Well if I could afford a Mercedes, they would be off my list now.
With all these subscriptions and other crap being added to autos, seems I will be only buying very old cars. My current auto is pushing 20 years
With all these subscriptions and other crap being added to autos, seems I will be only buying very old cars. My current auto is pushing 20 years
I just made a note on my phone today about how in future if there wasn’t some kind of a law to protect “owners” of hardware they “purchased” from cross promotion or added inconveniences due to upselling services I would be quite sad.
For e.g. the experience of backing up your iPhone photographs to a external hard disk could be A LOT better if Apple was satisfied with the money they make from selling the device and didn’t want to sell us their iCloud service.
I so hate growth at all cost mindset that is visible in every business these days. I wish investors would just get used to lower growth rates.
A VM running macOS and a script. Open Photos.app and sync with ‘Download Originals’ checked. Quit Photos.app and rsync the folder ‘Originals’ out of the app bundle and onto a NAS. Once finished, reopen Photos.app.
It’s quite horrible getting the script to run as permissions get tricky with chrontab, so I used Lingon X to schedule it.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD821AM/A/lightning-to-us...
But, yeah, I have lightening drives that connect directly to download pictures onto (well, purchased as a gift).. They even also have USB to be read in a computer.
But you can also have it connect to a computer over wifi and auto-backup. Does Google let you do that?
To some extent this was eventually solved by third party vendors laboriously creating lightning flash drives and creating an app to talk to them.
But it is definite that you cannot backup your phone. Even apple's backup method is crippled.
I would like an image backup - where you could back up every bit of phone data - but apple gets in the way of that.
But compare that to an Android phone, where I have no idea how to get access to anything more than pictures without ADB.
afaict it doesn't back up apps and app data. You can restore your phone, but the apps download again and app data is lost.
I believe this means if you are on version 10 of an app and 11 is the latest, a restore will upgrade you. And it you have say kindle books downloaded, you will have to re-download them again.
Car companies can't offer anything close; this subscription features thing from Intel, Mercedes and BMW is bold-faced grifting and needs to be stamped out with extreme prejudice.
It's a classic masterpiece of platform gatekeeping: Getting money for doing nothing, but being the only one who can do it.
Capitalism.
It used to be about making a great product, and people would buy it.
Then it became "We can generate a fake demand with various psychological tricks" to get people to buy it.
Then it became "Give away the razor and charge $$$$$$ for the blades".
Then it became "Buy the thing and subscription and save!"
Then it became "Buy this crippled thing so we can sell you the subscription for recurring income" <- This is where we're at.
Point being, it's not about making a great product. It's about using emotional tricks to get people to buy a thing AND a subscription, to get what 10y ago would have been a lump-sum you-own-it thing.
And at this moment in time, the "best" strategy is to milk customers with recurring purchases. And it turns out the value-add didn't work. So feature-removal-and-sell-back recurring purchase is the current phase.
We're seeing that everywhere in IOT, gadgets, kitchen consumer gear, vehicles. Basically, it's the manufacturers exerting control post-purchase with the implicit threat that they can and will brick your stuff.
To put bluntly, we need government oversight over these realms. First-sale doctrine needs to cover "functionality sold at bill of sale". "No bundling" (of additional services that "complete" a thing) also needs to be strongly enforced. And if/when companies do stuff later and remove features (PS3 for an easy example), that they need to be dealt with as if a hacker did that - as C-level ordered felonies with prison, direct massive compensation to the wronged parties, and massive fines (company-ending if need be).
Free markets are not always providing perfect solutions, but I am absolutely sure government intervention could only worsen the situation, never improve it.
> Still the devices I currently own are the best devices I ever had.
"Own" - that's the key word here where the contention is. If the entity you bought this thing from still retains control over your thing, that's a rental.
> And the services I subscribe to are incredible services that never even existed before.
Considering you're not naming said "incredible services", it's irrelevant to dispute.
> Free markets are not always providing perfect solutions, but I am absolutely sure government intervention could only worsen the situation, never improve it.
Absolutely sure? That sounds extremely over-simplistic to reduce every possible legislation and governance down to "always sure government intervention worsens the situation".
And part of my recommendations are not needing new laws, but maintaining product truth-in-advertising in the face of remote access. And frankly, if I put in remote control, sold the machine, and then remotely destroyed it, I'd be brought in for felony hacking charges.
But really, the level of discourse of "guvernment baaaadddd" is damned distressing, and unfortunately a result of Reagan's very successful campaign to say that, defund public facing gov orgs, and then point at lack of performance for underfunded orgs, thus doing another round of underfunding.
We don't live in anything remotely resembling a free market. Tens of thousands of pages of government regulations govern every facet of our commercial markets. The only question is how these regulations should be written.
But of course there are a zillion other examples, if you bother to look, it's just that those benefits disappear into the fabric of society.
Luckily usb c sucks less, but: What company will now have any reason to research a better connector to replace usb c when it’s not allowed to put it on the market?! Any innovation in this area was made illegal in the EU. Luckily we still have USA not yet succumbing to the madness.
These kinds of shortsighted decisions are why the EU stopped growing and innovating and started falling behind while becoming dependent on cheap Russian energy.
Even if well meaning and well written (two big ifs), the actual price of regulation is extremely high, it’s stagnation. But nobody realizes it because that lost opportunity cost forever disappears into the fabric of society…
Of course if you mandate a very narrow standard, completely inflexibly, you may have this kind of problem.
But from where I am, it looks like the 'swashbuckling free market' has stagnated due to monopoly power (Apple lightning), whereas the 'evil plodding government' has ensured compatibility, reduced waste, gauging, etc, while accommodating the incredible evolution of the USB standard.
Apple will have no problem complying as they already had a separate European nano SIM model. Or maybe they were ready to switch to USB-C anyway (a standard they helped develop), as they did with iPad Pros and MacBooks. While us users will swallow the cost as always while bitching about downgrading to USB-C.
But now innovation in this domain was made illegal. There is no way a company will invest in researching a new connector when they cannot legally bring it to the market. So Europe is becoming dependent on American creativity in yet another area. A small and maybe negligible one, of course, but this is a symptom of a larger disease: the EU is voting to mandate stagnation. And the worst part when outlawing innovation is this: you don't even know what you are missing. Because nobody is allowed to invent that future anymore.
Locking quality behind a subscription is 100% incompatible with that pattern. Some short-sighted executives just sold Mercedes’ long-term future for a couple extra bucks.
Just blacklist and ignore them, they’ll figure it out eventually.
Instead of endlessly debating if Mercedes should have done this or not, vote with your wallet. if you dont agree with what they did dont buy the product.
If enough people dont buy it, they will change. it isnt like Mercedes has a lock on the market like you see in other areas.
I drive a truck. I think I'm going to get my favorite body style of F150 (late 70s/early 80s) and put a brand new engine in it, and whatever else it needs to make it 100%. I don't need any tech except one of those things that turns AUX into FM radio.
When I bought this truck, it replaced a 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 318,000 miles (512,000km). I can live without luxury. I'll miss my heated steering wheel, though.
It was genuinely, with no sarcasm, my favorite vehicle I ever owned. It was mine and it felt like freedom. (Also, with no upholstery, no amount of smoking could stink it up, so an extra helping of freedom).
I miss the shit out of that busted old pile of junk.
• depending on your era the radios are easily replaceable with something that has aux in and bluetooth.
• towing insurance, the kind that actually pays for the tow, not the garbage my insurance includes which will pay part of a really expensive tow leaving you with more than you will find if you shop around.
• a flexible schedule.
• a greater than average tolerance for vehicular death.
I use a 1990s F250HD when I need a truck, love it, can't stop to put fuel in it without someone coming over to talk truck stories. It has more miles on it than the Artemis space capsule. But, it does strand me from time to time (water pump bearing, transmission, instant total brake failure on a downhill grade into a contested intersection with 4 tons of boat on the hitch…)
As much as I use it for its truck super power, I would be money ahead to sell it and just rent Home Depot/Menards truck for in town use and an Enterprise 3/4 ton for long distance towing. But, its "my truck", and I'll keep it until the next transmission or engine.
You're free to drive into a tree of your own accord, but please don't let your personal choices kill my girlfriend or mother. If you drive an old vehicle, especially if it's a large truck used for towing, ensure before any drive that the brakes will not fail, and that you have the requisite backups required by local law.
if it wasn't for these regulations I think there would be a huge market for "dumb" cars that just have the essentials without a bunch of added stuff. Same goes for TVs, I' love to buy a dumb flat screen TV
at this point seems like corporations are using dystopian sci-fi for ideas and inspiration rather than as something to avoid. Stuff like this a few years ago was literally parody material, now it's actually happening
Past conversations about this on HN suggest that this is almost certainly a complete fabrication, not something that has actually been documented.
I think all luxury manufacturers will experiment with this unfortunately. Best you can do is don't buy into it...
If it ever gets back into Tesla's hands, they have the option to remove the features.
There WAS a case where someone bought a used Tesla from a non-Tesla dealership that was sold with FSD and Tesla then removed the FSD, and there was a lot of outrage behind it, but like many cases of outrage, it was based on a misunderstanding. That car was never supposed to have FSD. There was a bug at some point that gave FSD to cars that weren't supposed to have it, and that car was sold before the bug was fixed, removing FSD, but the dealer sold it as having FSD because at the time, it did. Of course, IMO, Tesla should have just gone ahead and granted FSD in order to save face instead of generating a ton of negative PR and creating a massive amount of misconceptions.
And this wasn't a feature when it first came out, but I wonder if Tesla planned it from the beginning, or if it's something they decided to start offering only after people started noticing that the motors and battery on the LR AWD were the same as the Performance and started asking for a software unlock.
These things require access to accurate and up-to-date road and traffic info, need updates to stay compliant with local regulations, and may (need to) include insurance.
These are all factors that nudge towards a monthly subscription, instead of a one-time purchase. Once the seller goes bust, you wouldn't be able to use your 'purchase' anyhow.
Which they will probably steal from the regular drivers, so you will be effectively paying for your own data.
And not so luxury as well, they might start by giving you the features and financing that by playing/showing you the ads and giving the incentive to pay. I imagine in not so distant future even the microwaves for plebs will have ads.
This will affect used car sales, maybe like used video games with activation codes and the like.
I suspect this is merely an experiment to see if people buy into this stuff (Hint: I believe they won't).
Say a clutch that would normally last 7 years and costs $7,000 for parts/hours lasts half as long if users do regular full throttle accelerations to 60 MPH (like say an on ramp)?
And many more places with 75 - which people effectively treat as 80.
Why? There are speed limits greater than that in a few states. The flow of traffic in Southern California is often even faster.
Which is exactly the problem GP wants to fix.
I'm more worried about the growing pedestrian deaths since vehicles have no requirement, like in Europe, to be as safe as possible when hitting pedestrians.
pedestrians being struck at speeds in excess of 75 mph while crossing freeways?
But it's a good thing that we should make sure can continue, not a problem that needs to be fixed.
Reminders of scale aside, I posit that the limit for vehicles needn't be speed or size, but braking distance. If a manufacturer can make a 6600 pound SUV that stops from 75 mph in the same distance that a 3300 pound sports car with track brakes and extra grippy, super-wide tires, brakes from 75, I say more power to them.
Until then, this metric will naturally lead manufacturers to downsize, and for the ones who still produce SUV's anyway, they will need to be as good at stopping as regular cars, which might make them more cost-prohibitive and dissuade their ownership via market pressure.
After all, it's not speed or size that cause automotive fatalities, it's cars being unable to stop in time before impacting other vehicles, pedestrians, or impassible barriers.
The speed-unlimited sections of the German autobahn have far fewer accidents per million miles travelled than any US highway, in spite of the fact that many people are routinely doing 150+ mph / 250+ kmh on a daily basis through those stretches.
If you're arguing from an environmental perspective, just remember that even if the entirety of the USA and western europe hit net zero carbon emissions tomorrow, it would still be impossible to avoid 2° C of global warming thanks to India and China alone, to say nothing of the rest of the world.
I forgot which study it comes from, but I read that several dozen Chinese coal-powered industrial cargo ships produce more CO2 than all North American personal automobile emissions combined.
I'm not a climate denier, and we should do more to improve things but what would the impact be if 32 million people cut back?
We already have massive taxes on our gas, and now we have a "carbon charge" on top of this.
if canada's consumption fell to zero would the world notice?
If we really want climate change, we need to stop focusing on small consumer usage and look where the real problem areas.
Convincing people in Saskatoon to buy electric cars, which are powered by coal plants is not going to "save the planet".
Helping remove coal as an energy source globally will.