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.
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
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
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’m not OP, but here are the downsides I’m aware of: