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.

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

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.

Any hardware associated with Facebook.

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.

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.

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.

If I see an ad playing at a gas station pump, I get back in my car and keep driving.

I stopped using a smart watch I used to use all the time because Samsung started requiring location services to be on to use it. Immediately made me drop it and I stopped buying anything Samsung after that. Not only would I never be okay with having that on all the time, it's fucking insane to start making that a requirement for a device that never required that out of the box.

As a bonus one, I'll never buy anything Playstation ever again for obvious reasons.

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.

Newer cars. They come with cameras pointed at my face!

almost everything.

They are sneaking creepnology into all kinds of things it has no business being.

I'd go back to a Bakelite phone on a fucking land line if I could. As it stands I mostly try to buy older shit, cause not only is it typically better made, its just simple and basic with no extra pointless points of failure.

I'll start: printers.

Boy, do I have good news for you!

https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer/

Micro$oft. Everything from them. Windows, Office, etc.

Only yesterday I bought a piece of hardware, an old surface tablet, and immediately installed Linux on it to make it usable and safe.

Several years ago, I bought a color laser printer/scanner. It cost about twice what an inkjet one costs. It has now lasted twice as long as the average inkjet, and no sign of that changing. And it doesn't have any of the subscription bullshit. Money well spent.

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.

windows. and any software related (github) to windows.

I'm now 100% all linux all the time.

Car.

Robot vacuums, I've always hated how they were all cloud-connected, but now they have cameras too.

Yeah I know about Valetudo.

Microsoft products

I mean, you bought an HP printer. What did you expect?

deadpigeon.jpg

Printers are a loss leader for selling ink cartridges. I have done my recent printing at Walgreens. It's about 25 cents per page and I don't need it very often.

Video games. I stopped buying games because they started requiring a monthly subscription to play.