FuglyDuck

Except that’s not what happened in the pi and that’s not what is happening in the cars.

You’re paying for that hardware whether or not you also pay for the keys. You own that hardware. You would be offended if you bought a house and the previous owner said “oh and if you want to use the rooms, you’ll need to buy room keys”.

You should be offended at BMW. And Broadcom.

You get that, right?

R pi paid Broadcom for the chips. Then you paid r pi for the pi. Broadcom didn’t give anyone a discount there.

And you’re ignoring decades of scummy lawyering and lobbying to make the proprietary codec bullshit legal.

So, like. Proprietary codecs are also pretty disgusting.

But what you’re not being told- I assume this didn’t occur to you rather than you’re being dishonest- is that you didn’t necessarily need those keys- the chip wasn’t a dedicated decoder chip- it was the GPU.

And you have no idea how much I despised Broadcom for pulling that shit. (And I’m not alone. Most of us pirated the keys out of sheer irritation.)

It’s not that it’s cheaper.

It’s that they’re getting away with extortion and make more money that way.

Heated seats, for example, are not “software”.

It’s some form of heating element. You flip a switch and it runs electricity through some fairly resistive wires (iirc it’s carbon fiber; maybe NiChrome)

The most firmware you see is some kind of thermal monitoring to keep from getting too hot. It’s not a complicated system.

All this is, is a whole bunch of claptrap to sell you fully functional car, but charge you to unlock that functionality. You wouldn’t buy a house and then buy keys to use every room in the house.

You can call it what you want. I call it extortion. It should be illegal, and it’s certainly scummy.

No.

absolutely not.

you already paid for the hardware. it already has the firmware installed. All that they’re doing is flipping a software switch that tells the system to let the firmware/hardware be functional.

it being a one-time payment isn’t the problem. The problem is that you already paid for the heated seats or whatever else. I shouldn’t have to pay to have features that are already in the car.

“Illicit” is definitely the wrong word.

I don’t have and don’t ever care to have one, so I’m not sure on that

Same, really. Even just getting in one is a bad idea.

That’s not what is being banned- though the newer style could still be electric and problematic, the style they’re really going after seems motorized pop out handles that look like this:

The normal pocket handles do create a not insignificant amount of drag.

The pop out mechanism is stupid, don’t get me wrong, but it does have an appreciable effect on range.

A.2, overpriced!

So, the flush handles actually save a lot.

The thing is, there’s purely mechanical ways of solving the problem. Including a hinge set somewhere towards the middle- so you push one side in, and the other angled out so you can open it.

Not the most convenient, but it’s less inconvenient than an over engineered piece of shit that breaks every winter.

that would make a lot of sense for digital formats.

I was thinking for more physical media- possibly including bits and bobs that don’t survive for very long (Like the banksy self-shredding painting, or the one I saw somewhere with an ax that chopped it’s leg. or something more performative/experiential.)

it would suck for the public to basically fund art, and not get to experience it, is all that idea was getting to. It would also suck for the artist if they weren’t allowed to take commissions or sell off high-value pieces.

edit: imagine if you will, libraries with reading nooks and paintings or whatever in them. or for there to be a sort of public museum. that puts things on display. And after a while, you could probably just sell some of the art (particularly if they get famous, lol. kinda like how venture capitalists shotgun start ups looking for the golden ticket.)

they’re not being kinky about it, if that’s what you’re saying.

Just a guess… but that they’re not actually married.

edit: yeah, they weren’t actually married. also they drank booze.

Hmmm.

Yes but with conditions?

Part of their art is public (so like, installed in public places- city/town halls, parks. Libraries.)

This might look like just paying commissions.

Just spit balling here.

And we’d need to talk about some practical limits of who is an artist. All I know, is that there are artists, and then there are people who think they are. And then there’s the genuinely offensive people, and the people getting rejected because of pearl clutching.

ahaha. I’m not fixing it. but that’s what happens when I use an different acronym for work and it decides to autocorrect to that. (not fixing it so people know what your making fun of me on.)

LSF is where it’s at. it’s the ultimate distro.

(kinda joking. kinda being literal as a joke.)

It’s really disconcerting that our president can’t even pass a fucking Turing test.

Someone above and behind him got shot. You can see it in the videos that it was with the fist shot.

I’m saying he wasn’t the target.