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.
When I bought my current house, the previous elderly owner’s sons had outfitted it with Ring doorbell and security/monitoring including Alexa in a few rooms…even had a piece of paper stapled to the ceiling above his bed that said “ALEXA EMERGENCY”. It was Probably good idea to keep an eye on their dying parent.
The day I closed on it…I ripped out the panels, unplugged anything Alexa, and disconnected the ring doorbell. The only things ring-related still here are a motion sensor and 1 or 2 door sensors…but all the wiring has been disconnected.
Fuck Ring.
I ended up putting in Eufy with a Home Base, zero subscription.
Televisions.
I will not have any “smart TV” that has access to the Internet, spewing ads and harvesting data in my house. I currently have two older dumb models and when they ultimately fail, I will switch to projectors. Chromecast and a Raspberry Pi server can handle everything I want, without ads
Company apps.
Every business you deal with has an app these days. Grocery stores, restaurants, etc… Just install and scan to get your discounts and track your points. Yeah… No thanks.
ditto. fuck that app shit.
I don’t house any apps from any companies, restaurants, shops… The people who have shit like McDonalds, Zara, whatever else installed on their phone by the dozens actually seem crazy to me. And not even for privacy reasons (although those are a part of it). Those people also seem to be always complaining about running out of space on their phone (and %50 of the time what they are running out on is actually their iCloud/Google Drive from auto backups but they dont know the difference…)… why dont you try deleting the 50 different fast food apps on your phone? What’s that? It gives you a coupon for a %20 discount or a 6 pack of nuggies/small fries every 2 months? Well then, everything is fine and dandy. Time to keep it in your phone 24/7.
I also never give my phone number out to stores when they ask. Its crazy how normalized it is for stores to ask you for name, address, phone number etc. to make an “account” for you without even explicitly saying that they are making an account for you at checkout. And people do it!!! It enrages me. I just want to give you my money in exchange for goods and services, no unnecessary fluff on top, HOW HARD CAN IT BE???
I hear you on the phone number thing. That’s another stupid thing I don’t really do. I have a separate VoIP number that I use for any business I need to deal with. No way are they getting my real number.
And speaking of friends and their apps and my phone number, I rarely give anybody my phone number too. I don’t need it being harvested by the load of apps they have installed. You’re only as strong as our weakest link, and most people don’t give this stuff any thought.
Running Calyx and don’t have the play store installed so guess I won’t be using your app.
Pretty much anything that doesn’t run on foss. Game consoles in particular. When they all started requiring a subscription for basic online functionality, I moved all my gaming to PC and now also those retro bootleg handhelds. Love my Retroid Pocket 5.
Microsoft products or any suscription that doesn’t have to be a suscription.
Avoid Google as much a possible, may be next phone will be graphene.
No social networks
No social networks
You’re on one right now.
Using GrapheneOS for a few years now, its great. Banking apps also work. Only thing that doesnt work is NFC payment via google pay.
I’ve read that a lot of stuff is outright blocked graphene based phones
I haven’t found anything apart from Google Pay’s NFC payment that doesnt work (Google Pay for online payment does work).
My list of working apps includes banking apps for two different banks, national government communication app, audi app, two apps for charging electric vehicles, two apps for public transport tickets, …
You’ve read that the Volkswagen app did this , you’ve conflated it to “a lot of stuff” and you probably don’t own a Volkswagen FWIW
Cars. Basically every new model is always online, connected, and streaming who knows what data. Not to mention the awful UX of touchscreens.
Why should a car be connected to the internet? The infotainment is justified but should be controllable. And this includes EVs. Just because your wheels are moved by electric motors it doesn’t automatically mean the entire car is “tech” and must be connected to everything and anything.
If I had to get a car I would by an old clunker and pay someone to convert it to electric.
Yes I would like a fully electric 1957 Bel-Air please.
Old cars sound like fun, until you experience the safety features (seatbelts and crumble zones optional), missing rear visibility with tiny mirrors and the hassle to find matching spare part replicas.
And you think there is not much electronics or fancy extras in them to break, but the older cars where expected to last for 100.000km and maybe 10 years tops before the rust would eat everything up, so a lot of parts where designed cheaper and would fail sooner than today’s cars that are expected to last at least twice as long.
Sweet spot is Japanese cars from the '90s and '00s. They are more reliable, more fuel efficient, have safety features and spare parts are often still available. Rust remains a topic but not as much as with older cars.
Yeah. Find a Honda or Toyota from the latter half of the 00’s with a reliable service history and they’ll last another 10-20 years if you take them to a decent imports mechanic.
Rust is always a problem in some places hahaha
Visibility out of something like a '57 Bel Air is excellent. Back then visibility was something people cared about, and having the pillars be as thin as possible was highly desirable. In comparison, modern cars have horrible visibility with thick pillars, high belt lines, high hoods, and tiny rear windows. Of course, the whole thin pillar thing did come at the cost of a weaker roof, less crash protection, and basically no rollover protection so there does need to be some balance, but with modern cars I hate how I feel dependent on things like backup cameras and blind spot monitors because I can’t effectively see out the car.
The 1970s fastbacks had terrible rear visibility because they don’t have rear windows:
https://smclassiccars.com/uploads/postfotos/1972-dodge-charger-coupe-red-se-4.jpg
The driver is essentially blind in he 3-5 o’clock visibility range when you have to do a left turn, and the intersection is not at an 90 degrees angle, or you try to merge into the highway. All you can do is floor it and merge in behind some car in front of you that you can see.
Well in the 70’s you also have the AMC Pacer which is like driving a fishbowl.
As a styling thing it does go in cycles. Late 30’s-40’s cars also had high beltlines and small windows. Then the big airy greenhouses in the late 50’s-early 60’s. Many 80’s cars into the 90’s tended to have good visibility, though part of that also just came from the squared off styling. The poor visibility of today’s cars is partly from safety features, but a lot of is also just styling.
Yeah, if I had a choice for an electric conversion, I think my ideal pick would be a newish car that somehow had its engine ruined way before its time. Like, maybe it was owned by some idiot that never got the oil changed until it burned out completely.
And while newer cars have the annoying tracking crap, that’s solvable. If you’re paying a mechanic enough money to completely convert a vehicle to electric, it won’t be much more work to rip out the tracking tech while they’re retrofitting it. You might need to just completely throw out the existing infotainment system, but that would still be a rounding error on a project that large.
Ideally you just look for a Honda or Toyota from like 20 years ago, assuming you want gas powered. Look for only like 1-3 owners, regular service history. Those things will last into 600k+ miles if they received regular service and parts are dirt cheap.
If I did that I would just be another selfish, ignorant asshole complicit in the destruction and collapse of the natural systems that allow me to breath and eat. No, it would have to be electric. Even then I wouldn’t really want it because of the tires and the raw materials needed to create it in the first place.
Alright well I’m going to continue surviving. You have fun doing whatever I guess.
good luck lol. ur gunna need it (literally like fkin miracle). o7
Touch grass, dude.
Open your fucking eyes, dude. Everything’s dying. There won’t be any grass to touch, in our lifetimes.
OK, convert a 20 year old Toyota or Honda. Way easier to find one than thinking you have to go pre-fuel injection era to avoid wireless connectivity. Either way, you’re probably going to instantly trash a working engine apparently.
Yep, that’s the plan. Maybe soon, more people will realize those engines are one of the main reasons millions of people have already died from catastrophic climate change. I doubt it though… most are too focused on themselves, their own comfort and “survival” to realize or even care how much of an impact their actions have and even then can easily blame some rich asshole so they can keep being just as selfish as said rich asshole.
That sounds sick as fuck. Makes me wonder if that will become a service in the future? Instead of everyone buying new electric cars, just replace the engine* with a bigger battery and electric motor. Any car-ologists able to chime in if this is viable?
There are services like this already.
https://www.fuel2electric.com/
No idea if these companies are any good. They’re just the top results that popped up. But it looks like there are a fair number of companies already doing this. It looks like the cost is from $10k to $90k.
Certainly is: there was a group of people doing just that at the University of Calgary(?), but it was years ago and they have almost certainly graduated by now. If others are still doing so, I am not certain.
afaicr the most difficult part was the infotainment system. Installing the motors and stuff was easy, to engineering students at least haha.
I kind of hate infotainment systems anyway. I just want a mounted screen to cast Apple Drive Mode or whatever it’s called. The default GUI they put there is fucking awful. I tried to use the inbuilt GPS once and actually gave up and just went on a spiritual journey instead. Surely it can’t be that complicated just to have essentially a mounted iPad?
Great to hear that cars can be saved though. I was worried I’d have to sell my perfectly good car because I want an electric motor… I was thinking like, the rest of the car is fine it doesn’t need to be trashed at all
Same, they are always useless to me because I just use my phone anyway. All I would need is an audio jack and a usb port for charging. I imagine a simple sort of shelf with a ‘seat belt’ where the screen would be.
ijmuawn
I just make up acronyms, why not?
Iirc is a thing, why not use that instead of making people spend time figuring out what afaicr means? I assume I figured it out, yes, but I’ve never seen that before.
It’s been in fairly wide usage for a long time, and it’s literally only two characters off from an extremely well known acronym that has also basically been around as long as the internet (afaik). IIRC was also just made up by somebody too, not that that’s even what OP was doing.
Don’t worry, I understood what you meant
:)Wait a minute… you’re not OC! (Original Commenter)
I have seen iirc thousands of times, don’t recall ever seeing this one before. Yeah they get made up, yet it’s silly to make a new one up that means almost the exact same thing as an established one.
fully electric 1957 Bel-Air
That would be gorgeous.
Convertible in Tropical Turquoise and India Ivory?
Most definitely.
I only saw it in tropical turquoise.
An acquaintance from NHTSA says the cars save audio from the interior of the vehicle in a type of black box that can be accessed by investigators after wrecks. They frequently analyze this audio, but it’s SUPPOSED TO BE A SECRET.
Infotainment ain’t justified, at least not up front. Put all that shit in the back if you gotta have it, but the driver should have as few distractions as possible. A simple radio, climate control, and the instrument panel. That’s it.
Utterly insane that we ever allowed glorified tablets to become standard equipment in dashboards.
My recent purchase was a Mazda specifically because the infotainment was not a touchscreen, but instead controlled by a rotating knob joystick.
Nothing quite like the twist of a good knob.
Honestly that seems a bit worse
It’s really quite nice. I was just in a rental car with a touchscreen and hated how hard it was to hit buttons while driving because your finger is bouncing from the road. With the knob you stay leaned back in the seat and rotate the knob and slap it down to activate things. Don’t have to worry about missing the target. The only thing it’s not great for is scrolling a map.
At least it’s a physical interface
How many cars were you buying
Like most people who drive, they probably would be buying a new car every 5-10 years. Is that far fetched? I’ve know several people who spend half their money on cars, buying/trading them every year or so. Most fediverse people would be saavier than that, but still.
Well there was period where I changed cars every 2 years. For a total of 3 cars, and then I didn’t need one any more. Not the most egregious example but I did like changing them. It’s like any other toy, it’s easy to get hooked on upgrades and trying out new models.
Yeah, that’s pretty normal I think. I tend to keep my cars a long time but I’ve still had 4 so far, which may surprise the OC here.
I drive them until the cost of fixing them significantly exceeds the cost of getting a new used car. Accounting for it being a pain in the ass to shop for cars etc.
But yeah every 3-5 years sounds about right for typical middle/upper class families. My parents did pretty well when I was little and I remember them doing 2 or 3 year leases.
I don’t buy cars anymore. I didn’t used to buy them either.
New anything. Analogue or bust, if it wants to talk to the internet and isn’t a game console or computer then it can absolutely go and fuck itself dead.
Cars.
Most any vehicle made after 2006 will have one or more of these three issues:
- Lack of repairability. Not just computerization, but auth to the point where changing your brake pads and rotors can make your vehicle refuse to move until those brakes and rotors are authorized over the Internet by the vehicle manufacturer. And the software to do so costs $1M to buy, needs a $6k/mo subscription, and can only be bought by authorized dealers, locking out independent repair shops.
- Privacy. Almost all vehicles after 2006 and any before that with OnStar records everything the vehicle does and sends that up to the mothership to be repackaged and sold to data brokers. Then your insurance gets a copy and jacks up what you pay because you braked hard and sped slightly over the limit a few times. Modern cars will also record everything that happens inside and around the vehicle, to the point where when you buy the car you have to sign a waiver that states they have permission to record anyone doing anything inside the vehicle, up to and including having sex in the back seat.
- DRM. When you buy a vehicle with all the bells and whistles, but many of those bells and whistles are shut down until you pay $$$/mo to have them turned back on. Sorry, but if the vehicle came with it, I will gleefully crack that software until I can use that feature. I paid for it when I bought the vehicle, so I have every right to use it without paying a cent extra.
Ive got a 2017 car and a 2018 car, one of them is even electric and basically none of what you say is true until ~2020 model year. That’s about the time th subscription model came out for extras on some european cars.
Pretty much nothing that you just said is true. What car can’t you change the brake pads on without going to that brands official repair shop?
As for the data one, how exactly is all this data being transmitted?
The “DRM” one is true to a small extent though, and that’s crap when they do that.
They exagurate, but I expect all these features come to pass eventually. Between the EUs driver monitoring mandate and BMWs subscription to use your heated seat coils. Its only a matter of time before the new bug is actually a bug.
2006 is the era when cars became complicated enough you needed more than basic wiring to repair them, for a car guy, that around where Ive seen them talk of the latest they would buy.
I would also say 2017 is also around a good time for non-car people who are good with tech. This is around the time when the cars computer would manage the radio, inputs and a backup camera. If you wanted GPS on the screen, your phone would have to handle it, the car would have no sim card.
Anything made after the plague, they are not far off for the level of tech and privacy concerns, just not all of these fratures are in a vehicle fresh from the dealers lot yet.
Later model cars with internet connections or telematics antennas are likely sending info about whatever they can, whenever they can, but such things can be disabled easily enough.
Which manufacturers offer free Internet connections in their cars?
Its free for them when its sending your info to them.
Which manufacturers do this and in which models?
Any hardware associated with Facebook.
And software, while we’re at it. Web plugins included. Basically just Facebook.
It could’ve stopped at “Lets people share things with friends and family” but they’ll never be satisfied,
untileven if they have the entire world’s money, attention, and data in their clutches.What they’ve done to VR pisses me off to the core.
There is some open source software that is associated with Facebook, like compression with Zstandard, a very common and useful compression format. Don’t care that it’s from them in that case.
I never understood why people think VR can be a mass market product. It’s literally single user. It cannot be looked at by two people at the same time. Such a silly concept. It’s good for gaming, some work, robotics, remote access, etc. But mass market? iPhone-killer? Price-accessible to all? I don’t get it.
Yeah I definitely think AR has a better opportunity for that… But then unfortunately we know what they do as soon as there’s a camera attached to anything
I sat in an uber the other day and the driver had meta ray ban sunglasses on. It was a very uncomfortable ride.
Honestly, using them as an uber driver might be the singular applicable use case in my eyes. It would be less intrusive than a 360 dash cam which I would want to use to protect myself. Accidents, false claims, etc. There is a lot that can go wrong and a lot of shitty people and a “paper trail” of events is VERY useful in court.
“Less” intrusive? A 360 dash cam will store everything on a memory card. The meta glasses uploads video directly into Zuck’s brain.
False.
The Facebook Portal TV was, and still is, gorgeous. The voice control is dead, the streaming services removed, the Alexa link dead, but as a video conf device that uses your TV really well, it’s a life-changer.
We chat with people on the other Coast weekly, and we get to see people in their living room from ours. We can’t go visit, but we can stay in touch.
We paid like $100 each for 4 of these. I’d’ve paid 5 times that for one with upgradeable assistant access and vanilla open video chat so it’s fb free. They’re all still running but they tether us to Fb since the zoom was ass.
Edit: downvoting something as cool as the portal TV is bizarre. It really is a stand-out product and I’m sad that its connection to FB ruined its reception.
What’s “false” here exactly?
Also at the end you’re like you’re like “but they force us to keep connected to fb” which sounds very disqualifying for many users here…
Maybe that’s the one tech we should try to bring back with FOSS next
What hardware is associated with Facebook? The Oculus?
Latest is the ray ban glasses, but also portal tv, oculus.
Oh yeah, i forgot about the doxx shades
If I see an ad playing at a gas station pump, I get back in my car and keep driving.
I stopped at a station a few years back, it started blaring an ad at me so I immediately stopped pumping, gave the cameras the finger, and left. left a shitty review.
almost exactly a year later, drive by and it’s convenient time to get gas, sure let’s stop. exact same situation plays out, except when I went to leave a review, I found I had already done that.
I had remembered that there was a reason I didn’t go to that gas station, just not what that reason was, and so I had pulled in anyways because it was on my way.
I fantasize about keeping a power drill in my car and when the ad starts playing I’d just drill straight into the speaker and waggle the drill bit around until the noise stops.
If you spill some petrol because you were distracted by the advert, they have to clean it up.
They hide. I swear I’m going break one of the screens from getting pissed and pushing every button as hard as I can till it shuts up.
I absolutely support that. Also FYI all of them should have an unlabeled mute button. I just start pressing buttons until the audio turns off when I have to use one, and it helps with my sanity.
I’ve only discovered one local station where I can’t mute the ads, so naturally I won’t shop there anymore.
Most of the gas stations removed the mute functionality where I am when moved to touch screen only. I now get most of my gas at a place that is consistently more expensive, but has no ads. I am just trying to drive less and less and avoid the entire process.
Until you find that station and disabled the mute button.
Newer cars. They come with cameras pointed at my face!
I got an Epson printer to replace the HP that stopped doing email/app service because HP seemed it too old. The Epson just takes ink from a bottle which is really cheap to refil. The Epson has a tiny screen (which makes sense when you realize Epson is just a sub brand of Seiko). I fully expect the app to stop working some day.
Brother laser printers don’t do that. The unfortunate thing is that the word is out, so the prices have skyrocketed. But for me, if I ever need to buy a laundry machine, I’m looking for a decades old, used one. One with a spin cycle and that lets you start and stop it in demand.
laundry machine, I’m looking for a decades old, used one. One with a spin cycle and that lets you start and stop it in demand.
Smart.
Get a Brother washing machine. Got it!
And definitely don’t get an inkjet washer, they cost you a fortune in detergent cartridges.
A good shower can wash you, your brother, your sister, and your parents! Usually only one at a time though.
Good idea on the washer. My washer and dryer are both 27 years old. Just basic Whirlpool models. I’ve repaired both myself a few times, it’s not hard, and there are directions for every problem online.
New appliances are shit, now. I dread having to replace my fridge. It’s about 25 years old and still works perfectly, but nothing lasts forever.
I’ll definitely be looking at old used in appliances before buying new from now on. Same for cars.
I know it’s off topic, but just want to jump on here and brag about my microwave that is still operating everyday, despite dating back to about 1982.
Yep, I had a GE from 1984. It was a “Spacemaker”. I stupidly gave it away after 30 years because I decided I wanted a bigger one. That’s when I learned that new appliances suck. I’m on my third microwave since then. I have no doubt the one I gave away is still working.
Ooh, this is very similar to the one I have which is also GE. Mine is larger than this, so maybe the non-spacemaker version. Thanks for posting this.
Found this video that looks exactly like mine, except mine has a digital display and buttons. https://youtu.be/nGyYGiuv-2g?is=rQbmXoax64RvMuhY
I haven’t bought one in probably like 12 years. Are the new ones all greebled up with “smart” shit? Even the store brand models?
Talk about it. My washing machine that was just 2½ years old, luckily within extended warranty period, had worn ballbearings. Those were luckily replaced, but it took repair shop and required paperwork 2+ weeks to even come and pick it up, they did offer replacement machine during the repairs.
That wasn’t the worst part, i could still run the machine as the ball bearings were just starting to wear out.
It came back from the repair shop and 2 bloody weeks later another part failed, a fucking simple sensor and the machine no longer runs at all. I removed the side panel and i can see the sensor, 2 screws and a simple plug. I’m not going to contact the repair shop and insurance for that, it’s going to take them longer to get back to me than it does me to find a supplier and order the part myself.
In the meanwhile I’m forced to wash my clothes by hand.Though that made me realize i need to buy a spare washing machine and keep that in the basement for when main one breaks again.
How’s the second hand brother market?
HP printers don’t do that, either. All sources I could find were random reports from people with zero evidence.
HP has terrible scummy business presences and sucks, but this post is straight up misinformation and everyone is just like “oh yeah that’s true they do that”
https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/hp-plus.html
When you activate the HP+, HP permanently disables the printer’s ability to use 3rd party ink. Model numbers that end in “e” require HP+ to function. While other model numbers don’t require HP+, someone who is not already aware of it could be prompted into signing up for it without understanding they’re permanently disabling their ability to use third party ink.
Thank you for the source! Not a great look on HP’s part, and they’ve always been against third party ink which is shitty. I remember a friend of mine having a giant ink reservoir next to their 02 HP photo printer—ink was free forever basically. Amazing printers. That’s prolly why they stopped the 02s… way too easy to make them awesome by tank-feeding.
I still contest OP’s “they bricked my printer”, it’ll still print with HP ink. Moreover, printers have had chips for decades that allow them only to print with first party ink… you can circumvent the chips, but still. HP didn’t brick yer printer if you fell for their subscription ink grift (also who does that, sorry) they just make it so you need their own ink… like… they have been doing since the 2000s.
Anything smart or iot, or that requires a subscription to use.
A windows license.
Games consoles. (I would consider a stream deck to be immune from this as it’s just a handheld PC)
Android phones, Apple phones.
Wireless earphones.
A modern car.
Wait, why wireless earphones?
Hazarding a guess, but wireless earbuds means your Bluetooth has to be active, and your Bluetooth radio is something that can be used to track you
Ugh, yes, good point. Bluetooth is not the height of security.
bluetooth got real fucking creepy once you had to start having location enabled to use it.
What device? Never heard that before
Samsung Galaxy phone, admittedly years ago, cause it made me stop using bluetooth.
But a quick sanity check, to make sure i was remembering correctly, by doing a search for variations of bluetooth cant be used without location on do return results showing that I was not out of my gourd and that it does happen.
Thats absolutely insane. Have they ever bothered with an explanation?
For real? I just tried on my P10 Pro XL running GrapheneOS and I could pair, forget, re-pair with location turned off.
I replied to another user about this, but aside from Bluetooth being a privacy nightmare, there’s also the limited lifespan, the bad quality dacs, the lithium batteries and increased e-waste. Not to mention the expense. For $500 you can get genuinely very good wired headphones that will last the rest of your life. For the same price you can get mediocre wireless headphones that will eventually fail to hold a charge and become useless in X years
idk, my $90 earbuds that I use for meetings in the office and occasional personal use are almost five years old and doing fine. can’t say I’ve noticed an issue with the battery life because they live in the charging case and only get taken out for use periods that are max a couple hours. and the quality is more than good enough.
I’ve got some nice proper headphones. they’re not the right tool for that use case, for me.
Track me with what? The pigeons don’t actually have Bluetooth tracking readers on them
The pigeons don’t, but phones do. They have access to bluetooth data from everyone who has it turned on in their phones, including yours. You’re surrounded by “pigeons”.
But there isn’t anyone else nearby carrying a bunch of phones unless I am in public or at work, where I am tracked anyway.
Lol, we’ve known about Bluetooth tracking for YEARS. Apple released the iBeacon in 2013, so this isn’t even remotely a controversial statement, unless you’ve been living under a rock. Add on the BT tracking we hear about for LPRs, and you can easily see why someone wouldn’t want to keep the radio active
Also curious about wireless earphones, if it’s an audio quality thing, I can understand that.
Please also reply to me so I can get a notification to see your answer
I’m not OP, but here are the downsides I’m aware of:
- Poor reparability
- BT always active
- Codec support
- Latency
- Some need apps for full control and they can come with ads/tracking
Foggenbooty pretty much nailed it.
Poor repairability, but also, why would I use 2 cheap dacs (1 in each earbuds), when I would use wired earphones and have 1 good dac. And the fact lithium needs to be mined for 2 batteries is super problematic considering the conditions lithium miners face.
Of course then there’s the issue that everything with a battery has a limited lifespan. Those batteries will die one day and render your wireless earphones useless. My headphones will last for the rest of my life, meaning less e-waste is generated.
BT being active is a privacy nightmare, and the ones that require apps is also a privacy nightmare.
But then also they are just inferior to wired headphones in every way. So yeah, I’m not gonna buy an objectively worse product for way more money than their wired counterparts, that also exploits lithium miners and our planet and is also a privacy nightmare.
I got fed up after the battery died on my 4th pair of AirPods, and the 20+ year old Shure IEMs I have, still work good as the day I bought them.
I have 4 pairs of AirPods on my nightstand where only one ear works, and the other ear gets maybe minutes of usable time, or is crackly and awful sounding. To be fair, one pair went through the wash. But even then, I’d rather wash a pair of 25 dollar wired headphones, than another 250 dollar pair of AirPod pros.
I had the same shit with an hp printer. I returned mine though.
I’m really picky about where I buy gas. There ar two places that don’t play ads at the pump and i go there. I worry they’ll change.
It always warms my heart to see a smashed screen or ballpoint pen jammed into the speaker on those ad-playing pumps
There’s a mute button. Of the 8 or 10 soft keys, it’s been right side, second from the bottom for me. No penalty for hitting wrong. Not saying it makes ads justifiable, just an FYI if you don’t have a choice in stations that day and get stuck with ads.
I’ve seen some that have a mute icon printed on the button. guess they got tired of people just smashing the screens instead.
Some stations disable the mute button. Maybe they like replacing screens.
