Mastodawn

Cory Doctorow Nov 9, 2023

How could this happen? Owners of #Chamberlain #MyQ automatic garage door openers just woke up to discover that the company had confiscated valuable features overnight, and that there was nothing they could do about it.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Pluralistic: The enshittification of garage-door openers reveals a vast and deadly rot (09 Nov 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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King Kaufman Nov 10, 2023

@pluralistic

"But this impulse to play shell games runs up against the hard limits of physical reality: grocers just can't send an army of rollerskated teenagers around the store to reprice everything as soon as a wealthy or desperate-looking customer comes through the door."

Can't they?

I've never thought about it before, but after reading this paragraph, I'm now AMAZED that the big grocery chains haven't replaced those little price signs on the shelves with digital displays of some kind, so that they can adjust prices on the fly.

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Darrin L Rogers

@kingkaufman @pluralistic I've been interested in those digital displays for a few years, as a (rank) hobbyist. Wal-Mart and other stores have used them for a decade or more, but in small numbers--like a couple hundred per store (e.g., to highlight a sale on a shelf). I suspect tiny e-paper displays still aren't cheap enough to use for every product in the store, or even every product that could change price a lot. If they were, I'm guessing big chains would do that, b/c flexible pricing = $.