lazyvar

Instead of cracking jokes he should improve the piss poor optimization.

Can’t even render 50fps consistently on a Strix 3090OC at 1620p (accounting for resolution scale), what a joke.

Edit: Scratch that, it’s even worse, averaging around 40 fps with HUB Quality settings, so not even on Ultra and my 12900K is nowhere near bottlenecking.

What a joke.

The point is that “6 months free ink” is misleading whichever way you look at it because it’s ambiguous since ink isn’t measured in months.

Even if your reading of it would be the intended reading, then it’s still misleading because it’s just a 6 month trial for a per page subscription. Or put differently: if you surpass the monthly allocation of pages, you would have to pay, making it not free.

Given that neither the trial component nor the per page component is mentioned in the image and given the fact that the offer is ambiguous, there isn’t much to like or dislike about the deal because the deal as presented is false and non-existent.

Moreover, you conveniently sidestep all the other issues I’ve mentioned.

Like the fact that people receive cartridges with their printer that will be rendered useless with no clear warning on the box that this will happen or how to prevent this, instead they’re listed on the box in the same fashion other printer manufacturers list their cartridges that don’t get rendered useless.

Can’t speak for the article because all it leads me to is a photo disguised as a video without much context and pop-up galore.

That said, it’s a bit more nuanced that you make it out to be. HP uses some very shitty dark patterns.

Used to be that printers came with a set of starter ink cartridges.

HP nowadays uses Schrödinger’s ink called “HP Instant Ink Ready” cartridges.
If you never sign up for the HP Instant Ink subscription (incl. trials), then the cartridges that in the box will just be like the starter cartridges you’re used to.

If you however sign up for the subscription **or its ** trial, then the cartridges are changed into Instant Ink cartridges and will refuse to work once the trial is up and/or cancel the subscription.

I can see how people would expect to be able to use the cartridges that came with the printer like they always have been able to before HP pulled this nonsense.

It’s bad enough that this isn’t clearly and explicitly communicated with the customers.

What’s worse is that during setup of the printer (and in the marketing materials for the printer) customers are offered and asked if they want X months ink for free, without much indication that this is a trial for a subscription service.

Even worse that is not ink based, but per pages printed. Or to put it more bluntly: it’s a subscription that, depending on the tier chosen, gives you X amount of pages to print per month (paper needs to be provided by yourself) and HP will automatically send you ink to ensure you can print that amount of pages.

However, in all the marketing HP emphasizes ink and ink subscriptions (or “free” ink), and only after spending time looking into details can you figure out that you don’t pay for the ink, but for pages.

Here’s an example of how they market it as “6 months free ink”:

That ink is not free, because if after 6 months you cancel the trial, that ink is unusable.

Of course they can’t get a full cartridge and then just cancel the subscription

Is that so self-evident?
Classically (and HP also still has this as an option somewhere hidden away I believe) these kind of subscriptions used to be supply subscriptions.

For X amount a month we’ll send you Y amount of supply and it was yours to keep and do as you see fit, nowadays it’s often marketed as “auto-ship” across many web shops and comes with a marginal discount, but there are also plenty of examples that just call it a subscription (e.g. razor blade subscriptions).

This reads as incredibly condescending, naive and duplicitous, filled with hubris.

For starters, the whole “yeah sure XMPP got EEE’d but who cares, only nerds cared about that, lol” is not only false (e.g. Jabber), but also does nothing to quell concerns.

Here’s an account by someone who was in the XMPP trenches when Google started adopting it.

Notice something? The “omg so cool!”, this is exactly the same as Rochko.

It’s the hubris when you’re a FOSS maintainer who toiled away for years without recognition and now a $700B+ corporation is flattering him by wanting to use/interact with his work.

The blog is a far cry from the anti-corporate tone in the informational video from 2018.

Then there’s the fact that Rochko is extremely tight lipped about the off the record meeting with Meta and consistently refuses to deny having received funds from Meta and refuses to pledge not to accept any funds from Meta.

There’s also the unsatisfactory answer he gave to people who started questioning some dubious sponsors and the fact that he rushed to lock the thread, killing any further discussion.

I genuinely think the dude is just so hyped for the perceived recognition, that he lost the thread.

So much so that he thinks Mastodon is untouchable.

And it’s extremely naive to think that Meta has benevolent motives here or that Mastodon will survive any schemes Meta might have.
What’s more realistic is that Mastodon will die because people will flock to Threads if their social graph has moved over.

Similarly these lofty and naive ideas that people on Threads will make the switch to Mastodon once they get a taste of what it has to offer.

So now all of a sudden the “difficulty” to get started in Mastodon, that is keeping people who want a polished corporate experience away isn’t going to be an issue?

Especially when in the “extinguish” phase Meta will have siloed off from Mastodon and its portability function, having to leave their social graph behind?

It’s all so increasingly naive, one can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional sabotage at this point.

Mark my words, this’ll be the end of Mastodon especially when Meta can outspend Mastodon all day every day to add proprietary functionality.

Sure perhaps years from now a few hundred to a few thousand people might still use it, but it will be as irrelevant as XMPP is to most people, and Rochko with it.

@remindme@mstdn.social in 2 years.