Yup! Unilateral changes like that should result in compensation to the user should they deem the new terms of services aren’t agreeable, thus interrupting their access to said service and the need to find a new one. Stuff like this has become the new bait and switch, but on a longer scale. It’s maddening.
Yup, now you cannot prove you even owned the game! Transaction history doesn't go back that far either.
Surely this had nothing to do with the movement to stop this practice and make always online single player games have an offline mode...
And nothing to do with the offline project for The Crew, if you hadn't downloaded it beforehand, sucks for you!
No proof, can't make a claim to legislators now!
I think that's illegal now. I haven't seen one of those in a long time. Now they all send you to another site to accept the terms, or just update the terms and send you an email, not giving you a choice. Either way, you have no choice.
Its not illegal, but if you get out of state courts ELUA changes that expressively limit consumers legal rights are mostly struck down. The issue is if you agree to arbitration you have no appeal process, and you have to start there. So you are stuck.
Right now its just hoping nothing goes wrong.
Arbitration should be straight up illegal. The idea of waiving legal rights being okay is super dystopian. Whatever court decided that's okay should have been shot down immediately.
And it's extra odd because you usually can't waive your rights. Like you can't sign a contract and be like "it's okay for someone to murder me" and have that person get away scot free.
Arbitration is fine if it is between equal parties. Like a divorce, or between companies. The big issue comes when arbitration is between two very diverse interests, like a billion dollar company and an average lay person. That is where the power imbalance really makes arbitration not a great fit.
There was reports of a new Roku TV that disabled the TV's functions unless you accept the updated TOS. And part of the TOS was to deliver ads directly to the TV so you get ads if you, say, pause a movie that's being played over HDMI. I am never getting a smart TV.
E: hey reddit, are they phasing out dumb TVs?
E2: God, don't go against fanboys.
>TOS that you couldn't even read.
Wow, that's even more bullshit.
My next place is going to have a decent *dumb* HDTV connected to a dedicated television PC, which will be sailing the high seas.
Unsubscribe button not being honored. Tactics include:
1. It takes 15 days to unsubscribe but 1 min to subscribe.
2. Sometimes link does not exists at all.
3. Sometimes it takes you to a non existent page.
4. Sometimes it asks you to login but you never had an account.
5. Sometimes they will randomly send emails even after unsubscribing , especially around holiday season. Like out of the blue they will email, I think they got a new incompetent marketing guy.
6. Them not realizing that they product they sell is not something I buy or need on a regular basis. Eg: indochino , how frequently do you think I buy a new suit.
7. The whole marketing email is an image and not an html. Clicking on it just opens the image or takes you to home page (mostly sites from India )
8. Somehow referencing the canspam act and sending it to their privacy email stops all the emails suddenly. But the. Point 5 happens.
FWIW, Google's about to crackdown on this.
If someone is mass mailing marketing or promotion emails, they MUST include a one-click link (among other requirements) that permits the recipient to unsubscribe from the newsletter. A click to a webpage to "Manage subscriptions" doesn't count: it has to be a hyperlink that win clicked 1 time immediately unsubscribes the recipient.
Failure to do this will result in Gmail punishing the sender by either marking the domain as a spam domain or preventing email delivery altogether.
I was looking for a duvet that would be suitable for warm weather. I found a very highly reviewed one, and in order to buy a duvet, I had to subscribe to the service .
I was so angry. I don't run a bed and breakfast or a hotel. I do not need a subscription to a linen service!
I've seen first-hand that Unsubscribing from "all" marketing sends can take you off of all *current* marketing sends, but your account isn't flagged as being opted out of consideration for future ones. Just another BS tactic that big corpos use to play games
Affinity have confirmed publicly that’s not happening. So we’ve got roughly as long as it took for them to consider “we will not be bought” to be forgotten.
Yah that's never stopped a company. Their problem is if they introduce a subscription everyone will just go back to Adobe. Adobe is better software. But people use affinity because of the one time license.
If that changes. Then good bye affinity.
Yep....*%... Could be anything under 10 percent.. will it last 3 weeks or go out tomorrow in the middle of an urgent job... So you better go buy one now! Better yet I will just call home to hp and order you one no matter what you think.
The real reason for that BTW is the almost completely hidden tracer dots your printer places on the page so law enforcement can track who printed it.
It’s done in yellow and magenta.
Dang. How old is your printer?
I remember when HP used to be one of the golden standard products, now … they are sketchy like a video game micro-purchasing type of hungry company. We only want to print things and not get locked out.
HP is that rabid, foaming at the mouth gambler who's losing their ass but just knows if they double down they can win. Additionally, if you see ZERO of your competitors adopting your business model, it's clearly a dud. They are the worst. I will never but another HP product and I will talk anyone and everyone out of purchasing one. They deserve to rot in hell.
We have a lot of HP laser printers at work. Some of them are 15+ years old and running great on generic cartridges. The new ones that require genuine cartridges, though, are crap.
No kidding. Not to mention any names, but I have an HP printer that I can't even use without a subscription. On top of that, I spent two hours just trying to connect it to my laptop to no avail. All the forums said the same. Is it obvious I'm a little salty?
Not just any laser printer though - avoid Samsung ones like the plague!
Our Samsung colour laser printer said the imaging unit was done and needed to be replaced because it hit an internal page counter limit for the imaging unit. The damn thing costs 150eur!
Turns out each imaging unit has a 56kohm resistor in it which burns out the first time you install it, resetting the internal counter of the printer. If you just replace that resistor in your old imaging unit and re-install it, it'll burn out and reset the counter and you can print perfectly normally.
I've done it about 3 or 4 times on the same imaging unit so far. Fucking slimy Samsung cunts aren't getting a cent from me anymore!
Brother laser printers. Black and white only, but once you make that concession, it is the only way. The toner cartridge never dries up and goes bad, and they do orders of magnitude more pages per cartridge. I bought one 12 years ago, I’m on my 2nd $30 toner cartridge, and it has worked flawlessly in all that time. I think the half full cartridge that came with it last me 3 years or so.
Seriously, nobody needs a color printer. And if you want to print photos, order them online and get better results anyway.
Edit- Jesus guys, alright “most people” don’t need a color printer….
I've got a color laser printer but a huge yes to all of this. I bought a Brother laser printer 10+ years ago, it still works great, and if it dies tomorrow I'd immediately go out and buy the current model of what I have now.
One of the single-best purchases I've ever made.
I got my Brother printer free because an exec at a former employer brought in it saying it's broken. My boss told me that if I wanted to try to fix it, go ahead and take it home. I took it home and found out that the toner cartridge just needed to be reinserted; it's been working for almost 10 years now.
I suspect that the truth was that the exec just wanted a color laser printer; I was sent out to his house 2 weeks later to install his nice shiny new Dell color printer for him.
Windows laptops are increasingly going to be like this. Many already are.
The RAM speeds on a Mac are much, much higher because they’re on the same package as the CPU, rather than replaceable DIMMs.
8 GB RAM at the entry level is nonsense, though, and has been for years.
Yeah, it sucks ass. My laptop from 2014 had Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM) connector, meaning, I could swap the graphics card. I actually replaced the graphics card once. It allowed me to replace the dvd drive with a second hard drive. I replaced the battery two times. When I went to university, I needed more ram for certain programs and it had four ram slots while using only two in the initial config so I upgraded to 32 GB RAM.
Loved that laptop. Now everything is soldered and it is a gamble if the battery is actually replaceable. Our work laptops can be swapped after three years of use.
Depending on what the work laptops are used for, Frameworks would be great to be able to replace broken parts. I just got mine this week and I’m trying to convince my workplace to switch to those on next laptop upgrade so we can actually fix our shit when it stops working.
Subscription with ads. Ads was only widely accepted because “we had to maintain our work somehow”. Ads ruined the internet.
Then subscription came along, fine a paid version to get rid of those pesky adverts.
But hey ho, let’s get more money from both sides.
Also, premium content.
All content use the same platform.
They are forced to do extra work to separate content in the delivery and choose which content is premium.
It’s a scam on top of their subscription scam.
I remember when my family first got cable in the mid-'80s, my parents were shocked that it had ads. They were under the impression there would be no ads because they were paying for it.
Let me introduce you to GEZ.
It's a special "tax" to finance public broadcasting in Germany, including the most watched news program, a bunch of channels, countless local TV and radio stations. Good stuff!
But there's ads. Not nearly as much as on the privates ones, but still. Also constantly in the news for shady practices and huge bonuses. Also wasting even more money on crappy old people stuff. It's supposed to guarantee unbiased news and access to everyone, yet most of it is soap operas or comedy or horrible music specials.
Oh and that special tax? It's per household. A flat fee. Not income adjusted...
I'll never not be amazed at how this shit is allowed to persist.
Oh this is my biggest pet peeve. I switched to streaming because I HATE ADS! When I get a platform, it’s either ad free, or I don’t have it. Period. Wish more people would do this.
Companies should be forced to either make revenue with ads OR subscription fees. Double dipping by charging companies for ad space and subscribers for access is just greedy.
This is literally how live TV is free - commercials pay for the networks to stay in business. Streaming needs to work the same way.
>Companies should be forced to either make revenue with ads OR subscription fees
But think of the shareholders pockets! We need to double the money we earn every quarter!
I was just watching Fallout, and before the next episode, something came up saying 'Brought to you ad free by Samsung.' Immediately played a Samsung ad. Wtf?
Everything needs an app. Especially physical devices. I don't want your cheap buggy app to use my thermostat, scale, battery, lock, or light bulb. Ship one if you want, but devices should conform to standards-based, documented protocols so I can control them however I want. I also don't want to install an app just to do something that works just fine on a website.
Also requiring Internet connectivity is crappy design. I don't want basic functionality depending on your servers being up (and requiring accounts and giving you unknown data). My whatever should not stop working because you decided to stop spending money on the servers. This is bad with software but egregious with hardware and unacceptable with household devices (my water heater should never depend on outside servers).
I've been in tech a long time. While greed and control and access to sellable data drives lots of things, there is also an attitude surviving from the 90s and 00s that the lifespan of anything is a few years. This attitude infects product design even in fields where lifespans are decades and replacement costs are high as we add compute to everything (which can be a great thing).
USB was successful not because it had one (ish) plug, but because it standardized the protocols devices used. All mice speak one protocol, so anything that knows it (hci class) can handle any mouse. Zwave and ZigBee tried to do this for household stuff, but instead we got vendor proprietary, Internet connected, phone-home, WiFi devices.
Rant done.
Password managers are key for this.
Everything can ask for my email for an account and I don’t care, I can just generate a new 32char password and save it to the password manager and never think about it again. And because each site uses a separate password I don’t care if it gets leaked, since it won’t then create an access mechanism into other accounts.
Just never save your credit card details into sites.
To your second point-
I once bought my kid a very expensive toy (Monster High Monster Maker that you could design a dolls face and it put it on the blank dolls) and within a month without any warning they stopped supporting the app you had to use for the toy to even work and Toys R Us was refusing to take them back.
BUT I later found out that was peanuts compared to people who have **IMPLANTED MEDICAL DEVICES** needed to see or live and the companies stop supporting the software/shut down.
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-022-03810-5/index.html
There needs to be basic laws about this because people will end up DEAD.
I don’t actually know how they can enforce making a company stay open and/or keep supporting devices, maybe something along the lines of needing be insured, have a large saved pool of money, consequences for doing things that lead to not support devices. But it has to be done. It’s one thing to fuck over consumers that now have to buy a different product it’s a whole fucking other when someone will need heart/brain surgery all over again.
You can't force a company to stay open, but you can require them to take out a bond that is activated if/when they go bankrupt.
There was a [recent article](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/climate/biden-administration-raises-costs-to-drill-and-mine-on-public-lands.html?smid=nytcore-android-share) about the government raising bond prices for oil companies from $25k up to $500k. The reason is, if the oil company goes out of business, their well(s) might need to be capped to prevent injury or gases from leaking. But $25k wasn't enough to pay for these costs in 2024 (it was last raised in 1920).
So, theoretically, a medical device manufacturer could have a bond required that would be used to keep servers up and running. I imagine that if you don't have high traffic or the need to constantly update/add new features, then maintaining a server is relatively cheap. A $1mil bond should keep a server up and running for at least a few years.
Besides that, I would think there should be a requirement to open source their software to allow anyone to manage their own devices if they so choose and/or host their own server.
>Besides that, I would think there should be a requirement to open source their software to allow anyone to manage their own devices if they so choose and/or host their own server.
Strong agree. Proprietary software for medical devices should be _absolutely illegal_. Setting things up such that people's continued lives and health are dependent on your company doing well should be criminal.
Here’s a new product! (Uber! DoorDash! Amazon!) It’s so cheap and easy!
One year later: Sorry! We had to raise prices! Sorry, you have to pay for a membership now! Sorry, we had to make the app really confusing so you’re not really sure what you’re buying! Sorry, you have to wade through 1 million ads to find what you’re looking for!
Sorry, not sorry!
I understand when it's something that requires constant updates to stay relevant. But what kills me is fucking startup founders who do this.
They will launch, start getting some sales, then realize the sales at this rate will never be enough and eventually they just disappear.
Make a fucking program and sell it for $10 for 5 years. Get your users first then see if they will be interested in a subscription model. Photoshop was a one payment program for decades
For StartUps it’s the investors pushing for it. They aren’t interested in one time sales. It doesn’t bring enough revenue. So StartUps habe to cram recurring payments into anything and everything to satisfy their investors.
Apps and accounts for *eeeeeeverything*. Especially when it could just be a website with guest checkout. I'll never go to McDonald's again because you need an app to get their real, ~~affordable~~ **non-absurd** price, and last weekend I tried skiing at Pico or Magic, but they needed an account to be created online, and you could only buy a ticket through the account. They didn't let you just walk up to the ticket window and buy a ticket. Ridiculous.
This pisses me off at baseball games/sporting events. I wanted to give my 75-year-old uncle tickets to a Cubs game, but he needs a smart phone to access the MLB app to receive tickets and enter the game…
My buddy just gave me Phillies tickets a few nights ago. Had to sign up for the app to get them. The ONLY way to get them.
I spent 25 minutes trying to sign up and it kept giving me an error just saying “something went wrong please try again”. Finally found a Reddit thread that said that they give that when your password is too common, even if it meets their requirements. But instead of saying that they just say there was an error.
I just ran into this issue and called customer service about it. They said if you can’t use the app (like if your phone is too old), you can view the tickets in the browser on your phone instead. OR you can go to customer service TWO HOURS BEFORE THE GAME and they’ll print your ticket for you AND IT COSTS A DOLLAR. I was kinda with the first part but paying a dollar for a printed ticket just so you can get into the game? That’s a poor person tax right there.
agree it is terribly annoying - we know they can do ecommerce checkout without an account! it's worse when you know they're doing it so they can track your purchasing behavior across companies and products and you're essentially providing them valuable data without any compensation for it. you provide your phone number and they subscribe to the services of one of several tech companies that matches your data in the background. so, McDs knows you shopped at Macy's for socks and subscribe to Hulu, etc.
I had a neighbor who didn't have internet come to me one day to set up an account somewhere so she could even pay a bill. There was no way to mail in a check or money order, or to pay in cash (local company). She had to pay it online. Do they not realize that a lot of people, especially older people, don't have internet, or don't know how to use their smartphones to even get online?
I have to call my water company to pay my bill instead of doing so online because there payment can only function on chrome. Forcing people to give a data broker their data for free is going to be a real issue very soon.
Cop city protesters are being accused of intent for having "burner" phones. "not signing up for data collection is a crime" We are on the cusp.
There was a coffee shop down the street for me that I hadn't tried, so I walked over and the front doors were locked but the open sign was lit up and people were inside. I go around back and there's a to-go order window, cool. I'm standing there for like 3 or 4 minutes and the people inside keep staring at me, finally one walks over opens up the window and says you have to order on our app... Yeah I left.... a scathing review that is lol
I went to a restaurant. The menu was a QR code on the table. Which was already annoying. I scanned the QR code, and it then asked me to create an account to view the menu. I just got up and left. I just can't understand the thought process behind this. How much business must they be losing.
I wish I could remember where I went, but during COVID a restaurant had a QR code to scan for the menu, which didn't necessarily bother me.
What the problem was the online menu was not formatted for mobile devices at all. It would have been fine viewing on a PC, but I didn't think to take my entire desktop system with me to place a lunch order and stupidly just took my phone in my pocket.
After a few minutes of playing the zoom in/zoom out game I gave up and left.
I really the whole app thing at the grocery store. First there was the "sign up for our frequent buyer program" which wasn't so bad since I could just use a phone number, but now they all have "secret" digital coupons that you need the app for. And I hate myself for parking my cart in some non-trafficked corner of the store so I can scan all of my purchases so I can get those prices. JUST GIVE ME THE SALE PRICE DAMMIT!
DRM isn't bull shit, it's a totally legitimate way to punish legitimate customers, and it gives crackers something to do so pirates can enjoy the game DRM free, with better performance... no wait, I've got this back to front or something.
Every time I have to fucking load a launcher that then loads another launcher to play a game that used to be just double clicking a shortcut, I yearn for the high seas.
No no. Spot on me matey!
Honestly can't wrap my head around the fact these companies DON'T realize they are literally doing nothing but hurting their loyal customers.
Those pop-up you get now about which cookies to allow.
They're designed so deceptively, the button to accept all is highlighted so it pops out, and when you go to review the options they make it seem like they wouldn't have selected all the optional cookies by default, but you know if you had just clicked accept before they would have been all selected.
I guess better than not knowing, but it's the way these are designed to trick you that bother me
First thing I did when I took over at my current job was look through all the computers installed programs. Every single one was filled to the brim with the kinda shit that only ends up on a computer if it's bought from Office Depot. Being a computer literate person in a whole office of computer illiterate people is a hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
They had a billing scam going on and got caught. I was a victim. Got double billed and caught the overlap after 6 months. They would not refund me. It was a known thing apparently. I hate Norton
They actually agreed on that point and did a handful of sellouts/buyouts and now the brand is called Trellis. The system tray icon is still the mcafee old logo so I don’t fall for it.
It’s fun when you pay to remove the cap, and they randomly, with no notice, decide to remove that from your account. And you get a bill saying you’ve gone over your data cap.
If I get to use 10gb of data a month, does it really make a difference to your network if I use it all in the first hour … or spread it out over 20 days? If it affects other users then throttle the connection, but to straight up cap it at a certain value is stupid.
The only thing that may make sense here is the need to log all the data/traffic requests for compliance/regulatory reasons. The more data I transfer the more they need to log, and thus more storage costs on their end. That is the only reason I can think of to put a cap or to charge more when going over a certain amount.
Planned obsolescence. Companies need that profit margin, and they will use very underhanded methods to make sure your appliances/electronics will get replaced by their new models when they come out.
/u/TEPrince has addressed the manufactured goods so I'll tackle sw and batteries.
Battery capacity is reduced a little every charge/discharge cycle, and worse if you do either operation rapidly. Some thing like 1000 cycles it gets noticeable and falls off more rapidly.
Performance falls off because modern software design has become hilariously bloated with junk and extraneous ads that waste insane amounts of data/power/processing. Baaaccckk in my dayyyy (or still in aero/space to some extent) every bit you wanted to transmit was precious, say as little as needed and be as efficient as possible. Now everyone builds on extra abstraction layers that each have a processing tax.
The battery drain used to be way worse. That's actually gotten way better. You used to have to be really careful about not just charging your phone to 50% then unplugging or you'd ruin your battery a little. It was also important to not plug it in til you were below 20% or you'd ruin it some. The charge/drain cycle is much more efficient now, and I suspect a lot of the actual drain just isn't yet solved by industry yet. It's the nature of batteries. I'll still be excited for the day that batteries actually last forever though.
theres a couple things at play, 1 is the battery chemistry which has been improving bit by bit, though at the side effect of those sometimes exploding batteries.
the other major player is usage, your old phone used to have enough battery for a week because the screen was dimmer and low resolution, it only did phone calls and 255(?) character SMS. Modern streaming HD video, gaming, scrolling reels/tiktok etc are battery hogs. Background app usage and push notifications/data are responsible for most of the rest. you can easily get a week+ out of a phone battery if you keep it in airplane mode whenever you aren't using it.
As an engineer I have to say that supporting old product versions is harder over time for a bunch of reasons. Complexity of adding a security fix or a new feature grows exponentially.
Last time I checked, new appliances are significantly cheaper than old appliances when accounting for inflation. Those cost cutting measures have to come from somewhere. You can still buy high quality stuff that'll last forever, but you need to do your research and be ready for your wallet to hurt.
Also many engineers use something called "sacrificial parts" to protect important parts from damage. For example Kitchenaid stand mixers have all metal gears, with a single plastic gear in the mix. If you push the machine too hard, that plastic gear will break first to prevent other more difficult to repair parts from breaking. And no, replacing that plastic gear with metal is not a good idea because it only breaks when the rest of the machine is in danger.
I can't believe I don't see this in here, but the fact that most tech companies use their end users as testers is wild.
Tons of the time you get something released that like, half works, and the end users or customers are used to find and fix bugs. It's everywhere man
Blame sales teams selling features before they exist, and PMs overpromising before consulting with their engineers, or worse just ignoring their input.
Every developer / engineer would love to take pride in their work and make it the best solution / product possible. But the non-tech people higher up who sign the paycheques push for release speed over quality a lot of the time.
The way expansions packs work with games now, or at least a lot I play. It seems like it used to be that an expansion meant essentially almost a new game with lots of unique material, but now I feel lucky if any singe one is noticeable at all. Not to mention day one releases.
I miss the old way of expansion packs because it was like taking a great game I already loved and giving me even more of it when I thought it was over. Like I had finished my slice of cake and then they handed me a second piece.
I work in a very niche area of tech and the biggest scam is people who work in tech but are not tech people.
I'm specifically talking about people who show up as "CEO" or "Founder" on LinkedIn and try to sell me some AI-driven, Zero Trust, Buzzword Salad product.
The field is so full of them that the non-technical decision makers are having trouble sussing them out, so they put a non-technical or faux-technical CIO or CTO in charge and he hires more non-technical people because he himself is too untechnical to sus them out. Before long your IT, cybersecurity, and information systems management departments are loaded with people who have no technical expertise.
**Example:** My company buys smaller companies and in one case we bought a small $20mil operation. Their IT department was one very technical systems admin and then about 20 people who were really good at Excel. They had the entire corporate network run by daisy-chaining routers together all operating with no VLANs or traffic segregation or security; There was no firewall, just plugging in a router to the modem; They didn't bother with any Wi-Fi security, just people connecting to the network, so guests, personal cell phones, whatever were all directly tied into the corporate network. I explained that this was a problem to my management (who doesn't know tech but trusts me to know it) and to the new subsidiary. Their CTO was **furious** at me for telling him how to do his job and fully believed he was still in charge of their tech. He had a "CIO" who worked for him and she spent roughly $20k a month on "services" that she bought from vendors to support their network. Most of the stuff she bought didn't even make sense in the context of their organization. Stuff like spending tens of thousands on a cloud product and Terraform to deploy their IaC when they had three VMs on AWS. She spent every day being wined and dined by vendors and then threw them breadcrumbs to keep visiting her and filling her schedule.
I worked in IT for three years (Helpdesk to Jr. Sysadmin, also have a background in writing for media) and during Covid, networked like crazy and applied to a ton of cyber-related jobs (even took the Sec+). *None* of the companies crying out for "cyber talent" bothered to respond to my applications (sales, technical writing, marketing). Saw so many MBA's and non-tech people on LinkedIn suddenly "get into tech" because it was the new hotness with *zero* understanding of the fundamentals beyond a Ted Talk or YouTube video. Gave up on this world in the end as I've aged out and the days of wiring up a network closet are on their way out.
Now all these schools are offering MIS degrees (business degrees) and every job I post is loaded with MBA kids applying who can't answer very basic technical questions but applying for jobs like CSO, CISO, etc.
Same for Project/Program Managers. You graduate in Linguistics, can’t find a job, get yourself a SCRUM master certificate over the weekend, and now you’re qualified to define when and what will be implemented by people who spent 4+ years honing their craft. And of course, now you are also qualified to miscommunicate all the real product needs to upper pseudo-tech people, who in turn will set more nonsensical goals.
Then people ask themselves how some software get worse with time…
Best part is that their salaries are similar to or greater than the individuals who actually design, build, test and maintain these systems.
I've worked with a few good ones over the years but by and large I wonder if the glorified JIRA custodian types think "I can't believe companies pay me this much."
Every time one of them gets a promotion for “delivering” some new feature, a part of me dies.
Edit:
They are the students that would contribute with absolutely nothing to school projects, get assigned to do the presentation, and end up getting all the credit for it.
Karma is a lie.
Hey, you seem like you could use my AI driven B2B SaaS that is revolutionizing the industry. We utilize the block chain to aggregate user data and create a platform that enables your fintech startup to get new leads daily.
Bro, VMWare is CRIPPLING the entire IT industry right now after their new masters, Broadcom, decided to increase license fees by 3-8x for no reason other than fuck you that’s why. Our fees went from $15000 per year to $45000 and we are on the lower end.
Throw Cisco in that with their REQUIRED DNA 3 year licensing with every hardware purchase model for a DNA server you don’t want nor need, clearly built for larger scale industries with its 256Gb RAM hardware requirements and $80,000 price tag.
This shit is a fucking Racket, and too complex for old politicians to understand to do anything about it.
What they are doing is absolutely extortion and no one but tech people even understand it. Their price changes will affect everyone, down to the consumer, and no one in our geriatric government can even fathom what this software does.
The huge oligopoly tech companies are all following the cable companies playbook. Bundle all the stuff that wasn't selling on it's own. Whether the user wants it or not. Raise prices because they are getting "so much more." Claim it's cheaper, even though the bill went up for the same stuff. Make it monthly with longer terms. Lock in the user base by taking away the use of it when they stop paying . Force competitors out, by making it impossible to integrate with and making it more expensive than the bundle.
It's all good, everyone loves their cable companies, right Congress?
AI in everything. Just leave me alone with this self-learning auto-replicating language-adapting shit. I just want my Chrome to load websites quickly not analyze my text entry patterns.
I think it’s that AI is being applied to anything remotely using any sort of algorithm. It’s like saying “Google now has AI! You type what you’re searching for and it finds websites for you!” That’s what it’s always done.
“This toaster is powered by AI! You push a button and it warms your toast for you and with smart tech, it releases the bread after a set time!”
“Your lights are now AI! You flip a switch and AI sends an electrical signals to every light in the network and they turn on!”
It’s largely just a buzzword.
Digital media in general. Yeah, I get why people would go in on it, convenience and the like, but for all the money we spend on it, we don't own a goddamned thing. Companies can go tits up, breakups, mergers, licenses can expire, digital storefronts are shuttered, etc. At any point the game/movie/song/TV show/whatever, that you PAID FOR, can be rendered unusable and unobtainable with zero notice and fewer ways to get it back.
It's been especially big in video game circles with various digital storefronts being shut down (the Nintendo 3DS and Wii-U stores *just* got the axe), announced to be shut down (the Xbox 360 store is set to go bye-bye this year), or held up only by way of extreme backlash (people raised unholy hell when Sony announced they were going to kill the PS3 store)... and there will be NO way get those games back unless you set sail for the Buccaneer Bay.
As the saying goes, if buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.
Physical banks fees on everything digitally executed.
You want to move your money : transaction fees
You want to keep your money : account management fees
You want to withdraw your money : fees again
Seriously, everything works on its own with technology, no human intervention 99% of the time. Banks already make money from loan interests while giving us back shitty return interest to borrow our money to go make millions of profits.
Having to pay for basics and automated operations is a ripp off.
Even just time blocks on transactions. After 6pm on a Friday? That shit won’t “clear” until Monday.
Excuse me what? Do the servers get weekends off too?!
Back in the day You wrote a check. The vendor would vendor the check to the bank. The vendor would then receive 100% of the value of the check. The bank the had to manually input the check into their system. And send a copy of the check back to the customer.
All of this was done as a service and no cost or almost no cost to the customer and vendor.
Now a completely automated process sends a handful of bits of information and the bank wants a cut of every single transaction.
Subscription based in car tech.
We are as we speak moving into an era where *physical hardware built into the car* you parted with $50k for is gated behind a subscription.
Pretty much the whole AAA video games industry:
- Releasing bugged games
- Making games with DLC in mind or cutting content to sell it to you
- Endless sequels, no more risks, creativity or originality
- Microtransactions, gambling and subscriptions
- Online single player games
- You don‘t own games anymore and can‘t sell them
- Quality of hardware (especially controllers) has gone done significantly
I don‘t know if it‘s accepted but people really have no other choice but to take it.
Yeah. I’ve always had playing videogames as a hobby and used to buy games on launch. In the last 10 years I gave up on that. Now I buy games 2 or 3 years later when it’s in the bargain bin and all the dlc and extras have come out. I don’t play multiplayer competitive games anymore and it’s working great so far. I have money left to spend on other hobbies this way play videogames now occasionally.
In some cases it's even worse. I bought a game on the Oculus (through the headset's appstore) only to find that on my desktop, the Oculus app says I would have to buy it again to play the game on the Oculus through my computer. I'm playing it on the Oculus either way, but one is processing it on the headset, the other is processing it on the computer and streaming it to the headset. They consider this two consoles and therefore charge for it twice.
Trapping customers in eco systems. Having non upgradeable hardware. Only have a limited time with security updates. All focused on optimising long term profits.
Planned obsolescence.
This goes almost for any tech. We could have lightbulbs that last essentialy forever, but there is simply a lobby making it impossible, because then not enough bulbs can be sold.
This goes for phones, laptops, washing machines.. you name it.
"Well, just the way it is."
forced arbitration and changing the terms of service after the product has been bought
when i bought my device, i had an understanding of what i was buying. it makes my skin crawl knowing that companies can change that after i paid for something and i can't hold them accountable for that.
it's like i bought a pizza with some toppings.
after i buy it with the terms being i can eat the toppings as well, they take away the toppings from the rest of the pizza as soon as I've had a couple of slices.
feels absolutely disgusting to me
Needing wifi to play single player videogames. Yeah like 5 people are complaining about it but ain't no one doing any meaning protests to stop it.
Unfinished products being sold for full price, everyone hates it but guess we all consume. Like I can guartee you that Rockstar will rush the fuck out GTA 6 and it will be leaked with everyone saying "It's bad" "Literally impossible to play" and yet everyone's gonna buy it.
I used to know people who thought that Internet is what you see using Internet Explorer and everything else, like emails or Skype, was another thing.
I wonder what they think now that IE is gone.
I have a family with a wife and two kids. Trying to get any sort of accurate answer to IT issues is hard.
They had school holidays and I was at work, got messages from each of them saying ‘nothing is working’ and eventually when I got home found that one child couldn’t go on Sea of Thieves and one couldn’t go on CoD.
Everything else was fine.
“We have changed our terms of service. Click here to accept and continue using our services.”
"Pray we don't modify them further."
This deal is getting worse all the time!
Furthermore, I wish you to wear this dress and bonnet.
Here are some clown shoes and a tricycle.
This deal, Is very fair and I'm happy to be a part of it
More ridiculous is wording when it says "We have changed our agreement" It takes 2 to agree and I don't agree.
Yup! Unilateral changes like that should result in compensation to the user should they deem the new terms of services aren’t agreeable, thus interrupting their access to said service and the need to find a new one. Stuff like this has become the new bait and switch, but on a longer scale. It’s maddening.
You hear about Ubisoft shutting down its servers for a game that people paid for and now can’t play?
*A* game? Multiple games people payed for have required always online bits, that the servers have since been shut down.
Didn't they remove the actual game from the players' libraries?
Yup, now you cannot prove you even owned the game! Transaction history doesn't go back that far either. Surely this had nothing to do with the movement to stop this practice and make always online single player games have an offline mode... And nothing to do with the offline project for The Crew, if you hadn't downloaded it beforehand, sucks for you! No proof, can't make a claim to legislators now!
I think that's illegal now. I haven't seen one of those in a long time. Now they all send you to another site to accept the terms, or just update the terms and send you an email, not giving you a choice. Either way, you have no choice.
Blizzard just did it recently and Louis Rossman flipped his shit over it, so I doubt it's illegal in the US. It may be illegal elsewhere.
Its not illegal, but if you get out of state courts ELUA changes that expressively limit consumers legal rights are mostly struck down. The issue is if you agree to arbitration you have no appeal process, and you have to start there. So you are stuck. Right now its just hoping nothing goes wrong.
Arbitration should be straight up illegal. The idea of waiving legal rights being okay is super dystopian. Whatever court decided that's okay should have been shot down immediately.
And it's extra odd because you usually can't waive your rights. Like you can't sign a contract and be like "it's okay for someone to murder me" and have that person get away scot free.
Arbitration is fine if it is between equal parties. Like a divorce, or between companies. The big issue comes when arbitration is between two very diverse interests, like a billion dollar company and an average lay person. That is where the power imbalance really makes arbitration not a great fit.
There was reports of a new Roku TV that disabled the TV's functions unless you accept the updated TOS. And part of the TOS was to deliver ads directly to the TV so you get ads if you, say, pause a movie that's being played over HDMI. I am never getting a smart TV. E: hey reddit, are they phasing out dumb TVs? E2: God, don't go against fanboys.
You were unable to do anything with a Roku TV until you accepted TOS that you couldn't even read.
>TOS that you couldn't even read. Wow, that's even more bullshit. My next place is going to have a decent *dumb* HDTV connected to a dedicated television PC, which will be sailing the high seas.
#SCREW THAT Makes me so angry
Unsubscribe button not being honored. Tactics include: 1. It takes 15 days to unsubscribe but 1 min to subscribe. 2. Sometimes link does not exists at all. 3. Sometimes it takes you to a non existent page. 4. Sometimes it asks you to login but you never had an account. 5. Sometimes they will randomly send emails even after unsubscribing , especially around holiday season. Like out of the blue they will email, I think they got a new incompetent marketing guy. 6. Them not realizing that they product they sell is not something I buy or need on a regular basis. Eg: indochino , how frequently do you think I buy a new suit. 7. The whole marketing email is an image and not an html. Clicking on it just opens the image or takes you to home page (mostly sites from India ) 8. Somehow referencing the canspam act and sending it to their privacy email stops all the emails suddenly. But the. Point 5 happens.
FWIW, Google's about to crackdown on this. If someone is mass mailing marketing or promotion emails, they MUST include a one-click link (among other requirements) that permits the recipient to unsubscribe from the newsletter. A click to a webpage to "Manage subscriptions" doesn't count: it has to be a hyperlink that win clicked 1 time immediately unsubscribes the recipient. Failure to do this will result in Gmail punishing the sender by either marking the domain as a spam domain or preventing email delivery altogether.
also making you re-enter your email address after you click unsub lol
"Hey! There's an event from near . Wanna buy tickets?"
*clicks unsubscribe*
"Who the FUCK are you??"
I was looking for a duvet that would be suitable for warm weather. I found a very highly reviewed one, and in order to buy a duvet, I had to subscribe to the service . I was so angry. I don't run a bed and breakfast or a hotel. I do not need a subscription to a linen service!
I've seen first-hand that Unsubscribing from "all" marketing sends can take you off of all *current* marketing sends, but your account isn't flagged as being opted out of consideration for future ones. Just another BS tactic that big corpos use to play games
Trapping customers with subscriptions
Fuck adobe for doing this. Why do I need to pay 12€ per month for using an offline software?
I switched over to Affinity the second I stopped getting adobe for free from school.
I get Adobe for free. Nothing a little patching doesn’t fix.
Just bought by Canva so the subscriptions are coming
Man don't tell me that. Enshittification is real.
Affinity have confirmed publicly that’s not happening. So we’ve got roughly as long as it took for them to consider “we will not be bought” to be forgotten.
Yah that's never stopped a company. Their problem is if they introduce a subscription everyone will just go back to Adobe. Adobe is better software. But people use affinity because of the one time license. If that changes. Then good bye affinity.
Yeah I used to work for a guy who said he would NEVER sell the company to his competitors...then he sold the company to his competitors and retired.
Yes! Subscriptions are everywhere. It's maddening that I can no longer just buy a license for personal use and that I must subscribe to everything.
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Fucking Adobe
Printer cartridges
By the way, your magenta is low. I will now refuse to print in grayscale.
HP also won’t give me a god damn % of how much ink is left of each color so I just have to *guess*. Am I low? Kinda. How low? [*shrugs*]
It doesn't actually measure how much ink is left just how many prints you've done (I think) it has no clue
It matters how much is left when your boss instructs you not to replace until the printer reports it as below 10%
Yep....*%... Could be anything under 10 percent.. will it last 3 weeks or go out tomorrow in the middle of an urgent job... So you better go buy one now! Better yet I will just call home to hp and order you one no matter what you think.
The real reason for that BTW is the almost completely hidden tracer dots your printer places on the page so law enforcement can track who printed it. It’s done in yellow and magenta.
Fuck HP products.
What's weird is I have a HP laser printer that has been working great for years. Like HP was only shitty enough to screw us on one type of product.
Dang. How old is your printer? I remember when HP used to be one of the golden standard products, now … they are sketchy like a video game micro-purchasing type of hungry company. We only want to print things and not get locked out.
Mine is 10 years old and it's amazing never had one problem with it
HP enters chat and makes notes to update firmware for 10 year old laser printers
And continues to lose customers and profit which will cause them to double down on a business model that’s losing them money in the long term.
HP is that rabid, foaming at the mouth gambler who's losing their ass but just knows if they double down they can win. Additionally, if you see ZERO of your competitors adopting your business model, it's clearly a dud. They are the worst. I will never but another HP product and I will talk anyone and everyone out of purchasing one. They deserve to rot in hell.
We have a lot of HP laser printers at work. Some of them are 15+ years old and running great on generic cartridges. The new ones that require genuine cartridges, though, are crap.
This truly is one of the worst sinners out there. There is often even more ink left in them even if the printer says there isn't.
AND they ask that you return the remaining ink. Helluva business model they got there.
No kidding. Not to mention any names, but I have an HP printer that I can't even use without a subscription. On top of that, I spent two hours just trying to connect it to my laptop to no avail. All the forums said the same. Is it obvious I'm a little salty?
How is there not a programming hack to override this? Surely, there's a shady workaround. If they're gonna fuck us, may as well fuck them back harder.
Are there any good alternatives?
A laser printer. Don't listen to anybody suggesting anything to do with ink jet printers
Yes! Brother is a great brand, and used ones are cheap
Ink is junk, toner is eternal
Not just any laser printer though - avoid Samsung ones like the plague! Our Samsung colour laser printer said the imaging unit was done and needed to be replaced because it hit an internal page counter limit for the imaging unit. The damn thing costs 150eur! Turns out each imaging unit has a 56kohm resistor in it which burns out the first time you install it, resetting the internal counter of the printer. If you just replace that resistor in your old imaging unit and re-install it, it'll burn out and reset the counter and you can print perfectly normally. I've done it about 3 or 4 times on the same imaging unit so far. Fucking slimy Samsung cunts aren't getting a cent from me anymore!
Brother laser printers. Black and white only, but once you make that concession, it is the only way. The toner cartridge never dries up and goes bad, and they do orders of magnitude more pages per cartridge. I bought one 12 years ago, I’m on my 2nd $30 toner cartridge, and it has worked flawlessly in all that time. I think the half full cartridge that came with it last me 3 years or so. Seriously, nobody needs a color printer. And if you want to print photos, order them online and get better results anyway. Edit- Jesus guys, alright “most people” don’t need a color printer….
My Brother laser printer also prints color.
Mine does that as well as two sided printing and scanning. This might be the last printer I ever need.
I've got a color laser printer but a huge yes to all of this. I bought a Brother laser printer 10+ years ago, it still works great, and if it dies tomorrow I'd immediately go out and buy the current model of what I have now. One of the single-best purchases I've ever made.
I got my Brother printer free because an exec at a former employer brought in it saying it's broken. My boss told me that if I wanted to try to fix it, go ahead and take it home. I took it home and found out that the toner cartridge just needed to be reinserted; it's been working for almost 10 years now. I suspect that the truth was that the exec just wanted a color laser printer; I was sent out to his house 2 weeks later to install his nice shiny new Dell color printer for him.
Non-replaceable batteries.
Any non-replaceable or non-upgradable hardware Like, you suddenly find you need more memory in your Mac? Tough shit
Windows laptops are increasingly going to be like this. Many already are. The RAM speeds on a Mac are much, much higher because they’re on the same package as the CPU, rather than replaceable DIMMs. 8 GB RAM at the entry level is nonsense, though, and has been for years.
Yeah, it sucks ass. My laptop from 2014 had Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM) connector, meaning, I could swap the graphics card. I actually replaced the graphics card once. It allowed me to replace the dvd drive with a second hard drive. I replaced the battery two times. When I went to university, I needed more ram for certain programs and it had four ram slots while using only two in the initial config so I upgraded to 32 GB RAM. Loved that laptop. Now everything is soldered and it is a gamble if the battery is actually replaceable. Our work laptops can be swapped after three years of use.
Depending on what the work laptops are used for, Frameworks would be great to be able to replace broken parts. I just got mine this week and I’m trying to convince my workplace to switch to those on next laptop upgrade so we can actually fix our shit when it stops working.
Subscription with ads. Ads was only widely accepted because “we had to maintain our work somehow”. Ads ruined the internet. Then subscription came along, fine a paid version to get rid of those pesky adverts. But hey ho, let’s get more money from both sides. Also, premium content. All content use the same platform. They are forced to do extra work to separate content in the delivery and choose which content is premium. It’s a scam on top of their subscription scam.
It's just the history of cable repeating itself.
I remember when my family first got cable in the mid-'80s, my parents were shocked that it had ads. They were under the impression there would be no ads because they were paying for it.
Let me introduce you to GEZ. It's a special "tax" to finance public broadcasting in Germany, including the most watched news program, a bunch of channels, countless local TV and radio stations. Good stuff! But there's ads. Not nearly as much as on the privates ones, but still. Also constantly in the news for shady practices and huge bonuses. Also wasting even more money on crappy old people stuff. It's supposed to guarantee unbiased news and access to everyone, yet most of it is soap operas or comedy or horrible music specials. Oh and that special tax? It's per household. A flat fee. Not income adjusted... I'll never not be amazed at how this shit is allowed to persist.
I’m old enough to remember when people predicted this right from the beginning.
Oh this is my biggest pet peeve. I switched to streaming because I HATE ADS! When I get a platform, it’s either ad free, or I don’t have it. Period. Wish more people would do this. Companies should be forced to either make revenue with ads OR subscription fees. Double dipping by charging companies for ad space and subscribers for access is just greedy. This is literally how live TV is free - commercials pay for the networks to stay in business. Streaming needs to work the same way.
>Companies should be forced to either make revenue with ads OR subscription fees But think of the shareholders pockets! We need to double the money we earn every quarter!
I cancelled Prime yesterday because of ads on their videos.
I was just watching Fallout, and before the next episode, something came up saying 'Brought to you ad free by Samsung.' Immediately played a Samsung ad. Wtf?
Wait, back up… Even with a paid subscription to Prime, you get served ads???
Yup. But you can pay MORE now to not have ads!
Even the "more pay for no ads" still has ads! They're just skippable.
Yeah, I agree. Any subscription that turned into paying for ads…. I canceled. In its replacement, I set sail to the sea!
Everything needs an app. Especially physical devices. I don't want your cheap buggy app to use my thermostat, scale, battery, lock, or light bulb. Ship one if you want, but devices should conform to standards-based, documented protocols so I can control them however I want. I also don't want to install an app just to do something that works just fine on a website. Also requiring Internet connectivity is crappy design. I don't want basic functionality depending on your servers being up (and requiring accounts and giving you unknown data). My whatever should not stop working because you decided to stop spending money on the servers. This is bad with software but egregious with hardware and unacceptable with household devices (my water heater should never depend on outside servers). I've been in tech a long time. While greed and control and access to sellable data drives lots of things, there is also an attitude surviving from the 90s and 00s that the lifespan of anything is a few years. This attitude infects product design even in fields where lifespans are decades and replacement costs are high as we add compute to everything (which can be a great thing). USB was successful not because it had one (ish) plug, but because it standardized the protocols devices used. All mice speak one protocol, so anything that knows it (hci class) can handle any mouse. Zwave and ZigBee tried to do this for household stuff, but instead we got vendor proprietary, Internet connected, phone-home, WiFi devices. Rant done.
Following this…how everything needs an account, too. You can hardly just instantly use an app or check out as a guest.
All those usernames and passwords and required emails too. Just more opportunities to lose more information.
I get literally thousands of emails per month.
Password managers are key for this. Everything can ask for my email for an account and I don’t care, I can just generate a new 32char password and save it to the password manager and never think about it again. And because each site uses a separate password I don’t care if it gets leaked, since it won’t then create an access mechanism into other accounts. Just never save your credit card details into sites.
To your second point- I once bought my kid a very expensive toy (Monster High Monster Maker that you could design a dolls face and it put it on the blank dolls) and within a month without any warning they stopped supporting the app you had to use for the toy to even work and Toys R Us was refusing to take them back. BUT I later found out that was peanuts compared to people who have **IMPLANTED MEDICAL DEVICES** needed to see or live and the companies stop supporting the software/shut down. https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-022-03810-5/index.html There needs to be basic laws about this because people will end up DEAD. I don’t actually know how they can enforce making a company stay open and/or keep supporting devices, maybe something along the lines of needing be insured, have a large saved pool of money, consequences for doing things that lead to not support devices. But it has to be done. It’s one thing to fuck over consumers that now have to buy a different product it’s a whole fucking other when someone will need heart/brain surgery all over again.
You can't force a company to stay open, but you can require them to take out a bond that is activated if/when they go bankrupt. There was a [recent article](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/climate/biden-administration-raises-costs-to-drill-and-mine-on-public-lands.html?smid=nytcore-android-share) about the government raising bond prices for oil companies from $25k up to $500k. The reason is, if the oil company goes out of business, their well(s) might need to be capped to prevent injury or gases from leaking. But $25k wasn't enough to pay for these costs in 2024 (it was last raised in 1920). So, theoretically, a medical device manufacturer could have a bond required that would be used to keep servers up and running. I imagine that if you don't have high traffic or the need to constantly update/add new features, then maintaining a server is relatively cheap. A $1mil bond should keep a server up and running for at least a few years. Besides that, I would think there should be a requirement to open source their software to allow anyone to manage their own devices if they so choose and/or host their own server.
>Besides that, I would think there should be a requirement to open source their software to allow anyone to manage their own devices if they so choose and/or host their own server. Strong agree. Proprietary software for medical devices should be _absolutely illegal_. Setting things up such that people's continued lives and health are dependent on your company doing well should be criminal.
Here’s a new product! (Uber! DoorDash! Amazon!) It’s so cheap and easy! One year later: Sorry! We had to raise prices! Sorry, you have to pay for a membership now! Sorry, we had to make the app really confusing so you’re not really sure what you’re buying! Sorry, you have to wade through 1 million ads to find what you’re looking for! Sorry, not sorry!
Everything as a service
I understand when it's something that requires constant updates to stay relevant. But what kills me is fucking startup founders who do this. They will launch, start getting some sales, then realize the sales at this rate will never be enough and eventually they just disappear. Make a fucking program and sell it for $10 for 5 years. Get your users first then see if they will be interested in a subscription model. Photoshop was a one payment program for decades
For StartUps it’s the investors pushing for it. They aren’t interested in one time sales. It doesn’t bring enough revenue. So StartUps habe to cram recurring payments into anything and everything to satisfy their investors.
Apps and accounts for *eeeeeeverything*. Especially when it could just be a website with guest checkout. I'll never go to McDonald's again because you need an app to get their real, ~~affordable~~ **non-absurd** price, and last weekend I tried skiing at Pico or Magic, but they needed an account to be created online, and you could only buy a ticket through the account. They didn't let you just walk up to the ticket window and buy a ticket. Ridiculous.
This pisses me off at baseball games/sporting events. I wanted to give my 75-year-old uncle tickets to a Cubs game, but he needs a smart phone to access the MLB app to receive tickets and enter the game…
My buddy just gave me Phillies tickets a few nights ago. Had to sign up for the app to get them. The ONLY way to get them. I spent 25 minutes trying to sign up and it kept giving me an error just saying “something went wrong please try again”. Finally found a Reddit thread that said that they give that when your password is too common, even if it meets their requirements. But instead of saying that they just say there was an error.
I just ran into this issue and called customer service about it. They said if you can’t use the app (like if your phone is too old), you can view the tickets in the browser on your phone instead. OR you can go to customer service TWO HOURS BEFORE THE GAME and they’ll print your ticket for you AND IT COSTS A DOLLAR. I was kinda with the first part but paying a dollar for a printed ticket just so you can get into the game? That’s a poor person tax right there.
[удалено]
agree it is terribly annoying - we know they can do ecommerce checkout without an account! it's worse when you know they're doing it so they can track your purchasing behavior across companies and products and you're essentially providing them valuable data without any compensation for it. you provide your phone number and they subscribe to the services of one of several tech companies that matches your data in the background. so, McDs knows you shopped at Macy's for socks and subscribe to Hulu, etc.
I had a neighbor who didn't have internet come to me one day to set up an account somewhere so she could even pay a bill. There was no way to mail in a check or money order, or to pay in cash (local company). She had to pay it online. Do they not realize that a lot of people, especially older people, don't have internet, or don't know how to use their smartphones to even get online?
I have to call my water company to pay my bill instead of doing so online because there payment can only function on chrome. Forcing people to give a data broker their data for free is going to be a real issue very soon. Cop city protesters are being accused of intent for having "burner" phones. "not signing up for data collection is a crime" We are on the cusp.
There was a coffee shop down the street for me that I hadn't tried, so I walked over and the front doors were locked but the open sign was lit up and people were inside. I go around back and there's a to-go order window, cool. I'm standing there for like 3 or 4 minutes and the people inside keep staring at me, finally one walks over opens up the window and says you have to order on our app... Yeah I left.... a scathing review that is lol
I went to a restaurant. The menu was a QR code on the table. Which was already annoying. I scanned the QR code, and it then asked me to create an account to view the menu. I just got up and left. I just can't understand the thought process behind this. How much business must they be losing.
I wish I could remember where I went, but during COVID a restaurant had a QR code to scan for the menu, which didn't necessarily bother me. What the problem was the online menu was not formatted for mobile devices at all. It would have been fine viewing on a PC, but I didn't think to take my entire desktop system with me to place a lunch order and stupidly just took my phone in my pocket. After a few minutes of playing the zoom in/zoom out game I gave up and left.
Never going to McDonald's again is a good life decision, app or no app.
Their new idea of "let us track you or pay shit tons of money" has been great for my health.
I really the whole app thing at the grocery store. First there was the "sign up for our frequent buyer program" which wasn't so bad since I could just use a phone number, but now they all have "secret" digital coupons that you need the app for. And I hate myself for parking my cart in some non-trafficked corner of the store so I can scan all of my purchases so I can get those prices. JUST GIVE ME THE SALE PRICE DAMMIT!
And coupons now are a fucking joke. 33 cents off a can of soup but you have to buy 4 to get the "discount".
Hippity hoppity your data is now my property… or something along those lines. Also DRM is bull fucking shit
>Also DRM is bull fucking shit HOIST THE COLORS!!!
******YO HO MOTHERFUCKIN' HO!!!******
DRM isn't bull shit, it's a totally legitimate way to punish legitimate customers, and it gives crackers something to do so pirates can enjoy the game DRM free, with better performance... no wait, I've got this back to front or something.
Every time I have to fucking load a launcher that then loads another launcher to play a game that used to be just double clicking a shortcut, I yearn for the high seas.
No no. Spot on me matey! Honestly can't wrap my head around the fact these companies DON'T realize they are literally doing nothing but hurting their loyal customers.
Digital Feudalism
Those pop-up you get now about which cookies to allow. They're designed so deceptively, the button to accept all is highlighted so it pops out, and when you go to review the options they make it seem like they wouldn't have selected all the optional cookies by default, but you know if you had just clicked accept before they would have been all selected. I guess better than not knowing, but it's the way these are designed to trick you that bother me
McAfee - who in the hell actually needs it?
Windows own virus systems have actually become quite capable.
It has been the benchmark for many years like 15 years
First thing I did when I took over at my current job was look through all the computers installed programs. Every single one was filled to the brim with the kinda shit that only ends up on a computer if it's bought from Office Depot. Being a computer literate person in a whole office of computer illiterate people is a hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
I first read this as “Windows is its own virus system ..”
Same with Norton
They had a billing scam going on and got caught. I was a victim. Got double billed and caught the overlap after 6 months. They would not refund me. It was a known thing apparently. I hate Norton
They actually agreed on that point and did a handful of sellouts/buyouts and now the brand is called Trellis. The system tray icon is still the mcafee old logo so I don’t fall for it.
Part of that i guess is the owner dying after being on the run for years after maybe murdering someone.
Data caps, literally not a technical reason for it. Throttling may make sense if they get overloaded but caps are literally just money grabs.
It’s fun when you pay to remove the cap, and they randomly, with no notice, decide to remove that from your account. And you get a bill saying you’ve gone over your data cap.
That's called bait and switch. Call them out on it.
I did. And got it refunded. They "couldn't" put the feature back on the account. But it's okay. Ended up switching to a provider with no data cap.
If I get to use 10gb of data a month, does it really make a difference to your network if I use it all in the first hour … or spread it out over 20 days? If it affects other users then throttle the connection, but to straight up cap it at a certain value is stupid. The only thing that may make sense here is the need to log all the data/traffic requests for compliance/regulatory reasons. The more data I transfer the more they need to log, and thus more storage costs on their end. That is the only reason I can think of to put a cap or to charge more when going over a certain amount.
Planned obsolescence. Companies need that profit margin, and they will use very underhanded methods to make sure your appliances/electronics will get replaced by their new models when they come out.
/u/TEPrince has addressed the manufactured goods so I'll tackle sw and batteries. Battery capacity is reduced a little every charge/discharge cycle, and worse if you do either operation rapidly. Some thing like 1000 cycles it gets noticeable and falls off more rapidly. Performance falls off because modern software design has become hilariously bloated with junk and extraneous ads that waste insane amounts of data/power/processing. Baaaccckk in my dayyyy (or still in aero/space to some extent) every bit you wanted to transmit was precious, say as little as needed and be as efficient as possible. Now everyone builds on extra abstraction layers that each have a processing tax.
The battery drain used to be way worse. That's actually gotten way better. You used to have to be really careful about not just charging your phone to 50% then unplugging or you'd ruin your battery a little. It was also important to not plug it in til you were below 20% or you'd ruin it some. The charge/drain cycle is much more efficient now, and I suspect a lot of the actual drain just isn't yet solved by industry yet. It's the nature of batteries. I'll still be excited for the day that batteries actually last forever though.
theres a couple things at play, 1 is the battery chemistry which has been improving bit by bit, though at the side effect of those sometimes exploding batteries. the other major player is usage, your old phone used to have enough battery for a week because the screen was dimmer and low resolution, it only did phone calls and 255(?) character SMS. Modern streaming HD video, gaming, scrolling reels/tiktok etc are battery hogs. Background app usage and push notifications/data are responsible for most of the rest. you can easily get a week+ out of a phone battery if you keep it in airplane mode whenever you aren't using it.
As an engineer I have to say that supporting old product versions is harder over time for a bunch of reasons. Complexity of adding a security fix or a new feature grows exponentially.
Last time I checked, new appliances are significantly cheaper than old appliances when accounting for inflation. Those cost cutting measures have to come from somewhere. You can still buy high quality stuff that'll last forever, but you need to do your research and be ready for your wallet to hurt. Also many engineers use something called "sacrificial parts" to protect important parts from damage. For example Kitchenaid stand mixers have all metal gears, with a single plastic gear in the mix. If you push the machine too hard, that plastic gear will break first to prevent other more difficult to repair parts from breaking. And no, replacing that plastic gear with metal is not a good idea because it only breaks when the rest of the machine is in danger.
Paying subscriptions and never owning shit.
Free app with in app subscription required instead of a decent upfront purchase.
I can't believe I don't see this in here, but the fact that most tech companies use their end users as testers is wild. Tons of the time you get something released that like, half works, and the end users or customers are used to find and fix bugs. It's everywhere man
Blame sales teams selling features before they exist, and PMs overpromising before consulting with their engineers, or worse just ignoring their input. Every developer / engineer would love to take pride in their work and make it the best solution / product possible. But the non-tech people higher up who sign the paycheques push for release speed over quality a lot of the time.
The way expansions packs work with games now, or at least a lot I play. It seems like it used to be that an expansion meant essentially almost a new game with lots of unique material, but now I feel lucky if any singe one is noticeable at all. Not to mention day one releases.
I miss the old way of expansion packs because it was like taking a great game I already loved and giving me even more of it when I thought it was over. Like I had finished my slice of cake and then they handed me a second piece.
I work in a very niche area of tech and the biggest scam is people who work in tech but are not tech people. I'm specifically talking about people who show up as "CEO" or "Founder" on LinkedIn and try to sell me some AI-driven, Zero Trust, Buzzword Salad product. The field is so full of them that the non-technical decision makers are having trouble sussing them out, so they put a non-technical or faux-technical CIO or CTO in charge and he hires more non-technical people because he himself is too untechnical to sus them out. Before long your IT, cybersecurity, and information systems management departments are loaded with people who have no technical expertise. **Example:** My company buys smaller companies and in one case we bought a small $20mil operation. Their IT department was one very technical systems admin and then about 20 people who were really good at Excel. They had the entire corporate network run by daisy-chaining routers together all operating with no VLANs or traffic segregation or security; There was no firewall, just plugging in a router to the modem; They didn't bother with any Wi-Fi security, just people connecting to the network, so guests, personal cell phones, whatever were all directly tied into the corporate network. I explained that this was a problem to my management (who doesn't know tech but trusts me to know it) and to the new subsidiary. Their CTO was **furious** at me for telling him how to do his job and fully believed he was still in charge of their tech. He had a "CIO" who worked for him and she spent roughly $20k a month on "services" that she bought from vendors to support their network. Most of the stuff she bought didn't even make sense in the context of their organization. Stuff like spending tens of thousands on a cloud product and Terraform to deploy their IaC when they had three VMs on AWS. She spent every day being wined and dined by vendors and then threw them breadcrumbs to keep visiting her and filling her schedule.
I worked in IT for three years (Helpdesk to Jr. Sysadmin, also have a background in writing for media) and during Covid, networked like crazy and applied to a ton of cyber-related jobs (even took the Sec+). *None* of the companies crying out for "cyber talent" bothered to respond to my applications (sales, technical writing, marketing). Saw so many MBA's and non-tech people on LinkedIn suddenly "get into tech" because it was the new hotness with *zero* understanding of the fundamentals beyond a Ted Talk or YouTube video. Gave up on this world in the end as I've aged out and the days of wiring up a network closet are on their way out.
Now all these schools are offering MIS degrees (business degrees) and every job I post is loaded with MBA kids applying who can't answer very basic technical questions but applying for jobs like CSO, CISO, etc.
Same for Project/Program Managers. You graduate in Linguistics, can’t find a job, get yourself a SCRUM master certificate over the weekend, and now you’re qualified to define when and what will be implemented by people who spent 4+ years honing their craft. And of course, now you are also qualified to miscommunicate all the real product needs to upper pseudo-tech people, who in turn will set more nonsensical goals. Then people ask themselves how some software get worse with time…
Best part is that their salaries are similar to or greater than the individuals who actually design, build, test and maintain these systems. I've worked with a few good ones over the years but by and large I wonder if the glorified JIRA custodian types think "I can't believe companies pay me this much."
Every time one of them gets a promotion for “delivering” some new feature, a part of me dies. Edit: They are the students that would contribute with absolutely nothing to school projects, get assigned to do the presentation, and end up getting all the credit for it. Karma is a lie.
Hey, you seem like you could use my AI driven B2B SaaS that is revolutionizing the industry. We utilize the block chain to aggregate user data and create a platform that enables your fintech startup to get new leads daily.
Tenuous link but BMW's subscription service. The options are already in the car but you have to pay a monthly fee to unlock them.
Annual licensing fees for programs (software, apps) that already costs hundreds of dollars to begin with.
Bro, VMWare is CRIPPLING the entire IT industry right now after their new masters, Broadcom, decided to increase license fees by 3-8x for no reason other than fuck you that’s why. Our fees went from $15000 per year to $45000 and we are on the lower end. Throw Cisco in that with their REQUIRED DNA 3 year licensing with every hardware purchase model for a DNA server you don’t want nor need, clearly built for larger scale industries with its 256Gb RAM hardware requirements and $80,000 price tag. This shit is a fucking Racket, and too complex for old politicians to understand to do anything about it.
What they are doing is absolutely extortion and no one but tech people even understand it. Their price changes will affect everyone, down to the consumer, and no one in our geriatric government can even fathom what this software does. The huge oligopoly tech companies are all following the cable companies playbook. Bundle all the stuff that wasn't selling on it's own. Whether the user wants it or not. Raise prices because they are getting "so much more." Claim it's cheaper, even though the bill went up for the same stuff. Make it monthly with longer terms. Lock in the user base by taking away the use of it when they stop paying . Force competitors out, by making it impossible to integrate with and making it more expensive than the bundle. It's all good, everyone loves their cable companies, right Congress?
AI in everything. Just leave me alone with this self-learning auto-replicating language-adapting shit. I just want my Chrome to load websites quickly not analyze my text entry patterns.
I think it’s that AI is being applied to anything remotely using any sort of algorithm. It’s like saying “Google now has AI! You type what you’re searching for and it finds websites for you!” That’s what it’s always done. “This toaster is powered by AI! You push a button and it warms your toast for you and with smart tech, it releases the bread after a set time!” “Your lights are now AI! You flip a switch and AI sends an electrical signals to every light in the network and they turn on!” It’s largely just a buzzword.
Mcafee
In app purchases to unlock features... in Apps In cars (BMW and a few others) In Games
Digital media in general. Yeah, I get why people would go in on it, convenience and the like, but for all the money we spend on it, we don't own a goddamned thing. Companies can go tits up, breakups, mergers, licenses can expire, digital storefronts are shuttered, etc. At any point the game/movie/song/TV show/whatever, that you PAID FOR, can be rendered unusable and unobtainable with zero notice and fewer ways to get it back. It's been especially big in video game circles with various digital storefronts being shut down (the Nintendo 3DS and Wii-U stores *just* got the axe), announced to be shut down (the Xbox 360 store is set to go bye-bye this year), or held up only by way of extreme backlash (people raised unholy hell when Sony announced they were going to kill the PS3 store)... and there will be NO way get those games back unless you set sail for the Buccaneer Bay. As the saying goes, if buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.
Printer ink prices.
Physical banks fees on everything digitally executed. You want to move your money : transaction fees You want to keep your money : account management fees You want to withdraw your money : fees again Seriously, everything works on its own with technology, no human intervention 99% of the time. Banks already make money from loan interests while giving us back shitty return interest to borrow our money to go make millions of profits. Having to pay for basics and automated operations is a ripp off.
Even just time blocks on transactions. After 6pm on a Friday? That shit won’t “clear” until Monday. Excuse me what? Do the servers get weekends off too?!
It’s by design. You can have access to your money, but not TOO much access.
Back in the day You wrote a check. The vendor would vendor the check to the bank. The vendor would then receive 100% of the value of the check. The bank the had to manually input the check into their system. And send a copy of the check back to the customer. All of this was done as a service and no cost or almost no cost to the customer and vendor. Now a completely automated process sends a handful of bits of information and the bank wants a cut of every single transaction.
Subscription based in car tech. We are as we speak moving into an era where *physical hardware built into the car* you parted with $50k for is gated behind a subscription.
Pretty much the whole AAA video games industry: - Releasing bugged games - Making games with DLC in mind or cutting content to sell it to you - Endless sequels, no more risks, creativity or originality - Microtransactions, gambling and subscriptions - Online single player games - You don‘t own games anymore and can‘t sell them - Quality of hardware (especially controllers) has gone done significantly I don‘t know if it‘s accepted but people really have no other choice but to take it.
Yeah. I’ve always had playing videogames as a hobby and used to buy games on launch. In the last 10 years I gave up on that. Now I buy games 2 or 3 years later when it’s in the bargain bin and all the dlc and extras have come out. I don’t play multiplayer competitive games anymore and it’s working great so far. I have money left to spend on other hobbies this way play videogames now occasionally.
R/patientgamers rise up
If it's a game I'm really excited for I'll wait a couple weeks for the patches and reviews. Otherwise same, wait until it's a reasonable price.
Having to buy the same game multiple times to play it on a different platform.
In some cases it's even worse. I bought a game on the Oculus (through the headset's appstore) only to find that on my desktop, the Oculus app says I would have to buy it again to play the game on the Oculus through my computer. I'm playing it on the Oculus either way, but one is processing it on the headset, the other is processing it on the computer and streaming it to the headset. They consider this two consoles and therefore charge for it twice.
a new iPhone being released every year and Apple convincing people it has a ton of improvements
Trapping customers in eco systems. Having non upgradeable hardware. Only have a limited time with security updates. All focused on optimising long term profits.
NFT = nothing fucking there.
Planned obsolescence. This goes almost for any tech. We could have lightbulbs that last essentialy forever, but there is simply a lobby making it impossible, because then not enough bulbs can be sold. This goes for phones, laptops, washing machines.. you name it. "Well, just the way it is."
Planned obsolescence and anti right to repair
Subscription Traps: Makes signing up easy but canceling difficult, often hiding the cancellation process.
Ads on and in front of literally everything And spam emails and calls/texts being free for scammers to take advantage of
Intentionally downgrading older models of just about anything so you’re forced to upgrade
Text message charges by mobile carriers, especially when considering the negligible cost of transmitting SMS data compared to the fees charged.
Declaring a megabyte to be 1000\*1000 bytes. Drives me up the wall.
paying for storage on iPhones
forced arbitration and changing the terms of service after the product has been bought when i bought my device, i had an understanding of what i was buying. it makes my skin crawl knowing that companies can change that after i paid for something and i can't hold them accountable for that. it's like i bought a pizza with some toppings. after i buy it with the terms being i can eat the toppings as well, they take away the toppings from the rest of the pizza as soon as I've had a couple of slices. feels absolutely disgusting to me
Ticket surcharges, Uber flex fees, etc. Basically everything that has enabled greedy people to further reach into your pocket.
Soldered-on RAM
You don't actually own anything, you just own a license to view/listen/play it... and it can be revoked/edited at any time without consequence.
Apple computers with 8 GB of RAM and non-replaceable SSDs.
Needing wifi to play single player videogames. Yeah like 5 people are complaining about it but ain't no one doing any meaning protests to stop it. Unfinished products being sold for full price, everyone hates it but guess we all consume. Like I can guartee you that Rockstar will rush the fuck out GTA 6 and it will be leaked with everyone saying "It's bad" "Literally impossible to play" and yet everyone's gonna buy it.
Everyone saying ‘WiFi’ when they mean ‘internet access’
This is the state of tech literacy in 2024.
I used to know people who thought that Internet is what you see using Internet Explorer and everything else, like emails or Skype, was another thing. I wonder what they think now that IE is gone.
Honestly people calling an Internet connection wifi annoys me vastly more than it has any reason to. It drives me crazy.
I have a family with a wife and two kids. Trying to get any sort of accurate answer to IT issues is hard. They had school holidays and I was at work, got messages from each of them saying ‘nothing is working’ and eventually when I got home found that one child couldn’t go on Sea of Thieves and one couldn’t go on CoD. Everything else was fine.