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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
Cars. Basically every new model is always online, connected, and streaming who knows what data. Not to mention the awful UX of touchscreens.
Why should a car be connected to the internet? The infotainment is justified but should be controllable. And this includes EVs. Just because your wheels are moved by electric motors it doesn't automatically mean the entire car is "tech" and must be connected to everything and anything.
If I had to get a car I would by an old clunker and pay someone to convert it to electric.
Yes I would like a fully electric 1957 Bel-Air please.
Old cars sound like fun, until you experience the safety features (seatbelts and crumble zones optional), missing rear visibility with tiny mirrors and the hassle to find matching spare part replicas.
And you think there is not much electronics or fancy extras in them to break, but the older cars where expected to last for 100.000km and maybe 10 years tops before the rust would eat everything up, so a lot of parts where designed cheaper and would fail sooner than today's cars that are expected to last at least twice as long.
An acquaintance from NHTSA says the cars save audio from the interior of the vehicle in a type of black box that can be accessed by investigators after wrecks. They frequently analyze this audio, but it’s SUPPOSED TO BE A SECRET.
My recent purchase was a Mazda specifically because the infotainment was not a touchscreen, but instead controlled by a rotating knob joystick.
Any hardware associated with Facebook.
And software, while we're at it. Web plugins included. Basically just Facebook.
It could've stopped at "Lets people share things with friends and family" but they'll never be satisfied, ~~until~~ even if they have the entire world's money, attention, and data in their clutches.
What they've done to VR pisses me off to the core.
Brother laser printers don't do that. The unfortunate thing is that the word is out, so the prices have skyrocketed. But for me, if I ever need to buy a laundry machine, I'm looking for a decades old, used one. One with a spin cycle and that lets you start and stop it in demand.
laundry machine, I’m looking for a decades old, used one. One with a spin cycle and that lets you start and stop it in demand.
Smart.
I stopped using a smart watch I used to use all the time because Samsung started requiring location services to be on to use it. Immediately made me drop it and I stopped buying anything Samsung after that. Not only would I never be okay with having that on all the time, it's fucking insane to start making that a requirement for a device that never required that out of the box.
As a bonus one, I'll never buy anything Playstation ever again for obvious reasons.
About 12 years ago I bought a Samsung tablet that had an IR blaster function so I could control my TV and audio equipment. It was a primary reason I chose that model. Less than a year after purchase Samsung discontinued their app and remotely disabled the tablet's IR blaster.
It was less than $5 for a replacement app that could be configured to get it working again, but the fact Samsung thought it was just fine to remotely remove a feature that was one of the primary reasons for my purchase is not something I've forgiven.
Since then I've bought lots of consumer electronic products but have not (and probably never will) consider another Samsung product.
Company apps.
Every business you deal with has an app these days. Grocery stores, restaurants, etc... Just install and scan to get your discounts and track your points. Yeah... No thanks.
I'll start: printers.
Boy, do I have good news for you!
Thank you! I'm okay with walking over to the library to print, though.
It's fun getting to express my socialist sensibilities in that way.
Anything smart or iot, or that requires a subscription to use.
A windows license.
Games consoles. (I would consider a stream deck to be immune from this as it's just a handheld PC)
Android phones, Apple phones.
Wireless earphones.
A modern car.
phones. I just fucken hate em. Until I can get my hands on a graphineOS pixel I will just feel like I have a spy device in my pocket. So now I just have a 6 year old one that is mostly offline playing local music and watching/listening to videos from grayjay. Once this device is dead I will have to look at getting a new one and im really not looking forward to it. I never use calling and i only use txt to receive spam and 2fa spam. Kinda want something like the mechaComet instead of a phone.
Printers are a loss leader for selling ink cartridges. I have done my recent printing at Walgreens. It's about 25 cents per page and I don't need it very often.
Video games. I stopped buying games because they started requiring a monthly subscription to play.
Yea lately I've been playing a bunch of Quake and Doom mods/wads/paks. There are probably tens of thousands of hours worth of free content available for both of these games. Kinda makes it hard to justify buying a new game when I could go download some masterpiece Quake campaign for free.
Micro$oft. Everything from them. Windows, Office, etc.
Only yesterday I bought a piece of hardware, an old surface tablet, and immediately installed Linux on it to make it usable and safe.
Robot vacuums, I've always hated how they were all cloud-connected, but now they have cameras too.
Yeah I know about Valetudo.
Televisions.
I will not have any "smart TV" that has access to the Internet, spewing ads and harvesting data in my house. I currently have two older dumb models and when they ultimately fail, I will switch to projectors. Chromecast and a Raspberry Pi server can handle everything I want, without ads
Microsoft products or any suscription that doesn't have to be a suscription.
Avoid Google as much a possible, may be next phone will be graphene.
No social networks
When I bought my current house, the previous elderly owner's sons had outfitted it with Ring doorbell and security/monitoring including Alexa in a few rooms...even had a piece of paper stapled to the ceiling above his bed that said "ALEXA EMERGENCY". It was Probably good idea to keep an eye on their dying parent.
The day I closed on it...I ripped out the panels, unplugged anything Alexa, and disconnected the ring doorbell. The only things ring-related still here are a motion sensor and 1 or 2 door sensors...but all the wiring has been disconnected.
Fuck Ring.
I ended up putting in Eufy with a Home Base, zero subscription.
Any car made after 2020..
Newer cars. They come with cameras pointed at my face!
Car.
I have an old Brother laser printer which absolutely rocks. But I also have an HP flatbed scanner that has never come out of the box because of their bullshit.
Dating app subscription
If I see an ad playing at a gas station pump, I get back in my car and keep driving.
Pretty much anything that doesn't run on foss. Game consoles in particular. When they all started requiring a subscription for basic online functionality, I moved all my gaming to PC and now also those retro bootleg handhelds. Love my Retroid Pocket 5.
HP printer, cars, appliances.
Dryer drum seals broke and bushings worn. I just bought parts and spent the time fixing it, to avoid the IOT new ones. Probably coat me 30% of getting a new one
Car: we were due for a new one, but we found a 2004 car in mint shape so we downgraded purposely. I wanted to be able to have easy repairs and no phone-home garbage of a new car, and never any SaaS nonsense.
For the Printer: the drugstore guy alerted me to the HP ink nonsense, so I went with a Canon.
almost everything.
They are sneaking creepnology into all kinds of things it has no business being.
I'd go back to a Bakelite phone on a fucking land line if I could. As it stands I mostly try to buy older shit, cause not only is it typically better made, its just simple and basic with no extra pointless points of failure.
Several years ago, I bought a color laser printer/scanner. It cost about twice what an inkjet one costs. It has now lasted twice as long as the average inkjet, and no sign of that changing. And it doesn't have any of the subscription bullshit. Money well spent.
New cars, Adobe suite, meta suite, and most restaurants.
New anything. Analogue or bust, if it wants to talk to the internet and isn’t a game console or computer then it can absolutely go and fuck itself dead.
as far as I can tell. everything. its like any time there is a new purchase I have to scrounge around to see if there is a dumb option.
Software, but full disclosure: I did go wild and spend £5 on Symfonium a few years back which I don't grudge.
windows. and any software related (github) to windows.
I'm now 100% all linux all the time.
Android phones. I mean, Google has been an advertising company the entire time (2008 to now) that Android has existed, but the enshittification has gotten worse and worse. I still like Android, though. I'm an Apple guy, but I haven't forgotten wiping Android phones and flashing them with custom firmware, and getting the "AOSP-like" CyanogenMod, or the bone-stock "Google Play Edition" Android on an Android phone meant to slam 5 ads in your face every second. It was always a losing battle, but it was fun.
I still want a newer Android phone. I have a Galaxy S10. It's still a good phone, but it should be the next phone I replace, before replacing my iPhone 16 Pro Max (which should last another 7-9 years).
As for printers, HP is always a losing bet. They suck. Their lasers aren't bad at work, but they're not great either. It's always something with HP. I've heard Brother lasers are cheap enough and rock solid. I don't really need a printer though. If I did, I'd get that one Brother laserjet everyone's talking about. Just web search "that one brother printer" and look for the review that just says "stop worrying about printers and get that one brother printer." Follow their link to Amazon to get the part number, and shop around.
Acoustic guitars. Lately, they've been making these acoustic guitars with some sort of a box inside that gives it some reverb/delay, to make it sound a little richer. I hate it, it sounds shitty, and it makes the guitar unnaturally heavy.
It's an acoustic guitar, a pinnacle of woodworking artistry. Technology being involved is morally offensive.
Jesus. I do a lot of woodworking. I tell people I can make a guitar-shaped object, but I can't make a guitar. Musical instruments require a ton of specialized knowledge, precision, and care to make something that sounds right. Sounds to me what they're doing with these boxes is to lower the quality so they're actually building guitar-shaped objects, and then trying to compensate with some electronic bullshit.
Microsoft products
I had the same shit with an hp printer. I returned mine though.
I’m really picky about where I buy gas. There ar two places that don’t play ads at the pump and i go there. I worry they’ll change.
Home speakers, the "smart" kind