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And this is why "Smart" stuff is a racket...Flywheel "bricks" $2K bikes

posted 4 years ago by [deleted]
23 replies | jump to latest

This is what everyone gets for calling people like me a "Luddite!"

Know how Big Tech douche bros are selling everyone on getting "Smart" appliances, TVS, etc.? You buy this stuff thinking, "Oooh, this is the future and oh, so convenient." But the whole idea behind it is to allow manufacturers to brick your merchandise at will, even though it's hardware that technically isn't malfunctioning.

Case in point: this past week, Flywheel bricked $2K bikes over a patent dispute, forcing users to trade in for a different bike: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/flywheel-peloton-lawsuit-smart-exercise-bike-a9350586.html.

There have been other instances of this happening with other products. For example, a woman's printer was bricked after she stopped subscribing to a service, and my niece's tablet was bricked after she paid it off. It's illegal as hell, but there isn't a damned thing you can do about it if a company decides to disable your Smart item.

[–] jonathan_k80 (6436) 4 years ago

These "smart devices" are nothing but a gimmick and most of them are totally unnecessary. This is another trendy thing that is causing our society to become more dumbed-down and lazy. As I have said before, it is contributing to our eventual downfall.

Add more bells and whistles and you are increasing the chances of the product breaking down. Just another thing to go wrong. Of course the manufacturers want this and design appliances so that individual components can't be replaced. Or if you are able to replace a single element, it ends up costing almost as much as buying a whole new appliance. So the consumer is more likely to purchase the new appliance. It's the "throw away" mentality.

A lot of these silly gadgets such as the "smart speaker," are invaders of the users' privacy. That's another reason why I won't own any of these devices. I am perfectly capable of getting up off the couch and flipping the light switch myself. So are 99% of the owners of these toys.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

What you said about "throw away mentality" reminds me of the controversy involving Sonos. The company was caught deliberately bricking its speakers to force users to buy a brand new one. This kind of stuff flies in the face of tech evangelists claiming that "smart" technology has reduced consumerism.

The closest to a "smart" device I own are cheap speakers that use Bluetooth to stream music from my tablet. But there's no way I'd upgrade to anything that connects to a server, uses personalized settings or can record my voice. I know people, though, who would not only buy anything like that in a heartbeat but volunteer themselves as test subjects to help fine tune the service (as in, allow themselves to be recorded to help with voice activation, etc).

[–] jonathan_k80 (6436) 4 years ago

"Planned obsolescence" is still a factor in the design of today's consumer goods. It's all about money, and less about providing high-quality products.

[–] chilone (17309) 4 years ago

I love technology but refuse to become dependent on it. I've often said, the "smart" phone will be the downfall of humanity.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Smartphones have ironically made people less tech savvy than before. I have a sister who obsessively uses Facebook on her phone but has no idea how to use Google or pay her bills through the internet or anything. Before the smartphone, the opposite was the case. Everyone was encouraged to be tech savvy. Now smartphones have dumbed down things to such an extent that many users don't even know how to operate a simple point and shoot camera.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Encouraged how? The entire computing and communication end user field has become more dumbed down throughout my entire life. It's about getting as many people using them as possible, not for them to be the playground of the technologically literate.

[–] jonathan_k80 (6436) 4 years ago

That's why I call those devices StupidPhones®, because, contrary to popular belief, they don't make anyone smarter; in fact, the opposite is happening. What's sad about it is people are voluntarily dumbing themselves down and becoming lazier. They wander around all day staring at a screen and can't perform simple tasks without consulting some silly phone app.

I'm waiting for the day when a solar flare or some other phenomenon knocks out the satellites. The phone zombies will be unable to function without their toys. It will be total pandemonium.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

"contrary to popular belief, they don't make anyone smarter".

Actually, I don't think that's the popular belief, Jonathan. The reason they're called SmartWhatever is because they're "smart", and can do everything themselves.

And that's, as you say, the problem.

[–] Moonglum9 (10736) 4 years ago

I think you might be right. I'm not sure if it was just a freak random occurrence or if it was an inevitability of evolution, but I came home one day to find my tv rolling around on my Roomba with my Echo dot affixed at the top of the screen and two of my old cell phones affixed on the left and right side of the screen.

[–] Catbookss (13664) 4 years ago

Had Siri blown the coop? Suspicious. VERY suspicious.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

So, it's not Cyberdyne/Skynet that winds up causing the end of the human race?!

[–] 10200 (656) 4 years ago

And what is scarier is we are only at the tip of the iceberg.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Yes. I never thought it possible, but I find this scenario just as terrifying as the one on T2. Destruction of human civilization via nuclear war or hellish tech-based dystopia in which elections are undermined by disinformation, democracy is made mincemeat out of, people no longer believe in stuff like medical science (and vaccines) and self-sufficiency dies as we become The Jetsons.

[–] jonathan_k80 (6436) 4 years ago

"... hellish tech-based dystopia in which elections are undermined by disinformation, democracy is made mincemeat out of, people no longer believe in stuff like medical science (and vaccines) and self-sufficiency dies..."

Are you sure you're describing a film? It sounds a lot like today's society.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Yes, I was describing today's society. That is our scenario, as opposed to the scary scenario of nuclear war in Terminator. I actually find ours more frightening, even though I grew up in the tail end of the Cold War living in terror of the bomb. Civilization ending at the hands of nuclear war as opposed to just falling apart at the seams because of technology rewiring people's thought processes, monitoring their every move and dumbing them down ...it amounts to the same thing.

[–] jonathan_k80 (6436) 4 years ago

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

--T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

[–] 10200 (656) 4 years ago

Also the quote used in the novel "On the Beach"

[–] R_Kane (15828) 4 years ago

You make a good point about corporate greed and bricking; but there’s a similar, and perhaps greater, techno threat from the criminal sector: ransomwear. They can highjack your smarthome, your self-driving car, your flying car, your pacemaker, your smart penile implant, your smart cyberdildonic sex toy, and do evil things to you, unless you pay up. Ransomwear can literally grab you by the dick. If not now, then in the near future.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

OMG...LOL! why did you talk about all of those sex items? I almost splattered ice cream all over my computer monitor when I read that, LOL...

But you're so right! What if they were crazy enough to do that? Make it so that guys would literally have to "rent" a penile implant, as in, "Want 6 erections a month? Sign up now for our basic plan! Only $9.99 a month! Need more? No worries! Check out our next tier "Stud" plan, 20 erections a month for only $20! But if you sign up now, you can get our premium Casanova plan, just $200 a year for unlimited erections!"

Three months later, dude misses a payment and gets a message, "So sorry. Please pay bill to continue enjoying the Jackhammer 2000(TM)."

If he were alive, Philip K. Dick would've been making hay out of this (pun fully intended!).

[–] R_Kane (15828) 4 years ago

You probably know that The Terminator states in its credits that it is “based on the collected works of Philip K. Dick.” A year or more ago, on this very site, I wrote that Skynet is not going to be the result of a military project any more. Skynet will build itself on the Internet Of Things, and our smartphones and our smart homes and our smart cars and our IQ-enhancing brain implants will wipe us all out in a 1-day Judgement Day. Phil Dick was a genius.

PS I wrote about the sex “aids” because very few people fully think through the potential consequences of their sexual behavior. Our sex drive 1 of our greatest vulnerabilities, and the adult entertainment industry knows it.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

No, I didn't know that it was based on Dick, but that doesn't surprise me. He was an incredible visionary.

In terms of sex, yes, you're right. What you said reminds me of a series of drawings a cartoonist named Tomi Ungerer drew called "Fornicon." It showed people having sex via nothing but machines. Makes me wonder if one day, tech industries wouldn't resort to weaning people off natural sex to where people preferred machines to the real thing.

[–] R_Kane (15828) 4 years ago

Re Phil Dick: he’s like the Jane Austin of the science-fiction movie business, with umpteen films filching from his work. One of them is, oh, just another little movie turned Blade Runner
(Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep). Man was amazing.

When the day comes—and it will—that technosex is cheap, easy and accepted as being “not fucked up”—this site will be getting one-third the posts that it is now.

[–] wheelin176 (2026) 4 years ago

We have a phone and computer. Some of the"smart stuff' seems to be for convenience. Some things remind me of laziness.