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.
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.
“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.
Fighting Oligopoly is not a “boomer complaint” they want you to say that because it legitimizes their hostile tactics and takeover.
And we all know a Boomer would complain for the oligopoly.
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.
Looking at you, Adobe. Creative cloud has sucked so much from me, but I need it for work.
You will own nothing, eat grubs, and be thankful…
~ the oligarchs
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.
This is a particularly useful way to phrase it / think about it, gonna hold onto this one, thanks!
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^
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.
Cory Doctorow wrote a fantastic story about this. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wandyezj/reference/master/unauthorized-bread.pdf
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”.
I buy things that are a one-time purchase sometimes entirely because I was given the option.
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.
Protest with your wallet. Open source and self hosted communities living real chill right now.
This is the answer. If you pay for software you have only yourself to blame. I pay for email because I don’t feel like dealing with it. Everything else is open source and/or selfhosted.
Welcome to Rent Based Economy, peasants.
Perpetual debt. As planned.
Technoserfdom
Hello its HP…we have an all new printer subscription model we would like to sell you. Give us money monthly. Or better, give us money every time you use the printer!
The way it works is you pay for the printer, take it home, install the software and connect it unnecessarily to the internet where a hacker can easily hack your pii. Then we monitor your ink levels and printing count. If you use it, we charge you per page. If you’re running out of ink, we’ll charge you monthly and send you a new bottle. We’ll monitor the room temperature and sell that information to the power company. We’ll monitor for loud notices and send that to ICE and to shoe making companies so they can either deport you or sell you new shoes. Aren’t printers awesome?
Also if you stop paying, your fully functional printer will refuse to print. If you loose connection to the Internet, it will refuse to print.
HP products are forbidden in my house.
HP are also sending me reams of paper I don’t need. I need a printer but I don’t want to basically host someone else’s printer and pay rent on it.
Ehhh sir…you can’t scan without magenta! Comeback when you buy magenta!
This is why FOSS with donation is actually a superior model.
I honestly rather download a free software and donate after I know that it’s good and I’ll know that I’ll always have access to it.
Paying for something that can be revoked (cause it’s a legally license, not owned) just doesn’t sound like ownership.
Right, but the problem with FOSS is a that it usually moves slow, typically isn’t very user friendly, and has no real support from devs most of the time.
But also: Blender
It really is a marvel of open source software.To add on to this:
-
Krita (for art and what I want to use for learning art, it’s avalible for both Linux and Windows)
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Inkscape (for vector making and also can be used as a better text tool than kritas built in text tool if you’re using it in a combined workflow, avalible on Windows and Linux)
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Tahoma 2D (fork of OpenToonz, OpenToonz coming from Toonz which Studio Ghibli also uses. Used for 2D animation)
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Qbitorrent (torrent application avalible on both Linux and Windows)
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Gimp (Image editing program avalible on both Linux and Windows but in my personal opinion needs a UX rework)
Also openttd and beyond all reason
-
The best thing is when a private company contributes regularly to FOSS projects moving them along at a timely pace.
Turns out, if it’s a single person in their free time it’s slower. But at least if something isn’t working I can fix it myself.
meanwhile, companies are killing lifetime licenses that were previously paid for.
Yep I remember clearly the first time this happened to me with Splashtop Remote in like 2012. And more recently 4K video downloader. “4K video downloader is being deprecated, please upgrade to our new application, 4K video downloader” Literally only difference is my lifetime license is no longer good and I’d have to buy a subscription.
Well, too bad there are easier ways to download content and even if there wasn’t you have made sure I will never get anywhere near your products ever again.
That’s strange, 4k allowed me to upgrade my lifetime sub key to a new key for the new program.
Whaaaat?? That’s interesting, thanks. I will definitely have to look into that. I didn’t bother with the new one I just got mad lol
I just double checked my emails, and I forgot I did have to pay $7 AUD (like 4.50 USD) to upgrade it, which annoyed me a little at the time but was cheap enough I decided to swallow it.
This is wild. I decided to see what was what and clicked the link in my email to upgrade. It took me to the upgrade site and I pasted in my license key also retrieved from an email, and it said the license was inactive. I tried to retrieve the key again in case they had changed it, but it said no key associated with my email. Again they had emailed me the link to upgrade. Then I moved to my PC where I clicked the link in the application to upgrade and it autofilled my license key, same issue. Oh well, I put in a ticket, but I’m no worse off than I was before. Thanks for the info, though.
Damn sorry about that. Hope it works out for you.
I don’t see how that’s a “boomer” complaint lol I’m a millennial and don’t know anyone that’s excited to pay monthly fees for something they already bought
Yeah. The subscription model really only took off during GenZ.
not only that, but people usually use boomer, in this context, to say that the complaint is stupid, or selfish, or something
the gradual loss of ownership is a real fucking issue
In the future, you’ll own nothing and like it!
Wait, you guys own something?
Why wait? You can already own nothing
“Boomer” has lost all meaning. It has just become an empty counter for when you disagree with someone but you lack the emotional intelligence to have an actual discussion about something other the superficial.
And no gen-Z is happy about this model or pushing its use. It’s mostly being pushed by Gen-X and Boomer executives as a further mode of profit extraction in our rentier economic system.
Sure, we’ll just wait for the gen-Z executives to roll it al back then right? It’ll never happen, this is a money thing, not a generation thing.
that’s the point I was trying to make
I’ve always blamed Adobe for the subscription mess, and that started in the early 00’s.
There was a joke about “rethinking the Microsoft model” in a 2005 episode of The Office. The move to subscription based software has been in the works for 25 years or more.
This has been the goal of Microsoft for 20 years, like you stated. Bill Gates stated it. We’re just now to the point of ubiquitous internet connectivity, and cultural conditioning to accept this model.
Windows itself is eventually going to be a subscription service, with all your data saved on Microsoft’s servers. Microsoft announced at the end of last year a dumb Office terminal that does just this, to test the waters.
Because that’s when the infrastructure started getting developed to support that model
deleted by creator
I blame iPhone and Android apps that required developers to keep paying a $100 minimum yearly fee to keep an app in the App Store.
There were tons $1-$5 apps in the early days of the stores, but 3-4 years in they switched to either freemium subscriptions or adware (or ad ransom models). Usually as publishers bought out indie devs, if they just didn’t copy them anyway.
It’s because a lot of boomers own their homes and the concept of rent is foreign to them.
The thing is, you never really “own” your home. Don’t pay your property taxes, and see what happens. You just pay less when the mortgage loan is paid off.
Most boomers don’t even use any paid software aside from Windows and an antivirus they got tricked into buying
Because software needs to be maintained. Well at least most software that has a subscription model is maintained and gets regular updates. People don’t work for free, you have to pay them
That’s the result of a fucked business model. Many software devs came and went prior to the subscription model. Technofeudalism is not wanted by anyone but the software publishers.
To them, it’s the perfect business model. Keep you customers in perpetual debt, and dependent.
I don’t think you can compare software from like 20 years ago to software today.
Things got way more complicated and applications require a lot more work
Supermarket chain Kroger announced today that they are switching to a subscription model for grocery purchases. “Customers will no longer be allowed to buy groceries directly, but will now be requested to log in using their account in order to complete purchases.”
“Moving to a subscription model will help us to streamline operations, cut costs and continue to provide our customers with prices.” according to the Kroger CAI’s quarterly filing with Wall St.
“At the self-checkout, after scanning your groceries, simply login with your e-mail address and 64 character password. You will then receive a text with your 128 digit verification code, which you can type in manually at the 3rd numeric keypad. If you attempt to purchase more than your subscription level, you’ll be guided on how to restock the excess items.”
Kroger says grocery plans will start at $5/day, which will enable customers to treat themselves to a daily ration of either 1 lb of cabbage or 1 lb of potatoes.
Please note that customers must create a unique account for each Kroger location. “Customer loyalty is very important to us.” said a Kroger representative, who then offered this reporter an opportunity to invest in a pre-public release of Kroger Koin.
Had me eating the onion until the third paragraph
😁
Will I need a shoplifting subscription too as an add on?
I love potatoes and cabbage personally. But this is still scarily accurate and possible.
Time to start growing our own food. People buying groceries on klarna, after pay etc is already happening
Kroger can come eat what I flush every morning.
So it’s either we destroy our masters or we allow our children to destroy our societies and who could blame the kids? There’s a reason why things are the way they are. Older men are dating younger women. I wonder why this is. Maybe it’s because their wallets are more mature. And what am I supposed to do? Be angry at women? Get real. One of the reasons why we have so many young men who are incels is because of employment issues. Yet some forms of feminism specifically libturd females who Love castrating males and rubbing shit in their face, blaming it on rightwing populism, but populism is capitalism in crisis. We are still in fucking denial. The violence that is directed towards women is directly correlated with socioeconomics and stupid fucking Judeo-Christian values. Now I know correlation is not causation. But shit, it’s got a relationship… Now just because people do these things and there is a bad economy doesn’t justify their actions but I am wise enough to know that I am a product of my environment. Look at all of these familicides that happen in our country yet we got these dumbass oinker shit rags making $200,000 plus a year and they are forming deputy gangs emboldened to the point where they’re chasing ink with their gang tattoos. The Catholic Church and the police are very similar in that they just shuffle around these reprobates. I don’t leave the house much only for what I need to do, the basic necessities of life. But when I do, I usually take a drive on a Sunday where all those that want to ignore our problems are in their homes sheltered buying shit on Amazon and I drive around and I look at all the people that are pushing shopping carts. Not like animals in the zoo, I’m just trying to see the temperature and where we’re at. It’s not looking good. Sometimes in life there are no easy answers. We live in the paradox, a open air prison, where we don’t understand what’s going on in the black box. If we could get inside that black box, we could turn the dials like the Wizard of Oz, and all these stupid social fucking ills would just automatically just disappear, at least at the rate that they are now. The German population hated themselves and that’s why they invented the undesirables. Now you as a civilization have an option. You either start having respect for yourself or you’re going to create a system that executes the undesirables while failing to realize that one day you might be an undesirable. Now it’s kind of like a slow even burn, but pretty soon this system is going to open up the komono, come on out and start swinging dick. Are you ready to send your children to die for a billionaire’s cock? Are you ready to be conscripted? because it’s gonna happen and they’re gonna start dropping nukes. You’re also going to see false flag events happening in your own country, but yet you think I’m a tin foil hat man and I think you’re an idiot that doesn’t understand history. There is no fucking war but the class war. The left and right paradigm is a byproduct of kicking the can. And the paradoxes that we live in are really fake. So when your grandpappy got some old man knowledge. Just remember, his brain doesn’t work like it used to. https://www.theviolenceproject.org/
