The control of the computer is getting shifted from you, who bought the computer, to the seller of the computer.

@Epic_Null @huntingdon @Em0nM4stodon Alarm clock enshittification sounds hilarious.

Your alarm clock is a whole year old, we will play adverts at you every morning unless you buy a new one or pay for an advert free subscription...

Has anyone done this yet? I would have said most people use their phone but lately there has been a trend for light-triggered or sleep-sensitive for a while so it wouldn't surprise me...

@Em0nM4stodon I like my computer stupid, so it leaves the smarts to me, I hate "talking" to my computer, I don't talk to my tools, I need my computer to just compute, I like my fuck ups be my fault, not whatever background cloud service is running that time, I like to decide WHEN my computer becomes obsolete, I don't want my computer to pretend it knows things or it can do things I don't even need it to do, I don't need it to pretend to be my assistant, friend, etc., it's a tool that I own

@Em0nM4stodon

For many years now, Apple products have been the "devil I know" and I could kind of hold my nose and accept the compromises (and prices). But, damn, the compromises are piling up faster every month! I've accepted that I'm going to have to learn Linux at some point, but it's not just Linux, it's photo and video editing software, and every other app I use that I will have to relearn.

Or, maybe, I will ditch every digital everything from my life and become a hermit hanging out on the porch in the desert with my lizard and bird friends. That is sounding better all the time.

In the meantime, yeah, seize the means of computation as Cory Doctorow says. With torches, pitchforks and guillotines if necessary.

@Mikal @Em0nM4stodon Apple is overwhelmingly the one that did this to the tech industry. If the iPhone had never existed we would still have:

Replaceable batteries
Headphone jacks
Ability to install software from anywhere
Unified messaging
No app stores

The rest of the industry only went that route because Apple got away with it.

I got a Black Friday laptop and went fully to Linux.

Now what do I do when my car breaks? I went car shopping in 2025 and aborted because of hostile antifeatures.

@mike805

I'm going to find a good mechanic because the antifeatures are too much for me.
@Mikal @Em0nM4stodon

The control of the computer is getting shifted from you, who bought the computer, to the seller of the computer.

This should not happen.
You should be angry about this.
You should refuse to be controlled.
You should resist.

The control of the computer is getting shifted from you, who bought the computer, to the seller of the computer.

This should not happen.
You should be angry about this.
You should refuse to be controlled.
You should resist.

@vervain @Mikal @Em0nM4stodon Likewise. I liked the Honda Accord feature wise, but it has a cellular modem you cannot turn off.

I asked dealers, independent shops, search engines, and AI if there is a hack or workaround. So far nothing.

If my car got wrecked tomorrow, I might get a 10th generation (2022) because some of the lower tier ones do not have a built in modem. I would just not install any apps and hang a Garmin for navigation.

@Em0nM4stodon I just bought a new computer.

I chose the components, just like I did in 1991.
I installed the OS, just like I did in 1991.
I dealt with the glitches, the app problems, the 'issues' mostly like I did in 1991.
My computer is tellinh the vendor *almost* nothing, kind of like it did in 1991.

But I'm a seasoned geek, and it's taken me three days to get a *mostly* functional system working *mostly* the way I want without selling my favourite underwear colour to someone.

In a just universe, the default would be "here's your tool, it works for you" without this much bullshit.

@mike805 @vervain @Em0nM4stodon

This is something that truly amazes me. Why isn't car hacking a thing? I mean FFS, if corn farmers can share cracked codes for John Deere tractors that allow them to work on them and program them themselves, you'd think all the privacy oriented tech nerds would have figured out how to crack car codes so that we could turn off all the surveillance or tweak the settings to our liking.

Till that happens, I'm sticking with my 2012 non-telematics truck.

I spent this morning replacing some of my house's original cracked and corroded cast-iron drain pipe with modern, standard ABS. This is a very useful skill when you need it! But I would readily swap it out for the "car hacker nerd" skill module if I could.

@Lamb
Refurbished laptop running Linux and FOSS is the answer. Ditch Apple, Microsoft and Google altogether
Lenovo and Dell come shipped with Linux distros these days.

The control of the computer is getting shifted from you, who bought the computer, to the seller of the computer.

This should not happen.
You should be angry about this.
You should refuse to be controlled.
You should resist.

@Em0nM4stodon They've been working on that since ~1976 when they realized how much money could be made through that control...and yes we should all be pissed.

@gruby I think most people would be surprised at how much better Linux runs. Aside from a few fixable driver issues, Linux is a smoother workstation. I tried Windows again for five minutes, and I was annoyed within thirty seconds.

@Em0nM4stodon You are so right. In the past we bought a computer and the softeare we used for our purposes. Now we don't own most software and are constantly manipulated and captured by big tech and subscriptions. We have lost control of our own space. Now we are force fed with stuff we don't want or need because so much is now subscription based and no longer owned and controlled by us.

@Mikal @Em0nM4stodon Apple is overwhelmingly the one that did this to the tech industry. If the iPhone had never existed we would still have:

Replaceable batteries
Headphone jacks
Ability to install software from anywhere
Unified messaging
No app stores

The rest of the industry only went that route because Apple got away with it.

I got a Black Friday laptop and went fully to Linux.

Now what do I do when my car breaks? I went car shopping in 2025 and aborted because of hostile antifeatures.