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.

  • rekabis@lemmy.ca
    164·
    1 day ago

    Cars.

    Most any vehicle made after 2006 will have one or more of these three issues:

    1. Lack of repairability. Not just computerization, but auth to the point where changing your brake pads and rotors can make your vehicle refuse to move until those brakes and rotors are authorized over the Internet by the vehicle manufacturer. And the software to do so costs $1M to buy, needs a $6k/mo subscription, and can only be bought by authorized dealers, locking out independent repair shops.
    2. Privacy. Almost all vehicles after 2006 and any before that with OnStar records everything the vehicle does and sends that up to the mothership to be repackaged and sold to data brokers. Then your insurance gets a copy and jacks up what you pay because you braked hard and sped slightly over the limit a few times. Modern cars will also record everything that happens inside and around the vehicle, to the point where when you buy the car you have to sign a waiver that states they have permission to record anyone doing anything inside the vehicle, up to and including having sex in the back seat.
    3. DRM. When you buy a vehicle with all the bells and whistles, but many of those bells and whistles are shut down until you pay $$$/mo to have them turned back on. Sorry, but if the vehicle came with it, I will gleefully crack that software until I can use that feature. I paid for it when I bought the vehicle, so I have every right to use it without paying a cent extra.
    • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
      71·
      1 day ago

      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.

    • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world
      84·
      1 day ago

      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.

      • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 day ago

        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.

      • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 day ago

        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.