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What's something you no longer buy due to intrusive, insidious technology being added into it? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago* by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] 62 points 1 month ago* (4 children)

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.

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  • [–] 48 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    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)

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago

    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"

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    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

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    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

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    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.

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