It’s also a group think variant of a straw man fallacy. To attempt to refute an individual’s argument by arguing against group A’s opinion(s) instead of actually addressing the individual or their specific argument.

Perhaps even a PEBCAK error.

Im still boycotting them from the Hong Kong stuff back in '19/'20. I really miss hearthstone but fuck them.

They recently released a firmware update that disallows third party toner carts. You can downgrade it though and keep using the hardware. Not positive which models were impacted, mine wasn’t. Still a shit move from a brand that I used to recommend to people.

Brother

My philosophy is that it’s wrong to assume that I am entitled to anything that I didn’t pay for or create. It’s also wrong to eat meat but I still enjoy a good burger. My philosophy is that instead of bending over backwards to make whatever you do the “right” thing, you should simply acknowledge that you are not a wholly good entity. For as long as burgers remain accessible and tasty and the suffering of animals is out my sight, it’s going to remain worth it to me to accept that a little part of me is kind of shitty. For as long as the value (ux, price, accessibility, catalogue variety, longevity) heavily favors piracy, I will support my friend that pirates (not me ofc). It doesn’t bother me one bit if you steal from Walmart, but don’t pretend that just because they are a megacorp that you have no moral responsibility for actual theft. It’s diminished, but it’s still there. You still did a bad thing. And I support you if you want to say “so what, I don’t care about them. They are greedy and they have enough.” but I get really irritated by people who think “there’s essentially no difference… they don’t even notice… it’s just a statistic” stop trying to make yourself feel better. By lying to yourself you permanently degrade your own moral judgement and if that’s an opinion you willingly share with others then you become very easy to identify as someone with compromised morals. Just my two cents as someone with pirate friends (never me I pinky promise).

I’d go a step further and say it should be capable of an industry standard communication protocol from the beginning and every device that has a ‘root’ or equivalent elevated access mode should be user recoverable (not easily necessarily, but there shouldn’t be any specific counter measures to prevent it). EOL unlocking would be a good first step towards that goal.

Tell me wise sage, how smart do I think I am? How smart am I? Gee I hope you say “very” so that I can feel good about myself. I hope I can remain one of the intellectual elite so that I can call out stupid ideas on the internet, since normal folk aren’t allowed to.

I actually totally agree with all of that. I think it even supports my sentiment. The issue I have is that to make the system work well like it does in Finland you need a ton of well thought legislation that all works towards those goals. What I am specifically opposing is half-measures that are easily subverted and poorly thought out. I’m actually totally fine with banning subscriptions, but that alone doesn’t guarantee neutral access to equal rates, or reasonable $/gig or even network mobility. You need a large suite of laws all designed to be pro consumer from the ground up. I like the sentiment of “ban devices that require subscriptions to function” but that just isn’t a well thought out or realistic idea. If that was all Finland did then solving our issues in America would be much much easier. We need to do a lot more.

I too support the idea that devices should not be bound to a specific parent service. I do not support banning any device that requires one. Where we draw the line on functional/non-functional is arbitrary as long as the device has some function without a service. If they added a chip and antenna that let the Car Thing receive/play radio would that qualify it as functional? If not then how is a Modem still functional when the signals it is designed to receive are locked behind a service? It makes no sense to go down that legal and technical rabbit hole when you could simply legislate that devices be user configurable instead. There numerous industry standards that could function as the backbone of that law versus the useless feel-good sentiment of ‘ban everything I don’t like, even though I can’t rigorously define what that is’

So what use is a consumer modem without an internet service? How would the law banning “all physical devices that require a subscription to be functional” differentiate between products that work with one or multiple services? It’s still a subscription to a service either way.

Phones, arguably, don’t perform their primary function without cell services. Where in this proposed law are we going to draw the line between ‘functional enough’ and ‘useless brick’? Come up with any line in the sand and it is trivially easy for a company to comply with the law while changing nothing about the actual functionality of the device. In many cases this would look like additional chips on the board that ‘work’ but don’t add any value to the device. Think 7/11 selling single roses in glass tubes… that just so happen to be the perfect dimensions of a meth pipe. It’s just a rose so it doesn’t need to comply with any drug paraphernalia laws, right? Well now it’s “Car Thing the Radio Mixer” (with optional spotify). Now there’s even more e-waste and nothing has changed. At best the law does nothing, at worst it actually makes the problem worse.

I totally agree with you about Car Thing being e-waste because of its software, that’s why I think it should be root-able, serviceable, and speak in standard open protocols so that you can point it to your own servers/service of choice. But poorly thought out legislation will only hurt consumers, the industry, and the planet. Blanket bans on buzzwords with no consideration for practical nuance is foolish.

Option 1: The hardware is free for as long as you use pay for the service. Then you must return it. You never own anything and your ecosystem is tied to a single company and subscription. No one is allowed to sell competitive goods that work across multiple services unless they themselves offer a service. This product, who many find valuable, no longer exists.

Option 2: You purchase a life-long subscription to the service when you purchase the physical goods. Startups offer competitive pricing for early adopters but cannot sustain the ongoing costs of growing/maintaining the service. New services are spun up frequently offering lifetime access, then going bankrupt after the investors make their profit. Eventually we settle into an industry landscape where each individual music label has their own subscription service the way that tv/movie studios do now.

Option 3: Everything is free. Nothing gets produced anymore because artists are busy hunting for meat.

Option 4: You pay for goods AND services and you read the product descriptions to decide if you really need a device that requires a subscription. like an adult. If you want a competitive alternative that doesn’t require a subscription… go get or make one.

edit: congrats hivemind, you just made internet modems and cell phones illegal. What you should actually be supporting is hardware that is user serviceable, root accessible, and capable of speaking standardized communications protocols. (ie, not hardware locked to proprietary only comms)

I’m pretty positive that if you put out a poll to any western country they would be against the idea of dismantling the government and replacing it with algorithms but maybe I’m not as alone as I think

here’s a real unpopular opinion for you, democracy has failed and we should stop holding on to its corpse just because it was better than monarchy. We don’t need representatives any more. we should vote directly on each issue we care about. should stay informed on issues we vote on. should abstain from issues we dont understand. and when that fails too we should evaluate if we as a population even deserve a say in leadership other than beheading and starting over with a new algorithm to select any humans that are absolutely essential for the process. y’all cant make me feel bad, i’ve seen what you’ve done to the world.

the real unpopular opinion is always in the comment replies. fr tho have you ever seen a real vim wizard at work? the productivity boost you get from a keyboard only workflow is mind boggling. it goes way beyond what anyone in notepad/modern IDE/Word can accomplish even if they have the fastest kpm in the world. being lightweight and universal is just a side benefit