I’ll start: printers.
I bought an HP in March 2020 when my job went remote and HP bricked it remotely after only 100 pages because I wouldn’t sign up for their subscription program. Ended up trashing a perfectly good printer.
Luckily my library’s close by and I can print there remotely.
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.
Sweet spot is Japanese cars from the '90s and '00s. They are more reliable, more fuel efficient, have safety features and spare parts are often still available. Rust remains a topic but not as much as with older cars.
Rust is always a problem in some places hahaha
Yeah. Find a Honda or Toyota from the latter half of the 00’s with a reliable service history and they’ll last another 10-20 years if you take them to a decent imports mechanic.
Visibility out of something like a '57 Bel Air is excellent. Back then visibility was something people cared about, and having the pillars be as thin as possible was highly desirable. In comparison, modern cars have horrible visibility with thick pillars, high belt lines, high hoods, and tiny rear windows. Of course, the whole thin pillar thing did come at the cost of a weaker roof, less crash protection, and basically no rollover protection so there does need to be some balance, but with modern cars I hate how I feel dependent on things like backup cameras and blind spot monitors because I can’t effectively see out the car.
The 1970s fastbacks had terrible rear visibility because they don’t have rear windows:
https://smclassiccars.com/uploads/postfotos/1972-dodge-charger-coupe-red-se-4.jpg
The driver is essentially blind in he 3-5 o’clock visibility range when you have to do a left turn, and the intersection is not at an 90 degrees angle, or you try to merge into the highway. All you can do is floor it and merge in behind some car in front of you that you can see.
Well in the 70’s you also have the AMC Pacer which is like driving a fishbowl.
As a styling thing it does go in cycles. Late 30’s-40’s cars also had high beltlines and small windows. Then the big airy greenhouses in the late 50’s-early 60’s. Many 80’s cars into the 90’s tended to have good visibility, though part of that also just came from the squared off styling. The poor visibility of today’s cars is partly from safety features, but a lot of is also just styling.
Yeah, if I had a choice for an electric conversion, I think my ideal pick would be a newish car that somehow had its engine ruined way before its time. Like, maybe it was owned by some idiot that never got the oil changed until it burned out completely.
And while newer cars have the annoying tracking crap, that’s solvable. If you’re paying a mechanic enough money to completely convert a vehicle to electric, it won’t be much more work to rip out the tracking tech while they’re retrofitting it. You might need to just completely throw out the existing infotainment system, but that would still be a rounding error on a project that large.
Convertible in Tropical Turquoise and India Ivory?
Most definitely.
I only saw it in tropical turquoise.
Ideally you just look for a Honda or Toyota from like 20 years ago, assuming you want gas powered. Look for only like 1-3 owners, regular service history. Those things will last into 600k+ miles if they received regular service and parts are dirt cheap.
If I did that I would just be another selfish, ignorant asshole complicit in the destruction and collapse of the natural systems that allow me to breath and eat. No, it would have to be electric. Even then I wouldn’t really want it because of the tires and the raw materials needed to create it in the first place.
Alright well I’m going to continue surviving. You have fun doing whatever I guess.
good luck lol. ur gunna need it (literally like fkin miracle). o7
Touch grass, dude.
Open your fucking eyes, dude. Everything’s dying. There won’t be any grass to touch, in our lifetimes.
OK, convert a 20 year old Toyota or Honda. Way easier to find one than thinking you have to go pre-fuel injection era to avoid wireless connectivity. Either way, you’re probably going to instantly trash a working engine apparently.
Yep, that’s the plan. Maybe soon, more people will realize those engines are one of the main reasons millions of people have already died from catastrophic climate change. I doubt it though… most are too focused on themselves, their own comfort and “survival” to realize or even care how much of an impact their actions have and even then can easily blame some rich asshole so they can keep being just as selfish as said rich asshole.
fully electric 1957 Bel-Air
That would be gorgeous.
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.
Infotainment ain’t justified, at least not up front. Put all that shit in the back if you gotta have it, but the driver should have as few distractions as possible. A simple radio, climate control, and the instrument panel. That’s it.
Utterly insane that we ever allowed glorified tablets to become standard equipment in dashboards.
How many cars were you buying
Like most people who drive, they probably would be buying a new car every 5-10 years. Is that far fetched? I’ve know several people who spend half their money on cars, buying/trading them every year or so. Most fediverse people would be saavier than that, but still.
Well there was period where I changed cars every 2 years. For a total of 3 cars, and then I didn’t need one any more. Not the most egregious example but I did like changing them. It’s like any other toy, it’s easy to get hooked on upgrades and trying out new models.
Yeah, that’s pretty normal I think. I tend to keep my cars a long time but I’ve still had 4 so far, which may surprise the OC here.
I drive them until the cost of fixing them significantly exceeds the cost of getting a new used car. Accounting for it being a pain in the ass to shop for cars etc.
But yeah every 3-5 years sounds about right for typical middle/upper class families. My parents did pretty well when I was little and I remember them doing 2 or 3 year leases.
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,
untileven 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.
I never understood why people think VR can be a mass market product. It’s literally single user. It cannot be looked at by two people at the same time. Such a silly concept. It’s good for gaming, some work, robotics, remote access, etc. But mass market? iPhone-killer? Price-accessible to all? I don’t get it.
There is some open source software that is associated with Facebook, like compression with Zstandard, a very common and useful compression format. Don’t care that it’s from them in that case.
False.
The Facebook Portal TV was, and still is, gorgeous. The voice control is dead, the streaming services removed, the Alexa link dead, but as a video conf device that uses your TV really well, it’s a life-changer.
We chat with people on the other Coast weekly, and we get to see people in their living room from ours. We can’t go visit, but we can stay in touch.
We paid like $100 each for 4 of these. I’d’ve paid 5 times that for one with upgradeable assistant access and vanilla open video chat so it’s fb free. They’re all still running but they tether us to Fb since the zoom was ass.
Edit: downvoting something as cool as the portal TV is bizarre. It really is a stand-out product and I’m sad that its connection to FB ruined its reception.
What’s “false” here exactly?
Also at the end you’re like you’re like “but they force us to keep connected to fb” which sounds very disqualifying for many users here…
Maybe that’s the one tech we should try to bring back with FOSS next
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.
Good idea on the washer. My washer and dryer are both 27 years old. Just basic Whirlpool models. I’ve repaired both myself a few times, it’s not hard, and there are directions for every problem online.
New appliances are shit, now. I dread having to replace my fridge. It’s about 25 years old and still works perfectly, but nothing lasts forever.
I’ll definitely be looking at old used in appliances before buying new from now on. Same for cars.
I know it’s off topic, but just want to jump on here and brag about my microwave that is still operating everyday, despite dating back to about 1982.
Yep, I had a GE from 1984. It was a “Spacemaker”. I stupidly gave it away after 30 years because I decided I wanted a bigger one. That’s when I learned that new appliances suck. I’m on my third microwave since then. I have no doubt the one I gave away is still working.
Ooh, this is very similar to the one I have which is also GE. Mine is larger than this, so maybe the non-spacemaker version. Thanks for posting this.
Found this video that looks exactly like mine, except mine has a digital display and buttons. https://youtu.be/nGyYGiuv-2g?is=rQbmXoax64RvMuhY
I haven’t bought one in probably like 12 years. Are the new ones all greebled up with “smart” shit? Even the store brand models?
How’s the second hand brother market?
HP printers don’t do that, either. All sources I could find were random reports from people with zero evidence.
HP has terrible scummy business presences and sucks, but this post is straight up misinformation and everyone is just like “oh yeah that’s true they do that”
https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/hp-plus.html
When you activate the HP+, HP permanently disables the printer’s ability to use 3rd party ink. Model numbers that end in “e” require HP+ to function. While other model numbers don’t require HP+, someone who is not already aware of it could be prompted into signing up for it without understanding they’re permanently disabling their ability to use third party ink.
Thank you for the source! Not a great look on HP’s part, and they’ve always been against third party ink which is shitty. I remember a friend of mine having a giant ink reservoir next to their 02 HP photo printer—ink was free forever basically. Amazing printers. That’s prolly why they stopped the 02s… way too easy to make them awesome by tank-feeding.
I still contest OP’s “they bricked my printer”, it’ll still print with HP ink. Moreover, printers have had chips for decades that allow them only to print with first party ink… you can circumvent the chips, but still. HP didn’t brick yer printer if you fell for their subscription ink grift (also who does that, sorry) they just make it so you need their own ink… like… they have been doing since the 2000s.
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.
ditto. fuck that app shit.
I don’t house any apps from any companies, restaurants, shops… The people who have shit like McDonalds, Zara, whatever else installed on their phone by the dozens actually seem crazy to me. And not even for privacy reasons (although those are a part of it). Those people also seem to be always complaining about running out of space on their phone (and %50 of the time what they are running out on is actually their iCloud/Google Drive from auto backups but they dont know the difference…)… why dont you try deleting the 50 different fast food apps on your phone? What’s that? It gives you a coupon for a %20 discount or a 6 pack of nuggies/small fries every 2 months? Well then, everything is fine and dandy. Time to keep it in your phone 24/7.
I also never give my phone number out to stores when they ask. Its crazy how normalized it is for stores to ask you for name, address, phone number etc. to make an “account” for you without even explicitly saying that they are making an account for you at checkout. And people do it!!! It enrages me. I just want to give you my money in exchange for goods and services, no unnecessary fluff on top, HOW HARD CAN IT BE???
I hear you on the phone number thing. That’s another stupid thing I don’t really do. I have a separate VoIP number that I use for any business I need to deal with. No way are they getting my real number.
And speaking of friends and their apps and my phone number, I rarely give anybody my phone number too. I don’t need it being harvested by the load of apps they have installed. You’re only as strong as our weakest link, and most people don’t give this stuff any thought.
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.
I never understood why they got rid of that. I always thought it was a cool feature that they could have really leaned into. I had a tablet with it and I never used it much because I don’t watch TV, but it felt like something that could have been super useful to someone who did watch TV a lot (and I also had fun setting it up for my family TV and then casually sitting in the background adjusting the volume, changing the channel, and tweaking other settings and watching the chaos that ensued while I oh so innocently appeared to be oblivious and busy playing games on my tablet)
If I remember right it’s because they outsourced that feature to a third party called peel
It started as a dumb remote (which was everyone wanted) but they had some monetization ideas like full TV schedules and “suggested” (aka: sponsored) content.
The same for Xiaomi. A simple ir remote app in the mi 5, but no, in the next updates they had to bloat it until it imploded and nobody used it anymore so they could say “see? Nobody uses it, we can save the $0.05 ir LED”
The Samsung IR app also was used for their streaming service. They could have easily updated the app to allow it to run without connecting to their servers once they killed the service, but it was easier to tell their customers to pound sand.
What the fuck! That’s egregious, that’s so anti consumer it’s basically malicious
This should be made illegal
What a disgusting practice… as if I needed more reasons to hate Shamsdung ugh I cant wait to ditch my phone
For some reason this user keeps telling people you can put graphene OS on Samsung devices, but that’s not accurate, graphene only runs on pixels
You replied to my comment with this. Are you referring to me? If so you’re mistaken.
Not a mistake, I am pointing out the other user to reply to your comment (saying you can put graphene on Samsung devices) is incorrect, in case you didn’t know.
That sort of crap is why I specifically buy older Samsung hardware like that tablet. I love a Samsung Galaxy S10e for my phone, because I can flash Graphene onto it and not have to deal with their firmware. If that tablet had/has an IR blaster, it’s old enough to do the same thing and rip all that Samsung software off of it, flash it with a FOSS ROM, and enjoy your hardware.
The PS5 is my last Sony device. I’ve even considered selling it because I don’t want to give them any revenue from future digital purchases.
They suck and they’re actively ruining physical media gaming.
Look into asteroid os or look for gadgetbride support
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.
Wait, why wireless earphones?
Hazarding a guess, but wireless earbuds means your Bluetooth has to be active, and your Bluetooth radio is something that can be used to track you
Ugh, yes, good point. Bluetooth is not the height of security.
I replied to another user about this, but aside from Bluetooth being a privacy nightmare, there’s also the limited lifespan, the bad quality dacs, the lithium batteries and increased e-waste. Not to mention the expense. For $500 you can get genuinely very good wired headphones that will last the rest of your life. For the same price you can get mediocre wireless headphones that will eventually fail to hold a charge and become useless in X years
idk, my $90 earbuds that I use for meetings in the office and occasional personal use are almost five years old and doing fine. can’t say I’ve noticed an issue with the battery life because they live in the charging case and only get taken out for use periods that are max a couple hours. and the quality is more than good enough.
I’ve got some nice proper headphones. they’re not the right tool for that use case, for me.
bluetooth got real fucking creepy once you had to start having location enabled to use it.
For real? I just tried on my P10 Pro XL running GrapheneOS and I could pair, forget, re-pair with location turned off.
What device? Never heard that before
Samsung Galaxy phone, admittedly years ago, cause it made me stop using bluetooth.
But a quick sanity check, to make sure i was remembering correctly, by doing a search for variations of bluetooth cant be used without location on do return results showing that I was not out of my gourd and that it does happen.
Thats absolutely insane. Have they ever bothered with an explanation?
Also curious about wireless earphones, if it’s an audio quality thing, I can understand that.
Please also reply to me so I can get a notification to see your answer
I’m not OP, but here are the downsides I’m aware of:
- Poor reparability
- BT always active
- Codec support
- Latency
- Some need apps for full control and they can come with ads/tracking
Foggenbooty pretty much nailed it.
Poor repairability, but also, why would I use 2 cheap dacs (1 in each earbuds), when I would use wired earphones and have 1 good dac. And the fact lithium needs to be mined for 2 batteries is super problematic considering the conditions lithium miners face.
Of course then there’s the issue that everything with a battery has a limited lifespan. Those batteries will die one day and render your wireless earphones useless. My headphones will last for the rest of my life, meaning less e-waste is generated.
BT being active is a privacy nightmare, and the ones that require apps is also a privacy nightmare.
But then also they are just inferior to wired headphones in every way. So yeah, I’m not gonna buy an objectively worse product for way more money than their wired counterparts, that also exploits lithium miners and our planet and is also a privacy nightmare.
I got fed up after the battery died on my 4th pair of AirPods, and the 20+ year old Shure IEMs I have, still work good as the day I bought them.
I have 4 pairs of AirPods on my nightstand where only one ear works, and the other ear gets maybe minutes of usable time, or is crackly and awful sounding. To be fair, one pair went through the wash. But even then, I’d rather wash a pair of 25 dollar wired headphones, than another 250 dollar pair of AirPod pros.
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.
Printers are a loss leader for selling ink cartridges.
Not quite — a loss leader is also sold at loss, so similar pricing concept, but that’s to get you in the store, where (statistically) people will buy more.
What (many) inkjet printers do is the razor-and-blades model.
The razor-and-blades business model[1] is a business model in which one article is sold at a low price or even given away in order to increase sales of a complementary good, such as consumable supplies. It is different from loss leader marketing and product sample marketing, which do not depend on complementary products or services. Common examples of the razor-and-blades model include inkjet printers whose ink cartridges are significantly marked up in price, coffee machines that use single-use coffee pods, electric toothbrushes, and video game consoles, which require additional purchases of accessories and software not included in the original package.[1]
Laser printers tend to be less prone to this. You can also get inkjet printers that aren’t using locked-down cartridges, will take tanks of ink and don’t try to keep out competing ink vendors — but keep in mind that while the ink will cost less, the base printer will also cost more than the razor-and-blades model printers. Canon’s “MegaTank” line is one such example.
Well… It seems to me like you were just picking bad games to play.
Monthly subscription? You mean like PS+ or something?
Yes, also World of Warcraft, anything like that with a subscription. PS+/Xbox Game Pass was the death blow for console gaming for me. I want to buy the game, play the game. Not be paying each month.
Yeah, MMOs are a special case. Realistically WoW or XIV are a better deal than most games. I’m probably in the tens of thousands of hours in WoW since 2004. Pretty crazy value for money.
I agree paying for online in consoles is dumb but that’s always been their strategy - cheaper and easier to get into than computers and they’ll nickel and dime you since you don’t know any better.
If you’re a daily player, sure. But I’m the kind of person who can play every day for maybe a week, but then I’ll take a month or four off before I pick it up again. The monthly billing system does not align with how I like to play games.
You can just… cancel the sub…
I’ll take years off between playing for a couple months here or there.
My complaint: I don’t want to pay every month
Your solution: Play for only 1 month
Problem not solved. I’d much rather buy a game where I get to play as long as I want.
Idk man you’re making it out to be a lot bigger problem than it is. There isn’t a single “buy once” game out there that is even remotely close to beating WoW or even XIV in terms of playtime or playtime:cost. As long as you’re having fun playing them and have stuff that you want to do in them, they are essentially an unbeatable value.
Even terraria and FNV don’t come anywhere close to matching the playtime I have in those MMOs, although terraria is so cheap that it probably beats everything on cost value.
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.
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Don’t let your own stopping reading confuse you. I told the solution right there.
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Windows is fine. But it’s a lot harder to justify when “for brainless morons like me!” distros like Bazzite are so readily available and robust and SteamOS is right there too.
But like. It’s fine. You can turn most of the annoying stupid shit like copilot off.
But like. It’s fine. You can turn most of the annoying stupid shit like copilot off.
you can turn most of it off… by hunting the internet for the right tools for that. Because built in settings certainly don’t allow disabling the majority of it. until they turn them back on with an update.
and the rest you just can’t turn off, or can’t reasonably discover.windows is not fine. that ended with windows 7.
I agree with both of you. Windows is not fine. But it can be made fine with an easy privacy modification.
I recommend ameliorated.io to everybody who needs to use windows. It makes it a viable OS, stripping out the junk, and setting better defaults for security and UI. I run it in VMs whenever I need it.
Hello, I run an easy privacy modification modified windows installation as a dual boot with Arch. Windows is still not fine. It still manages to enrage me every now and then.
It’s definitely a lot more usable and acceptable than a vanilla install (god forbid using an out-of-box windows installation), but Arch is still so much more stable and sensible.
Also like every update just decides to go ahead and undo a “make windows usable” modification so its kind of a constant uphill battle if you dont completely turn updates off. I have completely turned updates off and now it always thinks there is an update available and bugs me to reboot to apply it, only to end up not applying any updates because updates are disabled.
I understand that switching to Linux (and especially Arch) requires a lot more “dealing with stuff” until you get used to it, but the amount of dealing with stuff is not a whole lot nowadays with “easy” distros and after you get used to it and find your groove the dealing with stuff just kinda stops, unlike windows. Not to mention that the way you’re using your OS isnt some kind of weird hack coupled together with a few different debloaters. I really can’t see how much more difficult installing and getting used to something like Ubuntu or Mint can be compared to setting up a good debloated windows install.
I use Windows 10 with unatendedwinstall and a few more tweaks added on top with cttwinutil. I’d reccomend it.
I’m coming from the same place. My windows updates are off (that’s one of the mods that ameliorated makes) and I have not had a problem with it for a few years now.
I’m not saying that windows should be the choice, but I am saying that when I have to use it (there are legit reasons) then my ameliorated version is fantastic.
I use windows at work daily so I am very well aware of out of the box experience. No way I would ever use that for my personal computing.
Ameliorated is something I always recommend and it sounds like while what you are doing is pretty good, there are some shortcomings. I don’t know, maybe ameliorated won’t work for you either, but its worth a try.
Thanks! I didn’t know about this tool before. I’ll look into it :)
That seems like a pretty useful tool. Thanks!
But why is its website written like it’s trying to sell me something?
I never thought of it as salesy before, but I can see that.
They are not selling anything. The tool is free to use. The playbooks are free too. Or you can make your own, but I’ve never done that.
I’ve used this since I learned about it on multiple machines, and never need to think about it again other than when recommending it.
Probably the only “bad” thing is you need a legitimate, activated instance of windows.
I haven’t needed a single tool to turn off the junk in w11 that’s annoying, replace the dumb icon-based UI with the previous text, and so on.
W11 is fine. It’s not good, but it’s fine.
only thing that means is ypu don’t know what else is it doing in the background. you are operating in “what I don’t see doesn’t exist” mode
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
Using GrapheneOS for a few years now, its great. Banking apps also work. Only thing that doesnt work is NFC payment via google pay.
I’ve read that a lot of stuff is outright blocked graphene based phones
I haven’t found anything apart from Google Pay’s NFC payment that doesnt work (Google Pay for online payment does work).
My list of working apps includes banking apps for two different banks, national government communication app, audi app, two apps for charging electric vehicles, two apps for public transport tickets, …
You’ve read that the Volkswagen app did this , you’ve conflated it to “a lot of stuff” and you probably don’t own a Volkswagen FWIW
No social networks
You’re on one right now.
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.
When we got our new house, I took great pleasure in ripping the old ring doorbell off the wall and smashing it with the largest hammer I own.
Any car made after 2020…
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
I’ve got a typical Samsung, software-bloated smart TV, only I’ve never connected it to the internet so it’s effectively just a dumb TV. With modern smart TVs, the price is effectively subsidized by advertisers that expect to turn you into a recurring revenue stream. That’s why dumb TVs typically cost more (if you can find them anymore).
In my view, advertisers paid for part of my TV, which I happily connected to a mini PC that is ad-blocked to the fullest extent, and all of the shows/movies I watch come from my arr stack and Plex.
Only downside is the TV still has a ~10 second nag popup at the bottom telling me to connect to the internet every time I turn it on. In my book, that’s still less annoying than a TV powering on to a system menu instead of an input source.
I hadn’t thought about projectors!
I have a dumb TV and two smart TV’s, which never get connected to the web. One of those smart TVs is a second computer monitor.
I may need to get a projector though. That’s a great idea.
Projectors put out a lot of heat depending on what you’re looking for.
Any direct view screen at the size of your typical projected image will put out just as much heat. Those 80" panels do not stay cool.
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.
Yup, if I were still a buyer of printers, that’s what I’d get.
Is there scanner bullshit now too?
Scanner is fine but there are layers of bullshit with needing to install their app and store stuff in their cloud.
