I thought I bought a camera, but no DJI sold me a license to use it [video]

I have a washing machine that won't let me use it fully without installing an app that asks for permission to track my GPS coordinates at all time, in my phone. HomeWhiz.There should be a law against selling new hardware that demands that sort of thing to function, or to have full functionality. But I would be happy if procedures to bring class-auction lawsuits against companies that engage in this kind of bait-and-ransom were somehow simpler.

At least a requirement to let customers know in big letters that the device/appliance you're going to buy would not function without App + Wifi + Internet plan + GPS, and that you're not buying an appliance but a limited license to use it.

This is the kind of stuff that I feel a coordinated campaign to have consumers take companies to small claims court over would be very effective in combating.

I'm sure a bunch of elderly magistrates would feel that this kind of requirement is obscene and would readily side with the claimant.

Collectively this would cost the company a lot.

At the very least, when you the current end user refuse to agree to their terms of service, the model should have to be returned, at the manufacturer's expense, irrespective of condition.

Think of renters stuck in a place with units like that! They too should have the right to require un-tracked appliances and be free from being forced to agree to additional contract overheads that aren't obvious in the price / what should be reasonable terms.

Obligatory link to Doctorow’s Unauthorized Bread (2019), a DRM-themed, uh… thriller? polemic?… of a novella. Deals with the themes you discuss: large appliance manufacturer malfeasance, intrusive exploitation beyond the scope of the product’s purpose, renters’ relative helplessness for the appliances to service their daily needs.

https://craphound.com/unauthorized-bread/

Discussion here (2020, 123 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985140

Just yesterday I saw an ad for an "AI enabled dishwasher". I suspect things are about to get even worse.

Unfortunately, governments are highly incentivised to allow mandatory on-device spyware to feed your location into the global information market.

Why run a sophisticated surveillance and information retrieval system when a you can just ask big-tech for the data for free, or buy from the market at a fraction of the running cost of a dedicated system?

Personally I think the best way to combat this is for concerned people to build businesses with privacy as a feature. Dumb TVs, dumb washing machines etc.

I am astounded at how much this short, humorous quote from Philip Dick's "Ubik" was prescient:

"The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."

Looking forward to argumentative washing machines.

> Looking forward to argumentative washing machines.

Thanks to all upthread for the reminder.

Last week I was sorta forced to install the app for the laundry room at the place I am renting.

They previously used another big service provider, and had troubles with plumbing and there was undoubtedly finger-pointing between the laundry service and the landlady, and eventually, landlady switched to a new laundry service provider, which has a very generic-sounding app.

So you can pay two ways (no coins and no currency): obtain a stored-value card from the little kiosk in the laundry room (it will cost you, like $10 just for the card with $0 on it.) or you can install the mobile app, and load money into your account. (The account is not shared with any stored-value card, so they'll be separate.)

So last time, I opted for a card, and I immediately punched a hole in it, so I could string it to a lanyard. That disabled the card! It is some sort of RFID/NFC thing which has little spiderweb tendrils, rather than a single chip in one place that can be avoided.

So this time around, I installed the Android app. I loaded money on the card (of course you can't specify the exact amount, but you select a dropdown, and the $10 or $15 or $25 or $40 is never an exact multiple of the cost of a load.)

And the mobile app demands a lot of permissions. It wants camera access, and Nearby Devices, and Location, and probably Precise Location too. And then you need to enable Bluetooth, and you also need to be standing right inside the laundry room in order for the app to go anywhere (yes, you can't even check your account profile, or balance, or add money, unless you're inside the laundry room, so fuck me if I wanted to set this up in the comfort of "my" home before going down there in public.)

And the app relies on a shitty QR code scan anyway. I mean, you can tap the NFC stored-value card, but your phone won't tap-to-pay the fuckin' washing machines. And they don't take credit cards, or coins or bills. And the soda machines here don't take credit cards, or bills either, only coins. LOL!

And the app has a fucked-up self-image. It lists 16 washing machines. There are 6 in the room. So there are 10 "phantom machines". I informed the Support dudes like in Marh 2024, when they first installed everything. I told them the app was a dumbass and listed too many machines. I showed them how I was standing in the correct room and the other two rooms had likewise fucked "phantom machines" too, but I didn't care about them. We went around in circles with Support asking for "more information" and I cc:ed the landlady, and she was rather bemused, but more-or-less a bystander on the whole issue.

I was sort of indignant on behalf of the other residents who may be confused. I wasn't personally too confused, but imagine if Grandma installed her iPhone app or something and tried to start Machine #13.

And it's been 13 months and they still haven't rectified the list of machines.

The old service provider, they used to provide a public website; you could see each machine and whether it was active or not, in a little widget, it was very Web 1.0 but with animation. It didn't use Flash or anything fancy. There was no authentication to see these laundry machines running. I suppose that was too vulnerable, and so they locked it up in the app. And of course the app requires you to be in the fucking location rather than checking from the comfort of your home.

So I used to be able to see availability before I took everything down and went into the laundry room and bugged the other resident ladies. But now I can't see availability until I barge into the fucking room itself. Fuck you app makers. I have a login. Let me see whether I can start my wash or if I can wait in the comfort of my home. Now I need to make a special trip just to check on things, or to add funds or even just to check my balance.

In many countries, the consumer protection laws are strong enough that consumers probably can return such appliances, as long as the facts about app requirements weren't made abundantly clear to them at the store.

Though, it's usually the store who's responsible for that refund, not the manufacturer . Still, stores are motivated to reduce return rates and will put pressure on manufactures to not do stupid things.

Out of interest did you know this before buying it? I'm interested in how they would advertise that kind of feature. I feel like that needs to be a regulated warning label on the box.

For things you can carry back to the store, that works well. When I buy a new washing machine, though, it's a bit more complicated:

- I go to the store and make the purchase.

- A delivery crew brings the washing machine to my house.

- They unhook my old washing machine and take it away.

- They attach my new washing machine in its place.

Even with the strongest reasonable protection laws I can imagine, the most the store would be obligated to do if the new machine is unsatisfactory would be to detach the new machine and take it away. And I've probably had to pay for one or two visits from the installers at that point. Regardless of whether the extra visit from the installers carries any extra cost for me, there's enough hassle associated with this that I can easily imagine keeping a machine where I'm not happy with some app requirement because it'd be too much trouble to make the change.

Sounds really shit.

The RFID card will have a chip too. The 'tendrils' are the aerial which is a thick loop (of many wires) round the outside. So punching a hole in one corner is a non-starter, but there's a good chance you could punch one in the middle if you work out where the chip is

Of course, the simpler option is just to get a lanyard with card holder.

There are laws. Get a refund. Tell them why. If we all do this it won't be profitable.

This makes me so angry just reading this.

It's a failure of both management, and the developers carrying out management's tasteless design/vision which leads to this sort of shit. Not the kind of world I want to live in, and I wish these organizations would get punished somehow for the shit they put out into the world.

In terms of professional ethics, where should a product manager stand, when the business asks them for a customer-hostile solution like this (or on the opposite end of the developers suggest a customer-hostile technical solution)?

Depending on the card design, you can sometimes shine a bright lamp or flashlight through it and see the antenna shadow...

As well, I would say pick a shame domain and make some noise about this, collate feedback from other consumers, etc. Spread that constantly until the manufacturer can justify it or relent. Hassle them for comment and until they reply to your satisfaction, note on the site that they haven't responded despite repeated attempts at contacting them.

"Don't do this or I quit".

If you don't have enough money to do that, immediately start looking for a new job. If you are feeling lucky you can try weaponised incompetence to try to prevent this from being shipped.

I imagine there are lots of folks here who could answer this question. I like to assume that no individual engineer/developer/product manager is so unscrupulous as to make this sort of kafkaesque nightmare into a reality, but somewhere along the line from concept to implementation, some individual needs to demand, create or at least suggest such hostility to the user. My question is, how does this usually go? Is it a vague implicit target set by management that can only be achieved by abusing the user, giving both the engineers and managers a plausible deniability? "I'm just following orders". Or are there folks during the development phase suggesting and promoting these awful "features"? I'm guessing the answer will be unsatisfying to me, that no individual or group of individuals is really responsible, and it's just the incentive structure of the system that's emerged over time. Which just begs the deeper, but more complicated question, how did we get here?

I had a high-end dishwasher from the early 2000's in this house when I moved in. It had a lot of smarts to it. It would constantly monitor turbidity to change soap mixtures and would decide when it wanted to drain and add more water in case the tub water was really dirty.

I imagine this is what that "AI" feature is doing.

The same technology used to foist madness upon someone is also used to insulate the creator from feedback. Its a double edge sword. Virtually every touchpoint of society is being turned into this awful dynamic as its unregulated. All actors with power take their playbook from a familiar guy in a turtleneck on stage pointing to his users and saying " youre holding it wrong". As if every one participating in this "experiment" is indeed a willing "user"