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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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AssholeDesign
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This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.
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Can someone explain why there's a cloud printing service involved here at all? We've been able to print over WiFi for a decade now.
Data collection is the current in trend for most tech companies. They cant scrape any data if you don't download their spyware app on your phone or use their cloud servers. Any little scrap of data they can gather from you they will sell to anyone and everyone.
Companies been after the new gold for ages. Any excuse to mine your data.
That way they can lock you in making it difficult to transition. All those icloud users locked into the Apple ecosystem. They make it easy and then you are stuck.
Be careful with your data.
I understand that's the reason why they're doing it - but what excuse can they give? I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at the things consumers will endure - just look at literally everything apple does.
It's "the cloud", so it's high tech, advanced, and good for you!
It's sold as convenience same as every other "private data siphoning" and "insert yourself in as an intermediary" make-money-from-adding-no-value scam out there.
This isn't just in Tech: for example banks have been trying for almost 2 decades to insert themselves into the last group of economic transactions out there which weren't going through them - cash transactions - in order to get a cut of it and latelly they finally seem to be winning with touch-to-pay technology that's replacing little cash playments like, say, buy the newspaper.
Consider that there really isn't much more space in consumer society anymore to sell more things unless you trully innovate (proper breaktrough stuff, not the "some thing done for ages but now from a smartphone and over a network" of the last decade) and innovation is risky so well established players aren't going to do it (and even the supposed "innovators" in the Tech Startup world have mostly been copying each other of late and the only trully innovative stuff - last gen AI - isn't actually something that causes more sales), so instead what you have is more monetising of what hasn't been monetised yet (such as private information) and large companies leveraging their dominant position in one area to insert themselves as intermediaries in some other area (the touch to pay example from the banks but also quite possibly the point of Google's DRM-for-the-web).
Because they want you to subscribe to their ink cartridge auto-ship service that will send you a new one and charge your credit card any time one is empty, clogged, or just because they feel like it.
I think it is just monthly, whether you printed or not
My guess is they will tell customers it's "easier" just to sell them a cloud subscription for something they do not need whatsoever.
My use case is for printing things at home while I am not at home.
I haven't really had a need to do it since I've been out of school but I used my all in one printer a lot while I was in school. I don't print at home anymore because the ink/nozzles are all fucky, but I do plan on replacing it because it's annoying having to go to the library for that
You could remote desktop in for free and do the same thing.
My own printing is so rare that the most cost effective option is to just go to Staples the rare times I do need to print something. I don't think I've spent more than $5 in the last few years.
The only use I've found for cloud printing is how it would identify all the printers on the uni network and allow me to print on them with no hassle compared to manually adding the printer with the correct driver and IP.