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Comment by KronisLV | Hacker News Reader

What an absurd time to be alive: "Here's a device that you have supposedly bought, in full working order, with the supplies needed for it to work present... and yet, you cannot use it, unless you remain subscribed to the corporation that makes it."

What's next? Scanners only working under a subscription? Your Wi-Fi router or switches only working when a license is active (even your LAN)? Your chargers, PSUs or UPSes only being allowed to work for 6 months, before you're forced to buy a newer model? Needing a monthly subscription to use your OS or browser? I don't even know anymore...

The printer example feels like it shouldn't be legal. The whole printer ink situation feels a lot like that. The companies are probably going to get away with this, because they're the ones setting the rules, you're free to not use their services and instead turn to the non-existent companies that will put the users over maximizing profits.

Edit: Louis suggests Brother as a brand that doesn't do this. However, what guarantees are there that they won't?

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Wires. The next thing is wires. As a media tech guy I already know active optical HDMI cables (50m) that come with an USB-to-HDMI adaptor so you can update the cables firmware(!).

With electrical equipment like oscilloscopes it is quite common to sell the physically identical unit with different softwarelocks for different prices (Want 350 MHz bandwidth instead of 80? Pay some extra).

Want that HDMI cable to run 8k? Here os a simple subscription. As resolutions go up there comes a point where cable will have to have some active components in them anyways.

This isn’t new, though. My first job was for Xerox in 1996 and they sold variations on photocopiers that were purely software. (Or even a physical DIP switch.)

The basic model XX40 gives you 40 pages a minute. Want the XX80? An engineer comes out and flips the DIP. Exact same hardware.

I recall consumer CPUs and some pencil mark bridging trick to upgrade them around that time too.

Those were the Pentium II, 233-333Mhz were all identical and could be pencil unlocked

IIRC some AMD too.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AMD_Athlon_Pencil_Tr...

This probably sold a lot of extra CPUs.

Not the same time frame, but it reminded me of the hack to make consumer GeForce Nvidia cards appear to be their overpriced, professional, Quadro counterparts:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/hacking-nvid...

It's at least plausible that running them faster means servicing is more expensive (assuming these were supplied under service contracts / leases which seems to be the usual case for office copiers).

I am 100% okay with hardware that has been leased having artificial limitations. I don't own a leased device. I am paying for my usage of it. Running something at half capacity for service reliability reasons is a valid strategy.

I'm 100% okay with artificial limitations on hardware I buy, too, so long as they're upfront about capabilities - Running something at half capacity for service reliability reasons is still a valid strategy when dealing with warranties. I have no problem buying an AMD Ryzen 7900 which is literally the same silicon on the same fab as the 7950, but binned differently. They are clear about what they're providing, what the specs are, and it's possible that it could perform better, but I know what they're guaranteeing. Sometimes I don't like it - If yields are good, they could bin many more cards at the higher tier and drop the price, but they're under no obligation to provide me a better product out of charity; They should have competition that forces their hand.

It's where it's unclear or deceptive that it's a problem, and HP's scheme is a shakedown. We should invest in competitors.

I'd see them as a monopoly business. The cost to start a competitor is ridiculously high. The hardware sellers instead need to be broken up for competitiveness

And you don’t care if you can’t fix it either?

John Deere sells you a tractor and you honestly don’t care that you can’t have it repaired by a local tractor shop?

I mean it’s great if you happen to live next to a dealer and are rich, but not everyone is so privileged.

That'd be the "We should invest in competitors" part.

Monopolies are a problem. Businesses exploiting consumers are a problem. Both are worth solving.

Provided this is clear up front, and I have alternatives if it doesn’t suit my needs; yes.

You used to be able to buy budget version of Casio scientific calculator and use pencil to draw a wire on PCB to turn it into fx-991EX. The only thing missing button labels.

I remember this!! Similar with the 9850G, could upgrade it to the GII with a slightly modified hardware

What.

The.

Fuck.

Downvoted because you do not have the HN subscription to write swear words?

My bad, I forgot to drink the verification can.

Sorry, you were on the family plan. If you want access to adult content you will have to add the .xxx package (and also scan your government issued ID and/or install the adult verification app on your phone if you live in France, UK or in the states of Texas or Louisiana).

>It is quite common to sell the physically identical unit with different softwarelocks for different prices (Want 350 MHz bandwidth instead of 80? Pay some extra).

Literally every "scan tool" for troubleshooting machinery is like this.

I worked for a company that made customers send units in for an ‘upgrade’.

The upgrade consisted of popping open the case to pull an SD card out and update a text file with a list of enabled features. Could be a few grand in new features after the ‘upgrade’.

I can only imagine a few technicians figured this trick out on their own.

> Wires. The next thing is wires.

AT&T already did this. You were paying not only for the service but all of the equipment as well. You didn't actually own anything from the phone company.

My favorite is cable TV. First you paid extra if you wanted digital/HD, even though both analog and digital were on the wire. But after analog broadcasts were turned off, the cable companies were effectively downgrading HD signals and charging more if you wanted them NOT to do that!

cable was originally sold so you could pay your way out of sitting through commercials. that was why cable TV started.

Haha. No. Cable TV started in areas with poor reception primarily due to terrain.

haha. no. cable TV started because people didn't want to see commercials.

100% fact, at least where I grew up. we had no reception problems (flat farmland) and we were one of the first houses in one of the first towns in the area to get cable service. cable company promised no commercials ever, and that's why he subscribed, after a trial period. there were zero commercials.

I remember my father on the phone with the cable company, the company that owned the cable company, our state representative, and our governor, all within a month after the first commercials started airing. obviously it did no good.

I recall the same marketing, cable was going to be TV without ads… because you paid for it.

Sure, that’s after cable evolved into something with enough bandwidth to the house to deliver dozens/hundreds of channels to a subscriber, not to mention the necessary distribution infrastructure on the back-end (e.g. satellite). That wasn’t the case at first. Heck, Sputnik hadn’t even launched when cable started.

Cable wasn’t around long before the ads came along.

Jeez, tone down the snark? Especially if you’re going to not provide any sources. Either way, you are incorrect. Cable TV indeed started as a way for folks to get TV when reception was otherwise impossible at the home (e.g. a mountain sits between them and the broadcast antenna). Fwiw, my great-grandfather started a small (small!) cable company in rural east coast-ish mountains back in the late 50s or early 60s because they otherwise had no reception.

Per Wikipedia [0]:

“The abbreviation "CATV" is used in the US for cable television and originally stood for community antenna television, from cable television's origins in 1948; in areas where over-the-air TV reception was limited by distance from transmitters or mountainous terrain, large community antennas were constructed, and cable was run from them to individual homes. […] The early systems simply received weak (broadcast) channels, amplified them, and sent them over unshielded wires to the subscribers, limited to a community or to adjacent communities. The receiving antenna would be taller than any individual subscriber could afford, thus bringing in stronger signals; in hilly or mountainous terrain it would be placed at a high elevation.”

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television

> Your Wi-Fi router or switches only working when a license is active (even your LAN)?

We live in that world today. Most enterprise networking equipment operates with the licensing model.

IF that is correct, and I've had my suspicions about some network connected devices, then its sold under false pretences because its buying a product that you think you own but actually dont and it makes this deceitful. Saying that I know of a car manufacturer that will brick your engine a short while after a dealer service in a bid to give it an upgrade, I've had that done to me, by a certain German company, unless some other spooky entity has more oversight and access to things than they care to let on to.

I'm not sure why you have "IF". Different software has long been a different cost option on enterprise network kit.

If you are buying an enterprise switch you know exactly what you're getting

(In reality it features you don't buy on Juniper seem to still work, just print nags to the log file. Arista from what I can see are fully featured anyway. I'm talking basic routing features like BGP rather than some cloud based librenms the sales guy keeps trying to flog)

We have been explicitly told that a DNA Advantage 3 Year License will continue to work after the 3 year license though. All companies are moving to a per-year charge though, as it keeps the money rolling in.

Your home router has always been on the "subscription plan". Once your vendor abandons the hardware and ceases updates, do you really want an opaque, un-inspectable black box with access to your whole network, while the CVEs pile up and you have no patch or upgrade options left?

Your IOTs are all on subscription plan. All it takes is a defunct company, yank from the App Store, or unpatched CVEs and you'll need to physically uninstall that puppy, whether it's your dishwasher, fridge, thermostat, or lawn sprinklers. Have fun.

> Your IOTs are all on subscription plan.

Only if they require some internet connection.

IOT, internet of things. It’s kind of right there in the name…

> Internet of things has been considered a misnomer because devices do not need to be connected to the public internet, they only need to be connected to a network, and be individually addressable.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things

There's more than one internet.

> Your home router has always been on the "subscription plan". Once your vendor abandons the hardware and ceases updates, do you really want an opaque, un-inspectable black box with access to your whole network, while the CVEs pile up and you have no patch or upgrade options left?

OpenWRT says hi. https://openwrt.org/toh/start

Having used DD-WRT for a while, the fact that there is a searchable device list is a nice touch.

> Your Wi-Fi router or switches only working when a license is active (even your LAN)?

This is what OpenWRT is for.

We need FOSS scanner and printer stack.

Which is ironic given one of the original motivations behind Richard Stallman getting involved in open source and part of the foundational history of the whole GNU FOSS organisations and ecosystem… is that he got frustrated with a printer and wanted to write his own software to run it (basically wanting to write his own firmware) for it.

Given we have open source 3D printers… why are there no good open source regular printers? Does no one really care that much? Is it too much of a niche desire given the ubiquitous nature of shitty printers round the world being sold for less than they cost in a parasitical effort to trap owners into a sunk cost fallacy of paying for overpriced ink?

The argument I've been hearing when this comes up is that the mechanical side of ordinary 2d printers is too high-precision for hobbyist work.

This sounds plausible, the actual nozzle holes in an inkjet printer are around .003 inches (76 µm for the rest of us) according to Wikipedia [1]. That sounds like some pretty high-order manufacturing is needed, I'm not drilling that out in the shed.

Perhaps the best bet would be to find a commercially available printer (laser or inkjet) and reverse engineer it, perhaps replacing the control board with a Raspberry Pi or something more suitable (ESP32?) to drive the existing electro-mechanical components with an open firmare.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkjet_printing#Continuous_ink...

That’s the argument I usually hear as well. But a lot of the fidelity of such a high precision system is basically “wasted” reproducing the kinds of analog effects that exist at the edges of the ink meets paper part of writing/illustrating with a physical implement. Plotters with pens are still a commercial niche because the need for precise clean vector graphics to be mass produced in small batches of specific content (think custom topography maps with survey and drilling markers, or mission maps for a specific regional campaign, or other commercial line art work)

It’s sort of surprising there isn’t a well established reprap of plotting given it’s simplicity. The biggest missing piece is arguably the paper feed.

And as for an inkjet… why does a reliable printer need to be that good, I’d be pretty happy with a “higher dpi” pseudo dot matrix printer using a lift retract style mechanism and a hacked up refillable ink pen. Tapping out the art one dot at a time.

It’s not a bad argument for a lot of consumer printing use cases, but the “they need too much precision” never felt compelling to me given the breadth of printer technology both past and present.

You describe a rather niche printer.

Even 20 years ago most of that plotting work had been taken over by large-format inkjets - I used to be involved with a few print shops around that time.

The "high precision" is required for the very basic use case of printing a page of black on white text that does not look horrible, and being able to reliably print a 30 page document without jamming. Making the paper feed and printing head positioning hardware to do that is 90% of the way of the expense of building a decent printer.

The actual print head maybe, but there's no reason a commercial one couldn't be used, the same way people don't make their own CPUs.

The most realistic approach is probably to build an open-source printer which can drive proprietary cartridges (which would be refillable because the printer won't complain). People could even design different cartridge holders for a few different models.

It wouldn't be easy, but 3d printers also made immense progress despite technical challenges. I first heard about them in the reprap days and now we can buy well-engineered 3d printers with fancy features like resonance compensation ("input shaping").

People who are hacking in the free time often go towards hacking on things that are fun and interesting. When 3D printing appeared, it was (still is) immensely fun and interesting; "printing your own physical objects?!".

On the other hand you have 2D printing on paper, which is nowhere near as fun and interesting, so you have less people gravitating towards hacking on 2D printing software and hardware. Granted, a few FOSS giants are obviously maintaining the stack, which is amazing.

Same with programming languages for example. You give a developer unlimited free time to learn whatever language they want, they'll probably either go for a language that was newly released and hyped (like Rust) or something obscenely old (like COBOL), probably won't spend time learning PHP or Perl which are too old to be new but too new to be old.

Sounds like work. This is just printing. I can always print at the FedEx down the street.

I think the tolerances are much finer in regular printers, leading to the fact that not anyone can create and tune their homebrew printer. Building and tuning a 3D printer requires much less precision, making it more suitable for open source (for everyone) usage.

> Given we have open source 3D printers… why are there no good open source regular printers?

Most engineers can get an adequate printer - such as a small office laser printer - for 1-2 days wages. And can print things at work, their boss doesn't mind a few pages here and there. And can get photos printed at the supermarket for 10 seconds wages. So there's not much motivation to scratch an itch.

Existing printing technology can also produce photo-quality prints, and is heavily cost-optimised (albeit with very expensive ink). So there's not much motivation to improve on the state of the art in regards to print quality, or upfront purchase price.

Beyond the basic accuracy needs being vastly higher as others have said there's more going on in a paper printer than a 3D printer. Principally the actual paper feeding and movement is pretty complex and well beyond anything needed for a 3D printer.

We need open source printers.. not just the stack. Open source printer hardware, toners/cartridges etc. It is about time.

The irony that this is exactly the kind of garbage that SaaS is, yet it's the bread and butter of many here.

Businesspeople addicted to subscription revenues like they were crack cocaine. It's pathetic, IMO

What delineates businesspeople addicted to subscription revenues and people desiring regular pay (salaries) at regular intervals?

The difference between being paid regularly for regular work, and charging an ongoing fee to use already-purchased hardware to its fullest potential.

I am referring to the desire. I presume almost everyone would like to be paid a salary, regardless of working or not working, just like "businesspeople" want subscription revenues.

Everyone has the desire for fist-sized rubies and emeralds too, but having a desire for something doesn't make it reasonable. Exploiting customers so that 'businesspeople' can get what they want isn't justified by "But everyone wants things"

Sure, we should expect them to be greedy, but when they get too greedy we should hold them accountable. It's too late for me though, I stopped buying HP printers ages ago and while all inkjet printers are scams, and I would advise anyone to avoid them in general, HP currently tops the list of printer companies I'd recommend people avoid.

When they try to make their lives easier at the gross expense of their customers?

It's like those terrible runaway train memes where one track has 100 people and the other track has 1 rich man. Guess which side they always choose to run over?

Is your plumber charging you monthly for your toilet subscription?

No worries. This will last until Eu and other OECD countries crack down on it.

I think about this often. I feel justified by working on a product that is strictly B2B, enterprise software. No predatory practices towards end users. Is that any better or am I deluding myself?

Yes you are. Your end users are B, but that doesn't matter if the practices in question are in fact predatory.

>> I think about this often. I feel justified by working on a product that is strictly B2B, enterprise software. No predatory practices towards end users. Is that any better or am I deluding myself?

I think the question is whether you're providing an actual service that has value, or just charging rent for the software and calling it SaaS. Software has a marginal cost of ZERO, so SaaS is often simple rent-seeking. A company might actually use the money to develop a better version of the software, but that's actually optional on their part.

Another irony is this kind of bullshit from printer vendors is exactly what spurred RMS to advocate for free software (https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201...)

In my youth I found RMS to be excessively dogmatic, inflexible, and obsessed with ideological purity even in situations where it didn't appear to be relevant or matter.

I now see that he was probably right about everything, and every year, users lose more and more ground in the war.

Actually, both can be true (and are).

RMS has some issues, but ultimately even deeply flawed people can still have great ideas. He's a good example of why a good message shouldn't be ignored because of the messenger. No one is right 100% of the time about everything, but he was absolutely right about the importance of freedom and technology. He's got some great views on copyright too.

Hey, we're better that others, we have a on-prem version if our SaaS!

Coming from a "I deal in hardware and professional services around implementing that hardware" background SaaS always struck me a bit different than this kind of thing. SaaS is basically a rental whereas you've bought these things and then need to still pay rent to use them anyways.

I'm not sure it's the same at all. With most Saas, there's no upfront cost, there is nothing you "buy" that you can reasonably consider to be "yours" and use in isolation. Say, a managed database, you pay per resource unit whatever it is, time, space, whatever. If you use a managed service you pay per user or whatever.

How is this the same at all?

Eh... I think SaaS is just a more polished version of basically the same idea.

There absolutely is an upfront cost - a company has paid to create the software that enables that SaaS.

They are simply hiding that from view of the customer, and only offering a rental option.

You used to be able to actually buy stand-alone software, which you installed, and managed on hardware you'd bought, and which upgraded only when you decided to buy again.

But... it turns out it's less profitable to sell standalone software - so the vast majority of vendors are just quietly dropping that option and moving to subscription only licenses: SaaS.

Basically

> there is nothing you "buy" that you can reasonably consider to be "yours" and use in isolation.

Is entirely intentional, and exactly what the printer manufacturer wishes they could do - except they have the pesky problem of having to provide hardware that actually prints at some point. But it's DEFINITELY not the only way to sell software.

All these examples are missing the nefarious bait-and-switchy property to them like the printer example does. When you start using a managed SQL DB from GCP for instance there is no expectation whatsoever that you can use that offline. But you can still spin up a PostgreSQL and use that offline, no problem. No one can turn that off. Sure there are things like licensing but those have existed forever.

> You used to be able to actually buy stand-alone software, which you installed, and managed on hardware you'd bought, and which upgraded only when you decided to buy again.

That's not what Saas is usually considered though, at least in my experience. A note taking app needing a subscription to work isn't what I imagine this thread means when we talk about SaaS.

Not the same.

There is no ongoing cost (to HP) when I buy a printer from them. Whereas, a SaaS has to pay (presumably) server fees.

I prefer this model to that of ads-based revenue, because it leaves more room in the market for competitors (FOSS or otherwise).

brother doesn't do this maybe, but they also recently started purposefully degrading print quality for 3rd party ink

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

Just get an inkjet that uses tanks instead of cartridges. Can't put a chip into liquid ink.

too bad that inkjet fucking sucks if you're not printing regularly

That is a big downside. Have to remember to print at least monthly or deal with clogged heads.

If heads clog with Instant Ink, just swap the ink cart. It’s free. You only pay for prints.

last year brother pushed an automatic update that locked out third party toner

reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mfc_firmware_update_nongenuine_toner_now/

Trust me, cars will be next for the subscription model. There will be resistance at first, but it seems the way we are heading.

Like...a lease?

Nope, more like “pay this to unlock the features x,y and z”

This is already being done by moet major brands these days. They can only withhold luxury features like heated seating for now, but who knows when they take away basic features such as radio, replace it with a Spotify app, and demand a special subscription to listen tk music in your car.

I was trying to look up a Tesla special case (where upgrading the infotainment unit removes the radio unless an additional $500 upgrade is purchased) and learned that several EV manufacturers have already removed AM radio because electric motors interfere with that frequency range.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/business/media/am-radio-c...

"Carmakers noted that drivers can still stream AM radio on apps and not all electric vehicles have dropped it."

Removing hardware features is fine by me. Selling hardware features that can't be used, and rent-seeking with them, is user-hostile.

Want to drive without this awful music? 10$

I see ransomware coming to cars.

Why awful music when it could be ads?

"Please pull over and watch this message from our sponsors to continue your journey"

People would 100% be jailbreaking this stuff.

Or just physically cutting open the seat and bypassing the switch

Unless it has an AI, “you have violated the integrity of this vehicle, starting protocols have been disabled. Please contact your local representative.”

"drink a verification can to continue"

A microcontroller is probably enough, no need to throw in the big AI word.

Very few people. What percentage of iPhone users have their phones jailbroken? 0.0001%

Almost no one will do it - it's a lot of work, loss of warranty, loss of small conveniences.

I used to always jailbreak my iphone (mostly because I was one of the first owners and had been doing that since it was possible). The last time I did it, the apps were just too sketchy and wanted too much permissions. I didn't really see the value in it. Maybe things are better these days, but I haven't checked in the last 6-7 years.

> loss of warranty

In the U.S., this is not true. If Apple claims so, they are violating the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

Can you refer to the specific section that prevents it?

I'm not an expert at legalese or have access to LexisNexis, but after a quick Google search, I think this is it:

> a warrantor cannot, as a matter of law, avoid liability under a written warranty where a defect is unrelated to the use by a consumer of “unauthorized” articles or service.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2018-title16-vol1/xm...

your warranty is now void

your resale value is now zero

your service options have been limited to third party workshops only

> loss of warranty

In the U.S., this is not true. If the manufacturer claims so, they are violating the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

You're telling me that I can go to the U.S. and purchase a car, perform unauthorised modifications to its systems and the manufacturer still has to honour the warranty? That sounds excellent!

As long as what you do doesn't cause the damage that you want them to repair under the warranty. They still have to honor the warranty for the unaffected systems.

...and after a car accident you get all the blame and other legal consequences for having tampered with your car.

There is oddly little ECU/BSI/onboard computer hacking (beyond flashing a tune, mostly to change engine specific settings). Or maybe there is, but I never managed to find an active community that goes beyond ecu tunes. I guess it's due to how fragmented the hardware is (even if most auto manufacturers usually source the components and systems from the same vendors).

Cars are too expensive to void the warranty. But I agree in spirit.

Conceptually I have less of an issue with it for cars. I think encouraging car-sharing, at least in urban environments, would be a good thing. Most cars spend the vast majority of the day either parked at home, or at work.

But I keep my last week's garbage in the car, why would I want to share somebody else's garbage ?

Taking a quick peek (at least where I live), There's not much garbage in ppl's cars

It's already here. BMW tried to charge a subscription for CarPlay.

There is at least one Indian manufacturer pushing subscriptions on some features on their high end models.

Thin end of the wedge.

BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription...

Our products are turning into vending machines, with the iPhone as the best example.

I wonder how much their subscription for the blinkers costs.

Probably a lot, judging by the cost of BMW blinker fluid.

Toyota sells access to their remote start.

This should be illegal.

So does Acura/Honda. Used to be on the key fob, but now it’s through a phone app with a subscription. I thought it was ridiculous until I learned how it worked. Instead of being RF based, it works using Sirius XM satellite data pushes.

I’m not sure how to feel about it now. I think the satellite version is more secure, but does have a different cost structure.

(I only found this out when our account wouldn’t work for months. Then a few months ago there was a security issue with that system that reset our account.)

Secure, eh?

https://mobile.twitter.com/samwcyo/status/159779209717567488...

Tl;dr: They didn't actually bother to put security into the app

> We could execute commands on vehicles and fetch user information from the accounts by only knowing the victim's VIN number, something that was on the windshield.

The upper middle class will cheer is because they can afford it and they would rather see the poors on the bus than in a used car. Maybe the ones with a little bit more self awareness than average will feel dirty about it.

As someone who is upper middle class, I dispute this. It doesn't matter how much I make, I feel like I'm drowning in monthly subscription fees already. Nobody wants to pay a recurring fee for what should be a one-time payment.

Owning an ink jet printer is never a one time payment. If you are drowning in subscriptions, printing should be the least of your worries.

People vote with their wallets. If they buy stuff that's cloud and subscription based, that's the world we're going to live in tomorrow. Big corporations are of course very happy to proceed - it gives them a lot of power, control and higher profits (e.g. Adobe has drastically increased their sales since moving their programms to a subscirption model).

And IMHO it's a done deal. Almost no one nowadays listens to MP3s, rather than Spitify or Apple Music. Few people buy or download movies, rathen than subscribing to Netflix and other streaming services. Most people are accepting the requirement that they need an online account to use an iPhone, Chromebook or a Windows PC.

The problem with these services is that they're not portable and you don't realize it until it is too late. For example, there is this service called "Vudu" in the US that lets you purchase movies that get added to your 'library' or if you have the physical disc, keep a copy in your 'library.' Then you take a job out of the US and find you can't even access the service. So, buried deep in the ToS, you discover that you agreed to lose access if you leave the US. Meanwhile, you thought you were saving a few boxes worth of shipping by leaving the physical disks in the US.

Same with Apple. At the time we moved, we had a few movies in our library that wouldn't transfer to the new region. We had to go "buy" them again (at which point it would realize you already owned it and charge zero currency). FWIW, Apple has since fixed this and when you change regions, your purchases come over (mostly) without any issues.

If we could fix the region shenanigans, all of this would be fine IMHO. At least when it comes to digital content.

I think we vote when we vote. The relative prices of true ownership and subscriptions aren’t random: they’re set by companies trying to shape a market where they can extract recurring revenue. Normal cash-constrained people are going to do what’s individually rational; it’s not reasonable to expect most people to pay a premium in the hope that it might actualize the market we’d prefer.

If we want a different slate of choices we should use the collective power we have to make it happen. ‘People vote with their wallets’ is just a way for self-interested companies to shift the blame.

OK, but what are you trying to say?

US is world's biggest market and home to most big tech companies. It has a two party system. Do you suggest that the majority of people will select which of the two parties to vote for, based on their stance on subsriptions? Or that it's possible to force one of the two parties to take a strong position against subscriptions?

>Do you suggest that the majority of people will select which of the two parties to vote for, based on their stance on subsriptions?

Of course not. Culture war bullshit will keep them distracted.

Of course not, but that's a pretty naive view of how politics works. (Naive and cynical at the same time is a nice trick.)

On second- and third-tier issues, politicians take their cues from friendly activists and interest groups, for whatever "friendly" means to that particular elected. Think about how many politicians' reelection messages are basically bullet-points of small-bore asks delivered. Each individual item may not win many votes, exactly, but they create a general sense that the candidate is engaged and effective. And perhaps more importantly, it's hard for potential opponents to build support when the incumbent is delivering for the most engaged voters in the district. Anyways a politician needs to do something while in office; it might as well be the stuff that people they respect want.

So: you frame this issue, and how it's confluent with the broader [Democratic/Republican] outlook. You clarify the desired legislative outcome. You show some public support, which takes many fewer people than you might think, and set up some meetings. Hopefully you find a sponsor. Then repeat as necessary to get the bill introduced, voted on, and maybe even passed.

None of this is easy; it's a ton of work, and by no means guaranteed of success. It's especially difficult in today's US where so much gets bottled up behind partisan showboating. But it also happens all the time. See the traction the right-to-repair movement is getting.

As this point, you're no longer voting, but engaging in activist effort to make a change.

Really it's the same for "voting with your wallet" - to actually vote with your wallet, you need to start a competing company that offers the service that you want.

If we’re just doing literary criticism, sure, fair enough.

In actual practice, as here, ‘vote with your wallet’ stands in for “people are choosing this, nothing to be done.” And ‘voting’ stands for collective action to change the choices on offer.

But sure, starting a company’s great too. Though with concentrated markets and high barriers to entry, that won’t always be feasible: I wouldn’t want to start a printer company, and that’s probably not the worst case.

> it’s not reasonable to expect most people to pay a premium in the hope that it might actualize the market we’d prefer

Nobody is saying that, though. Time is money, and if your printer is bricking itself because you forgot to update your credit card information, that will be wasted time, and you'll remember that when it comes time to pick a printer vendor in the future.

> People vote with their wallets.

People just don't want to vote with their wallets. Voting with your wallet isn't sustainable when the options you have to pick from are what's on the market. What's on the market will never be what you want to vote for; you want to vote for change.

-Emily

Of course they do. They can buy a Blu-Ray disk of a movie they want to watch (and potentially store a copy on a home NAS) or buy a Netflix subscription. Can buy a digital recording of a song, or a Spotify subsription.

> They can buy a Blu-Ray disk of a movie they want to watch

No, they can't. A lot of new releases never leave streaming services.

You still need a Netflix subscription to obtain some of the DVDs for their "netflix originals". They do still ship DVDs, but they aren't available to buy separately, you need the streaming subscription to access them.

Some "netflix originals" have DVDs sold outside of Netflix (i.e. on Amazon), but not all; you need to order DVDs directly from Netflix as part of their DVD service, I believe. (If they are even available at all.)

> Can buy a digital recording of a song, or a Spotify subsription

No, they still can't. A lot of indie artists release on Spotify but never make physical media of any kind. You can't buy songs DRM-free from Spotify.

The answer is "well don't listen to that song then" but this kind of voting is really dumb and people do not like to do this. They'll suck it up and throw money even if they hate it with their entire being. Because society as a whole has been conditioned to do this, unfortunately, and no matter how hard you try to start a revolution, this is a fact of life and you cannot avoid it.

Tell me: when what you want is no longer on the market at all, how do you vote for it? With your wallet? Do you just not buy its replacement? Nobody will care. Unless you manage to start a revolution all at once, you not buying something will be statistically insignificant.

-Emily

>> Can buy a digital recording of a song, or a Spotify subsription

> No, they still can't. A lot of indie artists release on Spotify but never make physical media of any kind.

You're contrasting spotify with physical media, but responding to a remark that didn't say physical media. Are you aware that digital downloads of music have been DRM-free from iTunes and Amazon for many years now? Physical media is irrelevant.

I'm sure you might respond by saying that some artists are spotify-exclusives (I wouldn't listen to them on principle, but you do you). But the way you contrasted spotify with physical media specifically makes me think you might not be aware that DRM-free digital music downloads have been the norm since the late-00s (about the last time I ever bought a CD!)

Sorry, I was contrasting with physical media because their first example was indeed contrasting with physical media. My point still stands. It doesn't have to be physical media, Spotify does not offer DRM-free downloads and some artists are indeed Spotify-exclusive.

I am not blind to the existence of DRM-free music downloads, no.

-Emily

To be somewhat glib, let me coin "lazulicurio's law":

The only way to have the option to have your preferences met in a large and mature enough market is to be completely price insensitive.

Oh, I am bookmarking this.

I think a lot of enterprise networking gear requires licenses. Meraki APs don't work without a subscription, for example.

A long time ago, I once had a Netgear WGR614v10 (802.11g router). Imagine my surprise when I learned that it was possible to enable telnet access, alter the model number in the NVRAM, and flash WNR1000v3 firmware onto it, converting it to an 802.11n router. They were identical internally.

> Edit: Louis suggests Brother as a brand that doesn't do this. However, what guarantees are there that they won't?

Everybody I know buys Brother because they don't do that shit. And, of course, they produce decent printers that do their job properly and aren't that expensive to maintain.

They region lock their toner cartridges to stop grey market sales.

Unfortunately, even Brother does this now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34695261

It's the same with Apple. You can't use an iPhone device without connecting to Apple; "use" in the reasonable sense.

There should be a law against this tethering of devices by the vendor when you buy a product as opposed to a service.

However, you can connect to Apple without a credit card using a "dummy".

That's a slightly different world than requiring a valid, working credit card. iPhones work without a working credit card.

You're still paying for a device that is tethered by the vendor.

And if you use the device long enough, I'm sure there will be sufficient information for Apple to link the device back to you.

You need to sign in to an Apple account to get it going for the first time or to buy apps through the app store, or to do software updates. But you don't need to stay signed in or use the cloud services. Granted, it will pop up annoying notifications, but (at least so far) you're not required to use their servers. I have a second iPhone which I bought unlocked and don't have any phone service set up for. I bought it specifically to use as a camera. I can use it on my WiFi, not signed in, record video, AirDrop the files to a different machine, and never connect to iCloud. The day Apple starts doing what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows and remove the possibility of access without using the cloud will be the day I stop using iPhones.

That's a very restricted usecase. What if you want to use your phone as an actual phone and install apps like WhatsApp, etc.?

Well, I never actually said I really approved of their "walled garden" app store. I will say that I use Signal, and once I've installed it I can sign out and continue to use it. And there's no need to stay signed in to use the cell network for either voice or data.

I feel this is hyperbolic, because in my head, why would you ever buy a defective-by-design piece of junk? But I am aware that I'm an outlier here, with a ~20 year old printer, ~15 year old TV, 10 year old laptop running coreboot with no ME chaperone, 13 year old desktop running libreboot with no ME chaperone, very few Internet of Trash devices that are allowed to connect to the Internet, no streaming services, no software subscriptions, etc.

I do appreciate that many of these decisions have required effort and self actualization. Like I'm not particularly expecting a non-tech yuppie to seek out a libreboot machine. But if I were in the market to replace any of these things, I'd turn to the commercial and the used markets rather than walking into Best Buy (or worse searching Amazon) and narrowing my field of view to only shiny surveillance traps.

I do have to wonder what it will take to get the technologically sustainable choices into the general public consciousness, so they stop buying things designed to milk your wallet and spy on you for a few short years, before they're deliberately obsoleted.

These technologically sustainable choices would also have to be desirable on their own merits. Largely, they're not; they're often ugly, difficult to use, require specialized knowledge, or of uncertain quality (e.g. used cars). The technologically sustainable, not-designed-to-milk-your-wallet alternative to subscription music services is ... buying or pirating everything you want individually, which is inconvenient and potentially even more expensive than Spotify. That's an uphill battle.

What's the sustainable alternative to buying a new locked-down laptop? If it's a ten-year-old laptop running coreboot then almost nobody is ever going to go that route. You could explain your principles until you're blue in the face but it will never seem like a better alternative than a fast, warrantied new laptop that does almost everything they want to do fairly easily.

While I agree with the general dynamic of what you're saying, you're also referencing a lot of the advertising bullet points that are used to confuse consumers to sell crap. Like there's very little point to worrying about a 3 year warranty that you'll have to beg the company to send a service person out for, for an item that is expected to last 10-20 years (like say a TV or appliances).

Also the point of opting for media self-ownership (which may include piracy) isn't to save money on subscription services, but rather to avoid the inevitable rug pulls and other backstabbing down the line. All these articles about Netflix clamping down on account sharing are only relevant if you've bought into their zero sum world. I understand that's where pop culture is these days, but it's unfortunate that the tech community, who should know better, treats it as if it's anything more than a passing fad.

> I feel this is hyperbolic, because in my head, why would you ever buy a defective-by-design piece of junk?

Because manufacturers will not mention their product is defective by design. Until I heard of the HP ink subscription scheme a year or two ago, I would not think twice if they advertised such a feature since the expectation is that I could still buy ink independently. I would not expect the printer to stop functioning if I did not subscribe.

That's not to say that I would have bought HP. I already knew that they were not upfront about a lot of things and I already had a company that I trusted. (Ironically, a company that people claimed produced cheap junk back in the 90's.) That said, there are a lot of people buying their first printer and who have little concept of what the pitfalls are. Certain types of pitfalls are rarely mentioned in reviews and, when they are, they may come off as hyperbolic. That said, even commercial products have their pitfalls. I had to deal with a Xerox printer a while back that refused to work with a toner purchased under a support contract since the printer was not covered by the support contract. (The printer was purchased separately since the Internet connection wasn't reliable at that site.)

And thanks to automatic updates, the deal can be turned sour on you at any time. For security reasons!

Of course manufacturers will never mention that their product is defective by design. The change I'm referring to is when consumers will stop relying on nonsense advertising / placement to comparison shop, actually care about how something functions, and reject products that are built with backdoor control.

And yeah the same crapification is happening to commercial markets, at slower or faster paces. The point is that most of this gimmicky consumer shit is just advertising skins on functionality that was already solved 20 years ago, and buying a new old stock or refurbished products would meet the need while avoiding backdoors.

It just feels like so many of the headlines these days about Internet of Trash and subscription service rugpulls are like the old doctor joke - "Doc, it hurts when I do this" ... "Well, stop doing that".

> why would you ever buy a defective-by-design piece of junk? But I am aware that I'm an outlier here, with a ~20 year old printer

Imagine your printer fails, and you need a new one ASAP for work. Now what?

I'm a member of the 10 year old printer club, and hating the idea of needing a replacement at some point.

Use a print shop/library, hit up a friend/coworker, or figure out a different way of getting the immediate task done without printing. Basically anything that isn't walking into a store and dropping a few hundred dollars on a fully-fledged simulation of a capital asset, that will likely put you in the same exact urgent situation within a year or two.

I totally understand the impulse to spend a bit of money and feel that you're solving a problem now and for the future. But these companies have evolved their offerings to fully take advantage of this behavior, and the only way to protect yourself is to take a step back and act deliberately.

Even if you manage to postpone buying a printer, needing one can still be inevitable. You asked "why would you buy a defective-by-design piece of junk", the answer is buying anything else seems to be impossible. Holding on to whatever you bought 10-20 years ago does not solve the problem going forward.

Better consumer options have been mentioned in this thread. There is repair. There is used hardware. And there are new non-consumer-targeted products. And sure, sometimes you just have to compromise. But not nearly as much as people end up doing when they feel pressed to make quick decisions on the spot, and fall for advertising and placement.

Do you mean Brother? They're also evil now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34695261

This is simply wrong though. These printer companies will gladly sell you a printer that is entirely under your control. Nobody is forcing you to sign up for particular terms, but consumers are doing that for convenience and lower prices.

> you're free to not use their services and instead turn to the non-existent companies that will put the users over maximizing profits

This is just a strawman argument though. No company on earth is putting users over maximizing profits, but that doesn't lead logically to your conclusion that people don't have choices. People have plenty of choices, because the act of maximizing profits requires exploring and providing many ways of buying something. Some people want to pay per-page, some people want to buy a printer outright and handle maintenance themselves. Both options are available.

> Brother as a brand that doesn't do this. However, what guarantees are there that they won't?

The void in the market it would leave, and some company would (and as you can see, has) take advantage of it to provide consumers with this buying format.

> No company on earth is putting users over maximizing profits

That isn't even remotely true. Many companies are run by people who actually have morals and, even if only for selfish reasons, want customers to not hate them.

I've worked for companies that refused to do things like sell user data, knowing full well that they'd be making lots of money doing it, but knowing that it was wrong and would make customers hate them. They weren't worried that unhappy customers would flock to competitors either. One was a telecom who was the only game in town for many of their users.

It's not always and entirely a race to the bottom where companies do as little as possible for customers while charging customers as much as humanly possible and it shouldn't be, but that is how things often end up. It's why we have that cycle where good products/companies gain massive popularity by putting users over maximizing profits until someone steps in who is too greedy and suddenly users are forced to find alternatives when greed ruins yet another good thing.

There are good companies and great products that put users before maximizing profit every single day. The fact that exploitative assholes also exist doesn't mean that's how everyone behaves, or that it's how everyone should.

> No company on earth is putting users over maximizing profits

> That isn't even remotely true

> even if only for selfish reasons

So we're on the same page. You just repeated what I said. Companies don't put users before profits, but the act of seeking profits (the "selfish reasons" as you put it) require stopping short of some things.

Your mistake is assuming that those selfish reasons are all about profit. Other motivations may include things like having a vision of themselves or their company as actually caring for the customers they serve, refusing to compromise their products/services because they themselves (along with others they care about) are also users of them, or even purely ideological reasons (actually having some integrity). Exactly how selfish those kinds of motivations are is open to debate, but there's no need to get into philosophical arguments about whether or not mankind is capable of altruism because either way, money still isn't the motivation or goal behind it.

I promise you, there really are companies that put their users before maximizing profits. There genuinely are people who aren't obsessed with money over all else.

That's such a bold statement, I can't begin to debate it.

Nope, scanner one has already been the case IMO. I had a Cannon MFP, a set of ink cartridges costed around $80 which could yield no more than 80 pages. I realized that and decided to only use the scanner and dumped the empty cartridges. And you guess what, the scanner stopped working too.

There is something to be done in legislation, or such malicious behaviors will become more and more rampant.

Not being hunted for releasing software that cracks their DRM and enables scanning would be a good start.

Philip K Dick was a visionary. In Ubik there are AI doors that do not open or close without paying them, for each use.

I've seen pay toilets in my country twice. Both times the doors had shit smudged all over the handle and pay slot.

> pay toilets

These were banned in America decades ago because they were unfair to women (urinals were always free.) So this one at least probably won't be coming back.

"visionary" is a very big word there.

The brush head on my Sonicare toothbrush recently "expired" and a yellow led started blinking. Later, it started making a particular vibration pattern when switched on. Now, I'm waiting for it to refuse to start up entirely.

The apparent wear on the head seems minor, so far. The $80 brush came with only one head.

Some people seem to be getting counterfeit brush heads from Amazon, so I'm going to have to visit my Walgreens for a spare, and then wait to see what happens.

I also find these "features" despicable, however in Sonicare's case this one is mostly benign.

I also have a Sonicare toothbrush, and other then the head it came with, I only use generic heads on it. The "feature" you are talking about is called the "BrushSync" and it enables the "Brush head replacement reminder". That feature doesn't activate with generic heads, and you can easily turn it for Sonicare heads. Here's a link to the manual for my brush. See page 11 for the feature description and 12 for the instructions to turn it off. Depending on your model you may need to do a different sequence.

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1507567/Philips-Sonicare-P...

Now, you might say that without reminders, I'm not getting the clean I deserve, but I buy heads with those fade away indicator bristles, so I just change it out when the blue turns white.

Thanks!

>Your Wi-Fi router or switches only working when a license is active

Cisco says hi.

Indeed. I'm surprised there isn't more outrage on this since they're cloud based subscription-ware.

I guess the enterprise customers don't care about everything being a subscription.

the relationship is more two-way, and always on.. in the consumer anecdotes here, the customer is just a victim

> What's next? Scanners only working under a subscription? Your Wi-Fi router or switches only working when a license is active (even your LAN)? Your chargers, PSUs or UPSes only being allowed to work for 6 months, before you're forced to buy a newer model? Needing a monthly subscription to use your OS or browser? I don't even know anymore...

I know. All of it, and worse, unless we fight back. And no, "voting with your wallet" is not fighting - it's retreat to not yet conquered ground, which is shrinking daily.

> What's next?

Ads. There could be a freemium model where, before every print job, a couple of pages of ads are printed if you don’t have the premium ink subscription.

Watermark ads on every print.

Relevant Novella from Cory Doctorow:

> The way Salima found out that Boulangism had gone bankrupt: her toaster wouldn’t accept her bread.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...

Next is Netflix style "have to he connected to the registered adrdress to work". Or take our 0.01¢/minute subscription to be able to print 10 pages in one more location in additional to your registered address every month.

"here's a artistic talent you spent decades crafting, now anyone can duplicate it with zero incentive to credit you"

Definitely entering the surreal disposable humanity

WiFi equipment already runs under subscription (ruckus, Meraki).

I was just about to chime in about Cisco meraki. If you stop renewing the license you lose control of your meraki hardware.

It's both very logical due to limited perspective in capitalism and probably self destructing. A lot of these will start to look either useless (the need to print is small these days) or better replaced by other ways (low res, organic cheap ink, nozzle bought as parts).

stop giving them ideas..

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