zlacker

>>pictur+(OP)
This enshittifcation is endemic. Corporations cannot just release a good product and support it. The better the product is and the larger the customer base becomes, the higher the likelihood that some business planner is going to see dollar signs and try to squeeze the product for everything it’s worth. And every time this ruins the product. And we’re here with a proprietary phone OS and proprietary apps. Proprietary firmwares on proprietary hardware. And we are completely at the whim of these companies.

And the option is what, buy a Zigbee dongle and a raspberry pi run some code written by unpaid enthusiasts? 3D print a case for it and mount it on the wall, running updates and fixing it ever few months when some package update breaks it?

I like the concept of lights that run from an app. I don’t have any of the physical Hue switches for my system and it’s fine. But I do not want an app that abuses me, and I do not want to maintain some fragile project made from slapped together code. I want robust open hardware with open source software.

I’m convinced that we can achieve this, but it won’t be with the current model of business and engineering we have today.

>>Taylor+We
The problem is investors. Investors don't care about a sustainable business. They want infinite growth, and sucking dry both the the customers and the business itself.

>>redox9+hi
The problem is also your fellow consumers, most of whom don’t actually care about the things us nerds care about.

>>tlrobi+Sj
They do care about getting screwed over. In my experience though they forget about it pretty fast and/or just feel overwhelmed and powerless about the situation. Maybe they'll avoid a specific brand after a bad experience, but they won't be checking over specs or considering requirements for the next thing they buy that rips them off.

>>autoex+ym
Define "getting screwed over". For instance, I do not care about Google Maps using my location data in aggregate to improve traffic predictions. But so-called nerds would consider that "getting screwed over". There are uses of private data that can be harmlessly used to support functioning business models - the alternate is ads and/or subscriptions

>>hacker+dw
> Define "getting screwed over". For instance, I do not care about Google Maps using my location data in aggregate to improve traffic predictions.

This guy didn't care about his location data going to google either: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike...

He got screwed over big time. Thousands of dollars, just to avoid a jail cell.

There are uses of personal data that can be harmless, but once that data is in the hands of someone else you don't have any say in how it is used (harmless or otherwise) and even if the people using your data today aren't doing anything abusive with it, that data will live forever and you never know who will end up with it in the future or what they will do with it.

If the alternative is a subscription (assuming that actually means your data is not handed over to someone else) then at least you'll know what the cost of a product/service is, and you'll only pay for it while you're subscribed.

If you pay with your data, once it's out of your hands it can be used against you again and again at any time so you never get to stop "paying" and can never know what it will ultimately cost you.

As another example of getting screwed over, I've got a family member who bought a bluray of some movie in a shop, and then when she got home to play it found that her player refused because of DRM. The player wasn't connected to the internet and it needed to connect to a remote server in order to get permission to play her legally purchased media on her legally purchased player. She didn't understand what was happening and called me. The player didn't have wifi. The company sold a special USB wifi adapter at an insane price, otherwise she'd either have to move her furniture to take the player upstairs next to her modem and connect it physically, or run a very very long cable across her entire house.

The next time she needed a bluray player, she avoided the old brand, but didn't even check to see if it had wifi capability before buying (she got lucky and it did).