I programmed for a refurbishing company for some time, where I learned about toner cartridge refill kits. Once you've bought an expensive copier for your company you're vendor locked into proprietary toner cartridges, and they charge outrageous prices. "Pirates" started selling bags of toner and syringes on eBay with instructional videos on how to refill the cartridge yourself. The toner company started putting small chips on the cartridge that would count the number of prints, and deactivate the cartridge after a certain amount. "Out of toner" was a lie, it was unauthorized printing. Reading this story is making me sick to my stomach.
The first one allowed you use refillable K-cups so you could make coffee really fast using your own grounds.
The second one had a DRM module that didn't allow you to put in 'Unathorized Coffee'.
Regarding Unathorized Bread, I actually found the story of the cancer patients to be far more realistic and made me realize how people get radicalized easily. The story is something that should be read for yourself but I was on the edge of my seat through it.
I edited the word "radicalized" out of my original comment to make it more concise, but that's exactly how I feel. I had medical issue while I was in a foreign country that cost me $35 to see a doctor and get medicine. When I returned to America, in between jobs and in between health care providers, the same medicine cost me $500, and that's only because I was able to have a doctor-friend phone in the prescription so I didn't have to pay for a doctor's visit too. This was the same winter I learned about toner-pirates, and I found my contact lens prescription were held from me unless I paid for another eye exam. I'm tired of protecting myself from this predatory system.
The medical system in America is fetishized suffering.
My partner is lucky enough to have "very good" insurance through their employer. They recently had to have a scan done to check for serious problems. We got a bill for $500, half for the hospital and specialist, and half for the scan itself and the people providing it.
I took a look at how the costs broke down. In fact, the "real" cost was $5000, and the insurance company paid 90% of that. I started digging and discovered that they pay just about 90% of all medical treatment across the board (for a very small set of in-network physicians and hospitals). Even putting aside whether $5000 was a reasonable cost for this 1 hour procedure (probably not), this left me wondering, why 90%? Why pay such an extraordinarily high percentage, but not all of it?
After thinking about this for a while, I've come to the conclusion that it's a combination of two factors. One is that it's absolutely unacceptable to Americans for individuals to ever receive anything for free. You absolutely have to suffer in some way for every good thing you're allowed to have. The other is that I think they want to actively dissuade you from getting the medical care you need unless it's crucial, because someone worked the math out and putting a slight disincentive on medical care works out slightly cheaper for them than just letting people have what they need with the insurance they're already paying for.
The result in human costs is enormous. My partner has cried about this on and off for weeks because $500 is a very consequential amount of money for us, and we didn't have even a ballpark estimate before the procedure of how much it would cost.
So yes, it's radicalizing as hell. Burn this system to the ground.
As far as billing goes I view US hospitals basically as criminal organizations. They lie, make up things, hide things and make no effort to do better. Problem is that a lot of people are making a very good living off this insane system and will fight any change tooth and mail.
I think radicalized is a good word. Some laws and rules just don’t deserve respect. I have no respect following IP laws that protect printer manufacturers to rip off customers with their overpriced supplies . A lot of US laws about importing pharmaceutical drugs don’t deserve respect . Neither do most of the drug laws in general.
Laws are principally about justice. The minute the law is warped to enhance personal gain, or twisted so it is about furthering a political agenda instead of about balancing the needs of all individuals, it becomes a perversion of justice. It brings both the law and the abstract concept of justice into disrepute.
This will lead to anarchy and the caveman with the biggest club will be the alpha silverback again.
If a law does not deserve respect, it must be struck down, else they will all be struck down.
As long as a lot of laws aren’t made from ethical principle but mainly for favored individuals or groups what do you want to do? I think most advances in society have been achieved by people breaking laws and effecting change that way. The whole civil rights and labor movements were about breaking immoral laws.
> I found my contact lens prescription were held from me unless I paid for another eye exam
I had this happen to me when I was younger. Lady basically said they only do eye exams and then they offer to sell you the prescription separately... some bullshit.
When I got my exam I asked about diving lenses which they don't sell. They then gave me a prescription and my pupil distance so I can order them. Of course I was buying their glasses which made them more inclined to like me.
The exam policy is corporate rent-seeking. The people who are actually doing the work are far more likely than not to personally side with the customer, although they're not going to risk their jobs (and possible future blacklisting) over it. Making any sort of even temporary personal connection with the person giving you the test will probably get you your pupil distance if you ask.
> will probably get you your pupil distance if you ask.
I just walked into a lenscrafters in the mall and asked for mine. Guy measured it and scrawled it on a card. Didn't even have to wait.
But if interpupilary distance is all you need, lenscrafters is overkill. It's easy to measure at home, you just need a metric ruler and a youtube tutorial.
Interesting about your story where having to pay for another eye exam... I heard someone ended up breaking their pair of glasses and knew their prescription so went to go back to the same shop to get a new pair, but they wouldn't let him until getting another eye exam... Yet there's sites now where you can just order glasses online like Warby Parker. I don't know how many people have a relationship with their eye doctor, but I'd be tempted to just say screw them and order it online, but then might burn a bridge for any future appointments maybe.
Not sure why they try to limit people directing their own care. Kinda like some states it's illegal to get bloodwork or other tests without a doctor, or even those DNA based heritage tests. Like there's some site that lets you measure your testosterone, but New York and like 2 other states banned at home tests.
Then there's some company now where you sit your laptop on a table and use your phone to go back so many feet, and can do an eye test. Some tested it and got the same results as their eye test done offline - but of course some states banned that site too. https://youtu.be/DTgmJqbXg1s talks about that case.
I was in mexico and went to the doctor once. He had office hours in a small office at a nearby farmacia. He took the time, listened to me, wrote me a prescription, and charged me the equivalent of 2 USD. The medicine was modestly priced as well.
In the US, doctors seem to have 15-minute windows to diagnose and solve your problem.
My primary care physician seems more relaxed, but I think it might be - #1 that I organize everything before I see her (15 minute anxiety) - #2 she might actually have a 30-minute window. The only advantage I've noticed is that once I suggested an extra blood test done or something and she quickly acceded instead of taking the time to talk about it (I think).
Funny story about the K-cup thing, the DRM could be defeated with some tape. Shortly after that discovery, someone (wish I could remember their name) proceeded to manufacture little clip-on plastic parts and send them to people for free. They were real, injection-molded plastic parts, too. Not 3D printed ones, though you could 3D print one for yourself. I've still got one of the original ones somewhere around here.
There's no way the story wasn't posted on HN, but I don't think I'd be able to find it easily.
E: Turns out my search fu is better than I realized. It was called the Freedom Clip. Even Walmart sells them these days.
At work we had a KCup machine but when I brought in some K cups I bought they wouldn't work. It was a branded K cup but not for the newer machine. I figured out i could take the foil lid of an approved K cup and stick it on the unauthorized K cup.
The "template" foil was left by the machine on a paperclip for anyone to use.
It's high time for legislation banning this crap, or at the very least mandating an up-front warning à la "this product will stop functioning after n uses".
Fixing existing legislation like copyright law so that it can't be abused to protect this behavior would be enough; the market will do the rest and there's going to be a whole (legalized) industry specializing in cracking and unlocking (effectively repairing) defective by design products.
In theory, this sort of thing may constitute copyright abuse, but I think you'd have to fight against each case separately which makes it pretty much intractable.
It'd be much better to simply ban lockout chip type nonsense for 3rd party parts, though I suspect they'd still find ways to make compatibility difficult :/
You don't want someone messing with emissions or doing other tweaks that make your nice used car into a money pit because it was abused.
I'm not sure how you counter the above, but it really needs to be handled, otherwise too much power will fight against it. If you can find a good way to handle this I'm all for it.
Unfortunately it seems we can't fix it with legislation until we fix our democracy.
88% of democratic voters support Medicare For All, but the DNC just voted against including it as part of their platform.
The elected leaders in this country no longer serve their constituents, instead serving corporations.
I think the vast majority of people in technology understand the DMCA is a horrible law - but at least it doesn't kill people. But if we can't get politicians to recognize the immorality our our current state of "cancer will bankrupt your family, even if you're insured and it also kills you", I don't know what hope we have on fixing copyright.
Yeah, the pirate chips are curing the symptom and not the disease though. I think Smart TVs are a really concerning symptom. If 1984 were about tyrannical corporations and not tyrannical governments, telescreens would be spot-on for Smart TVs.
