my home tech outdated after 5 years

[2sail2]

My Amazon Fire table from 2017 is now obsolete.  First the Optimum app stopped being supported and would not load last year.  In the Spring, Amazon notified me I could not use their shopping app anymore and I had to use a browser (prompts for my super long password, which I can never remember).  I kept clicking on the shop app and it always redirected for months.  About a month ago, it actually loads and I can add to cart.  Recently upon joining a zoom meeting, it said it would no longer update.   This was my second Fire.  Ya, they are cheap, but this is nuts.  My previous kindle I did root it, but the os had some issues.  I did send it for recycling and discount on a new one, but they noticed I had rooted it, so they sent it back to me.  Amazon doesn't appear they offer this anymore...ugh.

The other thing that is no longer supported is my Roku stick of four or five years.  This was my second stick too.  I have a roku premier in the living room.  I wonder how soon it will be headed for recycling.

And yet, I bought a Ring spotlight with camera and when I went to change router to disable older wpa (I think that was it), the Ring would not connect to it!  Ugh.    Oh ya and add the wifi printer to that one too.  And of course, the router company stopped updating the firmware.  There is / are probably some security vulnerabilities with it now.  I'm expecting the router to go to the recycling heap soon.  That would be my third or fourth one.

More and more profits.  ??

[Crinklz Kat]

Yes... the perpetual upgrade-upgrade-upgrade cycle needs to end.  All this talk of environmental responsibility doesn't seem to apply to electronics, yet they are disasters from a recycling standpoint. 

Problem is, people want stuff as dirt cheap as possible rather than pay up front for something that will last a long time.  And the companies can't keep making those billions in profit if they can't sell anything. 

[~Brian~]

20 minutes ago, Crinklz Kat said:

Yes... the perpetual upgrade-upgrade-upgrade cycle needs to end.  All this talk of environmental responsibility doesn't seem to apply to electronics, yet they are disasters from a recycling standpoint. 

Problem is, people want stuff as dirt cheap as possible rather than pay up front for something that will last a long time.  And the companies can't keep making those billions in profit if they can't sell anything. 

@Crinklz Kat @2sail2

the problem is is that most are not made to last anymore. the reason is is because then they can make more money out of you, or they can charge you a ridiculous amount of money to replace a simple part. for example my brother just had his car fixed, and unfortunately he said that it didn't pass inspection without this part, so he had to go to a local garage and have the whole underside of the car torn apart, and have a $20 part put in so that it would pass inspection. the kicker is is that it cost over $400 just to have the thing torn apart to put a $20 part into the right position. my brother takes real good care of his vehicle, because he door dashes, and he doesn't want to have an issue with his vehicle when he wants to go somewhere or do something, which I admire, because If you take good care of your vehicles they usually take good care of you.

Most of what we live in today isn't even close to what we lived in 25 years ago: by that I mean that when we used to have our refrigerator breakdown, or we used to have a stove A stove breakdown, or used to have something else in the house breakdown, you used to be able to bring the thing to a repair shop and have someone order the parts to be able to fix it at a reduced cost. When you buy a vacuum cleaner for example it might cost you $200 back then: the vacuum cleaner costs 200 and it lasts you 25 to 35 years, you might have to replace a couple of things, or you might add some add Ons, but for the most part your vacuum cleaner last 25 years, Or your stove last 25 years or your refrigerator last 25 years. as technology changes of course, things change rapidly, but at least in the old days you weren't throwing things away add an alarming rate, and I mean alarming.

It comes down to this they just don't want things to last: 25 to 35 years ago a car for example was made out of metal, and it was built to last. We didn't have cars that were made out of composite plastic with very little metal in there to be able to hold something together, and you didn't need to spend $300 on a screw or a nut or a bolt, and it didn't take 35 hours to change A small part, and for the most part your engine was something you could open up and you'd find a broken hose or something do with your starter and you could fix it right there.  my dad used to be able to fix cars just by using common sense, and his senses. he could see it, he could smell it, he could hear it, or he would use is smart to try to figure out a problem if none of those things Worked out fully. Then my dad would be able to say that something is wrong, and he says this is what's wrong with it: and then he would go in and explain to you and be able to replace the part, or he'd be able to order the part. Cars Use the last 25 or 30 years maybe, but now they last more than five and it's lucky that they don't crap out on the highway. Boy did things change really fast!

Basically in the 2000s in the 21st century, we live in a throwaway society! they tell us that they want us to recycle everything, they want us to recycle our compost, they want us to recycle plastic bags, they want us to recycle plastic, they want us to recycle anything that is number 2 plastic, #3 plastic or whatever. they push on us the fact that they want us to recycle everything, but then of course the products that they give us that that we used to rely on for 25 or 35 years don't even last five, and then they're outdated there need to be recycled and, and guess what we have to do: we have to pay to get those done! we have so many computers for example monitors printers scanners and everything else that our use on our daily basis. We have tablets such as ipads in Kindles and Kindle fires and all of these other ones, we have devices like Alexas, Multiple versions of this and multiple versions of that, multiple upgrades of this and multiple upgrades of that. companies upgrade things so bad now that it's like you for example you might get something for Christmas tomorrow. you You buy it in 2022. it's a brand new Alexa or a brand new ipad: within three years that ipad is old and needs to be replaced, or some of the applications that are on it are not able to be upgraded, and so you end up throwing the whole thing away. That makes absolutely no sense, but I can understand where technology needs to update itself, but dos it have to be done at the expense of having someone pay say like $700.00 for an ipad and then it only lasts two years? for example does my phone really have to die every two years? No it doesn't: but that's what the people that make these things want us to have to do, constantly worry about our batteries or other pieces of equipment, because they know someone's gonna drop the thing, or it's gonna take a drink in the toilet, or it's gonna do something else and someone's gonna need to replace it. right now if I were to replace the phone that I have in my hand it would cost me over $200 to replace, but I used to have to pay $799 to get a phone every three years, and by the time you get to the point where you want to Replace the phone, you have no choice because the battery is almost dead, and you can't even replace the batteries anymore. same thing with an iphone: you can't replace the battery any more so the phone is useless, and why do that when you can make a phone last 10 years? the reason is is because people want money out of you so they make things that don't last as long anymore.

It's all about living in a throwaway society: nothing lasts! things that should last 10 years only last about 2 1/2: things that should last 20 years maybe last 15 years! high end electronics usually don't last long because of the fact that they change so fast it's like changing diapers: one gets dirty you get rid of it you get another one: another one gets dirty you change it you get another one, and you throw away every single one of the dirty ones because that's what is expected of you. Companies don't wanna make good quality products anymore, they make it so that it just barely lasts maybe three to five years, and then they die out. Cars for example, all used to be made out of metal and when you had a metal bumper on a Ford F-150 for example, the damn thing was made of metal and you knew it! now it's all polycarbonate plastic plasticated molded body panels karma and if you bump into for A barrier in the parking lot for example, you might break a 50 piece of plastic or $100 piece of plastic, but underneath you might have done about $200 worth of damage to your bumper, so something as simple as a broken a piece of plastic can cost you up to $1000 to fix or more, because you can't see underneath the plastic molding what exactly is not looking well. cars don't last as long as they used to, because they're made out of this plasticated shell, and therefore god forbid you getting an accident because the car would just fold up like an accordion: that is why for example my mom likes big cars, because if she is driving the car she told me that she wants to make sure that she has enough room in the car so that you're not driving A clown car that will just fold over and you're strapped in it, she wants to have plenty of space behind it, because she thinks that if you're in a big car you stand a lot better choice and a lot better chance of survival, and I believe her! I've been through a few accidents myself, and lucky that cars then when we're growing up were made out of metal and not made out of plastic polycarbonate

Amazon, like everyone else is a corporation,, in their function is to allow us to be able to order almost anything we wanted or needed. You can go to Amazon and you can find anything from A-Z. you can find diapers or wipes or any of those things on Amazon, and there's a lot more things That we probably wouldn't even think that are available on Amazon, but we can find it there. Because of the pandemic and because of other things that are beyond our control sometimes, we end up ordering a lot of things online and we don't have to go to a brick and mortar store any more. times have changed, but the habits have not. the habit is that you use it for awhile and then you throw it away. at least when you're done with the Done with a car, you just can't throw it away and leave it somewhere, you have to trade it in or you have to end up having it taken somewhere and crushed or recycled, and then pieces of it are used to make different vehicles. because of us living in a throwaway society, we are being accommodated because of the fact that is easier to sell us a $50 piece of equipment like a fire tablet,, and it lasts maybe two years, because of the fact that the company who runs at Amazon of course, decides that they don't want anybody else's applications on it or anyone else's games on it, they lock it to that particular provider, which means that you are required to use their apps and their browsers in their equipment, and they make it very hard to root something, which takes the control away from Amazon and gives the user of the tablet the control they need to be able to use it as an Amazon tablet as well as a tablet they can actually use.  Amazon and other companies don't want you to be rooting their devices, because then the Cannot push updates to it, or keep it safe according to what they say. I tried rooting one device, and while I enjoyed doing it and I learned a lot doing it, it was a hell of a lot of work, and it really didn't give me what I wanted out of it, so rooting it doesn't really help anything, it just makes it harder to use, because you have to turn it on and you have to do some special thing to be able to turn it on and make it run the way you want it to run, and then when you want to put it back to the way it was, you have to start it A different way and do different things to make it come up the way it should. all in all all it is is just a waste of extra time, unless you are looking for something specific that you want this tablet to do. I actually got rid of a tablet A long time ago because all it was was like a $49 tablet and it didn't have much on it, the version of Android on it was very very very very old and, and It was probably going to end up being where the applications were not going to be updatable after a while. which is exactly what you both were saying.

So as stated: we live in a throwaway society and it's a damn shame because there is a lot of things that can be reused, or repurposed. the only thing with technology companies is that the technology gets old so fast that you can't do anything. what really burns me is the fact that modems or routers get old after a couple of years, and you need a modem or you need a router to be able to function on the Internet on the Internet, or they give you a piece of equipment that is older than normal so that you have to upgrade it and you pay the cost. Another thing that Burns me is for example spectrum, who provides My Internet, provided me with a brand new router and a brand new modem when I wanted to upgrade my equipment because nobody could access or address my equipment to be able to see what was going on. so they did that, and then after I put in their stupid router, after about a week I couldn't use it at all. go figure, technology at its worst but at its best!

Brian

 

[ppdude]

10 hours ago, 2sail2 said:

The other thing that is no longer supported is my Roku stick of four or five years.  This was my second stick too.  I have a roku premier in the living room.  I wonder how soon it will be headed for recycling.

And yet, I bought a Ring spotlight with camera and when I went to change router to disable older wpa (I think that was it), the Ring would not connect to it!  Ugh.    Oh ya and add the wifi printer to that one too.  And of course, the router company stopped updating the firmware.  There is / are probably some security vulnerabilities with it now.  I'm expecting the router to go to the recycling heap soon.  That would be my third or fourth one.

More and more profits.  ??

Hope my Roku don't do that.

WPA? Why on earth would you EVER use that? It's terrible! Why wouldn't you use something with AES-256? Just asking...

 

[oznl]

11 hours ago, 2sail2 said:

And yet, I bought a Ring spotlight with camera and when I went to change router to disable older wpa (I think that was it), the Ring would not connect to it!  Ugh.    Oh ya and add the wifi printer to that one too.  And of course, the router company stopped updating the firmware.  There is / are probably some security vulnerabilities with it now.  I'm expecting the router to go to the recycling heap soon.  That would be my third or fourth one.

More and more profits.  ??

I think that bit's complicated.

The original WPA (as opposed to WPA2) has known vulnerabilities which mean it is no longer considered secure.  Merely having WPA v1 enabled is considered a vulnerability.  Don't even go there with WEP or WPS.

WPA2 (using AES encryption as opposed to the cracked TKIP) is still considered ok.  For now...

If you've got a product that was designed in WPA v1 days it won't know how to connect to WPA v2 and it becomes a humble brick.

Sure, the manufacturers could possibly revisit firmware and develop an update but for them, that's all cost and no revenue.  At the end of the day, they need a business model that will keep the lights on.

Blame the cyber wild-west that's driving endless security updates and constantly consigning protocols to early graves.  I agree with you it sucks.

I've got a box of perfectly-operational cyber-junk that cannot be addressed using a "safe" encryption suite.

11 hours ago, 2sail2 said:

My Amazon Fire table from 2017 is now obsolete.  First the Optimum app stopped being supported and would not load last year.  In the Spring, Amazon notified me I could not use their shopping app anymore and I had to use a browser (prompts for my super long password, which I can never remember).  I kept clicking on the shop app and it always redirected for months.  About a month ago, it actually loads and I can add to cart.  Recently upon joining a zoom meeting, it said it would no longer update.   This was my second Fire.  Ya, they are cheap, but this is nuts.  My previous kindle I did root it, but the os had some issues.  I did send it for recycling and discount on a new one, but they noticed I had rooted it, so they sent it back to me.  Amazon doesn't appear they offer this anymore...ugh.

I actually agree.  I think there IS some corporate b@stardry going on with this.  I've become very wary about buying "cloud service" things because clouds tend to "go away".   A similar thing is my Samsung "Smart" TVs that almost inevitably succumb to "app deprecation disease" and finish up as glorified monitors.

I recently had to add a wireless access point in my garage for my car (sigh...)  I had to hunt a little to find a WAP that could be configured with a simple https interface as opposed to some manufacturer-sponsored cloud interface that, as likely as not, will disappear in a couple of years leaving me with another LED-illuminated brick.

RIght now, I'm dealing with a Christmas present that requires a USB-C socket charge source and do you think I can find one of THOSE in the house?  Right now I'm charging my present in a Tesla ?

[Firefly 35]

On 12/24/2022 at 8:48 PM, oznl said:

Christmas present that requires a USB-C socket charge source and do you think I can find one of THOSE in the house? 

Dollar Tree has those actually.  Most other stores charge $10 or so for one because they know people are caught in predicaments like that.

On 12/24/2022 at 9:01 AM, 2sail2 said:

My Amazon Fire table from 2017 is now obsolete.  First the Optimum app stopped being supported and would not load last year.  In the Spring, Amazon notified me I could not use their shopping app anymore and I had to use a browser (prompts for my super long password, which I can never remember).  I kept clicking on the shop app and it always redirected for months.  About a month ago, it actually loads and I can add to cart.  Recently upon joining a zoom meeting, it said it would no longer update.   This was my second Fire.  Ya, they are cheap, but this is nuts.  My previous kindle I did root it, but the os had some issues.  I did send it for recycling and discount on a new one, but they noticed I had rooted it, so they sent it back to me.  Amazon doesn't appear they offer this anymore...ugh.

The other thing that is no longer supported is my Roku stick of four or five years.  This was my second stick too.  I have a roku premier in the living room.  I wonder how soon it will be headed for recycling.

And yet, I bought a Ring spotlight with camera and when I went to change router to disable older wpa (I think that was it), the Ring would not connect to it!  Ugh.    Oh ya and add the wifi printer to that one too.  And of course, the router company stopped updating the firmware.  There is / are probably some security vulnerabilities with it now.  I'm expecting the router to go to the recycling heap soon.  That would be my third or fourth one.

More and more profits.  ??

Sounds like you need to do away with some of that tech.  These problems didn't exist before...

This reminds me on a more serious note of how police reform advocates are being murdered in some parts of the US.  One would think that people with guns that have authority to shoot people at their descretion should have transparency with the public regarding what they are doing and why.  Apparently some legislators/advocate groups think otherwise...

[DailyDi]

I have a Roku because my “smart” tv wasn’t made with enough memory to hold all the new streaming services. 

[id0ntknow]

Brian is definitely right about things not being made to last anymore. Another issue I have with things now is that everything has to be wifi enabled or smart. I don't need a smart toaster, or a smart lock on my house. That's just giving a tech savvy thief a way to hack his way into my house, and then he can take/do whatever he wants.

[2sail2]

On 12/24/2022 at 9:58 AM, ~Brian~ said:

@Crinklz Kat @2sail2

 for example my brother just had his car fixed, and unfortunately he said that it didn't pass inspection without this part, so he had to go to a local garage and have the whole underside of the car torn apart, and have a $20 part put in so that it would pass inspection. the kicker is is that it cost over $400 just to have the thing torn apart to put a $20 part into the right position. my brother takes real good care of his vehicle, because he door dashes, and he doesn't want to have an issue with his vehicle when he wants to go somewhere or do something, which I admire, because If you take good care of your vehicles they usually take good care of you.

It comes down to this they just don't want things to last: 25 to 35 years ago a car for example was made out of metal, and it was built to last. We didn't have cars that were made out of composite plastic with very little metal in there to be able to hold something together, and you didn't need to spend $300 on a screw or a nut or a bolt, and it didn't take 35 hours to change A small part, and for the most part your engine was something you could open up and you'd find a broken hose or something do with your starter and you could fix it right there.  my dad used to be able to fix cars just by using common sense, and his senses. 

Basically in the 2000s in the 21st century, we live in a throwaway society! they tell us that they want us to recycle everything, they want us to recycle our compost, they want us to recycle plastic bags, they want us to recycle plastic, they want us to recycle anything that is number 2 plastic, #3 plastic or whatever. 

.... Cars for example, all used to be made out of metal and when you had a metal bumper on a Ford F-150 for example, the damn thing was made of metal and you knew it! now it's all polycarbonate plastic plasticated molded body panels karma and if you bump into for A barrier in the parking lot for example, you might break a 50 piece of plastic or $100 piece of plastic, but underneath you might have done about $200 worth of damage to your bumper, so something as simple as a broken a piece of plastic can cost you up to $1000 to fix or more, because you can't see underneath the plastic molding what exactly is not looking well. ....

Amazon, like everyone else is a corporation,, in their function is to allow us to be able to order almost anything we wanted or needed. ...Amazon and other companies don't want you to be rooting their devices, because then the Cannot push updates to it, or keep it safe according to what they say. I tried rooting one device, and while I enjoyed doing it and I learned a lot doing it, it was a hell of a lot of work, and it really didn't give me what I wanted out of it, so rooting it doesn't really help anything, it just makes it harder to use, because you have to turn it on and you have to do some special thing to be able to turn it on and make it run the way you want it to run, and then when you want to put it back to the way it was, you have to start it A different way and do different things to make it come up the way it should. all in all all it is is just a waste of extra time, unless you are looking for something specific that you want this tablet to do. I actually got rid of a tablet A long time ago because all it was was like a $49 tablet and it didn't have much on it, the version of Android on it was very very very very old and, and It was probably going to end up being where the applications were not going to be updatable after a while. which is exactly what you both were saying.

So as stated: we live in a throwaway society and it's a damn shame because there is a lot of things that can be reused, or repurposed. the only thing with technology companies is that the technology gets old so fast that you can't do anything. what really burns me is the fact that modems or routers get old after a couple of years, and you need a modem or you need a router to be able to function on the Internet on the Internet, or they give you a piece of equipment that is older than normal so that you have to upgrade it and you pay the cost. Another thing that Burns me is for example spectrum, who provides My Internet, provided me with a brand new router and a brand new modem when I wanted to upgrade my equipment because nobody could access or address my equipment to be able to see what was going on. so they did that, and then after I put in their stupid router, after about a week I couldn't use it at all. go figure, technology at its worst but at its best!

Brian

 

heh, On my car in order to replace a headlight, you have to take the front bumper off.  Though I think people have found short cuts.

Recycling...I have a couple bags of electronic crap lined up.  I never seem to be able to get to the recycling day. 

My wife scratched and banged up her front end on her car going into our single car garage and it was almost not worth it to fix.  She did do it another time, but it wasn't as bad.  Recently she somewhat sideswiped a car and the mirror fell off.  We only had  the mirror reattached.  

I'm sure the big thing with the kindle was that they monitored what you were doing with it.  

I think there is a newish US law that is requiring manufacturers to allow things (maybe just phones, in particular iphones?) to be fixed.  I know batteries have been glued in a few years now.

 

[Cruiser 03]

I bought my smart Samsungs about a month before before everyone went to standardized apps , so all the stuff built in was completely worthless ,I use an apple 4 k tV for everything . . Admittedly I do have a serious collection of antique electronic trash leftover stuff like a service modem for a long since gone pilower chair it is blading high speed 1200 baud , I also have PDA and cellphone from the year 1999. This stuff ain’t worth the powder to blow it to hell ,but I do have some old CRT monitors that are I have been offerered 4-5 X’s what I paid for them new , and have old 386 & 486 computers that people have given me as much $3,000 to get ahold of compatible peripheral slots and such . For specialized applications . 

[SoggyTyke]

I have a Pioneer plasma from 17 years ago.  The black levels are as good as anything you can buy now.

 

 

 

On 12/28/2022 at 6:39 AM, DailyDi said:

I have a Roku because my “smart” tv wasn’t made with enough memory to hold all the new streaming services. 

This.  Why buy a new TV when you can buy a $99 Roku?