot more "dealing with stuff" until you get used to it, but the amount of dealing with stuff is not a whole lot nowadays with "easy" distros and after you get used to it and find your groove the dealing with stuff just kinda stops, unlike windows. Not to mention that the way you're using your OS isnt some kind of weird hack coupled together with a few different debloaters. I really can't see how much more difficult installing and getting used to something like Ubuntu or Mint can be compared to setting up a good debloated windows install.
I use Windows 10 with unatendedwinstall and a few more tweaks added on top with cttwinutil. I'd reccomend it.
I'm coming from the same place. My windows updates are off (that's one of the mods that ameliorated makes) and I have not had a problem with it for a few years now.
I'm not saying that windows should be the choice, but I am saying that when I have to use it (there are legit reasons) then my ameliorated version is fantastic.
I use windows at work daily so I am very well aware of out of the box experience. No way I would ever use that for my personal computing.
Ameliorated is something I always recommend and it sounds like while what you are doing is pretty good, there are some shortcomings. I don't know, maybe ameliorated won't work for you either, but its worth a try.
Thanks! I didn't know about this tool before. I'll look into it :)
Car.
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.
Boy, do I have good news for you!
https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer/
Thank you! I'm okay with walking over to the library to print, though.
It's fun getting to express my socialist sensibilities in that way.
[rant]Same; however, my local library has the shittiiiessssttt system in place for paying. Half the time the cards don't work and they're not reloadable so if there's like 5 cents left you have to print one single page to use it up. I have 4 or 5 cards now with less than ten cents left on them. They say there's a new system in the works but I think they only have enough money to pay one person to do it because it's been a really long time.[/rant]
That's aggravating. It's paid for by our taxes here in KC. Each user gets an allotment. (I think it's daily, but not sure.)
For responsible printing that's wonderful.
At our library I quickly learned that people want to just print entire reams of nonsense, like web pages that were clearly not made for printing and waste entire pages on like one graphic, and then 35 pages of comments because this person didn't know how to select certain pages or use "print preview"
...So they pay 10¢ a page. Lol
For some reason the open printer uses HP ink cartridges, so I'm sure it'll be great right up until HP decides to jack up the price and/or discontinue them.
No, they use the generic refillable cartridges as well. They just use that style of cartridge, not a specific brand.
All hp printheads are "refillable". The problem is that the printhead itself is not designed to last more than a refill.
HP doesn't sell those standalone, all the generic refillable cartridges compatible with HP are hand picked from e-waste in some third world country, then cleaned, primed and sold as "new"
You can buy generic new versions of the cartridge. They are not washed. They are not reused heads, they have never seen the inside of a printer. I have been using them in my printer for over a decade and have never used a rebuilt cartridge.
EDIT: Sorry for the link, these are the cartridges I use in mine. The manufacturer listed them as new, not rebuilt.
https://i.postimg.cc/MKq4VZSf/IMG-20260712-091512.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/m2BqCZsz/IMG-20260712-091519.jpg
DOUBLE EDIT: Thinking about it more, my HP printer is very old so perhaps there's a mechanic implemented in newer printers and cartridges that I don't have to defeat, which would make my argument incorrect for that cartridge.
Why the hell would they use hp cartridges?!
Edit
Oh it's refillable, that's fine then
No, it's not. They aren't built to last regardless of being refillable. They'll need to be replaced.
They used that generic design, not actual HP cartridges. You don't have to order a replacement from HP, there are several third party refillable cartridge manufacturers, and 3-D printer designs for the cartridges.
This sounds great! Except nowhere do they say how much one will cost, they’re currently in the “drive demand before campaign launch” phase.
I bet it’s gonna be like five hundred bucks. That’ll suck.
phones. I just fucken hate em. Until I can get my hands on a graphineOS pixel I will just feel like I have a spy device in my pocket. So now I just have a 6 year old one that is mostly offline playing local music and watching/listening to videos from grayjay. Once this device is dead I will have to look at getting a new one and im really not looking forward to it. I never use calling and i only use txt to receive spam and 2fa spam. Kinda want something like the mechaComet instead of a phone.
Grab an older phone that you can still root and flash, like a galaxy s10e. They work just fine.
-Sent from a
GrapheneLineage Samsung Galaxy S10eI got a galaxy s10. I can root it I think. Can I put graphine on it?
No. GrapheneOS currently only works on Pixels 7 and up.
Next year we might be able to buy a Motorola with GOS on it. Afaik, that particular Moto doesn't exist yet so we don't know what the specs will be or what the privacy/security compromises will be.
I'm very much looking forward to that Moto. Hope it's going to be decent, ideally something like current Edge 60 Neo - no bullshit ~7" tablet size, good battery, decent wired and wireless charging, ok camera.
I've heard this new phone described as "flagship" a few times so the specs should be decent.
I think this is the only way I’d go back to Android. Google is hostile spyware at this point. I’m interested in GrapheneOS.
No. But you can put LineageOS on it. Someone made a rom for it a few years back, though I don't know if it still receives updates
No, I forgot which rom I used. You can put Odin or Lineage on it though
https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
Literally on their page
It literally is not on their page. GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixel phones right now
There's a LineageOS rom that works for Samsung Galaxy S10e's, and that's all I know of
I was replying to fizz? Literally on their page what they support. Iunno where the confusion was?
People need to learn to open a browser and fuckin search, man.
It. Is. Not. On. The. Page.
You have 2 people telling you this. I myself skimmed the whole page and even did a search for S10e. Before you pull up your keyboard to tell me I'm wrong, go look through your own link first. It's not in there, quit lying.
Take your own advice. At best you just used the link that Google's AI spit out, which everyone knows is wrong 10-20% of the time
Holy shit you're dense. I know it's not on the page. I provided the page to show fizz what they fucking support you Muppet. Learn to read.
No, I went to the grapheneOS page myself and provided the link to the specific section that reads supported devices.
I run graphene myself on a pixel pro 8. The fact that I had to boil all of this down for you because you can't process possible inflection online is part of the problem. I'll make sure that moving forward I write every possible nuance of the message I'm trying to convey for dorks like you.
Graphene doesn't run on that phone. I don't know what's weirder, that you're lying about it or that no one has called you for it.
I forgot what ROM I used back in 2020 when I flashed the first one.
Boo hoo. I was only 90% correct. Go cry about it elsewhere.
0% correct. You spread misinformation, you can at least, cop to it.
Wrong. Making a mistake is not spreading misinformation, especially since it was fixed down thread by others. I pointed people in the correct direction to figure out a solution that can work for them.
You are just a doomer that tries to start fights. I never see you try to help, all you do is criticize any niggling point that you think you can make. Piss off, grow up, and be better.
Robot vacuums, I've always hated how they were all cloud-connected, but now they have cameras too.
Yeah I know about Valetudo.
Good news, there's an open source vacuum project called Oomwoo, which allows you to build one yourself with off the shelf parts and a 3D printer
https://makerspet.com/blog/building-an-open-source-robot-vacuum-meet-oomwoo/
Have you seen any mowers that do that? Our back yard is mostly dead, but having it go out once a week would be so cool. I'm a little intimidated by the thought of putting this together, but also want to do it.
Edit: Looks like the vacuum is sold out.
A quick search for open source robot mowers pointed me to this: https://openmower.de/
As for Oomwoo, they're still working on assembly instructions, so I wouldn't immediately jump in unless you're fine with a lot of tinkering. Also, it looks like right now they're only considering parts kits, not fully assembled bots, and that seems to be a future add.
I personally still think it's cool and will be keeping an eye on it
Very cool, thanks.
This is vapor wear.
Maybe it will be something sometime, but the post is just about an idea.
The most viable option is to manage your own firewall and block the outbound traffic. Only suggesting as a work around for those that want a robot vacuum.
You don’t have to get one with cameras though. I send my floorplan to china. But its worth it.
The ones without cameras are fewer and fewer, especially since using cameras is cheaper than lidar
Lol no. The first roomba just bumped around until it ran out of power, and hopefully it'd have covered the whole floor. After that came the Lidar robots, which mapped rooms and actually thought about where they went. No cameras there.
Android phones. I mean, Google has been an advertising company the entire time (2008 to now) that Android has existed, but the enshittification has gotten worse and worse. I still like Android, though. I'm an Apple guy, but I haven't forgotten wiping Android phones and flashing them with custom firmware, and getting the "AOSP-like" CyanogenMod, or the bone-stock "Google Play Edition" Android on an Android phone meant to slam 5 ads in your face every second. It was always a losing battle, but it was fun.
I still want a newer Android phone. I have a Galaxy S10. It's still a good phone, but it should be the next phone I replace, before replacing my iPhone 16 Pro Max (which should last another 7-9 years).
As for printers, HP is always a losing bet. They suck. Their lasers aren't bad at work, but they're not great either. It's always something with HP. I've heard Brother lasers are cheap enough and rock solid. I don't really need a printer though. If I did, I'd get that one Brother laserjet everyone's talking about. Just web search "that one brother printer" and look for the review that just says "stop worrying about printers and get that one brother printer." Follow their link to Amazon to get the part number, and shop around.
Where are you seeing ads in Android? I have a pixel and I've never had ads shoved in my face. Well, not by Google. The producers or providers of apps, sure, but that's not on Google is it?
They started adding ads all over that Google news feed when you swipe right from your homescreen last year, the one that's built into the Pixel launcher.
Thankfully, this shit isn't a part of Android itself (yet) and can easily be purged into oblivion with couple simple clicks.
What is unusable now is Google Play, and you kinda have to use it, or face inconvenience. But recently I am increasingly discovering that finding an apk on a separate website and installing it directly is faster and less offensive than using this eyecancer.
Ohhh. I've never, ever used that except when I accidentally fatfinger my way to it. I forget it exists.
Dude I hope my 16 Pro Max lasts that long. I only got it after breaking my 13 Pro Max. I’d never cracked screen in my 15 years of smartphone ownership. That blue variant was gorgeous and it would have lasted another 3 years easily.
I’m sure you and I were on the same XDA forums back in the day. I still have my old LG G3 with Lineage OS on it. I’ll always miss that era of Android. Wacky new features all the time on ROM, only for Google to integrate them in the main OS down the line.
We'd have been on the same XDA forums if we had the same device. Otherwise we may not have met. I never owned an LG phone, though I was considering the LG G5. I also liked the one with the second screen, the grandfather of every "notched" phone (its second screen was "attached" to the main screen and to the right of the camera). V something? LG had some good ideas.
I had a Galaxy S3, and an HTC One M8. I do not recall what I went by on XDA. I use a new name every year or two. It's entirely possible we crossed paths one way or another. I've been online a long time.
I cracked my 16PM screen the other day. Fortunately it was just the screen protector. I love how spoiled we are now. Wet wipe, dry wipe, dust sticker. Then this plastic applicator that holds the screen protector by these pins perfectly centred on the phone screen, and you pull this tab while pressing down and it applies perfectly every time. My old screen protector was up there almost 2 years, since I bought the 16PM in November '24. This is the second one, I have one more in the box.
I've cracked a few screen protectors but never screens.
Oh man I always wanted an HTC one M8, such a badass phone back in the day.
I was mainly on XDA for the HTC Incredible and then eventually the HTC Resound. It wasn’t until after I got a Pixel phone that I stopped flashing ROMs.
After seeing some comments on this thread about GraphineOS it has my interest piqued. It would be hard to leave Apple now that I am thoroughly entrenched in the ecosystem though. There really isn’t anything else like it. I remember I yearned for Google to get their ecosystem act together for years, but alas they kill more products than they keep.
Any car made after 2020..
TVs. I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but I want to set up a Linux based streaming box and have my actual TV completely offline.
I have a TCL/Roku that I'm not inclined to replace yet. I got tired of the "smart" thing fast. Most successful solution to take it offline without being nagged was to change the wifi password and tape over the flashing status light. Disconnecting wifi by settings either forces or dark-patterns you into reconnecting.
Honestly TVs were the original "insidious technology". I always hated advertising and the constant brainwashing. After going off to study and watching movies and shows on a PC for a few years, coming back home and seeing a TV run in the background is so fucking grotesque. And that was before they added extra ads lol.
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 working with forms that need an original signature.
What kind of forms require that? If you are at work your employer should provide it.
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.
Practice worksheets
Why would you print that? We always just did it off the screen and would write on paper. So paper and pen for answers, screen for questions.
Because that's what they do in class and for homework, and my daughter has ADHD and probable autism so changing from what she's used to can lead to meltdowns. I agree it's not entirely necessary, and we are planning to try to wean her off of the dead tree editions soon. (I'm in the process of setting up a Linux laptop for her with some educational programs etc)
I have school aged kids, they still need them for some assignments, though admittedly less than before as they can turn in much of their work electronically. We end up using our printer (locked down Brother laser printer) for things that technically can be done without printing, but require using privacy destroying smart phone apps. Sadly, a lot of places are removing the ability to not use apps and it is becoming a huge issue as my phone quite literally cannot use their bullshit apps.
What kind of things need apps? I don't have any, running calyx and don't even have google services
Just a few of examples that have bit me and made me angry:
Tbh I don't go to concerts or car parks. Been to pubs that do online orders but they always also take orders at the bar.
Printers are a loss leader for selling ink cartridges. I have done my recent printing at Walgreens. It's about 25 cents per page and I don't need it very often.
Video games. I stopped buying games because they started requiring a monthly subscription to play.
Well... It seems to me like you were just picking bad games to play.
Yea lately I've been playing a bunch of Quake and Doom mods/wads/paks. There are probably tens of thousands of hours worth of free content available for both of these games. Kinda makes it hard to justify buying a new game when I could go download some masterpiece Quake campaign for free.
Not quite --- a loss leader is also sold at loss, so similar pricing concept, but that's to get you in the store, where (statistically) people will buy more.
What (many) inkjet printers do is the razor-and-blades model.
Laser printers tend to be less prone to this. You can also get inkjet printers that aren't using locked-down cartridges, will take tanks of ink and don't try to keep out competing ink vendors --- but keep in mind that while the ink will cost less, the base printer will also cost more than the razor-and-blades model printers. Canon's "MegaTank" line is one such example.
Monthly subscription? You mean like PS+ or something?
Yes, also World of Warcraft, anything like that with a subscription. PS+/Xbox Game Pass was the death blow for console gaming for me. I want to buy the game, play the game. Not be paying each month.
Yeah, MMOs are a special case. Realistically WoW or XIV are a better deal than most games. I'm probably in the tens of thousands of hours in WoW since 2004. Pretty crazy value for money.
I agree paying for online in consoles is dumb but that's always been their strategy - cheaper and easier to get into than computers and they'll nickel and dime you since you don't know any better.
If you're a daily player, sure. But I'm the kind of person who can play every day for maybe a week, but then I'll take a month or four off before I pick it up again. The monthly billing system does not align with how I like to play games.
You can just... cancel the sub...
I'll take years off between playing for a couple months here or there.
My complaint: I don't want to pay every month
Your solution: Play for only 1 month
Problem not solved. I'd much rather buy a game where I get to play as long as I want.
Idk man you're making it out to be a lot bigger problem than it is. There isn't a single "buy once" game out there that is even remotely close to beating WoW or even XIV in terms of playtime or playtime:cost. As long as you're having fun playing them and have stuff that you want to do in them, they are essentially an unbeatable value.
Even terraria and FNV don't come anywhere close to matching the playtime I have in those MMOs, although terraria is so cheap that it probably beats everything on cost value.
Dating app subscription
TVs
We don’t connect our LG “smart” TV to the internet because “smart” just means advert box. It’s been a much more pleasant experience just using our consoles to control the TV.
You're TV is smart enough to connect to the internet anyway... It will use your neighbor's ring doorbell, nest, or other IOT device serving Weave, Amazon Sidewalk or other corporate IOT networks to upload its telemetry anyway.
You just have to connect it to your router and deny it internet access.
I think this is a bit much. It’s not that deep. Not everything is some crazy conspiracy. Also if it was connected to the internet you better believe the screen would be plastered with ads trying to make money off of me. It’s blank therefore not connected.
"It's blank therefore not connected" makes as much sense as saying "my phone's screen is off, therefore not connected." If you've got a smart TV, "Off" is more akin to "Standby." If it's connected to internet you should assume it's receiving updates, the latest ad rolls, etc at all times if you haven't completely firewalled it off.
Can't speak to them utilizing open APs or mesh networking like Sidewalk but I wouldn't trust that they couldn't if they wanted. Thought I'd read up that some of Amazon's devices even use LoRa which, while low bandwidth, can cover quite some distance.
Dude when the TV is on the Home Screen is blank. Unless I select an Input to a device the TV is useless. You really thought I meant when the screen is off? I think you have some literacy problems.
Not every comment needs to be some IT explanation, go back to your help desk job, thanks.
If you are asking whether or not I draw a distinction between "the screen is blank" and your now clarifying "the home screen is blank" ("blank" meaning "devoid of advertisment," because what home screen is ever literally blank?) then yes, I do. Words have meaning and "blank" doesn't mean "no ads on my home screen."
Maybe I'm the dumbass you're trying to make me out to be but I'm pretty confident my interpretation of what you said wouldn't be uncommon, or that there many people who don't realize a smart TV's connectivity is always active.
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).
Printers, not only just from enshittification, but also due to the fact that traditionally they were constantly having issues to the point of being a meme. I need to print something twice a year, so yeah, I ain't dealing with all that.
Good news, there's an open source project working to develop a printer, and it has working prototypes: https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/printers/raspberry-pi-powered-open-source-printer-earns-design-award-nomination-but-still-has-no-price-nine-months-after-reveal
Annoyingly not truly open source
I have an old Brother laser printer which absolutely rocks. But I also have an HP flatbed scanner that has never come out of the box because of their bullshit.
Yup, if I were still a buyer of printers, that's what I'd get.
Is there scanner bullshit now too?
Scanner is fine but there are layers of bullshit with needing to install their app and store stuff in their cloud.
HP printer, cars, appliances.
Dryer drum seals broke and bushings worn. I just bought parts and spent the time fixing it, to avoid the IOT new ones. Probably coat me 30% of getting a new one
Car: we were due for a new one, but we found a 2004 car in mint shape so we downgraded purposely. I wanted to be able to have easy repairs and no phone-home garbage of a new car, and never any SaaS nonsense.
For the Printer: the drugstore guy alerted me to the HP ink nonsense, so I went with a Canon.
I've been slowly doing more and more car repair. I just hope they don't stop producing replacement parts to force you into buying new cars.
Eventually we'll all either be riding bicycles or constantly repairing homemade vehicles like they do in Cuba.
It seems like the way things are going. We are also gonna need those cooling shirts with ice packs in them to prevent heat exhaustion.
I was thinking of this this morning, so looked up electric motor kits to retro fit cars. https://ev-evolution.eu/solution/ev-kit/
https://electricgt.com/shop/
I'm so bummed out that this wasn't around yet when I accidentally ruined my Honda Element's motor.
But then again, it seems even these wouldn't wanna push that frame around very much yet. :p
If you're in the US, there are some somewhat newer ones that only have 3G cell radios, so can't talk to the cell network any more. That said, I have no idea what data they transfer when being serviced.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39301678/3g-internet-sunset-cars/
Damn, didn't realize 3G is gone. I wonder if that explains my 2013's inability to send a health report. I assumed it went through my own cell but dialed a dead number. Now I'm wondering if I have an antenna to hunt down.
I knew 2G was on its way out, but my 2G GPS devices fell out of use before service was actually ended.
Meanwhile, I can't stand 5G and wish I could force my phone to 4G. Let me guess, 4G is on its deathbed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is 5G has faster speed but shorter range. I feel I'm always a little far from towers and sit at 1-2 bars of 5G. If I see it drop to 4G, everything loads way faster. But cell tech had to race to make the #G go up because bigger number sell better
That covers everything even the checkout at Walmart.
New cars, Adobe suite, meta suite, and most restaurants.
Home speakers, the "smart" kind
HP printers. For a long time, they had been my printer of choice because of quality and Linux support, but the quality has been replaced by enshittification. The last two printers had been fuckups (two, because I mistook the first ones' shittyness for being a one-off bad one), and wasted overpriced ink on a massive scale.
Since then, I've added HP to my black list of printers. The other brand on that list is Canon. But that's another story.
You should add HP to the list. They're products are shit, and their support even worse!
Am I missing something here? Why are you recommending they do exactly what they said they already did?
You did not include his ending:
Which means he would still have HP on the list for other purchases. I boycott HP entirely.
He confuses "they're" and "their". Do you expect reading to his strong side?
Software, but full disclosure: I did go wild and spend £5 on Symfonium a few years back which I don't grudge.
Hell yeah, and there's so much great FOSS software, makes me wonder why I didn't switch off paid subs for so many things sooner.
I donate to FOSS
Cars, phones
A car.
The problem with every laser printer is, eventually, they'll stop making toner cartridges for them. That's what made my perfectly serviceable Samsung printer garbage.
I was looking today at buying a cheap Brother laser printer, for the rare times when I want to print something. But, I saw that it was introduced in 2019, and I can just imagine what will happen. I still might get it and just stock up on cartridges, I haven't decided.
I got a Brother MFCL2750DW back in 2018. It is still going strong. My most recent toner refill was from an off brand. Zero issues with that.
Toner refill kits help with this.
I got sick of the experience that every time I wanted to print, my ink had dried out. So I went on eBay and found an office style Ricoh color laser, scanner, fax combo one. I think I spent about 250 on it.
When the first toner (the first ones are not fully filled) ran out, I bought powder and chips on Amazon. I refilled the cartridges and used the new chips and boom.
Cost for that was like 30 bucks. Official cartridges were hundreds.
My Samsung ML-1710 (from 2004) was put out of service because of the new OSes.. Am going to dual bot my work machine and reintall MacOS 10.9 Mavericks, to run it and the rest of the old 32-bit graphics software I still use.
HP did not break your printer because you wouldn't sign up for the subscription service something else happened to it. Quit spreading lies and idiotic statements.