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I am not looking forward to the day that medical implants and devices become subscription-based.
Missed too many monthly payments? Your pacemaker gets shut off until your account is no longer delinquent.
Find and watch the 2010 Jude Law movie "repo men".
I just watched the first episode of the most recent series of Black Mirror and it was this too.
Implant had range limitations, premium tier to avoid you randomly shilling products, constantly increasing subscription fee, etc.
This is something that Robots of all movies tried to warn everyone about 20 years ago, specifically with (spoilers for a freakin' 20-year-old movie that no one cares about) Ratchet killing spare parts in order to push his expensive upgrade packages. That sound familiar to what's going on IRL right now?
I think there are a lot of things that are behind subscriptions that you do not realize. One example is computer mice.
They use switches that are only rated for a certain number of clicks before they stop working.
I was going through mice about once every 18 months. I decided to learn to soldier and just replace the switches once they broke.
I found that the switched in the $100 Logitech mouse I bought were only rated for 5 or 10 million clicks. The switch they use can be purchased in a 70 million version. Why didn’t they use that from the start?
I ended up repairing 3 mice and have a lot of extra switches sitting in a bit at home.
planned obsolescence ≠ subscription
This seems like a ridiculously loose use of the word subscription.
Would you say you subscribe to 700km worth of fuel in your car, subscribe to light bulbs in your house, subscribe to your pencil that is getting slowly worn down with each use?
Why not?
Because it's frankly a somewhat ridiculous stretch of the word. That way, anything you purchase more than once in your life would be a subscription (toilet paper, bathroom repairs, even food and water). If anything, it gives more power to toxic subscription services (like how BMW gatekeeps seat heating iirc) by muddying the waters and making their subscriptions seem less outrageous than it is.
Meanwhile I'm on my second Logitech in 15-20 years.
Yo wtf
you can be the mouse fixer of the friend group. trade fixed mice for casseroles and rides to the airport
TIL something totally new. Thank you
5,000,000 / (1.5 x 365.25) = 9,126.169
You’re clicking your mouse 9000 times a day? Every day for 1.5 years?
I basically spend 40hrs a week hosting presentations where I’m constantly drawing and clicking and highlighting text. So maybe.
On top of that I spend another 5-10 hrs a week doing non-meeting stuff.
That's only once every 3 seconds if you use it 8 hours per day for work.
What job or hobby does one have that could possibly reach this threshold every single day for 18 months?
I mean I work 5 days a week so there is that already. That plus playing games on the evenings and weekends and I bet you can near that easily.
I work 5 days a week and game, and I have multiple mice that are 20+ years old and still working. (Microsoft Intellimouse FTW.)
My job revolves around hardware and lifecycle in a corporate environment. If you’re killing a mouse in 18 months, in my opinion, it is either an extraordinary shitty cheap mouse that shouldn’t have passed QA and you should be complaining to the vendor, or you bought solely because it was cheap expecting greatness, or you’re abusing it to the point of failure. Even the cheap OEM mice will easily last 5 years.
If one genuinely uses a mouse that much, then I would leverage the Harbor Freight rule — buy the cheap tool from HF, and if you actually use it enough it breaks, spend the money to get a good one that will last. Better to spend $30-50, even $100, on a mouse every 15-20 years than $10 or band aiding a mouse every 18 months.
——————
As I write this and reading the words back before posting, I realize this might sound condescending or come across as angry, but that is not my intention. I would like to be helpful, learn more, and am open to discussion and differing opinions. Just wanted to call that out.
Start avoiding Logitech then. I have had three of their Anywhere MX mice of various generations, and now an MX Master mouse. They are expensive, and have ALL had switches start failing, that I had to replace and solder. Two of my coworkers have the same mouse, and like clockwork, after one and a half years one started failing. The other one is not at this mark yet, but I bet the same will happen.
I bought a Keychron mouse to replace it. It was also cheaper.
And to clarify, my comment was not to say it was expected that mice would last that short, rather that it is possible to use it enough that it falls within the expected lifespan in clicks of the switches they give.
Osu
housing.
for most, at least. and utilities. the rest can probably be unlocked/hacked/pirated into working without one.
Aren't rent and utilities already subscriptions, pretty much?
"only" is the keyword in the title. Also, no, most utilities are pay for how much you use, not subscription models.
Yes
Spending money. Thorough a combination of a lot of bad luck and a few bad choices, I'm stuck playing credit card musical chairs to keep enough cash for rent and bills. "Ability to buy groceries/toiletries/medical copays/etc." is functionally a subscription for me. Few years of rice and beans in my future until I can dig myself out... good thing I like beans I guess
The worst I can imagine (aside from housing...) would be the others in Maslow's pyramid base: air, water, food, clothing.
- Air would be some straight up cyberpunk shit.
- Water/food would also be horrifying. We currently see meal subscriptions as a luxury, but for those without access to a kitchen and/or with disabilities that prevent them from reliably using one... ah fuck that's dismal.
- Clothing would be fuckin weird. Because such a ridiculous volume of it exists due to fast fashion, I can't see this happening on Earth in the near future, thankfully.
If it's gonna take more than a few years to pay off, you might consider defaulting. Credit card debt is some of the most easily dischargeable debt.
That can range from offers in compromise to declaring some sort of bankruptcy to just not paying them anymore (the latter might have repercussions if you have seizable assets or enough debt that the carriers think it's worth going through the courts to try and garnish your wages, assuming you have regular W2 income). Or if you currently have decent credit, a refi might even be a good option.
Do your own research, this is not financial advice.
I know people that just stopped paying and basically nothing happened. Credit scores went through the floor, but that's pretty much it. Within a couple years they were able to open new cards, and after seven years the dings fell off their credit reports.
What I've been doing is shuffling the debt between new 0% APR intro-period cards every time the 0% of the previous card is going to expire, and just eating the cost of the balance transfer (usually 3–5%) which is still significantly lower than if the balance were to start getting hit by typical card APR (~25%)
I have considered doing bankruptcy but yeah I'm worried about wage garnishment. Also I had wanted to maybe buy a houseboat within the next 7 years but at this point that's almost certainly off the table so it may actually be worth just looking into bankruptcy at this point.
Right now I'm more focused on getting a full time job since my freelance stuff has been too slow to pay all the bills...
Being a grownup is so boring I hate this
out of curiosity, how much total debt are you carrying?
About 2 years' worth of rent (I live in NYC, to give an idea) in credit cards and a similarly large chunk in student loans
I was someone who paid off my balance in full at the end of every month for about 10 years, then bam, COVID, more fuck shit, rent needing to be paid via credit card several months (even more expensive as they take a usually 5% or more fee), and here we are
housing
Oxygen
Total recall style?
Spaceballs style
Never seen spaceballs
You should watch Spaceballs. Then you wouldn't be able to brag so proudly about being ignorant.
Tractors.
Toilet. A lot of the world has you paying for water anyway, but just wait until they add premiums for flushing your Toilet and offer an unlimited (Fair Use Applies) subscription
You don't pay wastewater charges where you live?
The planned internet as a subscription idea that has been on and off.
It's teetering, but I believe it's going to happen one day or another. Where, you'll have to pay a subscription for a part of the internet. Like for Streaming or Social Media or whatever else .etc
Your ISP and Netflix already charge subscriptions, what other "part of the internet" is left to charge for? There's several subscriptions for social media as well if you count blue checkmarks and the like.
That's not what I'm referring to.
What I'm referring to is the attempts made to axe Net Neutrality from corrupted chairmen of the FCC who wants to put ISPs in control of what content you're to access, based on tiered internet and wanting to charge you more to access other parts of said content.
I see, so you're talking about ISPs splitting up service into multiple packages like a cable company. I guess multiplying an existing subscription counts as a new subscription 👍
Yup. And they've been trying to do this for years.
They have as better shot as any right now, considering who's in charge of the FCC.
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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