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.
Certainly not a Boomer complain.
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.
I agree about the apps thing but QR code menus are fine imo. Beats having to decipher a sometimes outdated, damaged, dirty physical menu with a terrible print.
QR codes are 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.
That is a terrible scam, you will be caught in days when people go to court because they were towed when they paid on that site, and banks might well track you down out of spite.
It’s like fishing.
Oh wow I just replied that QR codes for stuff like menus is nice, but for paying ? That is a terrible idea lol. Never seen one in the wild though.
In the UK a lot of them take you to a site that you order the food from and that includes payment. Replacing it with your own QR code is very easy.
Why is a paper menu the hill you choose?
It’s just easier and simpler. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Besides, I don’t want to dig my phone, open it, and have to turn off a 1900 ‘legitimate interest’ switches or get told to download an app and let them install a camera in my ass.
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
the app only has half the functionality of the web page
… and all the ads, that I can’t block outside the browser
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.”
deleted by creator
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.
I’m a Xoomer and my knees just clicked.
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
As much as I loathe capitalism, I will be happy about the grubs, ribbit ribbit.
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 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.
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.
I’m reminded of the novel Ubiq, where the protagonist had to feed change into his apartment door just to get it to open.
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:
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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
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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.
