fucking "premium subscription" is just a reboot of the "bundling" bullshit from the cable companies.

no i dont really wanna pay 4 bucks to rent a shitty halloween flick for 48 hours that i randomly got nostalgia for, nor do i want to pay an additional 8 bucks a month for your streaming service that i hardly use to begin with to include Starz or whatever.

oh a free 7 day trial will get me access you say? oh but of course you need my credit card first just to verify that im real and then conveniently charge me when i forgot i signed up and keep my money after i cancel.

too lazy to torrent. movie wasnt that great either, so not really worth the effort.

Paste 2.

The best fucking little utility for clipboard management, and I've used most of them.

Keep a crazy long history of your copy and paste history... including FILES, JPEGs, Screengrabs... EVERYTHING.

There was one time I nuked a git repo then pulled origin... and I recovered my source from freaking Paste 2 because I had copied it earlier that day!!!

I would HAPPILY pay $20 for a license for this software. But it recently went subscription based and there is no fucking way I'm paying for a subscription for a fucking clipboard manager.

@HiFiWiFiSciFi everyones trying to build a "stable revenue *stream*" and "passive income" these days.

there are just some things that, if taken as a subscription, arent gonna garner customers.

otherwise eventually you reach a point where so many services are subscription based, your entire economy morphs into a microtransaction cyberpunk blockchain hellscape and the price floor drops from every market because no one can afford to be nickle and dimed *one hundred times per day* at $4.99 a piece.

open your minibar fridge (now standard in every home) - that'll be 25 cents.

grab a soda? that'll be $1.50.
open the soda? that'll be 10 cents.

coaster from your coaster dispenser? 10 cents.

login to your pc? 50 cents.

daily virus scan with "new and daily definitions"? 25 cents.

browse more then 10 pages on the internet? only a dollar more for 10 additional page loads excluding live services! (tm)

enhanced ultraquantum compression "for those unreliable network days?" 50 cents per hour.

@Wisecrack I am quite literally writing IoT based software to track minifridge door opens and inventory for a major commercial products company as I write this...

I'm the one connecting the rental fridge!

I'm so sorry.

@HiFiWiFiSciFi what a coincidence. sounds fun and terrifying.

well I guess it's only terrifying because when you think about the logical conclusion we always picture dystopia from impoverishment but actually the opposite conclusion has to happen: economy goes through a mode change where so many products and interactions we take for granted become 1. monetized and 2. incredibly cheap.

what do you guys do, image recognition or something like infra, or are you able to even ralk about that?

@Wisecrack You want terrifying?

I have another IoT project where I control valves on high pressure industrial tanks with a toggle switch.

I fucking hate that fucking toggle switch. I cannot tell you the amount of times I practiced sending the appropriate JSON packet for that thing before I even dared try pushing it.

Went back and forth with client several times just going "You want it to send a 1 for this value??? ARE YOU SURE???"

Pushed the code to prod and literally DID NOT TEST IT (against a real physical device).

Sent an email to the appropriate parties saying "Code is live. I have not pressed this toggle. If you press it it WILL send the appropriate JSON packet to open ABC Valve. From there, you guys better be ready to hold your dicks if anything is physically attached wrong."

Device software engineers have it worse tho... they'll be in range of the explosive decompression.

@HiFiWiFiSciFi I see no downside here.

@HiFiWiFiSciFi that industrial example sounds like you have control over something you shouldn't have.