Picard would be ashamed.
- Definitely gonna keep my subscriptions as minimal as I can, like I currently am: just a VPN. Obviously I have a few others I’ll need in the future like utilities, internet, and phone, but those are the bare minimum you need since you can scrape by without paying a dime for content thanks to piracy, so long as you are careful.
- I have a couple of ones that I’d say are both high on the list ( no idea which is higher because they’re both pretty annoying to me ).
The first is that when I do dishes at home, I put certain things a very specific way when filling the dishwasher and putting things away, which is why I absolutely hate when other people do dishes. I’ll deal with other people doing the dishes, but then I always feel like I gotta go and put things back where they belong when I’m not the one to put the dishes away.
The second is more furry fandom specific. So, when it comes to fursuits, some people might ditch the fursuit head and just maybe wear the paws or other pieces of it if it’s not a single piece costume. My gripe is specifically that: not wearing the head. I don’t care if you poodle ( wear a partial and show some skin ), talk in suit, or whatever, but I think it’s extremely disrespectful to the character your suit is based off of, whether it’s your fursona, OC, an adopt, liberty suit, whatever, to not wear the head at a bare minimum. It’s why my opinion the bare minimum you should do for a fursuit commission should be the head.
Did you have a stroke while writing this?
Not even just software. Fucking everything. They are making car options a subscription.
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.
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 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.
You’re nearly there already! 🤢
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.
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 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.
Cory Doctorow wrote a fantastic story about this. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wandyezj/reference/master/unauthorized-bread.pdf
I buy things that are a one-time purchase sometimes entirely because I was given the option.
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”.
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.
There was a map app I liked better than Google Maps because you could download any map you wanted for route planning and if you wanted traffic info etc, you had to buy the app for those features. But if you had to go places without cell connectivity. you would still be able to find your way.
Anyways, I liked it so much I payed 25 bucks to buy the app. Purchasing it gave me access to everything the app could do. Then Literally 6 months later, they were bought out by another company and rebranded and didn’t honor people who bought the app. Instead I would have to pay a monthly fee to use it…
I got rid of it and will never buy another app again.
Try Linux, I just recently installed fedora on dual boot
But be aware that it’s not all hunky-dory because I’m still figuring out how to get nvidia drivers working after trying solutions I found online and I’m still trying to figure out how to get hdr working in gnome and there’s also the fact that kde plasma keeps freezing after a short time so I’m stuck on gnome
Installation was fine though, I was scared I was going to fuck something up with dual boot
I liked the look of KDE plasma and used it when I first started with Linux but it is a buggy mess and extremely bloated. It feels like it’s stuck trying to be Windows 7 aero.
As for NV I use Nvidia as well and I haven’t had any issues on CachyOS with Nvidia’s actual “open” drivers (not neuveau)
The only excuse for subscription model is when there is cloud storage/sync or server provided functions that are a core part of the software.
If I didn’t rely heavily on the cloud storage and syncing part of Lightroom for editing photos seamlessly on desktop, mobile, and web, then I would already have dropped Adobe for Darktable and a pirated copy of Photoshop CS2 for when I need to print.
I’m glad to see you mention that, I was going to make a similar comment. I figure it’s a message that’s probably well understood here on the fediverse, but outside of this space not so much.
I think there’s also an argument to be made for charging subscriptions based on overall maintenance needs. Upgrades, updates, bug fixes, and things of that nature take time and can also cost money.
However, overall, there are way too many subscription based apps that just don’t seem justified. If I buy version 2.3 of AppXYZ, and as long as I stick to that version nor need any online functionality, I just don’t see a valid excuse for a subscription, other than pure greed on the developers’ part.
Welcome to Rent Based Economy, peasants.
Perpetual debt. As planned.
Technoserfdom
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.”
“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.
I love potatoes and cabbage personally. But this is still scarily accurate and possible.
Will I need a shoplifting subscription too as an add on?
Kroger can come eat what I flush every morning.
Time to start growing our own food. People buying groceries on klarna, after pay etc is already happening
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/
Had me eating the onion until the third paragraph
Feel the love of Free Open Source Software.
Aren’t the blue checks part of a subscription model?
I pirated everything before they decided to make everything rental only.
I assumed when I got older I’d be able to afford the software and they’d get there due.
But now they want everything to be rental and I’m not down for that.
This is me. I grew up “choose between bills and food” poor, and found alternate solutions to enjoy things. Figured that once I had the disposable income I’d stop. Sure, I did pay my way for a long time too. The thing that fucked me off the most was Netflix telling me that I couldn’t share my account with a student friend of mine. I’m paying to be able to watch on 4 screens simultaneously, who the fuck is Netflix to dictate where those screens are located?
I still pay for stuff, if I feel that the service, software, what have you, deserves my money. I’ve paid enough for Netflix through the years so anything there is just me collecting my due.
: Side eyes Adobe CS6 Suite and Ableton:
So you are claiming the only reason that you are not paying for the software that you were previously pirating is that they switched to a paid subscription? Right
Hmm, immediately call me out for being an assjole without asking if I own all the software that’s not rental?
Go troll somebody else, I don’t have time for people like you.
I didn’t call you an asshole lol I just find it hard to believe someone would not just continue to pirate the software they already pirate if that remained an option
When i was young and broke there were games that I’ve pirated. Played, and loved, and bought them redundantly to make up for it.
I wouldn’t have played the game if I didn’t.
I wish game demos were still popular.
You guessed wrong, this is common.
And good and blocked bye-bye
Use and support open source where ever possible
Actually supporting open source looks a lot like a subscription service. I donate monthly to a handful of projects that I use regularly.
they just need to outlaw subscription based services on services that don’t need it.
And no continuous support is not a valid subscription reason, if you want to charge support separate that’s fair to do but this pay 60$ a year “because it’s a continuous development” needs to go away.
Same with the “pay a rent for a building”, it’s just money drain. Being a landlord should not be allowed to be for profit, and should be heavily regulated. If you wanna rent? Sure, but at max it should be equivalent to costs the building has, and restricted to only apartment complexes. So annoying that you can’t find property anymore to actually /own/ because a handful of rental companies can just write a blank check and buy it all.
if you want to charge support separate that’s fair to do but this pay 60$ a year “because it’s a continuous development” needs to go away
Can i pay extra to not have continuous updates that often breaks shit?
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)
Lol, yeah, the fucking building at work kills me.
It’s well off the road and is not congruent with it, It has two viable fronts and since not quite 45° to the compass rose but not far enough off to use it to the description.
Can’t say north south east west can’t say roadside can’t say front so I can’t say left or right.
Labeling where IT equipment is is such a fucking pain in the ass.
There are fire stairs on either side of the building and they do not differentiate them.
I could probably do NE and SW But it just feel so fucking dirty.
I just called the sides East and West in the end even though they’re nowhere near.
At least the rest of the IT staff could figure out east and west if we were compass oriented I would totally not feel bad about using it
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.
How is that a boomer complaint? It’s basic. Microsoft Word should be buy once for 3 computers, as it always was until subs took over.
We can’t even read the news anymore without a sub.
I like the use of the word rent for this.
I think it depends on the type of software. Subscriptions do make sense for software that requires regular updates, e.g. something tax related, where you need it updated with the latest regulations every year. Basically for anything that won’t be useful a year from the purchase date without feature updates.
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Nah, absolutely not. Putting a profit incentive on the news is how we end up with how the news currently is - reaction-bait with the sole purpose of driving engagement and views to generate ad revenue, instead of actual, unbiased, honest journalism.
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I wouldn’t say it was just that. News also got worse on e.g. government supported TV channels in countries that have them. Part of the problem is the regurgitation of social media on the news and also news organizations being afraid of social media backlash. Another part is politicians not giving interviews to organizations that ask them hard questions, that one was probably better in the past because there were more limited numbers of news sources.
If you want narrow readership. Or a society that bases its current events knowledge almost strictly on headlines instead of article content.
People can’t afford groceries. Rent. There is a profound increase in garbage both along highways and in rural locations because it’s the first utility to be sacrificed in the name of survival.
Paying $x per month to dig deeper in on a headline, while the above is happening, isn’t going to occur on any grand scale.
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Gatekeeping the news? No ty.
Do you think the news just appears on webpages for us to consume?
Particularly in the case of investigative journalism, there is a skill involved in writing the stories, and it consumes the time and effort of many people.
Charging money for your work is not “gatekeeping.” It’s how you keep eating.
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