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.
Newer cars. They come with cameras pointed at my face!
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.
windows. and any software related (github) to windows.
I’m now 100% all linux all the time.
TVs. I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but I want to set up a Linux based streaming box and have my actual TV completely offline.
Cars, phones
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.
Where are you seeing ads in Android? I have a pixel and I’ve never had ads shoved in my face. Well, not by Google. The producers or providers of apps, sure, but that’s not on Google is it?
They started adding ads all over that Google news feed when you swipe right from your homescreen last year, the one that’s built into the Pixel launcher.
Ohhh. I’ve never, ever used that except when I accidentally fatfinger my way to it. I forget it exists.
Dude I hope my 16 Pro Max lasts that long. I only got it after breaking my 13 Pro Max. I’d never cracked screen in my 15 years of smartphone ownership. That blue variant was gorgeous and it would have lasted another 3 years easily.
I’m sure you and I were on the same XDA forums back in the day. I still have my old LG G3 with Lineage OS on it. I’ll always miss that era of Android. Wacky new features all the time on ROM, only for Google to integrate them in the main OS down the line.
We’d have been on the same XDA forums if we had the same device. Otherwise we may not have met. I never owned an LG phone, though I was considering the LG G5. I also liked the one with the second screen, the grandfather of every “notched” phone (its second screen was “attached” to the main screen and to the right of the camera). V something? LG had some good ideas.
I had a Galaxy S3, and an HTC One M8. I do not recall what I went by on XDA. I use a new name every year or two. It’s entirely possible we crossed paths one way or another. I’ve been online a long time.
I cracked my 16PM screen the other day. Fortunately it was just the screen protector. I love how spoiled we are now. Wet wipe, dry wipe, dust sticker. Then this plastic applicator that holds the screen protector by these pins perfectly centred on the phone screen, and you pull this tab while pressing down and it applies perfectly every time. My old screen protector was up there almost 2 years, since I bought the 16PM in November '24. This is the second one, I have one more in the box.
I’ve cracked a few screen protectors but never screens.
Car.
Printers, not only just from enshittification, but also due to the fact that traditionally they were constantly having issues to the point of being a meme. I need to print something twice a year, so yeah, I ain’t dealing with all that.
Good news, there’s an open source project working to develop a printer, and it has working prototypes: https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/printers/raspberry-pi-powered-open-source-printer-earns-design-award-nomination-but-still-has-no-price-nine-months-after-reveal
Annoyingly not truly open source
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.
bluetooth got real fucking creepy once you had to start having location enabled to use it.
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
TVs
We don’t connect our LG “smart” TV to the internet because “smart” just means advert box. It’s been a much more pleasant experience just using our consoles to control the TV.
You’re TV is smart enough to connect to the internet anyway… It will use your neighbor’s ring doorbell, nest, or other IOT device serving Weave, Amazon Sidewalk or other corporate IOT networks to upload its telemetry anyway.
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.
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.
Robot vacuums, I’ve always hated how they were all cloud-connected, but now they have cameras too.
Yeah I know about Valetudo.
Good news, there’s an open source vacuum project called Oomwoo, which allows you to build one yourself with off the shelf parts and a 3D printer
https://makerspet.com/blog/building-an-open-source-robot-vacuum-meet-oomwoo/
Have you seen any mowers that do that? Our back yard is mostly dead, but having it go out once a week would be so cool. I’m a little intimidated by the thought of putting this together, but also want to do it.
Edit: Looks like the vacuum is sold out.
A quick search for open source robot mowers pointed me to this: https://openmower.de/
As for Oomwoo, they’re still working on assembly instructions, so I wouldn’t immediately jump in unless you’re fine with a lot of tinkering. Also, it looks like right now they’re only considering parts kits, not fully assembled bots, and that seems to be a future add.
I personally still think it’s cool and will be keeping an eye on it
You don’t have to get one with cameras though. I send my floorplan to china. But its worth it.
The ones without cameras are fewer and fewer, especially since using cameras is cheaper than lidar
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Lol no. The first roomba just bumped around until it ran out of power, and hopefully it’d have covered the whole floor. After that came the Lidar robots, which mapped rooms and actually thought about where they went. No cameras there.
HP printers. For a long time, they had been my printer of choice because of quality and Linux support, but the quality has been replaced by enshittification. The last two printers had been fuckups (two, because I mistook the first ones’ shittyness for being a one-off bad one), and wasted overpriced ink on a massive scale.
Since then, I’ve added HP to my black list of printers. The other brand on that list is Canon. But that’s another story.
You should add HP to the list. They’re products are shit, and their support even worse!
I’ve added HP to my black list
You should add HP to the list
Am I missing something here? Why are you recommending they do exactly what they said they already did?
He confuses “they’re” and “their”. Do you expect reading to his strong side?
You did not include his ending:
I’ve added HP to my black list of printers.
Which means he would still have HP on the list for other purchases. I boycott HP entirely.
Any car made after 2020…
