Technology

It came from a speaker a few years ago at the Davos World Economic Forum. Davos is where the ultra rich gather each year to plot out how to be even more evil.

I'm not OP but I think it means "Providers are saying consumers should accept subscription-based models without complaint"

Brother. Get a Brother.

You should. The next time you want to use it, it'll probably do some bullshit. Better to be rid of it now than be coerced into giving HP money in the future. If you need a printer, replace it with whatever Brother laser printer is on sale at the moment.

It won't make any difference. There's a gamers Bill of Rights that nobody remembers. It was produced by the owner of a company that now ignores that it ever existed.

Not only that but they can train their AI's on all their subscribers' journal entries. Check F-Droid.org for some free, privacy respecting FLOSS journaling apps.

Definitely feel ya there. I highly recommend Obsidian or Joplin. Not sure what features you're looking for, but I've found Obsidian refreshingly simple. Aso nice knowing that it's just markdown files on my device that can't be sold as data.

F-Droid... An open source app store with exactly that: Apps without BS

To the extent you are able to (particularly if trying to stay legal).

So for streaming content, much of that isn't available to 'buy' at all. Even for the stuff you can "buy", technically speaking in many jurisdictions it's not legal to be able to rip your DVD or Blu Rays or remove DRM from a digital download.

For certain software, on-premise editions have been abolished or priced into the stratosphere because they don't want that market to exist anymore. Some of that software has competent alternatives, but sometimes your choice is dictated by your clients and partners, and opting for a less compatible or merely perceived as less compatible option is a non starter. Even among on-premise editions, a lot of software vendors have switched to still having it by subscription as the only legal way to keep using it. Again, maybe for those software you can get away by breaking the law as a workaround, but legally...

This is of course assuming the conversation narrowly applies to software type things. Everyone is also rebranding 'leasing' as 'as a service' and are copying much of the software playbook, for the same reasons, including making purchase of equipment more expensive to steer people toward the 'as a service' revenue strategy.

Then going beyond the 'tech' industry, it's getting really hard to buy a house rather than rent it from some company that has been pouring money into acquiring all the available real estate.

In short, people with the money to spend can't be arsed to inconvenience themselves with self hosting or 'alternative' sources.

Folk without the money find a way through perceived necessity and maybe learn something on the way.

Then there's people with the money and the know-how who are just looking to save or do so on principle.

Younger generations grow up with subscriptions and black boxes that are not ultimately under their own control, and lack the knowledge to change it.

It's a sad state of affairs, but their tolerance for ads and subscription slop keeps attention away from people like me.

I worked at Amazon and the head of Ring said their best customers were people who bought a subscription and then put the camera in a drawer and forgot about it. They don't even want to provide you a service. They want you to absentmindedly give them money every month because you forgot to cancel.

How do you get home internet service without a subscription? I'm down to try it.

How do i pirate insurance?

Plex has started to enshittify as well. I switched to jellyfin because Plex had features behind pay walls and kept going "oops I accidentally changed your settings so you have to look at the plex home screen with ads for our streaming service".